A progressive bourgeois law was repurposed to suppress workers’ associations

Evidence

The Le Chapelier law of June 1791 was brought in to dissolve the craft guilds which had survived from the ancien regime . Although it was in conception a “progressive” bourgeois measure, it was used throughout the first half of the nineteenth century to ban workers’ associations. The law of the maximum fixed a ceiling for food prices and for wages, and drove a wedge between the Jacobins and the workers. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1948

The Le Chapelier law of June 1791 was brought in to dissolve the craft guilds which had survived from the ancien regime . Although it was in conception a “progressive” bourgeois measure, it was used throughout the first half of the nineteenth century to ban workers’ associations. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1948

Categorization

• SEED: A possible essay angle: how ‘progressive’ legal formalities drafted to break ancien regime privilege become the tools for suppressing the next wave of subaltern organizing.
• XREF: Connects to the theme of law as a double-edged instrument, echoing Foucault’s analysis of legal power and Milgrom’s law merchant work in the reader’s foundational toolkit. — connects to: Trade unions can be co-opted to contain working-class opposition; Weimar’s constitution functioned as a trap for the working class by masking bourgeois advantages — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 955; A progressive’s thesis urged suppressing government workers who unionize — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 243 (+2 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1948

Broader Connections

• Trade unions can be co-opted to contain working-class opposition #expands (0.82)