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Historical sketch of the doctrines that have been given the name Industrialism↩

It seems to me that, until quite recently, no one had perceived the connection between the science of industry and the science of society, that is, between the knowledge of the laws by which all useful professions develop, and that of the laws by which society itself is perfected. The philosophers of the last century were more inclined to consider industry, in relation to society, as a cause of corruption and weakness rather than as a principle of life and a foundation of organization. Montesquieu, in noting that in our modern states people speak only of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and wealth, made it clear enough that one could not possess the virtues necessary for good government. Rousseau declaimed against the arts and sciences, presenting them as the source of all our vices and all our ills. Even though, for many centuries, the classes most directly devoted to the exercise of useful professions had continued to grow in wealth, education, morality, esteem, and importance, no one came [369] at the conclusion, so natural and so just, that industry is the vital principle and must be the aim of society's activity. It does not even appear that anyone asked what the goal of social activity ought to be. People reasoned about the organization of society while disregarding the laws that govern its progress; and all of politics was reduced to discussions about the nature, principle, and form of governments, or to abstract inquiries about which form of government deserved preference.

I do not think I am far mistaken in saying that this was the sole object assigned, until recently, to the science that deals with society, namely, political science. If I were to look back more than ten years, I would likely have difficulty finding writers who, in discussing politics, whether in general or in particular, do anything more than speculate on forms of social organization, with no regard for the goal of society's activity. This can easily be verified. One need only recall what was being published on politics twelve years ago, after the events of 1814, when the destruction of all the governments established by the Revolution suddenly opened such a vast field to the speculations of writers. Was it a matter of general politics? One proposed to reestablish the power of the Roman Church [1] ; another, to establish a well-balanced equilibrium among the powers [2] ; a third, to extend the representative system already existing in some states to the whole of Europe, and instead of balancing the forces of the powers, to subordinate them all to the authority of a European parliament [3]. As for questions of particular politics, these too were only about constitutions and formulas. Some favored the concentration of powers [4] ; others, their division and balance [5]. In theory and in practice, for each state and for Europe as a whole, the only issue was organization; no one [370] even thought to identify the goal of activity of modern societies, or to ask for what purpose they ought to be organized.

The economists, who delve more deeply into matters and whose work, it would seem, should have led them to less superficial ideas of politics, likewise treated it as a matter purely of forms. M. Say, following, I believe, the example of Smith, simply defined it as the science of the organization of societies [6], without saying for what kind of life society ought to be organized, what goal should be assigned to its organization, or even whether this organization ought to have a goal; and he thus made it into something so empty that, in his own view and by his own admission, it has no effect on public prosperity, and that wealth is essentially independent of the organization of society [7]. I repeat that, if we go back more than ten years, it is difficult to find authors who see politics as anything more than a science of forms, a science of the organization of societies without regard to their purpose or the laws governing their development.

I must say, to the credit of M. Benjamin Constant, that he is the first writer, at least to my knowledge, who pointed out the goal of activity of the people of our time, and who thus set us on the path to recognizing the true object of politics. Here is what we read in his work The Spirit of Conquest Considered in Its Relation to European Civilization, which he published abroad in 1813 and reissued upon his return to France, immediately after the first Restoration:

“Whereas each people once formed an isolated family, a natural enemy of all others, there now exists a mass of people under different names and various forms of social organization, but homogeneous in nature. It is strong enough to have nothing to fear from the still-barbaric hordes; it is [371] civilized enough that war is a burden to it. Its uniform tendency is toward peace... We have arrived at the age of commerce, an age that must necessarily replace that of war, just as the age of war necessarily preceded it... War was the savage impulse; commerce is the civilized calculation. It is clear that the more the commercial tendency dominates, the more the warlike tendency must diminish. The sole aim of modern nations is rest, and with rest, comfort, and as the source of comfort, INDUSTRY. War becomes daily a less effective means of achieving this goal. Its chances no longer offer individuals and nations benefits equal to the results of peaceful labor and regular exchange [8].”

These statements were not entirely above reproach. M. Benjamin Constant, in saying that comfort is the unique goal of modern nations, seemed to suggest that human beings have only physical needs to satisfy, something that the author of the Treatise on Religion might now find difficult to acknowledge, and which is certainly not accurate. The goal of modern nations is comfort; with comfort, dignity, esteem, glory, distinction; and, as the source of all these goods, the moral and enlightened exercise of all useful professions, or, as M. Benjamin Constant puts it, industry, which indeed encompasses all professions useful to society. But although the statement of that skillful writer may have lacked precision in form, it was nonetheless very significant in substance. It was the first time the difference between the ancients and the moderns had been clearly pointed out; it was the first time that modern people have been made aware that they direct their activity toward industry. The observation, which now might seem trivial, was at the time extremely new, and I believe I recall that it made a strong impression.

A work published shortly afterward by a man whose [372] ideas were far removed from those of this publicist also helped to fix attention on the same observation. It was the curious study by M. Montlosier on the French monarchy. This writer, in highlighting what he called the usurpations of formerly subordinate classes, in showing how these industrious classes [9]had liberated and elevated themselves, had worked, unwittingly, to make the vital force of industry extremely palpable.

