Eugène Buret
Antoine-Eugène Buret (6 October 1810 – 23 August 1842) was a French philosopher, economist, sociologist and journalist.
Biography
Born at Troyes, in the department of Aube, he was a disciple of Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi. An economist and sociologist, he was attached to the editorial staff of the Courrier Français.
In 1837, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences launched a competition on the theme "Determine in what poverty consists and by what signs it is manifested in various countries. To seek the causes which produce it". As the answers were judged insufficient, the deadline was extended until December 1839. Buret took note of the competition in 1839. Among the twenty-two submissions, Buret won a gold medal and a prize of 2,500 francs.
His prize-winning text provided the basis for his 1841 work La misère des classes laborieuses en France et en Angleterre ("The Misery of the Working Classes in France and England"), which is considered one of the most important contributions to the debates on pauperism around 1840's. His work appeared four years before Friedrich Engels' similar work on the situation of the working class in England published in 1845.[1]
Buret used the prize money to go on a study trip to England, which he had previously known only from books, and to discover the British proletariat. He then went to Algeria, where he met General Bugeaud and wrote an exposé for him on French colonization in Algeria, which was to be his last publication before his death.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx will study and refer to his extensive work on the situation of the working classes in France and England.
Works
- Carl Ritter, Géographie générale comparée, ou Étude de la terre dans ses rapports avec la nature et avec l'histoire de l'homme. Pour servir de base à l'étude et à l'enseignement de sciences physiques et historiques (1838; translator)
- La misère des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France (1840)
- Question d'Afrique: de la double conquête de l'Algérie par la guerre et la colonisation : suivi d'un examen critique du gouvernement, de l'administration et de la situation coloniale (1842)
- Louis Auguste Blanqui, Pellegrino Rossi, Eugène Buret, Cours d'économie politique; Histoire de l'économie politique en Europe depuis les anciens jusqu'à nos jours (1843)
Notes
- ↑ Vatin, François (2001). "Le Travail, la Servitude et la Vie. Avant Marx et Polanyi, Eugène Buret", Revue du MAUSS, Vol. II, No. 18, pp. 237–80.
References
- Aynard, Joseph (1937). "Ceux qui ont voulu connaître les ouvriers: Eugène Buret (1810-1842)," Vie Intellectuelle.
- Chanson, Paul (1943). Eugène Buret (1810-1842). Paris: J. Lesfauries.
