“Yes, without doubt, the Saint-Simonians profess peculiar views regarding property and the future of women, as well as concerning religion, power, liberty, and, finally, concerning all the great problems which are agitated so violently in Europe to-day. But these are very different from those ascribed to them. The system of community of goods means a division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruits of the toil of all.
“The Saint-Simonians reject this equal division of property, which would constitute in their eyes a more reprehensible act of violence, a more revolting injustice, than the present unequal division, which was effected in the first place by the force of arms, by conquest.
“For they believe in the natural inequality of men, and regard this inequality as the very basis of association, as the indispensable condition of social order.
“They reject the system of community of goods, for this would be a manifest violation of the first of all the moral laws which it is their mission to teach—viz., that in the future each one should rank according to his capacity and be rewarded according to his works.
“But in virtue of this law they demand the abolition of all privileges of birth, without exception, and consequently the destruction of inheritance, the chief of these privileges, which to-day comprehends all the others, and the effect of which is to leave to chance the distribution of social privileges among a small number, and to condemn the most numerous class to deprivation, to ignorance, to misery.
“They demand that land, capital, and all the instruments of labor should become common property, and be so managed that each one’s portion should correspond to his capacity and his reward to his labors.... Christianity has released woman from servitude but has condemned her to religious, political, and civil inferiority. The Saint-Simonians have announced her emancipation, but they have not abolished the sacred law of marriage, proclaimed by Christianity. On the contrary, they give a new sanctity to this law.
“Like the Christians, they demand that one man should be united to one woman, but they teach that the wife ought to be the equal of the husband, and that, in accordance with the particular grace given to her sex by God, she ought to be associated with him in the triple function of temple, state, and family, in such a manner that the social individual which has hitherto been man alone should hereafter be man and woman.[55]
“The religion of Saint-Simon is to put an end to this legal prostitution which, under the name of marriage, consecrates frequently to-day a monstrous union of devotion and egoism, of intelligence and ignorance, of youth and decrepitude.”
The leaders of the Saint-Simonian religion were Enfantin and Bazard, the Supreme Fathers. Rodrigues had been chosen by Saint-Simon as his successor, but he generously ceded his position to them as his superiors, in accordance with the rule that rank should be the measure of capacity.