From soviet five-year plans to the New Deal in the US and China’s Great Leap Forward to post-war building in Europe, concrete has been the material of choice for revolutionary change
“This process,” wrote François Coignet in 1861 of his new product, “will transform the safety, well-being, health and morality of mankind.” He predicted it would inspire nothing less than a “revolution” – not a word to be used lightly with the events of 1848 still fresh in the French memory.
Coignet’s new product was concrete, and he wasn’t far wrong in his predictions – except maybe for the bit about morality. Coignet was a Saint-Simonian socialist, which is to say that, unlike Marx, he thought social equality could be achieved without class war. He believed that concrete would be a step towards a world in which working people would own the means of production. Wherever the raw materials for concrete – sand and limestone – were available, which is to say just about everywhere, people of no skill would be empowered to build clean, dry, comfortable dwellings and be able to live in dignity. No more peasants’ hovels.
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