In postwar France, following the First World War, the need for a profound and ambitious economic reconstruction was more than evident. In human and material terms, France was the hardest hit of the Allies. It suffered around 1.4 million deaths and more than 4 million wounded. Although there were civilian casualties, almost all of these victims were soldiers. This left a decimated generation and a severe demographic crisis. The most brutal fighting of the entire war took place on French soil. Entire regions, such as Verdun and the Somme, were devastated, and the entire front line from the Atlantic to Switzerland had vast areas of devastation. This meant unusable farmland, vanished villages, and destroyed factories, railways, canals, and roads. The economy had lost much of its industrial and agricultural capacity. At the macroeconomic level, French public debt skyrocketed to finance the war and reconstruction. The devaluation of the franc and the rising cost of living were pressing realities. Consequently, in 1919, society was still reeling from the shock of the war, marked by grief and the memory of the horrors of the trenches, and also suffering the hardships of a new economic crisis.
In this rather bleak scenario, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT)-the country's main trade union organization-positioned itself not only as a force for workers' rights but also as a proactive social agent. It advocated for a complete reorganization of national production. As a result of this initiative, it proposed the creation of the Economic Council of Labor (CET), an institution designed to manage this ambitious project. It's important to remember that the CGT and the Socialist Party had forged a "Sacred Union" with the French state to win the war.
This proposal was nothing less than one of the most ambitious attempts to date by the European labor movement of the early 20th century to articulate a concrete alternative to both liberal market capitalism and Soviet-style state socialism. Honoring the Revolutionary Syndicalist origins of the CGT, its proponents based their proposal on the syndicalist principle of class autonomy, for both producers and consumers.
The origins of the Economic Council of Labor
The process of developing this plan had its own particular trajectory. At the Congress in July 1918, the final declaration stated that "We must orient ourselves towards positive action, which is not only capable of carrying out a street riot, but also of taking the direction of production into our own hands."
Thus, from the end of 1918, with the war already over, the CGT had begun to demand a central role for trade unions-understood as "organized labor"-in the direction and management of national production. This aspiration was formalized in December of that year when the Confederation presented the government with a proposal for the creation of a tripartite "National Economic Council." The Council would include representatives of employers, workers, and the government itself.
We must remember that at that time Germany was dominated by Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, which covered almost the entire country. For example, in Strasbourg, now occupied by the French Army, a Workers' Council held local power for several weeks. The red flag flew in the city's main squares, and the working class demanded a workers' government. Revolution was knocking on the doors of Western Europe. The French CGT, although by then no longer embracing the revolutionary spirit that had prevailed until shortly before the Great War, continued to uphold its aspirations for the liberation and self-management of the working class.
However, this initial proposal failed. The government of Georges Clemenceau stalled the project, though not without first showing apparent interest. In July 1919, more than six months later, Clemenceau made a counteroffer that the CGT rejected as a "mere caricature" of the original proposal. The government's alternative reduced the council to an inter-ministerial commission, without any real power and with only symbolic worker representation, more aimed at co-opting some union leaders. A waste of time. Faced with this unacceptable offer and the realization of the government's "inability" to address the economic crisis, the labor movement decided to take matters into its own hands.
Once again, we must consider the social and political context. At that time, there was an almost revolutionary atmosphere among the working class. In the major labor disputes in many factories and cities, strike committees were formed that sought to exert a degree of territorial control within their respective areas. Although they were not soviets in the Russian style, given their lack of revolutionary vocation and absence of soldiers, the conservative press did treat them as such. In April and May of 1919, a major strike paralyzed much of Paris and other cities along the Seine. Saint-Denis was practically controlled by the strike committee. This would be the largest strike of the period and attempted, unsuccessfully, to spread throughout the country.
The government attempted to quell this wave of worker unrest through concessions. The aforementioned strike aimed to establish the eight-hour workday, and the government approved it by decree on April 23. This was a concession by Clemenceau's government to defuse the discontent and prevent a potential revolutionary radicalization. However, employers refused to implement the law. This led to the general strike reigniting in May.