“We are about to see,” he said, “a new state rise up in the midst of the old state, a new people in the midst of the old people. We are about to see a double state, a double people, a double social order moving for a long time side by side, then attacking one another and fighting bitterly... Movable property balances with immovable property, money with land, cities with châteaux. Science, for its part, rises to rival courage, intelligence to rival honor, commerce and industry to rival arms. The new people, rising ever higher, shows itself victorious everywhere. It dismantles the old forms or takes them over; breaks all the old ranks or occupies them; dominates cities under the name of municipalities; châteaux under the name of bailliages; minds under the name of universities; soon drives out the old people from all their places, from all their functions, from all their posts; ends by sitting at the monarch's council table, and from there imposes its new spirit, its new laws and institutions on everything” [10].

The author, as if afraid of being misunderstood about the cause of these strange advances, takes care to state that the new people, in rising, does not renounce its customs or its occupations; he continues to rail against these occupations, which he calls base; he is indignant to see that science, commerce, and industry have usurped the sacred rights of birth; and by the tone of resentment with which he speaks of these things, he only succeeds in making their power stand out all the more.

At the time when these valuable works appeared, a new edition of M. SAY's Treatise on Political Economy  [373] helped reinforce the impact they were beginning to have and contributed further to highlighting the power of industry. It is true that political economy considers human industry only in one of its applications, its application to the creation of so-called material wealth. But by showing how the physical goods we enjoy are always the fruit of some form of useful labor, it leads us to recognize that all possible goods are the result of labor, and thus tends to have industry, that is, the totality of all useful professions, seen as the only goal that can reasonably be assigned to society's activity.

Thus, while M. Benjamin Constant said that industry is the unique goal of modern nations, M. Montlosier was historically demonstrating that these nations were created by industry, and M. Say, reproducing in a more lucid order and with notable improvements the ideas of Smith on the creation of wealth, was in turn scientifically explaining how all our physical goods are created by industry, and was thereby inducing us to see industry, understood in a broader sense, that is, human activity considered in all its useful applications, as the fundamental purpose of society.

One may reasonably doubt, without being unjust to these authors, that they saw the full use that might be made of their writings for the advancement of politics. Certainly, M. Montlosier, who spoke with such regret about the decline of the former rulers [11]and with such bitterness about the rise of the industrious classes, had not set out to work for the advancement of those classes or to promote industry as the natural goal of society. None of M. Benjamin Constant's writings after the Spirit of Conquest show that he perceived the political consequences of his observation that the people of our time direct their activity toward industry; he did not again concern himself with industrial society; he did not investigate how this society lives, according to what laws it prospers, and how it wants to be constituted in order to [374] develop. Most of his writings revolve around the sort of politics that has been called, perhaps with some justification, metaphysical politics, which deals with the organization of society without reference to its purpose or activity. As for M. Say, not a single phrase in his book proves that he extended his views beyond its specific subject, the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth, and it does not appear that the study of political economy revealed to him the true aim of politics. The definition he gives of the latter science would indicate, on the contrary, that he did not have a very accurate idea of its object [12].

That said, even if it is doubtful that these writers grasped the political implications of their observations concerning industry, it is certain that those observations cast a new and remarkably favorable light on politics and helped advance it. Their writings, falling into the hands of a few men who were studying this science in depth, brought about a revolution in their thinking. Such was notably the effect they had on the authors of the Censeur.

These writers had been forced by the reaction of 1815 to suspend the course of their publications. This violent interruption of their work, which lasted for more than a year, gave them time to reflect at length on the direction they had followed up to that point. They asked themselves whether liberal opposition, whether constitutional politics, had any definite aim; and without denying that the efforts being made to establish certain institutions could be of considerable value, they were forced to admit that, in general, people did not know, and indeed did not even ask, what direction society ought to take, or what general objective its activity ought to be oriented toward.

And yet it was perfectly obvious that this was the first thing that needed to be known; for institutions can only be good [375] insofar as they are well adapted to the purpose of society; and clearly, to adapt them to that purpose, one must first seek it out, one must understand it.

They therefore set themselves first to discover the goal toward which social activity should be directed, or rather, that goal was indicated to them by the writings I have just mentioned. They did not say, with M. B. Constant, that industry was the aim, and the only aim, of modern nations: too many domineering passions (noble, priestly, mercantile) still occupied the stage for one to easily recognize in the people this honorable inclination to prosper solely through peaceful labor and regular exchange. But what M. B. Constant asserted as fact, they laid down as principle. They recognized not that industry was, but that it ought to be, that it was destined to become, that it was increasingly becoming the aim of modern nations, and that the purpose of politics was both to identify this aim and to determine how society could achieve it. Such was also their purpose in the new work they undertook, under the title Censeur Européen, a publication very different from the one they had previously issued under the simple title Censeur, and one of an infinitely more scientific and elevated order.

