His leading ideas, contained within the compass of a few striking pages, have since become known as “Saint-Simon’s Parable.”
“Let us suppose,” says he, “that France suddenly loses fifty of her first-class doctors, fifty first-class chemists, fifty first-class physiologists, fifty first-class bankers, two hundred of her best merchants, six hundred of her foremost agriculturists, five hundred of her most capable ironmasters, etc. [enumerating the principal industries]. Seeing that these men are its most indispensable producers, makers of its most important products, the minute that it loses these the nation will degenerate into a mere soulless body and fall into a state of despicable weakness in the eyes of rival nations, and will remain in this subordinate position so long as the loss remains and their places are vacant. Let us take another supposition. Imagine that France retains all her men of genius, whether in the arts and sciences or in the crafts and industries, but has the misfortune to lose on the same day the king’s brother, the Duke of Angoulême, and all the other members of the royal family; all the great officers of the Crown; all ministers of State, whether at the head of a department or not; all the Privy Councillors; all the masters of requests; all the marshals, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, grand vicars and canons; all prefects and sub-prefects; all Government employees; all the judges; and on top of that a hundred thousand proprietors—the cream of her nobility. Such an overwhelming catastrophe would certainly aggrieve the French, for they are a kindly-disposed nation. But the loss of a hundred and thirty thousand of the best-reputed individuals in the State would give rise to sorrow of a purely sentimental kind. It would not cause the community the least inconvenience.”[440]
In other words, the official Government is a mere façade. Its action is wholly superficial. Society might exist without it and life would be none the less happy. But the disappearance of the savants, industrial leaders, bankers, and merchants would leave the community crippled. The very sources of wealth would dry up, for their activities are really fruitful and necessary. They are the true governors who wield real power. Such was the parable.
According to Saint-Simon, little observation is needed to realise that the world we live in is based upon industry, and that anything besides industry is scarcely worth the attention of thinking people. A long process of historical evolution, which according to Saint-Simon commenced in the twelfth century with the enfranchisement of the communes and culminated in the French Revolution, had prepared the way for it.[441] At least industry is the one cardinal feature of the present day.
The political concerns of his contemporaries were regarded with some measure of despair. The majority of them were engaged either in defending or attacking the Charter of 1814. The Liberals were simply deceiving themselves, examining old and meaningless formulæ such as “the sovereignty of the people,” “liberty,” and “equality”—conceptions that never had any meaning,[442] but were simply metaphysical creations of the jurists,[443] and they ought to have realised that this kind of work was perfectly useless now that the feudal régime was overthrown. Men in future will have something better to do than to defend the Charter against the “ultras.” The parliamentary régime may be very necessary, but it is just a passing phase between the feudalism of yesterday and the new order of to-morrow.[444] That future order is Industrialism—a social organisation having only one end in view, the further development of industry, the source of all wealth and prosperity.
The new régime implies first of all the abolition of all class distinction. There will be no need for either nobles, bourgeois, or clergy. There will be only two categories, workers and idlers—or the bees and the drones, as Saint-Simon puts it. Sometimes he refers to them as the national and anti-national party. In the new society the second class[445] is bound to disappear, for there is only room for the first. This class includes, besides manual workers,[446] agriculturists, artisans, manufacturers, bankers, savants, and artists.[447] Between these persons there ought to be no difference except that which results from their different capacities, or what Saint-Simon calls their varying stakes in the national interest. “Industrial equality,” he writes, “consists in each drawing from society benefits exactly proportionate to his share in the State—that is, in proportion to his potential capacity and the use which he makes of the means at his disposal—including, of course, his capital.”[448] Saint-Simon evidently has no desire to rob the capitalists of their revenues; his hostility is reserved for the landed proprietors.
Not only must every social distinction other than that founded upon labour and ability disappear, but government in the ordinary sense of the term will largely become unnecessary. “National association” for Saint-Simon merely meant “industrial enterprise.” “France was to be turned into a factory and the nation organised on the model of a vast workshop”; but “the task of preventing thefts and of checking other disorders in a factory is a matter of quite secondary importance and can be discharged by subordinates.”[449] In a similar fashion, the function of government in industrial society must be limited to “defending workers from the unproductive sluggard and maintaining security and freedom for the producer.”[450]
So far Saint-Simon’s “industrialism” is scarcely distinguishable from the “Liberalism” of Smith and his followers, especially J. B. Say’s. Charles Comte and Dunoyer, writing in their review, Le Censeur, were advancing exactly similar doctrines,[451] sometimes even using identical terms. “Plenty of scope for talent” and laissez-faire were some of the favourite maxims of the Liberal bourgeois. Such also were the aspirations of Saint-Simon.
But it is just here that the tone changes.[452]
Assuming that France has become a huge factory, the most important task that awaits the nation is to inaugurate the new manufacturing régime and to seek to combine the interests of the entrepreneurs with those of the workers on the one hand and of the consumers on the other. There is thus just enough room for government—of a kind. What is required is the organising of forces rather than the governing of men.[453] Politics need not disappear altogether, but “must be transformed into a positive science of productive organisation.”[454] “Under the old system the tendency was to increase the power of government by establishing the ascendancy of the higher classes over the lower. Under the new system the aim must be to combine all the forces of society in such a fashion as to secure the successful execution of all those works which tend to improve the lot of its members either morally or physically.”[455]