ABSTRACT
Workers’ emancipation was a major rallying cry in 1848, especially in socialist’s circles. It implied the desire to abolish any subjugation of workers to their employers and an emancipated production. This was the focus of socialism during the Third Republic, from the 1880s until the outbreak of World War I, and this included all concrete relations of production between labour and its environment. This chapter aims to analyse how three very different socialist authors – Benoît Malon (1841–1893), Georges Sorel (1847–1922) and Adolphe Landry (1874–1956) – imagined fluid relations between workers and the various components of production (machinery, natural resources and human participants), thus unveiling the complex connections that workers simultaneously forge with nature and society.
