Economic Materialism and Social Moralism: A Study in the History of Ideas in France from the Latter Part of the 18th Century to the Middle of the 19th Century 9783111382371, 9783111023199

Table of contents :
Introduction
PART I. THEORETICAL BEGINNINGS
1. The Materialist Idea of Man
2. The Opposition of Rousseau
PART II. PRACTICE AND THEORY: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND AFTER
3. Condorcet: the Rational Man and the Revolution
4. Robespierre: the Moral Man and the Revolution
5. Theories in Practice
6. Social Issues and Class Warfare
7. Again Theories in Practice: 1795 to 1799
8. The Development of Theory - the Idéologues
9. Saint-Simon before 1814
10. Economics and the Ideologues
11. Destutt de Tracy and the Science of Economics
PART III. THE THEORY OF INDUSTRIALISM
12. Forerunners of Industrialism
13. Industrialism
14. Industrialism and History
15. Saint-Simon and Industrialism
PART IV. THE REVOLT AGAINST POSITIVISM AND ECONOMISM
16. Early Criticism of the Economist Doctrines
17. The Moralism and Industrialism of the Saint-Simonists
18. The Saint-Simonists and the Concept of Class
19. The Confusion of the Early 1830s
20. Social Moralism after 1833
21. Communists
22. Fourierists
23. Moralism or Determinism?
PART V. THE RETURN TO DETERMINISM
24. Marx and the Relationship of His Ideas to the French Economists and Socialists
Conclusion
Further Reading
Index

Citation preview

ECONOMIC MATERIALISM A N D SOCIAL M O R A L I S M

S T U D I E S IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES edited by C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze

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ECONOMIC MATERIALISM A N D SOCIAL MORALISM A study in the history of ideas in France from the latter part of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century

by SHIRLEY M. GRUNER

1973

MOUTON THE H A G U E · PARIS

(g) Copyright 1973 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. Ν. V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 72-88191

Printed in Hungary

INTRODUCTION

I suppose most books come into existence because originally their authors had some problem to solve. In this case, my problem might be said to have been sparked off by such notions as that of Dr. Talmon's distinction between totalitarian democracy and liberal democracy, Sir Karl Popper's division between open and closed societies and later Dr. Nolte's idea of transcendental and non-transcendental political systems. 1 In all these cases, we see the bad system, whatever it might be, opposed to the good one without, in fact, the good system being in any way subjected to the same detailed investigation as the bad one. But it is the nature of that "good" system which has interested and puzzled me. Politically and economically, it might go under the term "liberalism" but philosophically it is often conceived as a system of "scientific" thinking. But can we say there is one system at all? And how can a system if there is a system be so devoid of systematic ideology as is sometimes postulated and how on the other hand can its basis be transcendental when it is also regarded at times as the very essence of non-transcendentalism for economically speaking it rests on the self-determination of man, and scientifically, speaking on the notion of the objective perceiver. On the other hand, if we leave this line of thought and go to such works as those of Laski or that of Ruggiero, we see liberalism quite obviously a very closed system in fact, often a mere fig leaf for class domination. 2 It seems then this socalled system is nothing but a peg to hang one's likes or dislikes on. But had it anything in itself? I have attempted to solve this problem, at least to unravel the skeins to draw out what I have considered a main theme of French political thought starting in the 18th century, in particular the concept of man and 1

See J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, K. Popper, The Open Society, Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism. 2 Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism, Guido de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism.

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INTRODUCTION

how this notion was used as the basis for political, economic and social systems. This is one system of ideas - most definitely non-transcendental (in the Nolte sense) yet it has often been called by the term "liberalism" although I do not say such a term is justified. In addition, I have also considered the persistent opposition which this line of thought has always provoked - a similar non-transcendental system sometimes given the name "socialism". All this forms then the basis of this study, that is, the concept of man as a natural object without any internal conflicts, the creation of political, economic and social systems to fit this man and at the same time, the opposing system it called into existence - the idea that although man might indeed be non-transcendental as regards God at least he could go beyond himself when it came to State, Society or Nation. In these movements, it is possible to see the roots of some systems we might call liberal and systems we might call socialist and possibly on top of that nationalism and fascism too, although that is not considered here. Although limited in view of the extent of the problem, I hope this contribution will help to clarify concepts and that my original feeling that you cannot criticise the "antithesis" without taking a look at the "thesis" might prove justified in the following study. I would also just like to add that since this book is concerned with the link between two well-known and well explored points in the history of ideas, the enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the inception of Marxism in the middle of the nineteenth, all the emphasis is on the connection, not on what is being connected, and it was neither necessary nor possible to investigate the enlightenment and Marxism in profound detail. I have instead relied here to a large extent on the research done by a number of competent specialist scholars. But I have, of course, also used my own judgment, common sense, and knowledge of the material in order to draw my own conclusions and to form my own opinions. These may not be to everybody's liking but then in these two fields no final conclusions seem to be generally acceptable in any case, and I very much hope that what I have to say will at least be found not to be unreasonable.

CONTENTS

Introduction

5

PART I. THEORETICAL BEGINNINGS

1. The Materialist Idea of Man 2. The Opposition of Rousseau

11 17

PART II. PRACTICE AND THEORY: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND AFTER

3. Condorcet: the Rational Man and the Revolution 4. Robespierre : the Moral Man and the Revolution 5. Theories in Practice 6. Social Issues and Class Warfare 7. Again Theories in Practice: 1795 to 1799 8. The Development of Theory - the Idéologues 9. Saint-Simon before 1814 10. Economics and the Idéologues 11. Destutt de Tracy and the Science of Economics

25 35 41 49 57 61 67 71 77

PART III. THE THEORY OF INDUSTRIALISM

12. 13. 14. 15.

Forerunners of Industrialism Industrialism Industrialism and History Saint-Simon and Industrialism

87 93 103 Ill

PART IV. THE REVOLT AGAINST POSITIVISM AND ECONOMISM

16. Early Criticism of the Economist Doctrines

131

8

CONTENTS

17. The Moralism and Industrialism of the Saint-Simonists 18. The Saint-Simonists and the Concept of Class 19. The Confusion of the Early 1830s 20. Social Moralism after 1833 21. Communists 22. Fourierists 23. Moralism or Determinism?

137 143 149 155 163 167 173

PART V. THE RETURN TO DETERMINISM

24. Marx and the Relationship of His Ideas to the French Economists and Socialists 179 Conclusion

193

Further Reading

197

Index

209

PART I

THE THEORETICAL BEGINNINGS

1 THE MATERIALIST IDEA OF MAN

The chief exponent of the materialist idea of man was Condillac and he derived many of his ideas from Locke, only differing from him in the fact that he denied man any innate faculties whatsoever. In other words, man was as a statue awakened to life by the impact of the external world on the five inlets of the senses - eye, ear, skin, nose, mouth. For example, the eye received sensations which were passed to the soul in man - this being in origin a complete blank with the sole power of receiving sensations - and the soul was thereby modified by the impression of the sensation. A complex of these sensations formed an idea so that, for instance, the composition of the sensation of touch and the sensation of sight could induce the idea of extension. In addition, the sensations, by evoking feeling, created sentiments - pleasure and non-pleasure, leading to notions of desire, needs, passions and then to concepts of good and bad, justice and so on. The act of comparing and judging was also a product of sensation since both these actions were considered to be solely a matter of attention. In addition, the theory demanded that sensation should impress the soul in two ways - firstly by impressing on the soul the imprint of the object then perceived and secondly by impressing on the soul the imprint of the object which had some time previously been perceived. Since the soul was a blank before the impress of sensations, it had no innate faculty of reasoning and so reason was produced by the operation of the senses. In other words, man could only derive his knowledge from the external world by an inductive process but there was in that external world reason which man could perceive and know. In this way, Condillac pictured the soul of man perceiving the external facts and then deriving from these facts their "essence", their innate reason as contained in nature so that it was then possible to reduce all the particulars to a general law and so via these general laws to explain other particulars. In other words, knowledge could only be acquired in the same way as it was imagined Newton had discovered the Law of Gravitation,

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THE MATERIALIST IDEA OF MAN

that is, first by perceiving all the facts, secondly, to reduce the facts by perceiving the law contained in them. In this way, it was the aim to reduce the complicated to the simple so that finally all could be brought to one principle, the consequences of which could be confirmed by new experiences. The reason of man was then solely a reflection of external reason. That is a brief outline of the concept of man which the philosophes found in some ways so attractive. It found endorsement in the Encyclopédie and it would, I think, be fair to state that it was the fashionable theory of the age although, of course, it was a theory least easy to maintain with any consistency. However, let us now turn to certain corollaries arising from this theory. Firstly, it is a clear denial of Rationalism.1 As Condillac said, the statue does not reason of itself. It can only do so via the impressions of the senses. Therefore all knowledge is based on the particular and the mind of man is detached from its contact with God and his laws. A knowledge of these can only be obtained inductively from the world as created by God or "Nature". However, in this way, man can obtain an insight into the world and it was the constant expectation of the philosophes that somehow man could obtain from the mass of facts one law which could then be used deductively to explain the whole world. It was not denied, of course, that there was nothing in the mind not derived from the senses but the senses reflected the external world and that world was bound by reason or at least law. Now to get at these laws or law, it was necessary to distil from the facts their generality, i.e. all so-called extraneous items of particularity had to be removed in order to arrive at the "essence" of reality. This did not simply apply to inanimate objects as, for instance, in the law of gravitation the fall of the stone is not affected by its colour but it meant too that man must be "reduced" to his essence in order to equate metaphysics to the experimental physics of the soul so that, for instance, the aim of D'Alembert was to collect all facts on the "souls" of men, assemble these facts, assess them and then determine their rank by reduction to generality and particularity so that in the end the most general can serve as the foundation for all the others. In similar manner, if we turn to morality, we see that the law of morality was also equated to the law of gravitation, i.e. man, by allowing his reason to digest the knowledge he perceives of man, can likewise perceive 1

Rationalism means here of course a system of thought whereby the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive.

THF. MATERIALIST IDEA OF MAN

13

laws determining the actions of man, just as Newton perceived laws determining the action of apples. In other words, as Voltaire said, morality was the same as mathematics and there were no sects in mathematics. Viewed from this angle, man has no choice - like the rest of the universe he has to submit to the Law which binds him and his nature. To discover these laws, it was necessary to know the nature of man, the general essence determining him. It could be that man might be reduced to desires, to a striving for happiness and an avoidance of pain, or it could be man in his generality was typified by reason, so that man's reason being a product of nature's reason always informs him of the laws of his conduct. Whichever way it was considered, there was the tendency to "explain" morality by reducing it either to the physical functioning of man or to his environment and, indeed, if man was a product of external sensations, his morality must be derived either from the external world or from his sensations so that, for example, in Holbach's eyes, medicine was the true key to morality. Man suffers, man is happy just as his physical senses inform him of pain or pleasure and so pain is bad and pleasure is good. However, environment and education can also have their part for they are decisive in producing the "right" reason. There are still, however, only the two facts - externality and the physical make-up of man. This theory of morality was most forcibly expressed by Helvetius. Adopting the Condillac view of man, Helvetius demonstrated what this meant in terms of morality. Morality must be treated as a science based on experience. On the basis of his sensations man pursues his interests as he knows them. From this, it is deduced that there is no evil only ignorance. Moreover, virtue is nothing but the search for happiness, that is, the personal interest of each individual, and therefore society should base its laws on this interest. All this of course is founded on the presumption that the interests of one man are general to all men, and in pursuing them no one conflicts with another. In addition it is imagined that the desires of man are social; for instance, the desire for approval makes him seek to please his fellow men. However, education is not to be neglected, for by it man can be manipulated so that his more sociable virtues are tended. In this theory, then, man is not only at one with himself but at one with society. If he is bad, it is because his environment is bad by putting for instance the interests of government before the personal interests. If he is good then it is because society accords to his natural interests. The laws of the state should then be based on the natural interests of man.

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THE MATERIALIST IDEA OF MAN

We see then that for Helvetius, the art of legislation and government is simply the art of putting the public interest in accordance with the private interest - in fact to return society and man to their "natural" state since man formed society to secure his happiness and therefore society is natural to man. There is no opposition between man and society, no more probably than between a bee and the beehive. It is all part of the natural order of things. A similar view of society could be perceived in the Physiocrats. Basing their presuppositions on the view that the aim of man was happiness and that the happy man was the rich man, they supposed the aim of man and society was to increase riches and secure property so that ultimately the natural law of man was economic law. Governments need then have only police function to ensure the free operation of these natural laws. It is strange how indeed the ideal of these writers did so often appear to be a beehive - one will, one law, one aim and so on.2 It was, of course, an open question just how far the society as it existed had to be regulated consciously before the natural laws could operate but the ideal did remain a freely regulating society with the natural laws operating on man and through man. From this view of man flows certain other points. To state that man should be free implies that he should be free to revert to his natural state, that is, to follow his desires, pursue his happiness in the normal manner. Therefore to obtain freedom it is necessary to remove bad laws and bad government but most of all to destroy completely the influence of superstition or religion which only gives man a completely false notion of his own nature. In other words, freedom involves a change - of government, environment, of education. It in no way involves a choice. For instance, if we take a bee away from its hive and lock it up, it is not free. If we open the box, the bee returns to the hive - it is again free although indisputably it is bound by rigid natural laws. Since these laws are natural however, they are not felt as constraint, no more than we are constrained to eat, drink, sleep, etc. Similarly, if government is based on natural laws, there is no constraint. This concept of man likewise affects the concept of equality. If man is ruled by general laws, "man" denotes the general essence of all men with the resultant corollary that in the general aspect all men are equal. There can be no fundamental differences between men otherwise there could be no general laws for men. Accordingly all inequalities of a 2 See for instance Mercier de la Rivière as quoted in George Weulersse, La cratie sous les ministères de Turgot et de Necker (Paris 1950), p. 117.

Physio-

THE MATERIALIST IDEA OF MAN

15

fundamental nature - in knowledge, in status, in possessions, are due to a false environment - legislation, government, education. This in turn presupposed of course that the generality of man was known, that in fact the fundamental features of man were obvious and could be simply stated - in fact, often could be reduced to a simple law such as the search for happiness or pleasure so that all virtues and vices, hopes and fears, aspirations and disappointments could all be reduced to this law just as indeed Newton was able to reduce all colours to wave lengths. This reduction of a man to a generalised equality had the result that not only was particularity ignored but it was often denied, or at least it was felt wherever it existed it must be eradicated. Here the question of property became acute. Was property part of the natural law so that a man to be a man must have at least a small amount and if natural laws reign would have some automatically or was property part of the corrupt legislation of the time which discriminated between man and man, and would accordingly have to be abolished before the natural laws could operate? Reason could unfortunately give no unequivocal answer to this. The third point which seems to be involved in this concept of man is the notion of progress. Progress seems to appear as a necessary explanation of the perversity of man in not yet obeying the natural laws created for him. The only explanation for this was that man had to grow into them. Without progress the contrast between the actual state of man and the possible state of man could not be explained at all. However, the notion of progress had also a still more primitive function to fulfill. It was in fact the means of reintroducing moral oughts into a theory of relativism. Indeed if you strictly follow the philosophes' procedure or method, you are far more likely to approach the relativism of Montesquieu rather than the absolute perfectibility of man as suggested by Turgot. A study of man and society would never show you what he ought to be or how society ought to be formed. It can show you how it is, was and presumably will be and since a mechanical man created by his sensations could hardly know the future, let alone determine it, the notion of progress is not a corollary of the materialist concept of man except insofar as the active element in man has in some way to be reintroduced. Why was such a theory of man ever conceived and maintained? It obviously contains within it very serious weaknesses which are never examined but merely skimmed over or simply asserted dogmatically. Could it genuinely be believed that to feel is to judge and memory is only seeing? In any case when it came to the central point of reform,

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THE MATERIALIST IDEA OF MAN

regeneration and so on, the whole theory was dropped and the "oughts" and the "musts" appeared in profusion. Yet, feeble though it was, this theory had its attractions. The philosophes of the 18th century felt they were fighting a bitter battle against a vicious dark superstition to be found firstly in the Church and secondly in Christianity, representing an oppressive domination of irrational dogma over free minds. This irrational dogma although driven from the field of natural science still ruled over social life and morality The philosophes felt themselves then to be the Galileos and Newtons of the social world. Where the Church had been forced to yield on science, so must it yield as regards man, morality and society. Therefore, it was likewise necessary to use the same methods of Galileo and Newton to show that the Church opposed Nature not only in the universe but in man. The so-called scientific method was vitally necessary for once it could be used, it was not a case of dogma A versus dogma B. It was a case of scientific proof. The reasonable, pleasureseeking, social, good living ideal of man as the natural man was not just an Ideal, it was proved by experience and that was a hundred times more valuable than any idle statement in the Bible. However, the difficulty of transmitting the Newtonian method to man was not that a social science is less scientific than a natural science, but that the so-called facts were not so malleable. Newton might generalise as he wished about apples, stones and colours. It was more difficult to play around with men.

