A History of Economic Doctrines / from the time of the physiocrats to the present day

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

Not that it had hitherto been neglected. Utopian communists from Plato and More up to Mably, Morelly, Godwin, and Babeuf, the eighteenth-century equalitarians, all rest their case upon a criticism of property. But hitherto the question had been treated from the point of view of ethics rather than of economics.[436] The originality of the Saint-Simonian treatment is that it is the direct outcome of the economic and political revolution which shook France and the whole of Europe towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The socialism of Saint-Simon is not a vague aspiration for some pristine equality which was largely a creation of the imagination. It is rather the naïve expression of juvenile enthusiasm in the presence of the new industrial régime begotten of mechanical invention and scientific discovery. The modern spirit at its best is what it would fain reveal. It sought to interpret the generous aspirations of the new bourgeois class, freed through the instrumentality of the Revolution from the tutelage of baron and priest, and to show how the reactionary policy of the Restoration threatened its triumph. Not content, however, with confining itself to the intellectual orbit of the bourgeoisie, it sought also to define the sphere of the workers in future society and to lay down regulations for their benefit. But its appeal was chiefly to the more cultured classes—engineers, bankers, artists, and savants. It was to these men—all of them members of the better classes—that the Saint-Simonians preached collectivism and the suppression of inheritance as the easiest way of founding a new society upon the basis of science and industry. Hence the great stir which the new ideas caused.

Consequently Saint-Simonism appears to be a somewhat unexpected extension of economic Liberalism rather than a tardy renewal of ancient socialistic conceptions.

We must, in fact, distinguish between two currents in Saint-Simonism. The one represents the doctrine preached by Saint-Simon himself, the other is that of his disciples, the Saint-Simonians. Saint-Simon’s creed can best be described as “industrialism” plus a slight admixture of socialism, and it thus naturally links itself with economic Liberalism, of which it is simply an exaggerated development. The disciples’ doctrine, on the other hand, can only be described as collectivism. But it is a collectivism logically deduced from two of the master’s principles which have been extended and amplified. For a history of economic ideas it is the theories of the disciples that matter most, perhaps. But it would be impossible to understand these without knowing something of Saint-Simon’s theory. We shall give an explanation of his doctrine, first attempting to show the links which surely, though strangely enough, affiliate the socialism of Saint-Simon with economic Liberalism.

I: SAINT-SIMON AND INDUSTRIALISM

Saint-Simon was a nobleman who led a somewhat dissolute, adventurous life. At the early age of sixteen he took part in the American War of Independence. The Revolution witnessed the abandonment of his claim to nobility, but by successful speculation in national property he was enabled to retrieve his fortune to some extent. Imprisoned as a suspect at Sainte-Pélagie, set free on the 9th Thermidor, he attained a certain notoriety as a man of affairs interested chiefly in travels and amusements and as a dilettante student of the sciences. From the moment of his release he began to regard himself as a kind of Messiah.[437] He was profoundly impressed by what seemed to him to be the birth of a new society at which he had himself assisted, in which the moral and political and even physical conditions of life were suddenly torn up by the roots, when ancient beliefs disappeared and nothing seemed ready to take their place. He himself was to be the evangelist of the new gospel, and with this object in view on the 4th Messidor, An. VI, he called together the capitalists who were already associated with him and, pointing out the great necessity for restoring public confidence, proposed the establishment of a gigantic bank whose funds might be employed in setting up works of public utility—a proof of the curious way in which economic and philosophic considerations were already linked together in his thoughts.[438] An ill-considered marriage which was hastily broken off, however, was followed by a period of much extravagance and great misery. By the year 1805 so reduced were his circumstances that he was glad to avail himself of the generosity of one of his old servants. After her death he lived partly upon the modest pension provided him by his family and partly upon the contributions of a few tradesmen, but he was again so miserable that in 1823 he attempted suicide. A banker of the name of Olinde Rodrigues came to the rescue this time and supplied him with the necessary means of support. He died in 1825, surrounded by a number of his disciples who had watched over the last moments of his earthly life. During all these years, haunted as he was by the need for giving to the new century the doctrine it so much required, he was constantly engaged in publishing brochures, new works, or selections from his earlier publications, sometimes alone and sometimes in collaboration with others,[439] in which the same suggestions are always revived and the same ideas keep recurring, but in slightly different forms.

Saint-Simon’s earlier work was an attempt to establish a scientific synthesis which might furnish mankind with a system of positive morality to take the place of religious dogmas. It was to be a kind of “scientific breviary” where all phenomena could be deduced from one single idea, that of “universal gravitation.” He himself has treated us to a full account of this system, which is as deceptive as it is simple, and which shows us his serious limitations as a philosopher whose ambition far outran his knowledge. Auguste Comte, one of his disciples, attempted a similar task in his Cours de Philosophie positive and in the Politique positive, so that Saint-Simon, who is usually considered the father of socialism, finds himself also the father of positivism.

From 1814 up to his death in 1825 he partly relinquished his interest in philosophy and devoted himself almost exclusively to the exposition of his social and political ideas, which are the only ones that interest us here.

His economics might be summed up as an apotheosis of industry, using the latter word in the widest sense, much as Smith had employed the term as synonymous with labour of all kind.