The political thought of Saint-Simon

by Henri de Saint-Simon

English, French (translation)

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

About the author

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon (17 October 1760 – 19 May 1825) was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology. He was born an aristocrat.

In opposition to the feudal and military system, he advocated a form of state[dubious – discuss]-technocratic socialism, an arrangement where industrialists would lead society and found a national community based on cooperation and technological progress, which would be capable of eliminating poverty of the lower classes. In place of the church, he felt the direction of society should fall to the men of science. Men who are fitted to organize society for productive labour are entitled to rule it.

Reviews

[Mickey Dubs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Henri de Saint-Simon saw that industrial capitalism represented a rupture with the old feudal age. It heralded a new struggle between two camps: a parasitic class of consumers and a productive class of scientists, artists, and industrialists. Real power had transferred from the government to industry, so that the old forms of control based on coercion and despotism had become redundant.

Saint-Simon's thought often gets labelled as an ideological antecedent to socialism and totalitarianism (see Hayek), however this seems to grossly distort his political vision. For one, when he argued for the reorganisation of society to the benefit of the industrialist class, he was not arguing for the rule of the working class. Unlike Marx, the class distinctions Saint-Simon draws places the proletariat on the same side as employers, financiers, and the industrial owner class.

Saint-Simon thought that modern society would need a corporatist Parliament representing scientists, artists, and industrialists chosen on meritocratic grounds. This Parliament would annually draw up a national economic plan in a consultative process to construct public works like roads and bridges. Far from being a harbinger of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Saint-Simon's scheme was really an early attempt to create a technocratic, class-collaborationist economic order inspired by the principles of Christianity like those that emerged in Europe after the Second World War. The parallels are uncanny - writing after the French Revolutionary Wars, Saint-Simon's fear of Jacobins backed by military might imposing their programmes on industrialists echoes the opposition of Christian democratic parties towards Bolshevism.

Interestingly, Saint-Simon also conceives of a 'reorganisation of European society' with a supranational European Parliament to coordinate industrial activity.

'There can be no peace in Europe until there is once more a political bond attaching England to the continent.'

31st of January, 2020: Britain leaves the European Union.

The rest is history.

[Immanuel Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I also don’t believe in revelation