The CGT was torn between Revolution and Reform. A revolutionary wing existed, comprised at that time of anarchists, communists, and revolutionary syndicalists. This faction would give rise that year to the Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees. This revolutionary wing aimed to unleash a national general strike and overthrow the State by establishing structures of workers' counter-power.
However, the Confederation's higher committees-especially the national industry federations-were controlled by the reformist majority under the strong leadership of Léon Jouhaux, the CGT's general secretary. Despite this, the moderate wing was not a pawn of the social-democratic SFIO party, but rather had its own distinct line, whether as an inheritance from the traditional Proudhonism of the French labor movement or due to the revolutionary syndicalism that permeated its political culture-despite having renounced the Charter of Amiens and its key premise of "the union is self-sufficient." The fact was that the CGT harbored a deep distrust of the "old, traditional state." These factors would lead to the search for a new formula of "planning without the state."
The Lyon Congress, the CET and industrial nationalization
The final decision was made at the Lyon Congress, held in September 1919. The CGT approved the creation of its own independent body, the Economic Council of Labor. This new entity, whose inaugural session took place on January 8, 1920, was formed on the basis of an alliance of four fundamental components of the working world:
Workers: Represented by the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), as the main driving force and core of the project.
Technicians: Represented by the Union Syndicale des Techniciens de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Agriculture (USTICA), recognizing their role in industrial and commercial activity.
Cooperators: Representing organized consumers through the Fédération des Coopératives de Consommation, complementing the representation of producers with regard to the distribution and consumption of goods and services.
Civil servants: Represented by the Fédération Nationale des Fonctionnaires. They were included not as delegates of the State, but as public workers in the service of the community. Their task was to ensure that the general services coordinated the production and distribution of wealth.
This structure was complemented by a complex internal organization that revealed its potential to replace the state, perhaps unintentionally. The CET was divided into nine specialized sections: National Equipment, Economic Organization, Industrial Production, Agricultural Production, Finance and Credit, Frameworks for Social Life, Education, Commerce, and Devastated Regions. This design demonstrated the intention to create a counterweight to economic planning, going beyond mere economic administration.
This structure formed the basis from which the new concept of nationalization was theorized. The CGT proposed the concept of "industrialized nationalization" as the cornerstone of the Economic Council of Labor's economic program. This type of nationalization was not the state takeover of industries. The idea was to reconfigure the management, control, and purpose of major national resources and services. It also aimed to overcome the shortcomings of private capitalist control, as well as state administration, by proposing an autonomous management model based on the direct partnership of the main economic and social actors.
In its work, the CET articulated a forceful critique of the model of direct exploitation by the State, which is what is commonly understood as "nationalization." As we have said before, the CGT had no interest in increasing the powers of the State or reinforcing its authority. It rejected a system that subjected essential industries to the civil service, generally bureaucratic and driven by self-interest, and which the Confederation accused of irresponsibility and squandering resources.
The disastrous results observed during the war economy of years past should serve as sufficient condemnation of that model[1]. For the CGT, nationalization did not solve the fundamental problem of worker alienation, but merely replaced the arbitrary authority of the capitalist with the impersonal, and often inefficient and short-sighted, authority of the state bureaucracy. We can see here the continued relevance of this analysis.
Thus, in contrast to the statist model, the CET and the CGT proposed industrialized nationalization, which would allow the community to manage major economic sectors autonomously. By nationalization, they meant entrusting national ownership to the stakeholders themselves: producers and consumers organized into large social structures.
This principle translated into a tripartite governance structure for each nationalized industry or service. Management would be the responsibility of bodies composed of equal representatives from the three key stakeholder groups:
Producers: Including both manual and technical workers, thus recognizing the combined value of labor and specialized knowledge in the production process.
Consumers and users: Representing the direct interests of those who use the service or consume the product, ensuring that management responds to the real needs of society.