The merit of the Censeur Européen was to perceive the benefit that could be drawn for the advancement of social science from recognizing this fact, well attested by history and newly and vividly illuminated by M. Montlosier: that since the earliest times, and particularly since the twelfth century, the industrious classes had never ceased gaining in number, in wealth, in enlightenment, in dignity, in influence. From this it drew the obvious conclusion that industry is the vital principle of society, and it showed that only industry has the power to preserve it, that industry alone is capable of making it prosperous, moral, peaceful, etc.

Since industry is the goal of society, the Censeur Européen concluded that society ought to be constituted for industry. It pointed out that at various stages of civilization, people have always tended to arrange themselves in such a way as to give [376] the greatest possible energy to their natural means of subsistence; that hunting people, for example, almost instinctively adopt the social order most favorable to hunting; that the warlike people of antiquity paid the greatest attention to organizing themselves so as to ensure the success of their military expeditions; and that therefore we, who live by agriculture, the arts, commerce, letters, and sciences, ought, if we have any sense, to adopt the social order most favorable to the progress of all useful professions.

Starting from this idea, the Censeur Européen sought to determine how all political powers should be composed, from electoral colleges to the peerage; and in this regard, its consistent doctrine was that the composition of social powers ought to be analogous to the purpose of society, and that, since society lives and prospers through the exercise of useful professions, every effort should be made to fill all public offices with individuals distinguished in those professions.

Finally, the Censeur Européen examined what kind of order these powers ought to establish, what kind of services they ought to provide; and in its view, the only demand that private professions should make of political industry was that it preserve them from all disturbance. It maintained that there ought to be free and unlimited competition in all professions; it rejected the idea that there could exist in society any industry capable of directing all the others; it denied that government could intervene usefully in the exercise of private professions, except to free them, with as few drawbacks as possible, from the constraints with which it had so unfortunately burdened them in earlier times. Aside from that, it limited the role of government, as I said, to the specific function of suppressing violence and maintaining the peace.

These principles were generally sound, and there was little to criticize in the Censeur Européen, except in the way it applied its fundamental idea regarding the composition of social powers. It was quite right to demand that the nature of those powers be adapted to that of [377] society, and that, in an age when society bases or ought to base its existence on the exercise of useful professions, public authorities should be composed of men chosen from those professions. But it was wrong to insist that preference be given, almost exclusively, to men from certain specifically named professions, agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, banking, for instance. Nothing could justify the preference it gave to these industries, nor the sort of exclusion it imposed on all others. These were neither the only important professions nor, perhaps, the most important ones; the men who practiced them had no more insight than others into the true interests of industrial society or the system best suited to it; they were no more than others exempt from unjust or privileged claims. The Censeur would have been right to reject a particular jurist whose ideas it judged false, or a particular public official it deemed an accomplice of tyranny; but it should have dismissed the former as a misguided thinker, not as a jurist, and rejected the latter as a ruler, [13]not as a statesman. It is clear that no one should be excluded because of his profession, since all useful professions contribute, each in its own way, to social life and prosperity. What should be excluded are fools and knaves, whatever their trade may be; and beyond that, all men of any profession who can reasonably be assumed to have honest intentions and the capacity to judge the general laws by which all sound industries thrive should be admitted.

At the time when the Censeur Européen began its publications, a peculiar man, whom some stern critics have at times labeled mad, and who may, in certain respects, unfortunately have deserved the title, a man who claimed descent from Charlemagne; who married once in order to produce men of genius, and did not even have children; who undertook, in another year, to construct a vast establishment and succeeded only in erecting an immense carriage gate; who always began [378] his publications not by announcing a book, but whole series of books, and who never produced more than prospectuses, and with all that, a man endowed in some respects with very deep insight, a man who lacked neither sagacity nor breadth of vision, and whose mind was particularly well suited to philosophical and political speculation, M. Saint-Simon, in short, was led, on his part, to regard industry as the natural aim of society, and he embarked on a series of publications whose orientation deviated only slightly, especially in the beginning, from that of the Censeur Européen.

It is difficult to accept that this conception of M. Saint-Simon was, as Le Producteur claims, the fruit of long-standing reflection and should be seen as the natural continuation of some previous publication. It is true that in a few excerpts from his early writings, one finds that he once praised labor and considered the positive sciences as destined one day to replace theology. But that is a far cry from the doctrines of industrialism as M. Saint-Simon later understood them. One finds no trace of these doctrines in the publications he produced in 1814 and 1815. On the contrary, it is clear that his political ideas at that time did not differ at all from those then in circulation. He was still concerned with form, not with the substance of society. In 1814, he published a plan for European reorganization based on the institution of a European parliament. In 1815, in the Censeur [14], he proposed as a means of establishing order in France the idea of organizing and arming the opposition party so that its forces might balance those of the ministry. A little later, his entire political science was reduced to the idea of launching a journal aimed at forming a party of national property owners [15]. During the Hundred Days, he placed the source of all progress and all good [379] in the alliance between England and France [16]. One can see how far removed all this was from viewing society in terms of its labor, its means of peace, prosperity, and strength, and from grounding politics in industry.