2 THE OPPOSITION O F ROUSSEAU

Rousseau typified the position of those who are unable to accept the materialist conception of man as an effective description of reality yet also refuse to accredit man with any transcendental possibilities so that both materialism and religious philosophy must be denied. This does not mean that Rousseau, no more than many others of the philosophes, denied the existence of God. It means in accordance with the general position of the philosophes he sought a solution of man which excluded any participation of God in man's world and in man himself, that is, Rousseau was as determined as his fellow philosophes to combat the pernicious teachings of Christianity. In his actual criticism of the materialist concept of man, Rousseau raised several points which are fundamental to any attack on that position, for instance the denial of passive receptivity, and the analysis of feeling whereby the organic sensations of every individual must be distinguished from the universal sentiments impressing all men alike. In addition, of course, he raised the more obvious points that memory cannot be sensation, the matter of distinguishing between external and internal sensation, and the impossibility of equating the seeing of differences to comparing. Rousseau, in general, stressed the fact that man was not a passive recipient but an active agent in the process of perception. Man is distinguished by his will, that is, he can act, do things, he can choose between things and from the information fed to him via the senses he can compare, judge, synthesise to create whole units from separate perceptions. All this forms a very interesting and fruitful criticism of materialism, yet Rousseau was primarily interested in developing these ideas in order to refute the moral aspect of materialism for nothing indeed aroused Rousseau's opposition so much as the materialists' rejection of free moral action. In opposition to the mechanical moral of the materialist scheme whereby moral law is derived from the chain of sensations, that is from

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THE OPPOSITION OF ROUSSEAU

external impression via feelings of pleasure and pain to reason so that ultimately my brain knows to avoid action A because it causes me pain, Rousseau developed a very different moral causality - no less "objective" than the other, perhaps more so in that it represented a deeper insight into man, his actions, feelings and thoughts. In the first place, Rousseau denied that morality was a matter of reflection or reason - morality was based on sentiment and will. Sentiment moreover was not sensation - we feel in our heart the moral commands of conscience, for example, injustice arouses in us a feeling of hurt quite different from any sensation of pain and in addition this sentiment or feeling is co-ordinated with the active participation of man in the world - that is his will. There is here no connection with reason or knowledge. Morality demands not the activation of the brain but the activation of feeling and sensibility which alone can perceive justice, truth, order and beauty. This conscience or sentiment is the voice of God or Law within us and is something there prior even to the development of Reason. Everyone can perceive it without having any knowledge at all just as indeed you can appreciate the beauty of a picture without knowing about art. The difficult operation, however, is willing. The natural man - the savage and the "ordinary" man - without knowledge always wills what his conscience tells him. He is naturally good, there is no opposition of interests within him. By willing what appears to him to be his interest, he wills the good too, although he does not know it. He is in the fortunate position of always being at one with himself. This idyllic state ends when in society personal interest clashes with public interest. Man then becomes aware in himself as two beings - a higher spiritual being striving for truth, justice and the common good and a lower material being striving for its own pleasures and desires. Man has now to choose and man thus becomes a moral being and in this choice is his freedom. He can freely share in his own development and can accept virtue by free submission to the laws within him just as he can freely accept vice by submission to the passions within him. Therefore, unlike the savage, man is no longer naturally good - he can be either virtuous or vicious. At this stage, too, reason develops - the knowledge man has which can likewise be put at the disposal of vice or virtue. Man can know what is good although this is no guarantee that he will will it, for the will is the instrument of noble strivings or ignoble desires. Virtue demands a struggle of the higher against the lower but once the soul has been corrupted it requires a great revolution - such as complete change of fortune - to bring it back to virtue.

THE OPPOSITION OF ROUSSEAU

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According to Rousseau, man in society is always corrupt. In fact on creating society, man had lost his natural goodness and cannot reach out to the new higher stage of virtue. He cannot do this because the circumstance of society in which he lives prevents him. Society in fact was formed for base motives, to serve self interest, greed and egoism. It was formed with the aim of satisfying the desires and passion of men so that man becomes subject to man, there is the clash of wills and interests, the appearance of war, and property with the selfish ego asserting its personal will at the expense of others so that the many are deprived and forced to serve the passions of the few. Of course, the conscience is still in the heart, the sentiment of morality is present, but man no longer follows it. How then, asks Rousseau, can society be considered natural, and how can the free play of passion and selfish interest ever lead to public good? Desires form the basis of a society where the weak are exploited by the strong and all are alienated from their true being. There is no freedom. In this way, according to Rousseau, man and his morals are inseparably associated with the society in which he lives. How then can man become virtuous ? For Rousseau obviously it is not a question of right reason or right environment. It is a question of Will. Rousseau believed that under certain circumstances man might make the leap from vice to virtue and could then cease forever to suffer the conflict of good and evil by entering into a higher stage similar to the once natural state only more advanced - a state where man is always at one with himself so that moral duality is finally overcome. Rousseau then looks forward to the end of moral freedom here and now in this world by our own will and not the Will of God provided of course the favourable external circumstances arise. In this respect, Rousseau approaches the materialist position in regarding the "natural" or here rather the "virtuous" state of man as the state in which man automatically and without restraint obeys the law of his Nature. Unlike the materialist concept however, Rousseau's law was not perceived automatically by the reason of natural man ; it was indeed felt and known but it has first to be willed by All so that all men can once and for all escape from their lower nature by willing to be only the higher general nature. Man could never do this alone because his higher nature must transcend his ego (or his individuality). He could only do it by entering a civil state so that as a part of a higher unity, he could exist in it solely as his higher self. This in some ways has a religious similarity in the idea of sinful man surrendering his will to God's will. Of course, this is not what Rousseau is suggesting.

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THE OPPOSITION OF ROUSSEAU

His God is the very earthborn State, Society or Nation. 1 It is this only that can make men virtuous, for to be virtuous is to live beyond one's personal interest and this is only possible in the good society, for then man can sacrifice his interest for the general interest and can discover how to subdue his passions by living in the nobler atmosphere of elevated happiness. Since in the end it is all based on the true will of everyone, there is neither compulsion nor force. The natural man never felt compulsion and no more will the virtuous man. All again is in harmony, freed from doubt. Theory and practice are resolved in unhesitating action since now we know that in following the General Will, we follow everyone's good. We know the good, we will the good. We are relieved of the burden of moral duality and the struggle to act. We have taken the leap from our lower selves. Of course, Rousseau does suggest this leap could be contrived by a legislator manipulating men by good laws, but in any case there is a leap, a revolution, and a great regeneration, the realisation of virtue in the higher unit of society or nation. It can then be seen that Rousseau has quite a different concept of man, his morals and his society than the philosophes had, although they all virtually end at the same point with a man no longer moral in that he he obeys a law of nature not as a constraint or as an impediment but as part of the order of things. Of course, Rousseau does not deny man moral responsibility as do the materialists but his system is in fact a method as to how man can rid himself of this very unpleasant accompaniment. In fact, the freedom of man is virtually the freedom to make the leap from vice to virtue and once this has been done, he can attain the end of choice, indecision, moral problems. The defective man of degenerate society is once again whole. Of course it is very questionable whether this is any solution at all. Admittedly Rousseau recognises certain features in men which have no existence in the materialist philosophy such as sentiment, as distinct from sensation, the will, the longing for good and the sense of moral failure in not striving for it, the notion of conscience as a sentiment, the idea of the dual aspect of man, all of which we know not from looking at other men but from studying our 1

These points are of course often disputed by writers on Rousseau. However, whilst one cannot deny the contradictory statements of Rousseau on this point, I feel Cotta expresses the matter well when he writes, "A la détermination de la religion civile le Génevois arrive en effet en partant précisément du refus d'un des principes essentiels du christianisme: la distinction entre le spirituel et le temporel, que Rousseau rejette au nom de ce bien suprême qui est l'unité du corps politique." "Théorie religieuse et théorie politique chez Rousseau", in Rousseau et la Philosophie Politique (Annales de Philosophie Politique, Paris, 1965), p. 190.

THE OPPOSITION OF ROUSSEAU

21

own selves - a method of analysis apparently not "scientific" enough for the materialist. Yet no sooner is it recognised than it appears the aim is to get rid of it somehow by burying it all in Society or the General Will as if society can have a will apart from man's will and as if too society is in any way transcendental to me, as if it can be anything but my creation and as if the Law of a society is indeed an expression of will at all. Who indeed is to say we should be a Cato and not a Socrates? Patriotism is not enough. Yet, considering the presuppositions of Rousseau and his determination to avoid a transcendental solution, what else could he offer to man ?

PART II

PRACTICE AND THEORY: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND AFTER

3 CONDORCET: THE RATIONAL MAN AND THE REVOLUTION

The French Revolution was the great opportunity to realize the idea about man which had gained in force throughout the 18th century, the idea we have summarized in the previous section. Yet, as we have seen already, on the philosophical level there were two sets of ideas on the concept of man, not to mention the numerous semi-philosophical, demi-philosophical, commonsensical, and ordinary ideas of the age. It has been said "ideas" were not the cause of the French Revolution but it was due, say, to hunger or perhaps to the deficit.1 But if the people of France had been filled with a faith of resignation whereby famines were the necessitous outcome of natural laws, would they have acted as they had done and too why should the King presume the deficit could be cured by calling the Estates General? Ideas are in everyone's heads. It is only a question of the level of ideas in order to weigh their ultimate effectivity. It is not our purpose to explain the ideas which caused the people to attack the Bastille or to murder de Launay. They are too obvious and too ephemeral to count as the ideas of the French Revolution. Therefore, let us assert that on the highest level of ideas the ultimate aim was to fulfil the Idea of man in achieving the environment for the realisation of that man, to end the duality of man - to make man at one with himself and society, both ruled by natural laws ; in fact virtually to achieve the Newtonian revolution in society as it has been achieved in physics. In this respect, the Revolution means a rejection of religion or superstition as it was called and also a rejection of all privileges so that man could be

1

For instance, Mornet in his book, Les Origines Intellectuelles de la Révolution française, virtually distinguishes between two sets of ideas, that of the philosophes and that of the people, suggesting however that miseries and injustices are real facts opposed to notions yet how do we know we suffer an injustice? Furthermore, by failing to define the word "revolution", he makes a distinction between a prepared revolution of 1917 types and an unconscious one of 1789 type. Yet, for all that, he does accord a leading role to the intelligence in the 1789 revolution, see p. 477.

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at one with himself and likewise society could be at one with itself. The original enemies were in fact the Church and Feudalism and the aim was a new regenerated society of men, orderly, unified, and rational. The splits in the ranks of the revolutionaries sprang not so much from this aim as from the determination of the means to achieve it. Looking at these divisions, on the one side we see those who believed in the fundamental accordance of natural law (or the Law of Reason) to the law of society so that, provided the dictates of Reason were followed, it would be possible to promulgate laws of an absolute binding and impersonal character which would be freely obeyed by all since it would be obvious to all that, in following them, their interests would be fulfilled just as indeed would be the general interest. In other words, there would be no conflict between the individual and the state, between governed and government ; government in fact would be solely a matter of making laws and exercising some police functions. Of course, it could hardly be expected that all - the whole General Will - would perceive these truths of reason for the ancien régime with its wrong laws and superstitions had too greatly distorted and corrupted men's minds but it was felt that at least the majority could perceive them and, as for the rest, education would soon spread the right principles. These ideas of course were completely revolutionary in import. Everything had to be changed - in man and society. Not only was the government to be completely altered, not only the laws completely changed, not only the Church and privilege completely destroyed but the whole outlook had to be altered. Man must regard himself in a way completely different to the one he had used up to now. It was not only a question of discarding superstition and returning to natural insight as was complacently thought. It was a question of building up a new picture of the world - of course already achieved by the leaders but not even imagined by many of the people.2 Therefore, quite clearly from 1789 until Napoleon put an end to it, there was the constant pressure of this mass of revolutionary concepts. As we have already said, not everyone held these ideas but they are the vital ones because they became the dominant ones and

2

It is interesting to note how Condorcet foresaw this need and still more interesting to see how this need was actually fulfilled later on. For instance, Condorcet wrote in 1792: "11 nous faut donc une histoire toute nouvelle, qui soit surtout celle des droits des hommes, des vicissitudes auxquelles ont été partout assujetties et la connaissance et la jouissance de ces droits; une histoire o ù . . . l'on suive chez chacune (nation) les progrès et la décadence de l'inégalité sociale. "Sur l'instruction public" in Oeuvres Complètes 7, ed. Arago, p. 419. Certainly his requirements were fulfilled thirty years later.

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now almost our commonplace concepts. Accordingly, let us study them as reflected in the mind of the philosophe of the Revolution - Condorcet. As befits a philosopher, the system of Condorcet forms to some extent a connected whole so that the concept of man involves certain concepts of society and economics. It could not be said that the links are always obviously necessitous but at least it is possible to see the primary notion of man determining the nature of society and vice versa if desired. This is not meant to state that Condorcet believed men influenced society but that Condorcet's idea of man automatically involves his idea of society. Unfortunately, the key idea, that of man, is not always so clearly defined as would be required for although Condorcet knew well enough what his idea of man was, he was not able to express this idea in any clarity or precision perhaps because it was all so obvious to him. Clearly he derived many of his ideas from Condillac, perceiving man as an object of sensation, responding to them with pain and pleasure, yet in the Locke fashion having within him the faculty of cognising, combining, and comparing facts and thereby creating ideas and general truths so that, for instance, inborn sentiments such as compassion and pity produce moral ideas and rules which in turn are obeyed to avoid pain and gain pleasure. That is, the original man has only sensations such as pleasure and pain, pity and sympathy together with the faculty of memory. But the original man is only the start. Just as Rousseau tended to make moral states historical stages, so Condorcet makes psychological states historical periods. Man at the beginning of time was not man in the 18th century. History is the perfectioning of man, all the ages have only been the stages preparatory to the emergence of the true man. Man was undoubtedly once only sensation, only desire and passion but Man as he should be is man as the Rational Being. It is the law of man to perfect himself or be perfected until his Reason can take over the task previously performed by externalities. Over the past ages the work has gone forward, external sensations called forth pleasure and pain, social intercourse called forth feelings of sympathy and notions of justice but the whole process is the natural progress of man to reason, so that as man becomes enlightened so his world becomes enlightened and as his world becomes enlightened and filled with freedom, the more man becomes enlightened so that finally the achieved man himself achieves the true society. Knowing now the rules of his own being, he can determine the future just as he was himself once determined in the past. The path towards this ideal state is not easy since without reason man is often the enemy of man, there are continual attempts at oppression by the exploitation of the superstitious

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fears of man and by the use of power and force to dominate over others using false laws and institutions so that indeed it seems a great wonder reason could ever issue through the clouds. In fact, it hardly appeared before the 18th century, certainly not before Descartes and this, of course, made the French Revolution so very important. It was the first appearance of reason on the battlefield, the first attempt: to establish the rule of enlightenment over prejudice. After centuries of darkness it was the great breakthrough so that its victory means the assurance of light, the rebirth of man into his heritage. At last man could know the past and achieve the future. Man then, for Condorcet, is reason embodied. Proceeding from the natural endowments of sympathy - the "necessary result of his organisation", he continually perfects himself since his happiness means virtue and truth until the day comes when he himself can reason on his conduct and so complete the work of perfection by bringing all his behaviour into conformity with the laws his reason discovers. Once this happens, quite a new era opens for man. For one thing he can study himself and his society just as he had begun to study the world around him, subjecting it to the rules demanded by proof and precision, by studying the facts, the connection between facts, by deducing the laws to which they are subject so that finally man can study his society just as he would that of bees and beavers. Of course, this means the elimination of passions, selfish interests, instincts, and desires, their subjection to analytic and objective reason. For this naturally is Condorcet's idea of reason - man thinking in a "scientific" manner, studying facts, deducing laws, and then discovering further facts and so on. That means, the method of the physical science must be extended to the study of man and his environment. Law and principles can be discovered here just as they can be discovered in physics. All talk of the soul and imagination are quite out of place. Reason seeks truth by proof, analysis, and calculation, by precise and determined language. Let us for instance consider morality. According to Condorcet, this involves an objective study of man, of the conditions of his existence, the requirements of his nature so that from all this the laws regulating his being can be observed - and not only the biological laws but also the social laws. If it should so happen that the government and institutions under which he lives are opposed to his natural needs and requirements, he will be a stunted growth, torn between desires and duties. What is then wrong is not man but his environment. The split, the conflict between the "want" and the "must" is unnatural. Virtue is not something to be