The Collective: Representing the general interest of the nation or society in general, ensuring that the industry operated for the benefit of the public good and in coordination with the rest of the national economy.
This tripartite structure was an attempt to institutionalize a form of economic democracy. It balanced the specialized knowledge of producers with the needs identified by consumers and combined this with the strategic interests of the nation as a whole. This model was designed to be applied to the strategic sectors of the French economy.
The start-up
The CET (Center for Territorial Studies) was launched immediately upon its approval. It began with the modernization of infrastructure, considered the backbone of all the country's economic activity and identified as the most pressing problem. Its importance was twofold: on the one hand, the railways constituted a fundamental pillar of the national infrastructure, and their efficient operation was an indispensable condition for overall economic recovery. On the other hand, the sector was a source of social tension, as demonstrated by the major railway workers' strikes of February and May 1920, which placed nationalization among their primary demands. To address this challenge, the CET mobilized its nine specialized sections. Each analyzed a different aspect of the problem, and the synthesis of this work resulted in a comprehensive project for the nationalization of the railways under an industrialized, tripartite management model.
But the CET's work did not stop at the railways. Its program encompassed a top-to-bottom reorganization of French society and the economy, as demonstrated by the work of its various sections. They produced analyses and proposals for reorganizing mining and hydroelectric power, following the same principles. The Finance section also published a critical analysis of the banking system and proposed the creation of a state bank. For its part, the Economic Organization section proposed a "large regulatory body" (without giving it a name) to provide overall direction to the national economy and overcome capitalist waste. The Council addressed other problems, such as agriculture, housing and urban planning, the education system, and even the creation of a national supply system, with the aim of rationalizing the distribution of goods.
This broad range of studies demonstrates that the ultimate goal of the CET was not the reform of isolated sectors, but rather to lay the foundations for a rational and general economic and social reorganization. This is what is meant by establishing a socialist society-under workers' control-without a violent revolution. At least on paper, since how would big capital have responded?
Industrialized nationalization
The Economic Council of Labor was not the product of government regulations, nor was it an attempt by the union leadership to gain access to the national government, but rather an autonomous initiative of the labor movement. It arose in response to what they perceived as the State's inaction or incapacity in the face of the urgent need to develop a coherent economic program from the workers' perspective. The creation of the CET was intended to launch a new phase in union activity, focused on concrete solutions.
The model of industrialized nationalization proposed by the Economic Council of Labor constituted an economic alternative that could have overcome both private capitalism and bureaucratic state control. It represented an attempt to articulate a "third way" based on class autonomy, technical training, and economic democracy, handing control of key sectors over to an alliance of producers, consumers, and other representatives of what was considered the collective interest.
The creation and work of the CET responded to a dual strategic purpose that multiplied the scope of union action, following the model of Revolutionary Unionism.
On the one hand, it presented feasible solutions. The Council aimed to move beyond criticism and demands to build a "positive and constructive program." The objective was clear: "It's no longer just about criticizing; it's about taking action." Its solutions were grounded in economic reality and could be implemented immediately. This gained legitimacy among workers and the progressive middle class.
On the other hand, it educated and prepared the working class. The CET was also conceived as an instrument of training. It sought to "equip workers"-in Jouhaux's words-"with economic competence to understand the complex mechanisms of modern life and prepare them to assume a leading role in the reorganized economy," a role that "significantly transcended the existing framework" and aimed at a profound social transformation.
The work of the Economic Council of Labor was understood in 1920 as the beginning of a new phase in the history of French trade unionism. For the CGT, the labor movement demonstrated its capacity not only to defend its particular interests, but also to identify its aspirations for the "public good" (common good).
With this plan, the Confederation should cease to be a minority opposition force and become a powerful armed structure with a detailed plan for the economic and social reconstruction of the nation, with the workers as the protagonists of the process.
A clash of reality
An old Prussian military officer once said that no plan, however good, can withstand its first encounter with the enemy. That is, with reality. Reality is constantly changing and dynamic; conditions shift, you can overestimate your strength, and all the other players are also making their moves.