M. Saint-Simon published his first ideas on this subject only in 1817, at the very time when the Censeur Européen was beginning to develop the same doctrines, and two years after the publication of the works by MM. Benjamin Constant, Montlosier, and J.-B. Say, which I have already mentioned. There can be no doubt that these works, which he knew and which he was better positioned than anyone to take advantage of, had a significant influence on the direction his thought took and on the formation of the doctrines he adopted at that time and later laid out in a series of writings, published sometimes as pamphlets, sometimes as books, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another, but always with the same aim and always reproducing the same fundamental ideas [17].

In these writings, it must be said, there is a very important distinction to be made between what came from M. Saint-Simon's own hand and what was written for him by a small number of talented individuals whose abilities he successively enlisted. It is really only in the work of these writers, whether rightly or wrongly called his disciples, that one can look for a proper exposition of the ideas attributed to him [18]. It would be difficult, in my view, [380] to find in Saint-Simon's own writings anything that justifies the colossal reputation some honorable writers, his self-appointed heirs and defenders, have tried to build around him. M. Saint-Simon, who aspired to be seen as an innovator in the moral and political sciences, was without question the least well-equipped man in the world to gain acceptance for new ideas. The vulgar tone of his writing, the charlatanism that pervades it, his boasting, his prophecies, his addresses to kings and peoples, the familiarity of his advice to the head of state, the draft ordinances he presents to that ruler to have his doctrines turned into law, his endless exhortations to industrialists, the excessive praise he heaps upon them, and his frequent fundraising appeals, all of this was hardly suited to make a favorable impression, especially coming from a man who claimed to be raising politics to the rank of the positive sciences, and who, on that very account, ought to have made it a point to banish all charlatanism from both his writing and his behavior.

I ask, who could recognize the tone of a genuine scholar in sentences like these:

“After forty years of work I have finally arrived at the political system suited to the present state of enlightenment... It has required, I dare say, long meditations on the course of civilization to rise to this general view that connects and governs all facts... We are undertaking to elevate all industrialists to the highest degree of esteem and power... This is not an enterprise we enter into lightly: we have spent forty-five years meditating and preparing for it... What you have just said (this is the way he addresses himself through the voice of an interlocutor), what you have just said is very good, very interesting, and of the utmost importance... If these measures (he is referring to the establishment of the industrial system), if these measures are taken promptly, I personally guarantee that the monarchy will be secured in the hands of the Bourbons; if they are not taken promptly, I dare predict that the Bourbons will not occupy the throne for another year... Princes, listen to the voice of God [381] who speaks to you through my mouth, and become good Christians once again, etc.” [19].

I could fill entire pages with sentences of this kind; this is the tone he generally adopts in his writings.

This system that M. Saint-Simon claimed to have spent forty-five years seeking was at first nothing other than the one laid out, in its own way, by the Censeur Européen, and to which its authors had been led by their study of political economy, particularly through their reading of the works I mentioned earlier. The fundamental ideas were the same. Like the Censeur Européen, M. Saint-Simon based the entire structure of society on industry, that is, on the totality of useful labor, and saw the social order most favorable to industry as the one most favorable to society. Only, he never moved beyond these general propositions and arrived at no concrete applications. He was far from showing, with the same level of detail as the Censeur, the changes that a regime favorable to industry would tend to introduce into the policing of Europe, into its military and commercial systems, and at the same time into the internal organization and administration of each country. He limited himself to saying, along with the Censeur, that the social order required by industry was one in which government, rather than intervening as a regulator of labor, would merely protect it from all disturbance. Later, he even abandoned this idea, one of those whose validity has been most clearly demonstrated by Adam Smith and his principal successors, and retained in common with the Censeur Européen only that initial idea: that society ought to be constituted for industry. But instead of limiting the role of government to defending workers from violence, he regarded it as the natural head of society, charged with bringing together and directing toward a common goal all individual activities. Only, he wanted this [382] direction to be placed in new hands. Here, then, are what became his doctrines in the end.