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fought for inside you. It is quite natural - to the reasonable man and since the reasonable man is produced by good laws and good education, in the good society man is completely at one with himself and everyone else. Morality can then be reduced to the study of man and society provided of course you accept the Condorcet belief that the aim is the reasonable man and also you are quite clear what reason means anyway. And this is the Condorcet problem. What is reason - objective fact or internal faculty ? He suggests at times that reason is objective thinking, the method of rigorous analysis of externality, the derivation thereby of objective laws and principles based on the necessities of the objects analysed. It is a method all men can use and if they use it they will always arrive at the same results. For example, use your reason on morals and you will all obtain the same ideas on morals because you will study man as an object and see his needs and the ways to satisfy them. Reason is here the reduction of particularity to generality and the discovery of objective, binding laws in external nature or things. Yet, on the other hand, reason is in itself a moral good. It is something to be striven for itself, it is part of man, the end and aim of his being. In this way, reason as the end of man determines by reasoning what are the natural rights of man to attain this end. In other words reason determines itself. Then also natural rights are a problem in themselves. Apparently they are the necessary conditions of man's being, at least if he is to be what he should be. Yet they were not known for centuries since only the reasonable man can know them and as long as man is oppressed he is not reasonable. Reason is in fact the product of freedom, just as freedom is the product of reason. Yet, in some way, these precepts are always there in the heart of man awaiting the light of reason and no power on earth can eradicate them. From this it should be obvious that Condorcet was by no means clear in his basic assertions, and that he combined a web of rationalism and empiricism with the threads of metaphysics. Or, to use another metaphor, he no more than anyone else could pull himself up with his own boot straps. However, from his concept of man, it can be seen that in Condorcet's eyes, society is not something "unnatural" to man. It is in fact part of him, the environment that develops as he develops and can therefore be explained as a necessary concomitant of man. If then society in some way oppresses man by its laws, institutions etc., there must be something wrong with these laws and institutions. If the law is the natural law of man, man is perfectly free. True law is then the key to the true society. Bad laws and institutions prevent man from developing his higher faculties

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and perpetuate the play of passions, hatred, war, and all the evils of ignorance. Good law is not the will of any person or persons. It is truth derived by reason from the principles of natural right. It is natural and not an imposition - it is rather a necessity as any man using his reason can perceive. Therefore, there is no restraint. Man can follow his natural interests assured of his natural rights. There is no opposition between the individual and society. Man is one with all. His interest is the interest of all. No effort is required on his part. The only necessary act is to end bad laws and government and so to clear the way for the rule of reason which then will also involve an extensive system of education for education plays a vital role in the Condorcet scheme. Only by using it can be created the Rational Being, that is, by fostering from an early age the right sensations such as pity and sympathy so that ultimately man can live according to a system of "natural" morality with no one willing to hurt the other. So too can the precepts of reason become the precepts of society - to achieve the perfect harmony. Naturally, this means the complete exclusion of religious instruction in school for that superstition retards the growth of reason and keeps men perpetually under the domination of a power-seeking class by the use of force and fear. Condorcet then pictures man in society as in his natural environment and therefore in complete freedom; as he says, a nation is free when it obeys the laws conforming to the principles of natural right recognized by it. As reasonable beings, men accept the necessary laws. Therefore, each man can follow his own (rational) interest and at the same time fulfill the general interest. There will be no parties, no conflicts of interests because all will know the true principles. Any conflict as to the particular means of fulfilling the general principles can be determined by statistics to provide the information on the best method to be followed in accordance with probability. 3 Both liberty and security are provided. Therefore happiness is assured and man can work on his perfection and so the perfection of the whole human race, discovering the entire laws of its being, exploring the past and determining the future. 3 Condorcet, of course, could hardly be accused of wanting to lay down the laws of human conduct on the basis of probability calculations although he might on occasions have given the impression. In his Esquisse d'un Tableau historique (10th stage) he wrote, as regards the application of the calculus of probability: "Avons-nous fixé des règles précises pour choisir, avec assurance, entre le nombre presque infini des combinaisons possibles, où les principes généraux de l'égalité et des droit naturel seraient respectés..." (my emphasis). See also the interesting article of Laboulle, "La mathématique sociale: Condorcet et ses prédécesseurs" in Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France (1939).

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Condorcet remained quite consistent to these views throughout his life. However, the problems of the French Revolution caused some slight modifications of detail. One of the acute problems it raised was that of obligation, and it seemed quite unlikely that men would automatically obey the laws as principles of their own reason. Accordingly in 1792 Condorcet introduced the concept of collective reason, that is, the reason of the majority which laid down the general principles for society - natural rights, the method of government, and the forms for making laws. All these decisions were as reasonable as was then possible and so should be obeyed. Condorcet stressed, as he always had stressed, that this was not a question of will, no one was being imposed upon. It was simply reason but if all were not yet reasonable, it was necessary to compel them to obey. As a result, there must be the use of force on the recalcitrant minority. Was this an admission of failure? Insofar as it was directed at that minority which refused to acknowledge the reasoning of Condorcet's reason it was. Yet, of course, Condorcet could not see this. The opposition was just bad will, selfishness, greed for power. In time these states of mind could be overcome since good laws and institutions would then be capable of removing the last imposition - that is, the opposition of government to governed. Naturally, this presupposes more reason and, in fact, more force because Condorcet does talk of forcing the people to become reasonable so that they want to obey the laws.4 Finally, there is the economic aspect. In the perfect Condorcet society, there is no opposition of interests. Society is natural and it naturally produces different classes of men - town-dwellers, countrymen, business men, farmers, capitalists, wage-earners, rich and poor. But they are not in opposition to each other; rather they are all held together by natural interests, provided of course these interests are not distorted by bad laws. They all have one common interest - to be happy and to be free to obtain this happiness. Thus everyone works for this end. The so-called evils of commerce and industry are really only the evils of laws and government. For instance, the desire for money, for luxury, for idle living are simply the evil products of the system endured by 18th century France with all its legal class barriers. If everyone is free to do as he wishes, economic equality will be attained - not absolutely, of course, for some will still be richer than others but the natural laws will see to it that wealth is distributed over the whole nation. In addition, education will also reduce the inequalities of talents. 4

See "De la nature des pouvoirs politiques dans une nation libre", Oeuvres tes, 10.

Complè-

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Economics then fit into the pattern of natural law. As may be expected, the idea that there was no opposition of interests in society, in particular between rich and poor, was not a popular idea in the Revolution especially in the face of what seemed to be much practical evidence to the contrary. Yet it is a very necessary part of Condorcet's thought. If society is to be natural, following natural interests, these interests had to correspond to the natural predilections of man. If you destroy the right of property and the freedom of commerce, industry, and work, man, at least on the Condorcet pattern, was hardly likely to have any natural incentive to do anything. Natural inequality was a motive force of society. It was simply necessary to ensure equality of inheritance, equality of taxes, free education for all, and the liberty of industry and commerce so that the only inequality left was that which was necessary for the functioning of the economy and the perfectioning of the human race. Throughout Condorcet maintained the useful character of commerce and industry, throughout he stressed that it was not the businessman, the trader or the shopkeeper that was wicked but the laws, institutions, and customs. During the revolution, Condorcet was certain that shortages of goods were caused by the inflation, the loss of security, and the prejudices and fears born of centuries of oppression. He also continually stressed the fact that, although human society was composed of different economic groups, their interests were never in conflict. Most definitely there were no economic class conflicts. The only conflict he ever perceived was that between those who govern and those who are governed but he imagined that this difference could be overcome by good laws, by education, by frequent elections, and by completely democratic institutions (as typified in his constitution of 1793) so that people would only obey themselves and not another whereby this also incidentally accounts for his distress over the Jacobin constitution for in his eyes this aimed at giving dominance to one group in society and thereby it perpetuated the difference between government and governed. With Condorcet, we see the ideas of the 18th century achieving their ultimate triumph in the work of the French Revolution - to justify to some extent his statement that the French Revolution was the war of reason against prejudice. Although there was much in the revolution which did not fit this interpretation, it was at least an interpretation and with the collapse of the opposing views as represented by Robespierre, it became the interpretation until its inadequacies seemed too obvious. Certainly Condorcet, if the last of the philosophes might possibly be considered, is one of the first idéologues and his ideas stretch far into the

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19th century. On two accounts however, Condorcet's thought was inadequate. It was inadequate in the interpretation of man and society being unable to provide the ideological basis for a new form of society and it was inadequate as an interpretation of the actual events of the revolution being unable to provide a satisfactory theory of it. The idéologues and more importantly the Economists had to abandon much of Condorcet's thought in order to attain to a better sociological and historical pattern. Condorcet in fact revealed too clearly the weaknesses of the "scientific" method. He already knows what he will find before he investigates the subject. His terms are defined in accordance with themselves so that reason defines reason and progress defines progress. The basic terms are not analysed because any analysis would destroy the system. Practical facts in the sense of external manifestations are consistently ignored so that the system of objective analysis is praised but never used. Of course, it could never be used because man is both object and subject unlike a stone or a planet but the whole difficulties of the method are never even appreciated because the method was never applied. Yet it would be foolish to ignore Condorcet. For all his weaknesses, he was a great original thinker and in all his works we meet up with fundamental tenets of 19th century thought - always vague and ill-defined but obvious to us now as determining the pattern to be followed later. Nor should we ignore his role in the French Revolution. He failed in 1793 but he succeeded in 1795 and, although dead, virtually created the whole French system of education and system of finances - indeed to a lesser extent the French form of government. There is no sense either in divorcing him from those who held power from 1792 to 1793 until driven from it by Robespierre coup d'état. He is the voice of the Girondins. There is nothing they ever did that was not part of his thought. It is in fact no chance that he was in the end condemned with them for he had virtually created their constitution and defined in all his writings their ideas. Doubtless he might have survived as Sieyès survived by keeping quiet until the storm blew over but he did not, he associated himself with those forcibly excluded, he protested against this act of violence and so he was condemned. In any case did he not typify to the mind of the day the philosophes, did he not represent the ideas and opinions of a Voltaire opposed to the views of a Rousseau? Nor was this a cheap simplification. It represented a profound insight, and understanding of what the continuous revolution was about. Condorcet was in fact a philosophe and represented in every way that view of man so typical of the philosophes, the Locke-Condillac man and therefore also represented the corre-

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sponding views on society and economics. The French Revolution clearly showed that these ideas were not capable of realization because of very serious inadequacies, the most notable being the failure to accord any substance to certain obvious features of human existence. The Condorcet man simply did not exist. But did the Robespierre man either?

4 ROBESPIERRE: THE MORAL MAN AND THE REVOLUTION

Turning from Condorcet to Robespierre, we approach quite a different type of thinker, not only in the nature of his thoughts but in his approach to them. Robespierre was not a man to work out a philosophical system. Many of his fundamental ideas have no logical relationship to each other and, as regards the nature of man, many are simply presumed. Of course Robespierre left only his speeches and political pamphlets but even this seems to show his ideas were born in the clash of action rather than in reflection. In other words, like many of the other revolutionaries, he used words, concepts, and ideas as he found them and without much consideration of their meaning. For instance, Robespierre has a tendency to insert in his speeches phrases on reason - the eternal voice of reason, reason as the basis of law, reason as the creator of the French Revolution and so on, yet, considering his ideas as a whole, one is tempted to think that for Robespierre the vital agent is not reason but the heart, the heart which bears within it the sacred instinct of men's right, the heart on which is engraved eternal justice, the generous heart whose passion is virtue and patriotism and so too the soul whose passion is likewise virtue. Heart and soul reflect then, to my mind, the tone of Robespierre's speeches and writings filled as they are with the vibrant emotion of feeling recalling of course yet by no means on the level of Rousseau's insight into men. Robespierre indeed is not interested in developing a theory of man either from the inside or outside. He is more interested in creating the political conditions in which man as he should be can exist. This doctrine of social moralism was Robespierre's great contribution to thought and after the initial defeat of 1794 saw a very successful revival in the 1830s. Throughout his speeches this strong moral feeling predominates. Whilst it has been said that Jacques Roux had constantly on his lips the word accapareur, it could equally be said that Robespierre had continually on his lips the word vertu. Indeed his whole outlook in this respect so completely coloured his ideas of man, society, and government that it is

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difficult to separate the various strands. Still it is clear that to Robespierre virtue is attached to the natural, the simple, and that historically speaking it is derived from the state of nature whilst actually speaking it exists in the people, the mass of simple hard-working citizens because they are nearest the natural state whereby it is clear that Robespierre tends to confuse Rousseau's concept of goodness with his concept of virtue. The original, natural or simple man is good, the poor man who works and lives in simple sufficiency is filled with virtue so that the problem of Rousseau's leap from natural goodness to conscious virtue via corruption is not given. If the poor are virtuous, so too the rich idlers are vicious for they are corrupted by living unnaturally. Therefore, to a much greater extent than Rousseau, the question of virtue and vice is "socialized" and made the concomitant of classes. Not that Robespierre can ignore the problem of society. Just as Rousseau said, "man is born free and everywhere he is in chains" so Robespierre says, "L'homme est né pour le bonheur et pour la liberté, et partout il est esclave et malheureux! La société a pour but la conservation de ses droits et la perfection de son être; et partout la société le dégrade et l'opprime." 1 The problem of virtue is then social or perhaps more so political if you can separate these notions in Robespierre's ideas. To Robespierre, until the coming of the French Revolution, man had lived ever since the formation of society in tyranny and oppression because society had instituted a system whereby the small group of the wealthy dominated over the rest, that is, the mass of simple people. Virtue was then not so much eclipsed as oppressed. In this situation, the French Revolution assumes a great and unique significance for the whole of history. It is the vital step in the direction of moral progress, the raising of the moral faculties on to the level already attained by reason in the study of the physical world. It is then something more than the realization of reason, it is also something more than the facile path of automatic progress. It is the triumph of virtue and since this represents an act of will rather than an act of enlightenment, there is nothing predestined about it and it can just as easily fail as succeed if the will is not strong enough. Naturally for Robespierre that will is the will of the people for they have preserved virtue all through the centuries. In the eyes of Robespierre, the French Revolution is then the fight of virtue against vice, in other words the fight of the people against their 1 Robespierre's speech, "Sur le gouvernement représentatif", May, 1793 in Choisis, 2 (Editions sociales, Paris, 1957), p. 141.

