The recomposition of social unity: a study of democratic tensions among fraternal socialists (1839-1847).

Summary This thesis is devoted to the analysis of the discourse of the first French republican socialists, the "fraternitarian socialists", and their attempt to think fraternity in an individualist perspective. The first chapter presents the transformations of French society that influenced this socialist discourse (urban fabric, industrialization by workshops, democratic public space in definition, economics in progressive autonomization, religion in society leaving religion). The following chapters identify themes of this discourse: power (social power, association, revolution), individual property and its overcoming, social conflict. The concluding chapter reveals the model of socio-political organization underlying this discourse, a "corporatist republican" model. Despite, or thanks to, its simplicity, the idea of "total recomposition" shows logical constructions and insurmountable contradictions of the first phase of democracy.