M. Saint-Simon asserted as fact that, since the eleventh century, that is, since the time when, according to him, the feudal and theological system had been fully constituted, two forms of superior power, [20]science and industry, which had arisen outside that system, had been steadily working to bring about its dissolution. He said that ecclesiastical and feudal power had, since that time, been in continual decline; while science and industry, by contrast, had constantly grown in strength. He added that these new powers had long had to restrict their role to combating the system that opposed them, but that now that this system had grown sufficiently weak, they must abandon their critical stance and proceed to the organization of the industrial system, that is, a system in which they would occupy the place once held in the old order by the feudal and theological powers, and in which the direction of the general interests of society would fall into the hands of scholars, artists, and industrialists. By scholars, M. Saint-Simon meant only those who practiced the physical and mathematical sciences; by artists, those engaged in the fine arts; and by industrialists, those involved in trades and crafts of all kinds [21]. Society, in his view, was entirely composed of these three classes of individuals, and he rather amusingly tried to prove this by saying that if France were to lose three thousand of its most distinguished men in the arts, sciences, and fine arts, it would immediately fall into a state of marked inferiority compared to the nations with which it now rivals; whereas death might sweep away from the ranks of its public officials, even starting with those of the highest dignity, a number of men ten times greater than that, without affecting it in any way other than sentimental, saying that nothing [383] could be easier than to find men capable of serving as princes, ministers, bishops, councilors of state, prefects, etc., as well as Messrs. So-and-so. M. Saint-Simon recognized as useful only those he called scholars, industrialists, and artists. He does not appear to have had a very fixed idea about the hierarchical order in which these three classes should be ranked. At times he placed the artists first, at other times the scholars, and at still others the industrialists. I suspect this depended somewhat on the degree of enthusiasm with which the men from one or another of these classes, those with whom he had come into contact, and from whom he often sought support and tried to rekindle interest, responded to his doctrines. I believe, however, that he generally settled on the order that assigned preeminence to the scholars, placing the artists and industrialists in second place. The first were to form society's spiritual power, the second its temporal power. The task of the scholars was to formulate the national doctrines and to ensure that no one deviated from them [22]. He assigned to the industrialists the responsibility of drawing up the budget and managing all public expenditures. Finally, the mission of the artists was to inspire society with a passion for the new social order he believed himself called upon to establish.

At the heart of this system there was something, if not entirely new, at least very accurate: namely, what M. Saint-Simon [384] said about the decline of feudal and theological powers and the progress of science and industry. But as for his classification of society into scholars, artists, and industrialists alone; as for his attacks on the spirit of inquiry and what he called critical doctrine; as for his supposed organic tendency and the proposal to make learned academies into a spiritual power responsible for fixing social doctrines and maintaining their uniformity, all of that, which may have seemed more original, was by contrast much less reasonable. I will soon have the opportunity to explain the reasons for this judgment when I speak about a periodical launched after the death of M. Saint-Simon, intended to propagate his industrial doctrines. But first, I must say a few words about another work, published prior to that venture, which also falls within the line of writings related to industrialism, although it differs greatly from those I have just analyzed. I refer to the work entitled Industry and Morality Considered in Their Relation to Liberty.

The author assigns to the human species the goal of the free and full exercise of its faculties, and seeks to determine under what conditions this exercise is constrained by the nature of things. He finds that it depends on the natural and acquired perfection of those faculties. This is not an opinion he adopted in advance; it is a result given to him by the facts, and one that is equally verified whether he compares the various races of men or surveys the various ways of living [23]through which the natural history of the species shows it has successively passed. And which of all these ways of living is the most suited to its nature, the most favorable to the full development of its faculties? It is the most recent one it has reached, it is the industrial state. The author is therefore also an industrialist; but he is far from being one in the manner of M. Saint-Simon. For him, industrial society is not a society composed solely of scholars, artisans, and artists, for no society can manage with so small a number of professions, but a society in which all professions [385] are industrial, that is to say, in which all are productive of utility, since industry means the production of utility; in which all are free from injustice and violence, since injustice and violence are destructive and non-productive.

Such is industrial society, in his view. One can see how far he departs from M. Saint-Simon in the definition he gives of it. But he departs even more radically in his ideas about the regime that suits it. He does not make government the supreme regulator of all labor; he does not recognize any industry as capable of directing all the others; he believes that no labor can be properly managed except by those for whom it is the sole or principal occupation; he limits the role of government to defending each worker against the unjust claims of others; and beyond that, he submits all services to open competition, including public service, and seems convinced that this is the only way to ensure that both individuals and society are served as well as possible in all respects.

Finally, his ideas on how industrial society might be established perhaps differ even more from those of M. Saint-Simon. He does not accept that any new social system can be founded a priori and realized by decree; he does not draft proposals intended to turn his doctrines into law. For him, the mere fact that a given order of things does not yet exist is proof that it is not yet possible. He believes that any major change in the condition of society only becomes possible, and only comes to pass, very slowly, very gradually, and in proportion to how far the partial changes it requires are understood and deliberately pursued with some degree of coherence and momentum... But enough on this work; let us turn to the one I mentioned earlier, and conclude this already lengthy sketch with a brief analysis and examination of Le Producteur.