Textes

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oppressors. But who are these oppressors? One is tempted simply to answer all government until at least 1793 for it is one of the continual themes of Robespierre that the people are good but government is bad and from it springs vices for the art of government is nothing but the art of spoliation, a method of enslaving the majority for the power of the minority so that this minority grows in might, riches, and opulence at the expense of the rest. It is then always the tendency of governing bodies to have their own interest opposed to that of the people, and therefore the main aim of the struggle is to secure a form of government which will ensure the true and free expression of the virtuous will of the people, to reestablish the ancient harmony of interests so that the country will only have one will - that of virtue or the people. It might be said that surely this was indeed the aim of Condorcet too, if not of all the revolutionaries to find a government which secured the rights of the people but did not itself become a violator of these rights. And that is true. The constant fear that some group would set themselves up as the exploiters of the people via political despotism was not only the nightmare of Robespierre. But it was all a question of "people", "rights", "virtue", "reason". Who were the people ? What were their rights ? What said virtue and what said reason ? Robespierre must have been truly convinced that if all were virtuous, the government could be reduced to a minimum and all could be left to the people themselves just as surely Condorcet was convinced that if all followed the rule of enlightened interest, the government could likewise be reduced to a minimum. That time however had not yet come. Just as Condorcet had the problem of educating the unreasonable, Robespierre had the problem of purifying the vicious. Fortunately in this task of regeneration, he was convinced - at least until near his end - that he had the support of the people, that is, he believed that the vast majority were sound and virtuous citizens although, unlike Sieyès, Robespierre never believed that what the majority wills is right, only that the majority do will the right and that the right is eternal and known even if no one wills it. Now in order to achieve virtue, the decisive step is to secure the right form of society, for instance, virtue can never triumph in a monarchy. In fact the sole form conductive to virtue is a Republic. This is the prime necessity for only in a Republic can the true virtue ever be realized and here Robespierre emphasizes the ancient concept of virtue having a suprapersonal existence in the state. Accordingly, the legislators have the duty of striving to further the conditions necessary for the perfection of virtue and so have the double burden of being naturally virtuous as are the people and

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in addition of being consciously virtuous so that they can always resist the temptations of their position. They must excite a love of the fatherland, purify customs, elevate souls, direct passions towards public interests. In this way and in accordance with the eternal laws engraved in men's hearts, it will be possible to attain the reign of virtue on earth. All evil ambitions disappear and the transmutation of man - so finely envisaged in Robespierre's speech of February 1794- will be achieved. 2 Whether this is as Robespierre sometimes appears to imagine a return to nature or natural virtue or whether it is a leap beyond nature and society to civil virtue is not clear. Robespierre is vague here and he is particularly handicapped by his concept of virtue being equal to the people being equal to natural simplicity. However, his state clearly aims at the end of man's duality, for man and society are one in virtue. Personal interests are forever blended in the general interest so at last the true democracy is realized. 3 But in 1793 the battle was far from over. Vice was still present and therefore the revolution had to go on and therefore a revolutionary government was necessary to wield the force of intimidation and scatter the enemies of the people, of virtue, of the Republic. And truly these enemies were everywhere, trying to creep back into power, trying to stifle the voice of conscience, trying to quieten the dictates of morality. The opponents of Robespierre were then not only wrong-thinking but also evil-minded. They were corrupt, they were the power seekers, they were greedy for riches and gain, an evil minority. Here we notice the equation of political struggles to class and moral struggles. For example, to Robespierre's mind, his enemies were corrupt, were rich or at least greedy for wealth, which meant they were filled with egoism, sought only their personal interest and therefore naturally could never serve their country. For us, this automatically raises the question of property. Did Robespierre condemn property? Was he a socialist and so on? Yet obviously property as an aspect of social theory was not a great issue of the revolution because thought was still pre-economic, that is, the theory concerning the importance of property had not yet been formed. Of course, like all the other revolutionaries such as Condorcet, Sieyès, and Barnave, Robespierre opposed excessive property and imagined a state of affairs where everyone would have sufficient but unlike Condorcet and 2

"Sur les principes de morale politique", Textes Choisis 3, p. 110. In the same speech, Robespierre defines democracy as "un état où le peuple souverain, guidé par des lois qui sont son ouvrage, fait par lui-même tout ce qu'il peut bien faire, et par des délégués tout ce qu'il ne peut faire lui-même". Ibid., p. 113. 3

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others this was not achieved by man following his personal greed, as it were, but by perceiving the moral evils of excessive wealth. The issue is then not property itself but the moral aspect of property and Robespierre clearly aims at making the rich and riches so hated and despised that no one will want to be rich. Moreover, although the rich are dangerous, it is not because they are rich but because they are enemies of the Republic. This might be a fine point but somehow Robespierre managed to balance on it. He emphasized there are evil men and there are good men but these should be distinguished not by their fortune but by their character - is he a friend of liberty or equality or is he a friend of tyranny and aristocracy? Opulence is not only the price of crime but the punishment of crime. Admittedly it cannot be stated that Robespierre was altogether consistent here yet, if we could imagine Robespierre ever achieving his Republic, we might imagine that there would have been no need to regulate property for the love of the patrie would have been so great that Jove for such an egoistical object as property would have disappeared of itself. This aim was never realized and perhaps Robespierre came near to perceiving why when, towards the end of his life, he came to doubt in the virtue of the people or at least to make a further, very vital distinction between good people and bad people. 4 As he also said, "Je suis fait pour combattre le crime, non pour le gouverner. Le temps n'est point arrivé où les hommes de bien peuvent servir impunément la patrie : les défenseurs de la liberté ne seront que des proscrits, tant que la horde des fripons dominera." 5 It might be said that in conceiving the unity of man realized in the fatherland, Robespierre still held out a transcendental position in his belief in Providence. It is true that Robespierre was a notorious opponent of atheism yet his concept of God or Providence denies all personal contact with man - it is rather a spirit manifest in the society itself and thereby makes society the object of the highest adoration. Convinced that men have within them a religious instinct not based on reason but on feeling and revealing to them the basis of good and bad, duty and morality, Robespierre apparently hoped to secure it for the good of society by creating a form of religion based on festivals of the state and nature without any priesthood. This would further the noble passions of the heart and soul and bring about the sacred love of the fatherland and that 4

See his speech of May 26th, 1794. In Oeuvres de Max. Robespierre III, ed. Laponneraye (Paris, 1840), p. 648. 5 From the last speech of Robespierre, 26th July, 1794, Textes Choisis 3, p. 194.

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celestial voluptuousness to be found in contemplation of the public good, passions to be felt only by those who have souls. All of which leads me to class Robespierre with the Rousseauan opposition to the Condillac man and his society and to deny at the same time that he in any way imagined man as an individual to be open to any other virtue but that found in the state and since the state is most definitely of the world, it can never be considered to transcend human experience. The problem of Robespierre is probably the problem of his own thinking. What did he mean exactly by virtue ? Was he always honest in what he said? Did he not sometimes express ideas likely to give him power? And what was he aiming at in the end? We cannot answer these questions because in all likelihood Robespierre himself did not know the answers. Yet in spite of about forty years of denigration as a monstrous tyrant, his ideas were to dominate the left wing in the 1830s. His speeches became their Gospel and he himself became a great martyr of liberty and equality, comparable it seems to Jesus Christ. Certainly, within Robespierre there is something very appealing which is especially attractive when ideas of the Condorcet type appear to be near achievement. The principle embodied in Robespierre's ideas is the denial of rationalism, mechanism or just that tendency to limit man to what he is in those terms and to deny to him that rush of feeling to be beyond himself. It is true that if religion dominates there is no need for such manifestations as Robespierrism but if religion is denied yet rationalism thrives, such doctrines provide an answer and an escape. However let us turn from these general principles and see how the clashes of these ideas in the Revolution produced their own doctrines and in particular how the notion of social classes developed.

5 THEORIES IN PRACTICE

It is the constant assertion of our time that the French Revolution was caused by a class, saw the triumph of a class and so on. Yet the French revolutionaries knew nothing of this. Indeed how could they for the theory of class struggle and so on had not been formed in their time. But I think it is true enough to say that the French Revolution contributed to the accretion of the idea of class to the theories of man we have considered. Of course, even prior to the French Revolution there is the notion of class - various notions in fact. There was the idea of the rich opposed to the poor, town dwellers opposed to country dwellers, landowners opposed to the non-landowners, the nobles opposed to everyone else, and the revolution vaguely contributed one of its own - the bourgeoisie opposed to the people. But whilst everywhere is the impression of class notions, "haunting" the scene as it were, the notion of a class struggle was a very rare concept in 1789. The usual idea of course was to see the Revolution as the work of reason against superstition and ignorance, the march of progress and enlightenment against tyranny and darkness, a process which would too bring about the complete regeneration of France and all her citizens. It was the "how" of this which led to the segmentation of society. The type of thinking predominant amongst the leaders of 1789 was one impatient of any criticism. Their idea of the natural or rational man capable of founding a completely new order had to be achieved, and it could only be achieved by the complete elimination of tyranny and superstition. This naturally was not conducive to compromise, but when moral qualities were imparted to social groups a still more intolerant spirit dominated. At first, this was expressed rather in terms of moral indignation than social theory. For instance, Sieyès passionate and fiery hatred of the "nobles" and the "privileged" accords little with the idea of universal harmony especially since he himself must have known that many nobles were on his side. But this abstract notion of man must be realised,

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privilege and superstition must be abolished, the nation must be made whole. Y e t how great was the temptation to attribute the hindrances on this path not to bad institutions but to bad wills, especially since with the improvement of institutions, the cherished end was still not attained. Therefore, instead of examining the realisability of the theory, the method was to search for enemies, scapegoats. Somewhere was a small group of "nobles", "aristocrats", "privileged", plotting and conspiring to prevent the realisation of natural justice and harmony. When that small group had been overcome, the ideal could be attained for all would automatically have one interest - the common good - and so could form in harmony the one L a w for the one People. For instance, Sieyès like Condorcet, facilely imagined that the Third Estate formed one interest group and therefore could form one Will and thereby the L a w would be obeyed without restraint because particular interests would in this case naturally accord with general interests. Such faulty notions could have disastrous effects and in the French Revolution they inevitably led to a period of anarchy where no one dared to assert force, since laws must be obeyed "naturally" with the result that there was an outcrop of warring groups, each claiming to be the General Will or the voice of reason, while all rival groups were the aristocrats, the conspiring minority and so on. For another thing, vital details of theory, such as the notion of the General Will, were vague and undefined. What was the General Will for instance ? The will of reason or the will of the majority or were they both the same and if not which will predominates? Then there was the awkward question of common interest. H o w can the particular interest equal the general interest if the particular interest varies with various groups but how can the particular interest be the same if some have great amounts of property and others none. Did not then equal interest mean equal shares? But then what of liberty? If you maintain the Lockean concept of the free man assured in his rights by the free, unlimited ownership of property, how can you assert the opposite when it comes to equality? Philosophy made the Revolution, but lack of philosophy prevented its termination. 1 The first check on the revolutionary aim to realise the General Will via the Natural Man was the establishment of property qualifications for electors. Considering the philosophy forming the basis of, say, the De-

' 1 owe these ideas to Groethuysen's admirable work, Philosophic française.

de la revolution

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43

claration of Rights, it is difficult to find a justification for this. In fact, there was a theory which did in some way justify property distinctions - that of the Physiocrats and once upheld by Condorcet - which said that only landowners could maintain the interest of the State because they were the interest of the State, that is, all lived off the land since this was the sole source of wealth and therefore those who held the land created the whole wealth of the State and therefore formed its interest. This view however presupposed that the country must be ruled by the minority of landowners or else everyone must become holders of land, both ideas having an unrealistic air after 1789, presuming in one case a landed aristocracy and in the other the loi agraire. However, the majority of delegates were neither Physiocrats nor egalitarians in the absolute sense. They could then justify property suffrage only as an exception to their theory and therefore the basis was very unstable. The fact of course was that their theoretical image of man accorded very little with what they had seen in the crowds of Paris - those empassioned insurgents, those violent and often brutal masses bore scant resemblance to the man of reason or Condillac's statue awakened to life by external sensations and never by internal desires and passions. They did not even accord to the notion of man seeking pleasure and avoiding pain for who but a madman could find pleasure in murder and delight in pain? Yet the impact was not sufficient to change the theory. It was merely modified. After all, those crowds in passion were only the products of despotism, of insufficient education and unenlightened surroundings. Time was needed. Education could change them but first the reasonable must rule, majority or not, and since they knew they were reasonable and they knew reason as a product of education, leisure and reflection, then presumably the reasonable being was not as yet the poor man and therefore until better times reason must be regarded as the attribute of those with a sufficient livelihood. But was this a reasonable argument? Could in fact reason be equated with the amount of money paid in taxes ? Could intellect be measured in terms of money and moreover was there no other way of measuring it? Certainly it immediately opened the door to charges that attempts were being made to create an "aristocracy of the rich", and therefore the necessity of a renewal of the war against "privilege." Yet, it should be clear to us that this struggle originated not in the imposition of property qualification but in the concept of man propounded by the revolutionaries. Seemingly well aware of the discrepancies between their acts and their doctrines, the upholders of law and order in 1791 resisted strongly

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the notion that they were creating a new despotism or a new aristocracy in the shape of a bourgeois aristocracy. On the contrary, the view was maintained with vigour that they represented the will of the majority and if there was anything "bourgeois" about that will it was because the "bourgeoisie" was the great mass of the nation, the great core of hardworking citizens from the businessman to the workman. It was their opponents who were in the minority, being merely a group of scheming intriguers, longing for power themselves and therefore stirring up the basest passions. Naturally, this class of opponents would have none of all that; they asserted an aristocracy had been formed - perhaps the nobles had gone but the bourgeoisie, that is, the rich had seized power for themselves and were turning the clock back.2 Now this split of 1791 is not, in fact, the great divide of the Revolution, for in fact the revolutionary doctrine as personified by Condorcet marched onward still hand in hand with Robespierre - not united in thought but at least in the determination to prevent the Revolution ending before their ends were achieved. Condorcet maintained the reason of all, believing in the inherent reasonability of the people so that there was no justification for property suffrage. Universal suffrage and the Republic could be proclaimed without fear and the march of progress could achieve its goal. Robespierre, of course, was aiming too at universal suffrage and the Republic, only in his case this was rather to achieve the reign of virtue via the virtuous people than to foster the rule of reason. The antipathy between the two men can be explained by the fact that each must have seen in the other the personified denial of their theory. Behind these two positions comes a whole body of half-digested theories, apparently based in the first place on a passionate hatred of the "rich", the "wealthy", the "aristocrats", the "cultivated", l'homme dorée, Vhonnête homme,

as opposed to the poor, the simple, the rough, the sansculotte. While this can probably be derived from a natural element in human nature, the failure of the government and the assembly to ensure the necessities of life, not to mention a system of economic viability, meant this potential hatred could very easily be inflamed simply by stating that economic miseries were due to the evil plots of the rich. Yet we can surely see that this was due ultimately not to an evil will or selfish interest but to wrong 2

The struggle to prove "the majority is on my side" is of considerable interest but is usually overlooked because the later definition - generally the Marxist - of such words as "bourgeois" is simply presumed whilst in fact, of course, the French revolutionaries had quite different notions of these terms. See Further Reading for references to this struggle.

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ideas, the impulse to impose upon society a defective notion of man which must call forth opposition both because it could not be realised and therefore provoked chaos in the existing society and too because the denied element in man must revolt against the imposed image. Accordingly, it is to be hoped the notion of particular interest of group, class or sect will be accorded the same irrevelant status in the future as is now accorded to the evil plot theory. Continuing our account of this period, we see that although the hatred and fear of the "betters" was certainly not a product of the French Revolution, the early scattered manifestations of this hatred grow to a most powerful refrain by 1791 as if indeed the behaviour of some of the Constituents was confirming the early hesitant suspicions. The hates and fears of these representatives of the sansculottes centred now firstly on the property suffrage and, secondly, on the re-establishment of public authority presuming this authority would serve only the interests of the new privileged, thereby depriving nine-tenths of the population of the rights for which they had fought on July 14th. Their refrain was that the mass of the people had made the revolution; they had destroyed the power of the nobles and priests but for whose benefit? For the rich, the speculators, the monopolists, the merchants, the financiers, all growing more rich and more powerful from the revolution whilst the poor were only getting poorer. Even in 1791 then we can see the question of society coming to the fore, as if political forms were irrelevant without some rearrangement of social and economic patterns. Here we see politics and society separating in a manner obviously not in accordance with the philosophes' ideas, for in their search for an automatic law to accord personal to general interests, it was not useful to introduce concepts whereby the political body would be forced to undertake a rigorous reorganisation and possible permanent supervision of social life. This, of course, provides a clue to the position of that group known as the Girondins and of Condorcet too. They were opposed to any limitation of the suffrage and therefore opposed the "right wing", yet they firmly believed both in the effectivity of purely political action and in the realisability of the reasonable man concept. So that they were "right" of the "social" and "moral" "left". In fact they took their stand on democracy of the representative type with the rule of reason being introduced once superstition had been abolished. Reason meant the rule of enlightened self-interest so that, provided no citizen infringed against the rights of another, he could do what he wanted - get wealthy or stay poor, that was up to him. It was believed that the result in the end would

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be ease and leisure for all since the interest of one could further the interest of another and if one man became rich that meant his fellow men would have a better chance of becoming rich too. In any case, no one could interfere with the "nature of things" for society was the domain of natural law. Obviously man as pictured by Condorcet was humane enough to make such a concept work. Unfortunately such a man was not very much seen during the actual Revolution. Yet there was always this belief that the introduction of a good Republican constitution would cure all evil, in spite of the fact that the whole economy called for some drastic regulation. The government of Brissot was, of course, blind to the defects of these ideas and persisted in seeing all criticism as the work of spiteful trouble-makers, selfish power-seekers who sought to stir up economic discontent for their own benefit, who sought to pretend the country was divided into two classes, the haves and have-nots, solely to secure for themselves the fruits of office. Undoubtedly their suspicions were justified to some extent but discontent could only be exploited, not created. The force of the Commune and the sections was at the disposal of the opponents of the government because that government neither relieved the discontent nor suppressed it - at the most it studied it.3 Since neither this nor any other government could have actually fulfilled the aims of the revolution, the only way it could ever be stopped was by force and, of course, it was just the aim of the other side to prevent any government ever consolidating itself by using force. Therefore, if the aim was no government, the formation of a government was an anti-revolutionary act. In this we see the roots of the appeals to direct democracy often made by the opponents of the Girondins whereby the law should be made by all but enforced by none. As conditions became increasingly anarchical, and the power vacuum ever greater, the ideological warfare could be heated to almost civil war with the armies of the hungry created by that very power vacuum ranged as supporting mercenaries. In this period, the warfare of ideas brings into play much of what seems to us shadow-boxing, with each side conjuring up a completely different picture of reality and using words such as peuple, bourgeoisie in absolutely opposite meanings, so that the impression is created of various conflicting groups violently trying to shape the world as it should be according to 3

A s can be seen from the quite remarkable police reports of this period - contrasting very noticeably with those of the Robespierre era, when clearly there was the imposition both of force and of ideological doctrines. See Schmidt, Α., Tableaux de la Révolution française (Leipzig 1867-1871) and Caron, P., Paris pendant la Terreur (Paris, 1910).

