A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

‘The Saint-Simonists undoubtedly do profess ideas on the future of property and of women which are special to themselves, and which are connected with views entirely new and special on religion, authority, liberty—in short, on all the great problems which are now being agitated over the whole of Europe with so much disorder and violence; but these ideas are very different from the opinions which men attribute to them.

‘The system of community of goods is always understood to mean equal division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruit of the labour of all.

‘The Saint-Simonists reject this equal division of property, which in their eyes would constitute a greater violence, a more revolting injustice, than the unequal division, which was originally effected by 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, and which enjoins that in the future each man should be placed according to his capacity, and rewarded according to his work.

‘But in virtue of this law they demand the abolition of all the privileges of birth without exception, and consequently the destruction of the right of inheritance, the greatest of those privileges, which at present comprehends them all, and of which the effect is to leave to chance the distribution of social privileges amongst the small number of those who can lay claim to them, and to condemn the most numerous class to depravation, ignorance, and misery.

‘They demand that all the instruments of labour, land, and capital, which at present form the divided stock of private proprietors, should be exploited by associations with a suitable gradation of functions, so that the task of each may be the expression of his capacity, and his riches the measure of his services.

‘The Saint-Simonists do not attack the institution of private property, except in so far as it consecrates for some the impious privilege of idleness—that is to say, of living on the labour of others; except as it leaves to the accident of birth the social status of individuals.

‘Christianity has delivered women from slavery, but it has nevertheless condemned them to an inferior position, and in Christian Europe we still see them everywhere deprived of religious, political, and civil rights.

‘The Saint-Simonists announce their final liberation, their complete emancipation, but they do not aim at abolishing the sacred law of marriage proclaimed by Christianity; on the contrary, they desire to fulfil this law, to give it a new sanction, to add to the authority and inviolability of the union which it consecrates.