Disciples of M. Saint-Simon, the authors of this journal undertook it, as I have said, with the aim of spreading his doctrines. They appear to adopt these doctrines without reservation. First, they claim for him the honor of having founded industrialism; they even credit him with the not insignificant glory of having invented [386] the word industrial. Starting, as he did, from the fact that theological and feudal powers have been in steady decline, while the arts, sciences, and industry have continually gained strength, they conclude that the direction of public affairs must pass from the hands of ecclesiastical and secular lords into those of scholars, artists, and industrialists. Like their master, they reproach these classes for having worked only to emancipate themselves, and, because they waged war for so long, for still wanting to wage it, for wishing to make permanent what was meant to be transitional, for turning a means into an end, for replacing the old system with the critique that exposed its shortcomings, for reducing critique to a system, for making a goal out of criticizing, with no other object than to criticize. They implore them to abandon this critical tendency, which they say presents the greatest obstacles to the progress of civilization, and to adopt the organic tendency, to proceed without delay to the organization of the industrial system. What they mean by this, following the example of Saint-Simon, is a social state composed exclusively of scholars, artists, and artisans, in which the most distinguished scholars and artists form the spiritual power, and the most prominent industrialists form the temporal power of society; in which the former are charged with the formation of ideas, the latter with the formation of sentiments, and the last with the administration of material interests. This system takes no account of individuals; it is concerned only with the human species as a whole. It assigns to the species the purpose of the increasingly perfected exploitation of the globe we inhabit. It proclaims the organizing principle of productive association among all people. The law of this association is not liberty. “Laissez faire and laissez passer” is an insufficient doctrine... Human imperfection demands a general direction for social labor, one that constantly presents workers with the path they should follow and does not allow anyone to stray from it... What use is the ability of those men who explore the paths of society and can help advance it, if there exists no means of [387] bringing back into the right direction those individuals who deviate from it?... The masses cannot do without a general direction, one aimed at regularizing labor... Society cannot do without directors... And who then will direct? No one? Does society know so well the destination of humanity that it no longer needs any general counsel?... The question is not whether society can do without direction, but who will direct... The people have cast off their leading-strings; but where is their guiding reason? Nowhere; it remains to be created... Strange thing! All the instruments of order, censorship, police, passports, the national guard, conscription, gendarmes, are repugnant to society and wound it... And yet competition contains no principle of order; order can result only from exceptions made to the principle of competition... We will strive constantly to combat this principle... There would need to be, in each branch of industry, associations of capitalists who would grant credit only to entrepreneurs and enterprises that deserve them... There would need to be a central credit institution in each industrial sector... We need disciplinary councils for lawyers, doctors, bakers, butchers, stockbrokers, notaries, etc., etc. These disciplinary councils are no more a harm than particular directors in each branch of industry would be, or than general directors of society, or governments in general. Such councils are needed to vouch for the knowledge and morality of every man examined by them... Only, they must be composed of men who are clearly superior [24].

Such is this system. It is wholly directed against what the authors call the critical tendency, and toward what they call the organic tendency.

I repeat what I said earlier when speaking of M. Saint-Simon: there is nothing true in this system except for the observation that serves as its foundation, [388] namely, that the spirit of industry tends more and more each day to prevail over the spirit of domination, and that the further society advances, the more it will be organized in the interest of labor and in opposition to the interests of brigandage. But this observation does not come from M. Saint-Simon. The invention of the word industrial does not belong to him either. This word, though fairly new, predates the use M. Saint-Simon made of it; I find it in a dictionary that was already in its sixth edition in 1813, in Wailly's dictionary. What does belong to M. Saint-Simon, and what I think no one will envy him, is the system to which he applied the term, the industrial system, as he conceived it.

I note first that this system is not sufficiently described by the term industrial; for society, even as conceived by M. Saint-Simon, does not contain only people of industry, but also scholars and artists. Nor is it adequately named by the double designation scientific-industrial, which its proponents sometimes use; for artists are still not included under this second term. To fully match the thing being described, it is clear that the name would need to be extended further, to say the scientifico-artifico-industrial system. Only then would the name of the system properly encompass the three classes of professions or persons it includes.

Moreover, even the term industrial, thus extended, would still describe only a very incomplete society; for there are many professions indispensable to any society that are generally not included, and that M. Saint-Simon himself does not include under the general headings of scholars, artists, and industrialists. Such are, notably, the professions of lawyers, judicial officers, administrators, statesmen, preachers, and soldiers, types of people who are by trade neither mathematicians, chemists, physicists, nor astronomers, nor are they artists, manufacturers, farmers, merchants, or bankers, and who [389] nonetheless are just as necessary to society as those others, and will remain so for just as long; for the moral nature upon which they act and which they aim to understand and govern is surely no easier to understand and govern than the physical nature on which the others operate.

Thus, from the moment one understands the word industrial to mean a class of people, this word, even if stretched enough to include scholars and artists, cannot describe a complete social body; for there is no social body that, with only these three classes of individuals, could perform all the functions necessary to its existence. The word industrialcan only be appropriately applied to a social system when it serves to describe, not a class of individuals, but a way of life; not a category of professions, but a common characteristic of all professions. One can speak, for instance, of the industrial system, the industrial society, if one means by that a society in which all professions share an industrial character, in which all are productive of utility, in which men of every class, finally forced to abandon violence, can live only off the value they create through peaceful labor, or of that which they obtain through voluntary gifts or regular exchanges. But there is no longer any reason to speak of an industrial social order once the word industrial is taken, as it is by M. Saint-Simon and the writers of his school, to mean only one or several classes of individuals or professions.