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their notions with the resultant forcible impacts as worlds denied worlds. But no one was as yet willing to enforce his world on the others. To one side it was all so obvious that they were convinced if only the other side would stop being so stupid, it could see the true way in an instant. Yet one set of ideas in fact immediately conjured up an opposing set for none covered the whole situation. What could be achieved by offering a Republic constitution in 1793? Could in fact any constitution be expected to create the perfect man ?

6 SOCIAL ISSUES AND CLASS WARFARE

With the disappearance of the Girondist government, the problem was just as acute as ever. Bare political reform had been rejected. It had been decided that the particular interest did not automatically equal the common interest once the priests and nobles had been removed and once a democratic Republic had been introduced. But when did the particular interest equal the common interest ? If it was not a question of political form, what was it a question of? Was it necessary to apply the Rousseauan moral leap so that men should change their nature and cease to be egoists, or simply the Robespierre virtue with the morally perfect people in power. Or, on the other hand, was the question to be decided rather by some social materialism, that is, the perfection of social morality by simply ensuring that all were equal in a material sense and therefore all would be the same and therefore no one would ever dominate any one else? In other words, could society be made a whole again via a moral regeneration based on the Robespierre notion of the virtue of the natural people or could it be made whole again via a redistribution or abolition of property? Of course both involve a moral aim differing solely in the means of attaining this aim. Was it first necessary to enforce a new moral code to end greed and egoism and therefore love of property and therefore particular interests, or was it first necessary to enforce a new property code to end particular interest and therefore greed and egoism and therefore to secure a new moral outlook. Of course, it was all this "moralism" which was so repugnant to the opponents of this view - in the rationalist camp. For was not this group searching for a law, a system which would end for ever that "ought" question, and yet here were their opponents apparently reviving again that old Christian morality with its eternal "ought". Yet we should not overlook that both set of views did actually aim at ending eventually the moral imperative for even in the "social" system, the moral "ought"

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would be ended by the common interest swallowing up the particular interest. We have already studied Robespierre's ideas and the disappointment he ultimately endured owing to his facile equation of virtue to people. Yet, throughout the revolution and after, the other solution was constantly expressed - abolish property and you abolish the source of evil ; abolish the property-owner and you abolish the embodiment of evil. As regards many of the exponents of these ideas, it is often difficult to dissociate the passions generated by economic want from the reflective process of studying the needs of society. For instance, much passion was expended on a hatred of bakers and wine sellers typical of Le Père Duchesne, although Roux with his very intense dislike of the accapareur was already approaching a more analytic position, for the accapareur is the monopolist, the speculator who piles up his wealth whilst people starve, whereby it must mean that political freedom and political rights are quite useless if the people are enslaved economically, therefore this class of exploiters should be prevented by law from profiting from the "freedom of commerce". Here, of course, is then a set of ideas which firstly denies the natural law of the beneficial effects of self interest in commerce and, secondly, demands a political regulation of social life. Obviously such ideas did not spring solely from the needs of the moment. Long before 1789 there had been a conviction that the rich would eternally oppress the poor if not forcibly prevented and therefore the events of the revolution could appear to be merely a confirmation of this. Yet the inner necessity had still to be explored and the events from 1789 had a powerful stimulus on this movement. By 1793, the "old" rich in the form of the privileged - the clergy and the nobles had disappeared, but the misery and distress remained, indeed had increased. What could be the reason for that? According to this line of thought, there must be some "rich" still left, and of course it was easy enough for a sansculotte to find someone richer than he, and eventually to project forth the concept of a bourgeois aristocracy a vague enough term comprising anyone from the local shopkeeper to the mythical banker, yet often used to denote a minority of rich men, as too the non- and anti-sansculottes, the educated, the snobbish, the meanspirited, the greedy and the selfish, as if grades of income determined grades of virtue. Of course, the person embodying vice could vary according to the insight of the virtuous, the simple might regard the baker as the personification of "aristocratism", the more sophisticated could see beyond this to the businessman and banker. All this, however, does not yet add up to a theory of society. Rather it reveals the funda-

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mental feelings on which a theory of society might be based. Was there indeed at this time any structural idea of society apart from that represented by Robespierre and his followers ? To my mind before Babeuf there was no actual scheme, i.e. a theoretical plan to be transformed into practice but only various ideas such as the moral notions propagated by the government together with very widespread views about the plots of rich conspirators and beliefs that merchants were intentionally hoarding the necessities of life, all leading to some notion that society was still divided into two opposing groups a small minority of the rich (variously termed the aristocracy of the rich, the financial aristocracy, the bourgeois aristocracy and so on) were in control of the vital economic life of the nation and the huge majority of the poor sansculotte, people or plebs, whilst secure in their political rights, were still in economic dependence on the former group so that it was concluded that political action was not enough and that something had to be done to tackle the state of society or the civil state as Saint-Just expressed it. In fact, how can you govern well if the enemies of the state, the rich, work against you and control the whole civil state? 1 It was indeed a problem. How in fact can you introduce a government based on virtue, on a hatred of riches, luxury and opulence when the economic life is in the hands of those very people who believe in such vices ? The civil state too must be revolutionised in order to overcome this situation and to assure that no one shall be dependent on any one, but only on the providence of the state. The period up to 9th Thermidor then resolves around this question, digesting as it were the practical realities of the theoretical principle, or even just realising what it would mean to put these theories into practice. No one was willing to seize the initiative to introduce a wholesale revolution in society, yet the ideas which had in part been realised necessitated other measures not so desirable in themselves yet obviously following in train of the original scheme, so that in some ways a path was unwillingly and reluctantly followed because it seemed to lead to perfection. Vaguely then appears the first signs of class war - the necessary step to the triumph of the sansculottes, which would be both an economic and moral triumph since the sansculotte was the natural man, the good man of simple virtue, the poor man, the open, free and easy man, the rough-and-ready-butheart-of-gold man, the honest, good fellow, the hard-working patriot. His opponent was the rich man, the egoist, the man who sought his own 1

See Saint-Just, Discours et Rapports, ed. Soboul (Les Classiques du Peuple), p. 145.

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interest, the lover of luxury, the idler living on others, the man without a country searching only for his profit. In this way, moral attributes became class attributes so that to achieve the Virtuous Republic, the rotten class had to be eliminated. "Public property can only be consolidated on the corpse of the last of the honnêtes gens. " The country must be sans-culottized. Or in the words of Le Bon "Sansculottes, it is for you we guillotine. If we did not you would have nothing.. ,". 2 The crime of "negociantism", i.e. the crime of greed and of trying to make money out of the Revolution must be rooted out for the spirit of business was incompatible to the spirit of liberty. Smithianism came under attack and with it the notion that the prosperity of the merchant means the prosperity of the state. Commerce had to be republicanised, i.e. it had to be based on patriotic virtue. To achieve this the rich had either to give up their ill-gotten gains to the poor or they had to be completely eliminated as the only means to secure virtue. Just as the attempt to unify man and the state by a simple law of natural interest and the outright denial of moral dualism was doomed to failure because its concept of man was defective, so this attempt to cause man to jump over his own shadow by founding a new virtue in the State or Society was doomed also to failure since man cannot pull himself up with his own boot straps and he is not so completely foolish as not to see that only he can make society. It is all man and man as he is, no matter how many are guillotined. To project our evil on to a class is no wiser than the Hebrews heaping their evil on the scapegoat. Of course, although the French Revolution effectively demonstrated the failure of the ideas because they could not and never would be used to build up political and social forms, this failure was never perceived. Some mistake had crept in. Rectify that mistake and then the new man and the new society would triumph. Whilst - as we shall see later - the Thermidorians were rectifying the mistakes to achieve eventually a revised Condorcetism, Babeuf was equally busy working out a revised version of "Robespierrism". 3 Not that the Revolution was necessary to originate Babeuf's ideas. Prior to 1789, he revealed the same sense of moral indignation and desire for social justice as he showed in 1795. Without feeling the need for any philoso-

2

See Wallon, H., Les représentants du peuple en mission V (Paris, 1889) p. 146. Or was it revised Hébertism? It is not likely because whatever were Babeuf's previous ideas, he had the sense to perceive the value of Robespierrism as a system. See Dalin., V. M., Babeuf-Studien (E. Berlin, 1961). 3

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phical demonstration, he was convinced from his own belief that society was bad, since it was clearly based on distinction and grounded in usurpation. Moreover, he was likewise convinced that the vast majority suffer because the minority have stolen their living from them. To explain this, he postulated the theory that all men were once good, living happily in the state of nature, but that certain defects in this state gave rise to oppression since natural inequalities resulted in the stronger gaining the possessions of the weaker and consolidating their gains by laws and institutions (society) and then perpetuating it by force and ignorance. Luxury, idleness, opulence were all the products of this oppression and could only ever benefit a small dominating caste. The dominant theme of Babeuf is the desire to make the people happy, the assertion that the aim of society is the happiness of all. In a sense this differs from the aim of Robespierre, since Robespierre by emphasising virtue instead of happiness implies that some sort of moral metamorphosis is necessary to achieve true happiness, approaching thereby the moral picture of Rousseau whereby man by a free act of will overcomes his corrupt state. For Babeuf there is no moral fall. Men were once happy, now the majority of men are unhappy and the minority only think they are happy; all men should be happy again. Virtue for Babeuf is simply ordinary happiness, self-love, the desire for pleasure, so that he avoids any contrast between the state of simple happiness or goodness and the state of virtue. He appears simply to desire a return to the primitive state of nature when all were happy. But this original state of nature is defective because of inequalities in natures - some are strong, some are weak, some are clever, some are stupid. These defects in equality result in domination, for one group can easily exert power over the other, seize the land, make it their own, create laws and government to perpetuate their robbery. Society and government are then founded on greed, cupidity and ambition which make their appearance with the desire to dominate, and with this too the false notion of happiness which in turn was generated by the notion of property, the idea that happiness lay in possessions. Out of this original fault as regards natural equality then springs all the evil of society. Therefore the aim must be to attain a revised state of nature. Why do men want to dominate and oppress, why are men greedy and selfish? Because under the existing system they can increase their wealth, their property. If there were no property, if no man could live from the labour of another, there would be no vices. All men would be brothers because there would be no reason for any one to oppress another.

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Since, however, Babeuf does not imagine any moral change in man, this desired benefit cannot come from a return to the natural state. There must be some social system to secure equality forever and to prevent the more strong and the more clever from once again oppressing the others. This is the natural conclusion since Babeuf always insists that his virtue is natural self-interest with nothing strenuous about it at all; but as a result of this he can never show how the unnatural happiness love of luxury, opulence, power and so on - cannot ever appear again without some strong force from above to prevent it, that is to prevent anyone carving out property for themselves. Therefore, the stronger man or the more intelligent man would somehow have to be kept down perhaps by force or perhaps by education, so that his "natural" bent to dominate would be subsumed to this "natural" inclination for brotherly harmony. In fact, Babeuf's difficulty arises from trying to explain the presence of evil by an externality "property", since how in turn can you explain the presence of "property" without the prior presence of evil and therefore how can you eradicate evil without the permanent use of force - which of course was no answer to the 18th century hope of ending without any force the old moral duality within man and the social duality between man and his government. Since Babeuf could never consider all men as they are to be natural, yet at the same time, for him, all men should be natural, he could never solve the problem even theoretically. His theory necessitates force as an element of its achievement because as we have said he failed to show that property was the cause not the result of evil. However, Babeuf has the distinction of firmly economising vice and in that he signalises one of the main results of the Revolution for even if Babeuf's conclusion was not accepted, property lost the neutral character it had so long borne and became something good or bad. For the men of the Revolution it had surely been at first a means to ends - a prop of liberty, a necessity for freedom, a measure of intelligence. All agreed too much was bad but all agreed that this could somehow be prevented, and anyway it was the consequences which were bad not the thing itself the luxury, corruption of morals and so on. Vice, in fact, was still a state of mind even for Robespierre whilst for Condorcet it was just ignorance. But Babeuf clearly formulates the undercurrents of 1794. No virtue, no happiness without a complete change in economic life, the end of commerce, industry socialised, and the abolition of private property - all stressing a quite unconsidered theme of the Revolution - the creation of man by his economic environment. Here perhaps was then another clue

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to solve the duality of man. It was neither a case of political systems, nor moral character but of economic and social institutions. Up to now, then, we have seen the idea and the counter-idea suffer many vicissitudes in this period of practical application. What were originally shadowy schemes have now received the first touches of reality. This long struggle - over five years - of theory with "fact" is almost unique in history, certainly for the first time a philosophical system contended with a political system to fight for a radical alteration of thought as well as of laws, customs as well as institutions. The impossibility of the aim, virtually the overcoming of man by man, gave it its immense attraction for the promise was the dream of man and not lightly rejected once formulated. Yet clearly it must fail and did fail although of course certain subsidiary aims were achieved. Still afterwards the whole event of the Revolution became part of the theory so that the continual problem was not how to modify the aim but to show what went wrong in achieving it, to digest the immense cataclysm and still come out intact. However, although 1795 certainly saw an end of the continual revolutionizing and a very gradual restoration of power and normal life, it still went on in ideas and theory and too in practical application until the advent of Napoleon caused the decisive break. By 1815 it was possible to look back and to see a French Revolution with the awareness that one was no longer in it.