The political and social climate thwarted these ambitious goals. Firstly, the economic crisis made it very difficult for people to remain members. A large portion of the workforce abandoned the union movement during the economic downturn of the 1920s. Most of the major strikes that swept the country in 1920 were lost. As a result, the organization's membership plummeted from approximately 2.4 million at the beginning of 1920 to 600,000 in 1921. This was a major blow to those who considered themselves the workers' movement.
Secondly, tensions between reformists and revolutionaries reached a point of no return. The former accused the latter of revolutionary impatience and of sabotaging the organization's overall plans. The latter accused the former of reformism and cowardice in asserting their authority. Consequently, both sides engaged in a fratricidal struggle that resulted in mass expulsions and departures. In June 1922, all revolutionary factions met at a congress to found a new revolutionary organization, the Unified CGT. However, this new trade union federation also faced serious internal problems and soon split again .[2]
The majority, and arguably reformist, CGT then absorbed sectors of white-collar workers and civil servants, even less inclined toward social revolution. In 1925, the French government took steps to create an Economic Council, though still outside the institutions of the Third Republic. This was enthusiastically welcomed by the CGT leaders. Their acceptance signified acceptance of the State's role as guarantor of the "general interest of the nation and humanity."
This Council did not develop the country in a socialist direction, as the CGT might have hoped. On the contrary, it strengthened capitalism and improved the French economy, given the inclusion of new voices that had previously gone unheard. The CGT had no power in the Council's resolutions, although its proposals were considered.
From time to time, the CGT would bring up the idea of the CET again. This happened in 1936, 1940, and 1945. The CET was the basis of the Conseil Économique (Economic Council) implemented by the government of the Fourth Republic between 1946 and 1960, although, obviously, much reduced and distorted, and Léon Jouhaux was elected to preside over it until his death in 1954.
The Spanish National Confederation of Labor (CNT) was the organization that would attempt to implement this plan, without diluting it within the state bureaucracy and maximizing its potential. It wasn't until 1938 that it was put into operation, albeit briefly, during the Spanish Civil War. These ideas reached Spanish anarcho-syndicalism through the numerous exiles in France during the 1920s, as well as through the work of Pierre Besnard, who was highly influential among Spanish anarcho-syndicalist activists.
Miguel G. Gómez.
Literature
Besnard, Pierre (1930). Les unions ouvriers et la révolution sociale.
https://bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/pf0000019115
Biard, Jean-François. "Chapitre I. The reformism of the CGT: the plan with the plan." Le socialisme devant ses choix , Éditions de la Sorbonne, 1985,
https://doi.org/10.4000/books.psorbonne.70832.
Jouhaux, Léon (1921). "Le Conseil Economique du Travail". Revue internationale du travail, Vol.1(2), pp.179-186
https://researchrepository.ilo.org/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/Le-Conseil-economique-du-Travail/995274445102676
Raports moral et financier des Committees Confederaux et de Comissions pour l'exercice 1918-1919. Presented at the 20th Corporate Congress (14th of the CGT) held in Lyon on 15 and 21 September 1919
https://www.ihs.cgt.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/20-1919-XXe-Congres-national-corporatif-XIV-e-de-la-CGT-Lyon-15-21-septembre-1919.pdf
[1]It should be noted that the Government nationalized a large part of industrial production and transport, putting it at the service of the needs of the war.
[2]All the worse, since in 1924 the communists definitively took over the CGTU, causing the departure of anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists. Some returned to the other CGT, while others would create the CGT-SR, by then a very small minority. The CGTU would merge again with the CGT in 1936.
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/01/21/el-consejo-economico-del-trabajo-y-la-nacionalizacion-industrializada-en-francia/
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Link: (en) Spain, Regeneracion - The Economic Council of Labor and Industrial Nationalization in France - The Work of the French CGT in 1919 By Embat (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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