If this school is mistaken in seeing society as consisting of only three great classes of individuals, it is no less mistaken in wanting to draw from among those individuals all the men who are to make up the political powers. Political capacity is a special capacity, perfectly distinct from that required by other professions. It consists in knowledge of the general laws according to which all sound professions develop, and of the social order that best fosters their progress. It is of great importance to all professions, but it is specific to none; and it is folly to claim that one must be a skilled publicist simply [390] because one is a distinguished astronomer, physicist, or chemist. The jurists, whom M. Saint-Simon so impatiently excludes from public affairs, are, by the nature of their work, closer to being politiciansthan the artists and scientists. “I can imagine nothing more absurd,” said a member of the Institute, “than a council of state composed of some of my colleagues whose genius I otherwise greatly admire.” This is not because political knowledge is more incompatible with the cultivation of the arts and sciences than it is with the profession of judge or lawyer. Statesmen can emerge from all classes. It is highly desirable that in every class the number of men with sound understanding of the various public services demanded by society, and of how those services should be structured, be increased. But no class has political knowledge instilled in them by nature, and it is absurd to claim for three classes the exclusive right to occupy themselves with public affairs, especially when, like M. Saint-Simon and his disciples, one finds it senseless to grant this right to everyone without requiring any condition of competence. What is desirable is that society turn only to men who are capable and honest; but those men must be sought wherever they are to be found.

It is therefore mistaken for the writers I am discussing to want to restrict society's choice to scholars, industrialists, and artists. But they fall into a still more serious error when it comes to the system best suited to the industrial state. Their complaints against what they call the critical system, that is, against a general and permanent state of inquiry, debate, and competition, strike at the very principle of life in society, at its most effective means of development.

To begin with, these writers are completely mistaken when they accuse critical philosophy of tending only to destroy and of aiming at nothing but a negative goal. In working to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of the free and legitimate exercise of human faculties, it in fact pursues a very positive goal: [391] to place humanity in a condition where its faculties can develop more freely. The progress of its faculties, this is the true and surely very positive aim it keeps in view. The question remains whether it does enough to serve this aim when it calls for the abolition of all privilege, all monopoly, all unjust and violent restriction, and demands that everyone be free to use their abilities within the bounds of justice and equity.

I say within the bounds of equity; for it is not at all in question whether, in order for society to develop, disorder must be suppressed, violence punished, disputes settled, and justice administered. No one questions this. The issue is whether society would not be sufficiently served by a government that effectively suppresses abuses and administers justice precisely, and whether it is also necessary that it be legally regulated, directed, governed in its work.

The disciples of the so-called organic school see great harm in leaving society to itself and relying on its development through the free interplay of individual efforts. This condition of competition, they say, leads only to the anarchy of sentiments and ideas, to the breakdown of social unity, etc. They are tireless in such criticism. And yet, by a strange contradiction, they admit at the same time that free discussion is necessary in certain periods, when society is shifting from one doctrine to another, from an imperfect to a better state. But if discussion is sometimes capable of producing light, if it can rally minds to the truth, if it is in the nature of things for common ideas to emerge from the clash of divergent opinions, then what is the meaning of the criticism directed at liberty? And when, exactly, does it become anarchic? Is there, in the whole course of history, a single moment when society is not trying, in numerous respects, to modify its ideas, to change its way of living? Is there, therefore, a single moment in which it has nothing to gain from liberty? To blame liberty for the remaining confusion in moral and social doctrines is [392] to see the disease in the remedy, and to complain precisely about what will cure it.

The error of the organic school is to believe that liberty is only of provisional usefulness. A time will come, they say, when all the sciences will be positive; and once they are, liberty will no longer be necessary: no one debates demonstrated truths. Of course, there is no debate over what is demonstrably true, but will everything ever be? Will what seems demonstrated always continue to seem so? Can one guarantee that the best-established truths in the experimental sciences will not someday be modified by new experiments? Rather than say our knowledge will become complete and certain, it is far more reasonable to say that there will always be something left to discover or to correct. It is therefore in the nature of things that freedom of inquiry remains perpetually necessary. Society, which lives above all through action, acts at every moment on the basis of the knowledge it possesses; but to act better and better, it needs constantly to improve that knowledge, and it can succeed only with the help of liberty: research, inquiry, examination, discussion, debate, this is its natural state, and so it always will be, even when its knowledge reaches its highest point of certainty and scope.

This is not the view of the organic school. On the contrary, it believes that this state is only temporary, and that the time will come when our knowledge will have reached such a level of breadth and certainty that there will no longer be any need for discussion. Consequently, and as if such perfection had already been achieved, it calls for society to be given official directors tasked with teaching it the path forward and managing its labors according to these infallible and complete truths it is destined to acquire. This is to begin with an empty assumption and to end in a dangerous conclusion. It is childish to try to decide in advance what the various branches of human knowledge will become; we have no means of knowing it; there is no reason to believe they will ever become as perfect as [393] is supposed; at the very least, it is certain they are still far from it, and it is foolish to reason as if they were already complete. And even if they were; even if the goal of society were fully known, along with all the means it will ever have of reaching it; even if there were nothing left to discover in the sciences; even if we had learned the best procedures in the arts and possessed infallible ways of distinguishing, in all cases, good from bad undertakings, it would still be highly dangerous to give those most learned in such things the right to impose their direction on others. Truth cannot be advanced by compulsion. On the contrary, the best way to prevent it from spreading is to give those who know it the power to impose it on those who do not. Far from increasing their influence, one destroys it. On one side, their activity is dulled, or their zeal misdirected; on the other, those they might enlighten are led to resist them. Everyone understands the duty not to use force, but no one sees why he should, as a rule, submit his reason to that of another; no one willingly accepts a truth imposed by force. The more desirable it is that society be guided by the insight of its most enlightened members, the more important it is that they have no power beyond what they derive from their insight. True scholars do not need to hold office in order to be consulted. The natural impulse of anyone in need of a service is to turn to the person best able to provide it. It is only the directors who are imposed by force who people refuse to follow, and nothing is less favorable to the progress of society than giving those who could enlighten it the power to compel it. Society does not wish to be coerced by anyone, no more by scholars than by priests; what its interest urgently requires, on the contrary, is that all unjust coercion be suppressed.