7 A G A I N THEORIES IN P R A C T I C E : 1795-1799

As we have seen then, the Revolution did not stop with any sudden finality in 1794. It was neither put down nor abandoned. The revolutionary impetus merely faded out as men gradually accustomed themselves once again to the evil necessities of power, force and government. The Terror stood as a significant warning of what might happen if those revolutionary passions were again released. Yet, of course, the events of the five years of turmoil were sufficient to guarantee that there was a strong determination to preserve something from it all, to uphold the view that if the Terror was bad, the old régime was still worse. So the Thermidorians had the difficult task of determining what could and should be achieved and what should be suppressed and what allowed. Obviously something had gone wrong. There was no time for historical reflection on why something had gone wrong, but it was vitally necessary to secure the true principles whilst at the same time not to present the appearance of advocating some weak compromise - as was so easily the case when they tottered between royalism and Robespierrism, facing at times a general collapse of all the high ideals into a welter of materialism so that it seemed there was no longer any foundation on which to build at all. Yet, in spite of the bleak mood of many and the dominant spirit of cynicism, the Thermidorians still maintained the old principles, went on to consolidate them, to turn them into definite theories, to institutionalise them and, in addition, to combat the enemies rising up on all sides so that a most vital period of about six years of power was gained, sufficient to ensure that the revolution could never be reversed and come what may its institutions would survive. This is the great achievement of these men and how often overlooked by just those who find the revolution so admirable. One of the chief problems facing them was just how to reconcile their theories to fact. For instance, it seemed very obvious that personal interest did not equal the general interest and morality was not as yet

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enlightened self-love. Their natural law in fact was far from being the natural law of the masses still darkened by superstition and prejudice. The rule of the reasonable by means of gentle pressure on the unreasonable was therefore an unfortunate necessity, but there was always hope. Just as in an experiment the right conditions had to be created before the right results could be obtained, so here in society the right environment must be formed for the operation of the true laws. Firmly committed to their beliefs, these enlightened rulers then sought to create the opinion they conceived to be natural. This explains the great emphasis placed on education - the chief weapon in their eyes to promote reason and combat prejudice and in this way the whole future educational system of France was laid from the primary schools to the École Polytechnique. Of course it was an overwhelmingly urgent task. If the masses were not won over to their ideas, there could never be any hope for peace and stability; a barrier had to be put between them and superstition, prejudice and anarchy so that in the end the true democratic government could be achieved based on real liberty and equality for these latter could never exist in ignorance - an ignorant man will never be really free or really equal but oppressed and dominated. It was as Cabanis saw it, that the enlightened would triumph in the end. 1 However, in view of the situation at home and abroad, it was difficult to wait for "in the end". The state was buffeted on all sides and was able to exist more from the fear of what might replace it than what it represented in itself. Many were reluctant to admit that a government was necessary at all, still imagining that the aims of the revolution could be achieved directly. In this situation, more speedier measures than education were needed. Furthermore, the ordinary man was still too enamoured of the idea of God, religion and the Church, and was therefore liable to seduction by reactionary forces. The aim was then to suppress and divert so that the original religious force could be used for the ends of the society both to eulogise the state and to secure some basis for morals, at least until Reason prevailed. It was indeed said that the belief in God was useful and therefore true. 2 Reasoned calculation mingled with naive deism resulted in the support given by the Directory to the Theophilanthropists, not without the intention apparently of creating thereby some kind of a state religion. However such a pseudo-religion could find favour

1

See Cabanis, Oeuvres 2 (Paris 1956), p. 517 ff. Mathiez, La théophilanthrope et le culte décadaire (Paris 1904), p. 147 quoting the words of the director, La Revellière.

2

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neither with the intellectual leaders of the time who were mostly confirmed atheists nor with the people who by a sure instinct could still tell a true religion from a false one. A more suitable cult was found to be Nationalism. It was not tainted in any way by superstition. It had the virtue of associating the people with the state whilst at the same time offering an outlet to supra-personal emotions. So must be viewed the culte décadaire with its pageants and festivals although of course it had the secondary purpose of improving morality by preaching the virtues of the good citizen and patriot who by his good deeds will find immortality, admittedly not in heaven but at least in the school books. These measures had the stamp of impromptu haste and too of an artificial striving to arouse emotions not actually believed in, that impress of "bread and circuses" for the masses which always vitiates against their genuine acceptance. The rulers were unwillingly conceding to necessity and so propaganda was born. No doubt in their hearts they felt it all to be an evil compulsion created by the situation whereby their ideas could not be realised but neither abandoned - for what then was the Revolution about? To let the people have their head would be to destroy all the significance of the revolution. That could not be. Often condemned as corrupt swindlers, capitalists and so on, the men who directed the fortunes of France until Napoleon took over showed a remarkable capacity for belief both in the correctness of their ideas and the certainty of realising them. It could perhaps be that the corruption of the time was the direct result of their thoughts and deeds, but they never knew it. They failed of course because their ideas if consistently carried out had to fail. Let us consider the matter of religion in this respect. Religion was superstition and prejudice, in particular this was the case with the Catholic religion. The true man could never believe in such nonsense, he must automatically reject it for it was nothing but a source of oppression and tyranny to his free thought. But what if he did not in spite of the best of education? What if all the people did not? Who would be the oppressors then? If the use of Reason was natural, how could you force it down people's throats? Then it was most unnatural. Yet if you did not where were your beliefs? There was no way out of this dilemma. Either force or abdication and by 1799 the general support for Napoleon given by the intellectuals revealed that the idea of force was being accepted. What might have happened if Napoleon had been a different man is open to speculation. Certainly the idéologues were spared the consequences of their own action. They were the persecuted and not the persecutors, so the situation saved their principles. It is not

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however uninteresting to note that the system established in 1799 was deemed a possible one for the securing of freedom, "democracy purged of all its inconveniences" as Cabanis wrote.3

3

He went on to say: "All is done for the people and in their name, nothing is done by them nor according to their thoughtless dictates; they live peacefully under the protection of the laws" - quoted in Picavet, Les Idéologues (Paris 1891), p. 233.

8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEORY - THE IDÉOLOGUES

Although we might say that the period from Robespierre to Napoleon was the only one at least for over seventy years when the Republicans with their philosophical ideas had power and that that period was in itself singularly devoid of any immediate success, yet it was a very fruitful time for the establishment and propagation of the new ideas and the seeds set at this time certainly sprang into bloom during the nineteenth century. The centre of intellectual life at this time was clearly the Institut National, founded in 1795. There the doctrines of the idéologues were given a chance to develop and, by means of lectures, special courses, prize themes etc., to influence the rising generation. Now the philosophical doctrines of the idéologues or "ideology" were merely a continuation of the sensationalist philosophy of the 18th century, in particular that of Condillac.1 The new name "ideology" given to it was invented by the chief idéologue, Destutt de Tracy who felt a new designation was necessary for the science of ideas since the older term of metaphysics had the unpleasant connotation of being "metaphysical" whilst the new ideology was supposed to be strictly scientific with the aim of analysing thought on the basis of observation.2 It was the aim then of Destutt de Tracy to establish a science of ideas based solely on observed facts and thus from this to deduce certain general laws fully conform to these facts since he himself was firmly convinced that the knowledge of how we form our ideas was the basis of all science and furthermore it was the basis of all moral and political 1 The idéologues always stated that Condillac was their master. Picavet in his book, Les Idéologues, tends however to stress the influence of Descartes in spite of the idéologues' dislike of his "rationalism". It might be true that as Picavet suggests the idéologues were in fact rationalists yet likewise it cannot be denied that they regarded their endeavours as strictly empirical - especially too they rejected all duality of mind and matter, determined as they were to reduce thought to changes in matter. 2 See Destutt de Tracy's memoir to the Institut National January 1797, reported in La Décade philosophique 12 II trimèstre (Jan. 1797).

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theory, so that once this science had been developed it would at last be possible to build society on a secure scientific basis. As Destutt de Tracy put it the problem was, knowing the faculties of an animated being, to find all the means of happiness to which that being is susceptible. 3 From this it is quite clear that ideology was still trying to create a science of morality on the same pattern as the mathematical and physical sciences but also at the same time striving to create a science of sciences so that from its principles there could be derived the principles of all the branches of knowledge so that it would unify them into one whole. As Cabanis wrote, "belle et grande est l'idée de considérer toutes les sciences et tous les arts comme des rameaux d'une même tige, unis par une origine commune et par le résultat qu'ils sont destinés à produire, le perfectionnement et le bonheur de l'homme". 4 It was believed that by unifying the analysis of ideas and morals to physiology the science of man could be discovered and if man could know the rules of his being and thinking he would necessarily have found the science of method revealing all the principles of the other sciences uniting these then to the knowledge of the faculties of man. This explains the great interest shown in physiology and the attempts - typical for instance of Cabanis - to deduce from the physiological study of man all the ideas developed by him - the brain in fact secreting thought as the stomach secretes nourishment. Accordingly, the study of morals was merely a study of man's physical organisation, revealing that the body required substance and reacted to pleasure and pain so that in this way the bodily needs led man to other men, to ties between individuals and eventually to the formation of society when man fulfilled his interest by likewise fulfilling the interest of others. All this could be worked out and made into a science of happiness and, by securing morals to the physical nature of man, creating an eternal basis for the determination of good and bad. Destutt de Tracy was equally firm in his conviction that morality could be deduced as a necessary consequence of the physical organisation of man - as necessary as breathing. It is interesting to see too how firmly Destutt de Tracy rejected the inward study of moral causation. That was obscure, uncertain. Morality could only be built on observed effects. Since the feelings which man imagined caused him to act in a certain way could never be rigorously determined, the only secure criterion was the effect. Therefore it did not in the least matter 3 4

See his memoir read to the Institut National, cited in La Décade 81 (1796), p. 140. Cabanis, Mémoires quoted in Picavet, Les Idéologues, p. 226.

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why man did anything, so long as the effect was beneficial. Just as apparently when we put our money in a slot machine, we expect a block of chocolate and are completely indifferent to the machinery's mode of effecting this. Or rather perhaps we know that the machine has been so made to give a block of chocolate when we put in sixpence. If the machine should have some strange ideas of its own that it gives us the chocolate because it loves us, that is just the subjective feelings of the machine, quite remote from reality and cannot alter the distribution of chocolate. All this was merely a consequential pursuit of the ideas of Condillac so that man was really considered to be a machine whereby by pressing sensation A you obtain reaction B. However, as Maine de Biran, pointed out man was both more than a machine and more than an animal. 5 For one thing he had the faculty of reasoning and naturally Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy presupposed this in all their language, for they were continually reasoning although apparently at times desirous of eliminating it. Both in fact use the notions of reason and judgment without deducing them from observation. Even more important they completely failed to eliminate the "ought". For example, as regards morals, Cabanis was certain that it was necessary to submit every detail of our conduct to the direction of a sens éclairé always conforming to the inspirations of a generous heart. 6 Needless to say, this philosophy was based on a complete denial of religion. Religion was in fact the chief source of evil being always in opposition to the interests of the individual and society ; a product of superstition and prejudice, it throve on ignorance and in addition was the source of all despotism and oppression. It denied the harmonious union of virtue and happiness and worse still it was illogical. Think, for instance of Volney's concept of verification. Ideas on religion are ones you can never agree about because they are not based on selfevident objects of perception. It is then best to steer clear of such fancies, to exclude them completely if we want to live in peace.7 Yet looking back over the many centuries when religion had dominated the world it was difficult to dismiss it as outright nonsense. In this connection, it is profitable to read Destutt de Tracy as he describes the evils wrought by religion and the feeling of the utmost despair this aroused in him until reading Dupuis' History of the Cults he was able to put it all 5

Maine de Biran, Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris, 1841), Vol. 3: "Critique d'une opinion de Cabanis sur le bonheur". 6 Cabanis, "Discours de cloture pour le cours sur Hippocrate", 1797 in Oeuvres 2 (Paris, 1956), p. 323. 7 Volney, Oeuvres complètes 1 (Paris, 1821), p. 243 f.

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into a historical perspective, to see that religion was simply the philosophj' of the infancy of humanity and therefore a necessary part of the growing up of mankind. 8 Volney expresses similar emotions in Les Ruines. What, he asks, is the meaning of all the historical movements, the rise and fall of empires, prosperity, decay ? Is man forever bound in this circle of meaningless ups and downs ? But no, man has at last overcome this chain of circumstances and a new era can begin. He now knows the law behind it all and knowing the law can live in accordance with it. Growth and decay are the natural results of obeying or disobeying the laws regulating man. If false self-love dominates, so does greed and oppression and therefore despotism appears, the despotism of ignorance as typified by the priests or the despotism of greed as typified by the rich. War comes upon the scene, pillage, destruction, the reign of wild passions and so eventual ruin and decay. But with the new knowledge, progress can be maintained. Laws can be formulated according to the natural requirements of men such as the need for freedom and equality. Then too the state will prosper for the self-love of man will be a healthy self-love, that is, it will be in accordance with the aims of society.9 This is all very like Condorcet. It reveals, however, the need for a history to put the new ideas into their right perspective, to show they are all the natural result of a natural development and, although at this time such a history was not developed, the historical studies commenced at this period undoubtedly resulted in that great flourishing of the historical school in France in the 1820s. Just as there was a felt need for history so there was a constant desire to connect man to society. It is true that following on the philosophes, the idéologues considered man to be naturally sociable. Man seeks pleasure, he finds pleasure in his fellow men due to natural sympathy as well as a desire for security - in addition of course to the necessary family bonds. Accordingly man apart from society could hardly be considered a man at all. By natural necessity man preserves himself and at the same time his fellow men, he serves his own interests and likewise serves theirs. In fact it might well be said that this school of thought could have done without the concept of society if it had not been so well known from the works of the opposing school. They much prefer to stress the individual, and society is made for the individual in that he 8 Destutt de Tracy: Analyse raisoimée de l'origine de tous les Cultes par Dupuis (Paris, 1804). See also the pertinent remarks of Cabanis that without the notion of the perfectibility of man, history would be inexplicable, Picavet, op. cit., p. 591. 8 Volney, op. cit.

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perfects himself in it. He follows his natural interest and public prosperity follows so that the particular interest is the source of all good. Yet there was something defective in all this thinking. The "ought'" appeared constantly. Destutt de Tracy had to draw a distinction between the good personal interest and the bad so that we should submit to the voice of justice and reason in order to be really happy.10 Saint-Lambert suggests that not everyone knew the right self-love which was only to be found in never separating your happiness from the happiness of others. We should therefore try to perfect our reason and to preserve the sentiments which are agreeable to us and others.11 Yolney drew up a list of moral precepts, "conserve-toi, instruis-toi, modére-toi; vis pour tes semblables, afin qu'ils vivent pour toi". 12 In ail cases these are moral imperatives suggesting that there are two kinds of natural interests, one good the other bad, the goodness and badness being determined by the degree of enlightenment or reasonability of the person. Yet what sort of standard was this? Who was to determine it? If man behaved naturally, he behaved naturally just as a snake behaves naturally when it bites its enemies and listens to no moral oughts telling him it is bad for the society of animals. Man, it seemed, had not one nature but two or more and who could say which nature would make any particular man happy ? Of course, these points were not raised yet the generally unsatisfactory character of these natural laws promoted the interest in the study of man in society in order to determine from a study of man and his needs the necessary laws conducive to his happiness, in other words to find a science of man and society based on the physical needs of man. This meant the study of political economy and with eager hopes it was considered that this subject could provide the longed-for solution to the scientific study of man, morals, and politics. The physiology of man created inter-human connections, formed a web of interests termed society and thereby this society was determinable according to these very physical requirements. It was in this field that the idéologues made their most decisive contribution to modern thought.

10 Destutt de Tracy, Elémens d'idéologie, "Traité de la volonté et de ses effets" (Bruxelles, 1827), p. 384. Tracy's moral command was "Aimez-vous les uns les autres". 11 Saint-Lambert, Principes des mœurs oit catéchisme universel 11 (Hambourg 1798). 12 Volney, Oeuvres complètes 1, p. 310 (Catéchisme du Citoyen français).