 

Such are the principal works in which, over the past ten years, the political doctrines that are [394] given the name of industrialism have been developed. By this word, as can now be seen, are designated two social systems that share little more than the name.One understands by industrial state a society composed solely of scholars, artisans, and artists; the other, a society in which all professions have an industrial character.,One wants the individuals who will make up the political powers to be drawn only from three orders of professions; the other wants them to be drawn from all the professions that contribute to social life.,The first, finally, demands that political authority be acquainted with all the labors of society and take responsibility for directing them all; the second, that it confine itself to a specific function, that instead of involving itself in directing labor, it focus on safeguarding the security of the workers.

It is not a matter here of deciding which one merits our support. I simply observe, as a fact, that the second is the one to which universal opinion is more and more inclined to rally; that it is gaining ground, while the first is in decline; that the more society progresses, the less it wants to be governed; that it does not merely ask authority to become more benevolent, but to withdraw into a narrower sphere, and to improve by simplifying itself; that this is indeed its natural tendency, and that wherever authority improves, it is recognized by this double sign: on the one hand, that policing is better carried out, property better protected, justice better administered; and on the other hand, that society is less hindered in its movements, that its activity is subject to fewer obstacles. It is therefore poorly timed to come forward proposing to multiply within society the governing councils, the official overseers, the sworn directors; and the organic school is perhaps beginning to understand that this is not the type of organization society is calling for. After a year of effort and sacrifice, the journal that served as the interpreter of this school, despite the unquestionable talent of several of its editors and the honorable intentions of them all, finds itself obliged to close its workshops and cease publication.

B. C. DUNOYER

Endnotes↩

[1] M. DE BONALD, M. MAISTRE, etc.

[2] M. DE PRADT, etc.

[3] M. SAINT-SIMON.

[4] The royalists.

[5] The liberalis.

[6] Traité d'économie politique, discours préliminaire, p. 1.

[7] Ibid.

[8] De l'Esprit de conquête, etc., chap. 2.

[9] DMH: CD says "les classes industrieuses".

[10] De la Monarchie française, t. 1, p. 135, 136 et 175.

[11] (Editor's Note.) Dunoyer says "les dominateurs".

[12] See Traité d'économie politique, Discours prélimin. Already cited.

[13] (Editor's Note.) He says "le dominateur".

[14] Tome III, p. 334.

[15] Voy. le tome IV du Censeur, p. 352.

[16] Opinion sur les mesures à prendre contre la coalition de 1815. Paris, Delaunay.

[17] Here are the titles of these works in the order of their publication: l'Industrie, le Politique, l'Organisateur, le Système industriel, le Catéchisme des industriels, les Opinions industrielles et le Nouveau christianisme.

[18] it is necessary to distinguish among these works a piece byM. THIERRY, entitled : Des Nations et de leurs rapports mutuels, which is included in the first volume of Industrie; Lettres sur l'Amérique, and in the second volume of the work of a young professor of philosophy who died eight or nine years ago,M. MAIGNIEN; finally several pieces by e M. Auguste COMTE, included in l'Organisateur, le Système industriel and le Catéchisme des industriels.

[19] See Lettre à MM. les Jurés, p. 21, 22, 23; Adresse au Roi, p. 89; Catéchisme des industriels, p. 42, 44, 7; le Nouveau Christianisme, p. 91.

[20] (Editor's Note.) He says "capacités positives".

[21] See le Système industriel, p. 262.

[22] Here are the draft ordinances that he presents to the King in one of his writings. First ordinance: Considering, etc. Art. 1. All the classes of the Institute united shall produce a National Catechism, etc. Second ordinance: Considering that the strongest bond that can unite the members of a Society is the similarity of their principles and their knowledge. Art. 1. The Institute shall have oversight of public instruction. NOTHING MAY BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS OR FROM LECTURE CHAIRS THAT CONTRADICTS THE PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED IN THE NATIONAL CATECHISM. (Address to the King, p. 103 and following.) One sees that M. Saint-Simon was very close to believing himself infallible. All he lacked was to speak in the name of Heaven. And indeed, he ended with that: Princes, listen to the voice of God speaking to you through my mouth, etc.

[23] (Editor's Note.) He says "les diverses manières d'être".

[24] The majority of these sentences in this paragraph have been taken from the Producteur.