9 SAINT-SIMON BEFORE 1814

Before going on, however, to consider the economic question, it might be of interest to consider the early works of a now famous writer of that age, the Comte de Saint-Simon, for this interesting man in his invariable manner provided lively if popular versions of the thought of his time. He was certainly equipped with the gift of grasping vital issues and seizing general principles from details of thought. However, he tended at the same time to seize on these issues and virtually worry them to death so that in the end they tended to display more their ridiculous than sublime side. Yet, on the other hand, it is this very reason which makes him so interesting because he reveals very clearly the skeletal structure of thought without much of the ponderous padding. In several periods of our study, we shall meet Saint-Simon and we shall always find he consistently supports the latest and brightest idea of the time but always goes beyond it. Now he is the perfect idéologue but, in pursuing so far the leading ideas of the idéologues, he leaps over as it were into a position no respectable idéologue would ever occupy. True to his perceptive intuition, he had grasped that the desired aim of ideology was unity of all the sciences based somehow on a principle derived from the study of man so that this science of sciences would be physiology since the physical organisation of man determines his thought and his thought determines the sciences. Having perceived all this, Saint-Simon proceeded to revolve these ideas in his mind, setting his own physiological functions into action with often very surprising results. Never a very consistent thinker, he issued forth with several wild and some times unfortunate speculations until at last he hit on the right track and was able to develop a fruitful line of thought without, however, having the capacity to consolidate it with intensive spadework. Most of Saint-Simon's ideas at this period were of the wild kind, often - at least it seems to us - quite ridiculous although perhaps if developed they may have attained some of the substantial reality of

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historical materialism. And, too, he was merely reflecting the ideas of others and if his line was false, it was because the whole line was false not, of course, in the sense of absolute truth but in the sense that it was unproductive for further effort, just as perhaps Descartes theory of vortices was less stimulating than the Galileo-Newton line of thought. Whatever the answer, Saint-Simon was certainly very involved in ideology. Firstly, he became a great exponent of physiology, urging that it should become a science just as astronomy and chemistry had become sciences and it should thereby abolish all moralism and metaphysics, just as those sciences had abolished astrology and alchemy. So, too, he was very interested in the relation of man (the microcosm) to the universe (the macrocosm) - man was the finger and the universe, the clock, both submitting to the same laws. Again, he was very eager to reduce morals to a positive science by showing that bodily happiness was virtue and that thereby politics could be reduced to the science of hygiene. He was sure moreover that it could be proved that those who strive for happiness in ways injurious to society would always be punished by the inevitable effect of the laws of his bodily organisation. 1 In all this, of course, Saint-Simon ran the danger of making himself ridiculous for he was ever oblivious of that danger line marking sense from nonsense. For instance, the conviction that he had found the unique law motivating the whole of the universe in the law of gravitation could be considered a sign of oddity rather than genius. Yet he pursued this idea through various meanderings to form a system of thought. The law of gravitation was the sole cause of all phenomena both physical and moral in fact according to him, the division should now be between solids and fluids since morality was solely the product of movements in the nerve fluids. This line of thought, however, was not very consistently followed through - at least as regards the solids and fluids. Later he considered attraction and repulsion as proceeding from gravitation and thereby influencing man. In the one case, man is affected by external sensation and the motion is then from the extremities to the centre, forming the basis of a posteriori thought (the analysis of facts) ; in the second case, there is a movement from the centre to the extremities and this is the basis of a priori thought (synthesis) or if we like the temporal-spiritual dichotomy, the study of m a n - t h e study of the universe; moral - physical

1

See Saint-Simon, "Mémoire sur la Science de l'Homme", and "Introduction aux Travaux Scientifiques du dix-neuvième Siècle", the former in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon Vol. 5 of 1966 reproduction and the latter in Vol. 6.

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and even, I suppose, fluid - solid. Here, of course, Saint-Simon is clearly leaping over and entering on to a position far from the "scientific" observation of the idéologues whereby it is not merely a question of the speculative character of Saint-Simon's thought - the idéologues speculated too but because Saint-Simon is now developing a trait very clearly noticeable throughout all his later writings - the notion of two states of thinking dialectically developing in opposition and counter-opposition with the need of the present time being for a kind of synthesizing thought to draw all the particular results of analysis together into one mighty comprehensive system.2 This idea is quite opposed to the idéologue position. Whatever system they desired, it must be based on the one true kind of thinking - the analytical, scientific kind as they conceived it and any unity must be a scientific u n i t y - a methodology of science. The dim and very confused perception of Saint-Simon was that the method of science as defined in the 18th century - observation, analysis and then deduction could by its very nature never unify. This idea is still very undeveloped in Saint-Simon's mind but somehow it affects his idea of progress and the notion of historical development. Progress is a series of stages but there are two series - the scientific revolutions and the spiritual and political revolutions or sometimes the spiritual revolutions and the political revolutions. At times he imagines the scientific revolution causing the political and other times he sees the political revolution causing the scientific revolution.3 However vague, Saint-Simon definitely sees history as a process of interchanging principles whereby there are certain vital axis points such as the transition from polytheism to theism and the change in his times from many laws to one law - the law of gravitation, just as later he was to talk of critical and organic periods. In this way, we progress to rather different concepts of man - man perhaps as a spiritual synthesizer as well as scientific analyser. Notably Saint-Simon was at times far from the anti-religious position of the idéologues although, of course, he was filled too with the greater wonder of science. Once, of course, Saint-Simon tries to "synthesize" he must answer the question of what is science. If science is of one age and religion another, when we synthesize we must subordinate both religion and science to some higher principle but is that "scientific" ? If, too, the principle of science is analysis, the synthesizing principle is beyond science.

2

These themes are mainly developed in "Mémoires sur la Science de l'homme". See for instance, "Mémoire sur la science de l'homme", vol. 5, p. 161, p. 173, and "Projet d'encyclopédie", vol. 6, p. 289.

3

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In all these respects then, Saint-Simon well overshoots the ideologues'' mark, and it is, of course, this preoccupation of Saint-Simon with cyclic development in terms of analysis and synthesis, a priori, a posteriori, critical and organic which eventually finds realisation in the last period of Saint-Simon's life, when he strives for a new spiritual unity. Apart, however, from this trend, at the present period Saint-Simon well fits into the idéologue pattern if rather to an excessive degree.

10 ECONOMICS A N D THE IDÉOLOGUES

The failure to create a science of sciences did not vitiate against the other aim of making scientific the yet unscientific. If man was a true object of scientific study, so too could be his society, his politics, his economics, his history; indeed, these very "sciences" were often conceived to be the unifying links of all "science" so that in turn economics, history and sociology have appeared as the primary determinants of development, claims quite ignored, however, by the natural sciences. In a way, of course, this period marks the falling away from the original aims of one unified science with a split developing between the natural sciences and 1he political and moral sciences, whereby the latter attempt to line themselves up as sciences along with physics, chemistry and biology, vaguely trying to be "scientific" without having any notion of what that really meant and certainly giving up any attempt at determining the whole of scientific methodology in the manner of the physiology of the earlier period. With the natural sciences still happily pursuing their method without any conscious insight into it, the moral sciences were doomed to conform to some mythical ideas of what this was. Not, of course, that this was felt to be a strain. The magic qualities of the word "science" were becoming so powerful that to submit to its dictates was deemed an honour not a burden. 1 Let us then turn to the first field to be made a science - economics. We have seen that there was a growing need to connect up the idea of man in the Condillac image to society by devising strict laws and in this way to abolish speculative metaphysics with its musts and oughts. The idéologues in particular were faced with the resolution of the problem whereby man is so, say "A", yet society is not so, it is "B" - the answer seemed 1

So long of course as the concept of man vital to the natural sciences is maintained, there is no objection to claims put forward by the "arts". The danger arises when new ideas of man arc put forward so that the whole metaphysical foundations of science rocks. In this respect see Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (New York, 1932).

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then to be to make either society "A" or man "B". But for the idéologue, man was always "A" - he was a natural product, therefore society must be devised to fit man, This means, of course, if you know what man is, it is quite possible to construct society to fit him. But what is man ? Here, of course, appears again the Condillac image. For instance, man is a creature of desires. But what desires are the basic ones? Well, surely, all men want to be happy. Yet that is not enough, it is necessary to get to the fundamental desires without which man is not man so that everyone can agree on them. What can they agree on? The fulfillment of needs and wants, that is, food, shelter, work, property, in other words, economics. In this way by reducing men to their lowest common denominator, you can create a society where the personal interest is the interest of all. This is what the idéologues proceeded to do. Now, of course, they did not come upon a virgin field. Before them were the Physiocrats and they had already contributed to the formulation of some economic terms and concepts. In fact, in certain respects, the idéologues were simply followers of the Physiocrats - for instance, in the desire to reduce the social order to a general physical order whereby laws are derived from physical necessities and so can be the objects of scientific study and, too, in the image of man as a compound of sensations and desires from which it is possible to derive society, government and law - a sort of superstructure to secure man's happiness. And there was the Physiocrats' derivation of the concept of property from the freedom of the person and the desire for security.2 Most of these ideas we shall meet again in the work of the great idéologue of this period, Destutt de Tracy. Yet there was one disagreement and this virtually led to the ideologues' complete disavowal of the Physiocrats - the question of the definition of wealth. The Physiocrats were perhaps led to their idea that the sole source of wealth rested in land by observing the facts of their times. As a corollary to this notion was also their idea that only those who owned land could represent their country for the landowners alone had an interest in it, since they alone paid taxes because they alone created wealth ; therefore, they alone should determine how much should be paid. This in itself does not imply the rule of aristocratic landowners ; it could equally apply to peasant proprietors. 3 Of course, it is undeniably true that 2

See Allix E., "Le physicisme des physiocrates" in Revue d'Economie Politique (1911). See Allix E., "La rivalité entre la propriété foncière et la fortune mobilière sous la Révolution", Revue de l'histoire économique et sociale (1913). In this article, Allix behaves like a good idéologue, clearly associating ideas with interest but by 1913 this belief had become not an object of thought but a facet of thought! 3

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during the Directory there was a certain conflict of ideas as to whether the landowners should solely represent the nation or not, doubtlessly strengthened by the idea that such episodes as the Terror could be prevented if the representatives were all secure and steady men attached to order by having an interest in order. So too the ideas of the Physiocrats as regards the flighty unpatriotic commercial and business element could have been still prevalent. Yet they did not prevail, the Constitution of year III certainly did not give prominence to landowners, and if it was the "commercial" element which dominated, one must wonder why it did not establish the theory that all wealth was derived from commerce instead of insisting repeatedly that it was derived from work. It should not then be so facilely imagined that ideas are mere figleaves of interest. There was a genuine question to be settled - was wealth solely derived from land or not? Such was, for instance, the prize question set by the Institut National in 1803 - answered in the negative by the prizewinner. In fact, "scientifically" speaking, the idea of wealth being reduced to land was just as unproductive as the notion of phlogiston in chemistry. The concept was too restrictive to permit of growth. Accordingly, the more popular notion was the one derived from Adam Smith that all wealth could be reduced to work and it was on this idea that the whole science of economics was founded. It is true that there was a certain opposition to its reception in France, it is true moreover that the idea was pushed by certain people who felt the necessity of emphasising the importance of the industrial, manufacturing and commercial element in society as opposed to the landowning element. For instance, there was Roederer. He strongly insisted that there were three kinds of property owners landowners, owners of fonds mobilier and owners of fonds d'industrie, i.e. the capital created by apprenticeship or learning. In this way he made everyone property owners except the unskilled. Property accordingly meant that which was created by man's efforts or work as well as by land. In other words, property was or at least should be regarded as the results of endeavour, the regulator of society, the reward of talent and industry. All this, however, does not necessarily mean that some class is hereby justifying itself. That explains everything and nothing. There can always be some class justifying itself somewhere. But why substitute the notion of the value of work for the value of land? Let us now look at Say. No doubt in the terms of thought of some people, Say was serving the industrial interest as opposed to the landowning interest. Yet in the terms of his own thought, he was convinced that he was serving only science, having at last discovered a truly scientific

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picture of society. In this respect it is only necessary to read the introduction of his Traité d'économie politique. He was, in fact, a true son of his age, the perfect idéologue. With what certainty he writes that the facts of political and moral sciences were derived from the nature of things in the same way as physics. All his facts were not created, they were found by means of observation and analysis, that is, according to him, the method of science and therefore, of course, the method of political science was to induce from observation a small number of basic principles from reality and then from these build up a whole system of corollary statements. Metaphysical speculation and moral "oughts" were all excluded. If you want to build a fortification, you study mechanics and if you want to regulate society, you study political economy. In this way, Say was completely confident that he had constructed his book on points de faits far superior to the method of Rousseau who only used point de droits, that is, merely set down his own opinions which were therefore completely useless as a guide to reality. As a matter of fact, Say's basic principles were ultimately derived from the sensualist notion of man, on the complete presumption that this concept of man was scientifically true without any need for further investigation. Of course, in a sense, this notion is "scientifically" true since it was created by science as a necessary accompaniment to its method so that the question is rather, does this concept of man accord with all our knowledge of man. In any case, on this idea, Say built his system. Man is a creature of needs, his happiness lies in the fulfillment of needs and so enters here the value of industry for it fulfills needs and creates value. Man by his very faculties creates wealth by work, and the industrious ones are those who produce value and riches. Here, of course, enters the moral value too for those who work productively in creating utility or value are good and the idlers who produce nothing are bad. Those who work productively as it were, can be included in three categories - brains, blood and brawn or the savant who provides the knowledge, the enterpreneur who provides the circulation of wealth and the worker who provides the labour. These alone are the useful elements in society. So what purposed to be a scientific discourse seems virtually to be aimed at one particular class of men by the completely arbitrary definition of work - in terms of what is useful in the opinion of Say. Certainly he is carried away by the virtues of "industry" and a dislike of "idle" landowners so that swinging right over from the Physiocrats' outlook, he comes to condemn all that are not "industrious" or industrials and, moreover too, to see the industrious development as the fundamental

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requirement for the establishment of freedom, i.e. the removal of all the conditions which necessitated war, oppression, pillage and robbery. On the presumption that men only fought for gain, it was thus shown that by means of industry there was no need to fight for gain, you only had to work for it. Presuming, too, there was only economic oppression, he imagined that once man was free to produce without dependence on a landowner, he would be quite free from all oppression. Here it is interesting to note is the first appearance of class in a "scientific" social theory. Society is quite obviously divided into two opposed classes - the producers and the idlers. 4 Saint-Simon seems vaguely perceptive of this in his Lettres d'un habitant de Génève, when he distinguishes between savants plus artistes and landowners although he is still far from his "industrial" days, as yet absorbed in ideas of the rule of reason and science rather than industry so that, for instance, general utility is for him nothing but the overriding interest of science uniting under it all the other partial interests.

4

The division was still often deemed to be between governed and governing - for all governments were only oppressors, costing money without being productive so that, in fact, the ideal condition would be where a simple economic administration would replace all political forms - see later.

11 DESTUTT DE TRACY AND THE SCIENCE OF ECONOMICS

The actual development of economics from the sensualist concept of man can best be traced out from the works of the greatest of the idéologues, Destutt de Tracy. Being a man of philosophical insight it is possible to see from his writings the whole metaphysical basis of the new science. We must, of course, start with man and here Saint-Lambert's catechism gives a helpful insight into the prevalent ideas of man as held by Destutt de Tracy and others. To the question, what is man, Saint-Lambert gives the answer that he is a being of reason and senses and to the question, as such a being what must he do, he gives the answer to seek pleasure and evade sorrow. 1 Man then is motivated by the agreeable and the disagreeable and as regards Destutt de Tracy one could almost say his motto was "I feel therefore I am". Having then in this way derived the notion "I am", he goes on to derive from this the whole idea of property since nature has given us each an inalienable piece of property - our individuality. I belong to myself and in fact if this were not so, there would be no property, for man creates nothing, he can only combine what is there and so it would be impossible for him to create an idea or a relationship which did not have its source in nature. 2 "Yours" and "mine" are derived from the idea of "you" and "me" and therefore are completely natural. Property is thereby natural too, something existing in man himself so that the notion of property in this way becomes something absolutely compelling. We all have property, we cannot help but have it, it is part of our natural equipment. The only point ever at issue can be one about its distribution, never its existence. Now this derivation of the notion of property is far from compelling and smacks more of an attempt to justify what is, rather than to see why it is. Even if I could derive property from the "me", I must certainly distinguish between my completely 1

Saint-Lambert, Principes des mœurs II (Hambourg, 1798), p. 19. It is difficult to see how Destutt de Tracy can justify his theory in this way because this is only true if the theory itself is true. 2

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inalienable property or my essence and my alienable property, my nonessence.3 The second concept which Destutt de Tracy attempts to anchor firmly to the nature of man is that of work. Man has members, therefore he acts and he acts so that "l'application de nos forces à différenys êtres est la seule cause de la valeur de tous ceux qui en ont une pour nous, et par conséquent est la source de toute valeur". 4 In other words, we have faculties, our original wealth ; we employ these faculties, that is, we work and so create all those things we call goods. In this way we fulfil our needs, create pleasure and wealth, and therefore utility. All useful work is productive, all those who work in that way are productive. How Destutt de Tracy could determine what was useful and thereby productive and what was not useful and thereby not productive without an ad hoc assumption is difficult to see. Of course he presumed all men were of the sensualist pattern with strictly determined desires. The whole scheme however is an attempt to derive work, value, and utility from the nature of man. Although this naturally is dependent on the supposed nature of man, there is a certain fruitfulness in suggesting that work is the fulfillment of needs and so on to value for in this way it is possible to proceed onward to a comprehensive formulation of the whole of economic life in a way difficult to imagine if value was determined by land. Obviously the weak point here is the definition of the nature of man and, of course, that is where the criticism generally starts. The third basic concept of Destutt de Tracy is freedom. Freedom is the fulfillment of will, desire, the satisfaction of need and therefore the end of displeasure. Constraint represents the opposite of this notion of freedom revealing of course the typical sensualist notion of freedom - freedom as the absence of constraint, denying thereby all moral freedom and all discrimination between duty and interest. Man as man has therefore his being, and so his property, he has the ability to act and so his work, and he has the freedom to act, to dispose of his faculties in order to satisfy his needs. Here we have the principles of society. Society in fact is nothing but the web of ties and connections spun from individual to individual as he seeks to satisfy his needs. It is the exchange of mutual services, the creation of mutual security, the fulfillment of mutual needs. 3

An interesting comparison of a similar rationalistic deduction of property albeit an idealist one can be made by considering Hegel's approach to property. A criticism of Destutt de Tracy's derivation of "mine" from "me" can be found in Proudhon's "Qu'est ce que la propriété", Oeuvres Complètes I, p. 50. 4 Destutt de Tracy: Elémens d'idéologie, p. 32.

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Man unlike animals finds society a necessitous part of himself. He cannot exist without it. Moreover since all our ties with each other are a series of exchanges, society is actually nothing but commerce and this commerce, according to Destutt de Tracy, is the source of all good - moral sentiments, mutual sensibility and reciprocal benevolence. It unites men together into a people and these peoples into the whole world. Being the bond of peaceful intercourse, it is the negation of all war and pillage for in war commercial wealth and property are destroyed. Gain is sought only under the inspiration of the true virtues - diligence, honesty, and moderation so that at last man becomes a moral being.5 One might ask how Destutt de Tracy knew all this. He was admittedly convinced that, having studied man, man's society and man's progress, he had discovered the law of man's development so that in some mysterious way man was drawn to a predetermined end by the natural forces at work in him. And these ends accorded very well with Destutt de Tracy's own idea of man. For example, he firmly states that, although men often oppose each other, their needs for security and subsistence will result more in cooperation than aggression. Moreover, his theory of the primacy of effects rather than causes tended to emphasize the importance of society and environment rather than the unknown factors in man. Not that he denied man had passions and emotions but for all purposes they were as irrelevant to economics and politics as are colours in the theory of optics. The only objective criterion was to be found in tangible effects. The emotion inspiring a desire for liberty was quite useless unless it produced a reorganisation of social forces in accordance with the law "tout le bien des sociétés humaines est dans la bonne application du travail; tout le mal dans sa déperdition". 6 It has been said that in the new science of Newton, man was made a mere spectator of the forces around him. So too it sometimes seems in the new economics, man was made a mere spectator of his society. On these preliminary principles of man and his society, Destutt de Tracy builds up his concepts of law and government. All positive laws must be in accordance with the laws of man as established by physiology on the basis of the knowledge we have of the effect of our inclinations and sentiments on our happiness.7 The laws must allow free reign to all 5

Destutt de Tracy, Commentaire sur Γ esprit des lois de Montesquieu (Paris, 1822), p. 287 ff„ p. 327 ff. 6 Destutt de Tracy, Elémens d'Idéologie, p. 258. 7 As Destutt de Tracy said in Commentaire... p. 134, "la seule chose qui rende une organisation sociale préférable à une autre, c'est qu'elle soit plus propre à rendre heureux les membres de la société".

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inclinations and activities provided they are not contrary to good order. It was just a matter of laisser agir - let nature work itself out without interference within the framework of the favourable circumstances created by the laws. As an illustration of this we may cite Destutt de Tracy's idea that, if there were a law enforcing equal inheritance, you could by a stroke of the pen abolish much family strife and jealousy without in any way being repressive; in other words, alter every condition which gives rise to bad feelings in man and everything will be perfect. However, in the example given, it seems that the happiness of the father in distributing his property as he wishes must be subordinated to the happiness of the children, or at least some of the children. Clearly it all presumes an absolute degree of malleability in man. According to Destutt de Tracy, the best type of government to achieve all this was representative government ; and the first task of such a government was education and still more education so that all men become reasonable by learning all about physiology so that they know the laws governing their being. Once this had been achieved it would be then simply a matter of leaving men quite free to develop their talents with suitable provisions to see that everyone should have an equal chance of winning fame and fortune. This meant the establishment of true equality of opportunity, the abolition of all privileges, the equality of all inheritance and abolition of the right to bequeath together with the entire freedom of industry and trade. Once all this had been established, all governmental interference would cease for with reason ruling, it would only be necessary to let nature act and so on to happiness. There would be no oppression whatsoever. Perfect democracy would reign since there would be no governing class at all, only a sort of objective administration. Everyone would be at complete liberty to perfect himself as best suited to his capacities. Some might naturally profit more than others since unfortunately talents were not equal. However, in the perfect society, the law would so operate that there was never any excessive accumulation of wealth and thus would prevent any disturbances in society by the seizure of power by the rich. 8 This sounds very fine and all we need to know is that science of physiology (presumably nowadays sociology!). Let us however take another look at Destutt de Tracy's society in its economic aspect. Obviously it is based on his theory of man and that theory says that only work in his definition of it is productive, therefore only those who work in that way are productive so that anyone who lives s

Sec his Commentaire...

p. 52 ff.

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without working in this sense is an idler, a man who lives at the expense of others. In the new society, such a privileged class cannot be allowed for all idlers are an absolute loss to it - far from increasing wealth and public prosperity, they diminish it. 9 Accordingly, for instance, capitalists of all description - living off land or funds are a dragstone on the community and Destutt de Tracy wrote, "dès qu'un pays où il y a de l'industrie et des lumières est délivré de ce fléau par une raison ou par une autre, on y voit tout de suite un accroissement de richesses et de forces vraiment prodigieux".10 From this it can be seen that Destutt de Tracy's theory of man and work gave rise to the notion of social classes grouped in terms of "productivity". But what is productivity ? Just like Say, Destutt de Tracy sees productive capacity contained in three groups - brain-workers, workmen (wageearners), and entrepreneurs; however he manages to give pride of place to the entrepreneurs so that this group almost stands out as a special class, quite separate from the other two (a dangerous isolation for them later on !). For example, in one passage, he says that society is divided into two classes, the wage-earners and the employers going on to distinguish between the idler employer and the active employer, i.e. the entrepreneur. Unlike the former, the latter is vital to society, in fact the source of all wealth. "Les entrepreneurs d'industrie sont réellement le coeur du corps politique, et leurs capitaux en sont le sang." 11 They provide the money for wages ; they provide the money for the rents and interests ; they provide the profits for themselves. They alone increase the public fortune. One might ask if work is the sole source of value why should the work of the entrepreneur be so singled out for such a distinguished position. In fact, Destutt de Tracy obviously makes a distinction between degrees of productivity or useful work so that the entrepreneur by combining actual work (labour) with accumulated work (capital) achieves the highest productivity and without their activity the labour of society would be much less useful, i.e. less productive. Yet Destutt de Tracy did not ignore the issue already raised by Adam Smith, that is, the clash of interests between the wage-earner and the employer with the wage-earner wanting to earn higher wages and the employer wanting to pay lower wages. Unlike Adam Smith who had no special philosophy of man to defend, Destutt de Tracy cannot permit any 9 In the sense that their wealth only encourages the vice of luxury and not the virtue of industry. 10 Destutt de Tracy. Traité d'économie politique, p. 254. 11 Ibid., p. 240.

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conflict of interests in his perfect society. He suggests, therefore, looking at the matter from the stand point of all the members of society - as consumers. For instance, if the wage-earners earned more, he would have more money to spend, the employer could then too gain more in the long run and the whole of society would prosper. Destutt de Tracy concludes from this that those who pay for labour should be persuaded that a high price for it is a desirable thing, in fact that, "en général tous les vrais intérêts du pauvre sont exactement les mêmes que les vrais intérêts de la société tout entière".12 Here is then another sphere for education and for courses on the science of physiology. But it all seems rather a far cry from the natural play of interests to bring about the complete happiness of man. If indeed everyone thought as Destutt de Tracy thought, if indeed there was such a thing as an enlightened reason common to everyone which once developed would forever tell us how to act absolutely rightly for our own interests and for the interests of everyone else, all might go well. But where is that reason? Would the entrepreneur find it very realistic if he were told it was to his enlightened interest to pay higher wages? Would the privileged idler perceive it was to his enlightened interest to cease to be an idler and get down to productive labour? I feel that they would only regard it as a tiresome intrusion into their freedom for who is to say what is my interest if not myself? Any interference in that respect is an intolerable tyranny, forcing us into the position of half-wits or at the best children compelled to obey the dictates of he who knows best. Of course, it is possible to admit that I as employer ought for the sake of the country, for the sake of the poor, for the sake of humanity, pay higher wages, but to say it is my natural interest to pay high wages is highly unnatural. In this respect, Destutt de Tracy for all his talk of liberty, tends directly to destroy it because he knows what we should do, he knows the laws of reason and all those who do not are simply unenlightened or abnormal and therefore are in some way ripe for treatment. Naturally he did not realise this but those who have experienced the wearying pressure of the concealed ought know well enough where his ideas were leading us. It could be said that in every way Destutt de Tracy failed to fulfil his aims - in morals, in government, in economics. None of his systems has anything like the compulsory necessity he imagined he had placed in them. In particular in spite of his great talk of facts and observations, all these schemes seem remarkably distinct from any commonsense reality 12

Ibid., p. 328.

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and surely the fact is that the first principles were all deduced from a priori beliefs and never from any sort of observation. Not, of course, that the natural sciences were not doing the same but there is a vital difference between arbitrarily defining movement and arbitrarily defining man. And there lies the great problem. All Destutt de Tracy's theories are based on his presumed definition of man which he derived straight from Condillac and not from any observation of the manifold features of man. Therefore deny Condillac's man and you destroy at once the society specially designed for the Condillac man. Yet in some ways there is a certain amount of injustice as regards the oblivion into which Destutt de Tracy has fallen. It is true he derived a great many of his ideas from the philosophes of the 18th century but it is also true that in general he added just those distinctive features which made these ideas profitable for further development. Admittedly he lacked a history and he made little eifort to construct any form of historical progress but he did lay the foundations for it by means of his studies in morals and economics so that materialism had the basis for further extension. With Destutt de Tracy's resolution of morals into economic impulses and so the study of man in society to the study of man and his wants, we have the whole basis for the new history, for the new political economy and for eventually the new sociology. If the first step is the vital one, then his step from the philosophy of morals to the science of economics was decisive. Man, his society, his history, his industry could now be studied "objectively", freed from immeasurable emotions and feelings. So on the whole we could say that Destutt de Tracy with the other idéologues worked out much of the framework of our present ideas - ideas which often form so much a part of our thinking that we forget they were thought up at all - they have almost in themselves become facts.

PART III

THE THEORY OF INDUSTRIALISM

12 FORERUNNERS OF INDUSTRIALISM

Napoleon was one of the chief anti-idéologues and apparently it was he who made the term one of derision. In the Institut National, he closed down the class on moral and political science (1803) and generally discouraged investigations into this field so that for many there was an enforced abstention from publication and public affairs. The Restoration was more favourable to these idéologues, for although it did not restore them to power, it at least did not prevent their public and intellectual activity so that, for instance, Destutt de Tracy was made a peer of France whilst Say probably enjoyed more fame and influence than he had ever known under Bonaparte. In this way, the idéologues continued their work and increased their popularity, although after 1814 their importance is restricted to the role of sources of influence on the younger generation, a generation which was not willing to accept all their tenets and which, in fact, created a modified "ideology" of its own. The year 1814, in fact, seems to mark an important point in the progress of ideas. The revolution appeared finally to be finished and done with so that at last its interpretation could begin. Yet the Revolution, the Napoleonic era and indeed the Restoration itself had created modes of interpretation with various parties to support them so that any simple account was confounded by the confusion of issues. For instance, what was meant by that word "liberal" then becoming so fashionable? Could, for instance, a Bonapartist be a liberal? He opposed the Restoration, he was in the opposition, so he must be then "liberal". From out of all this develops the mish-mash term "liberalism" which could mean apparently any doctrine which opposed anything resembling despotism whilst, at the same time, meaning a clear cut economic and philosophical doctrine so that by some queer mixture of concepts, for instance, a complete conservative like Guizot becomes a liberal due to his opposition to the Bourbons and therefore automatically becomes a supporter of a capitalist economy. Here we must be most wary of confusing groups. Even if all

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were liberals who supported the Revolution, then let us not forget there were the revolutions of 1789, 1792, 1793, 1795, 1799 and 1802, all with corresponding ideas and traditions. Fortunately, we have not to study all the groups since we are still on the track of our main theme but there are certain trends of 1814 which it is difficult to ignore for they were as influential on the new generation as were the ideas of the idéologues. The idéologues were often accused in later times of being defective o f a "historical" sense. We have seen that they were not actually adverse to the study of history and in fact during this period the idéologue, Daunou, virtually laid down the canons for the science of history. Yet there is some justification in this criticism for their ideas were not derived historically - as we can clearly see with Destutt de Tracy. His first principles were derived from reason not history so that his account of economics did not require an economic history to "justify" it. As far as Destutt de Tracy is concerned, the sole historical necessity was the development of reason and once this was achieved history was no longer needed although of course it could be studied for itself as a science. This attitude hardly survived the Restoration for as Flint put it, there was a "distinct change from belief in Reason and first principles to excessive deference to history and precedent". 1 Why was this? Up to this period, the method of historical justification had been in the main used by the other side, i.e. by the émigrés whose historical studies had been inspired by the burning need to explain the French Revolution. On the basis of this it was possible for some such as de Maistre and more especially de Bonald to see history as a God-made plan of development leading man to his ultimate good by a series of rewards and punishments so that all the events of history are necessary enchainments in a fixed pattern and insofar as man deviates from it so he will be returned to the path by the unpleasant results his actions incur. This is not, of course, history but it is its life blood, for once the present can only be explained by the past, the study of the past is of the utmost interest and the method of interpreting past action can now be used to "determine" as inevitable necessity present actions. Certainly the appeal to history as opposed to reason could be used by all sides, although those opposed to the émigrés' version of history saw no reason why they should not appeal to both history and reason. Perhaps the most influential work in arousing the conviction that there must be a "liberal" history, was the work of the Comte de Montlosier, De la monarchie française. The book had originally been written at the 1

Flint, History of the Philosophy of History (Edinburgh 1893), p. 345.

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request of Napoleon who too had apparently felt the need for a "national" history.2 However, Montlosier's book hardly filled this requirement and so was never published until 1814 - a very appropriate time to influence the eager spirits starved of nourishment during the Napoleonic era. In a sense, it was emigré history, at least history used in the defence of nobility and privilege as desirable institutions for France. Yet, in developing his theme, Montlosier actually provided part of the framework for the new liberal history. Leaning to some extent on the old 18th century historical notions of "Franks" and "Gauls", Montlosier developed the idea that, in spite of the fusion of races, France had still produced two people. His history of this development is roughly as follows. The Franks were a "noble" race with a true love of liberty and a hatred of mean-living and slavery of any kind. Therefore it was, as it were, their "mission" to elevate the "ignoble" Gauls up to their level so that they could become "Frank", i.e. free and noble. All went well in this respect until the Crusades when, due to the need for money, the Kings found it necessary to "enfranchise the communes". This was a very vital step since it was quite different to enfranchising a slave for the reason that the slave had become a Frank in habit and thought. It was instead the creation of a new people - raised to the honours and conditions of the Franks but at the same time with the retention of servile customs, habits and professions. In this way, two sets of laws, two sets of rights, in fact two "ideologies" in the form of two "people" stood face to face. The old people maintained the traditions of the Franks, free on the fiefs, bold, courageous, filled with the spirit of honour. The new people was the product of the towns, of commerce, their thought was typified by science and quite different concepts of liberty, law and justice. For a time, the two peoples lived as it were parallel to each other but conflict was inevitable since it was the aim of the new people to destroy completely the old. It is clear then that Montlosier's account is a delineation of the race/class concept of history whereby the bearers of a new world outlook arise in the womb of the old. Naturally it was not an economic account of history except in so far as the new people was the bearer of the economic or commercial spirit in contrast to the "noble" spirit of the old people.3 2

As regards this, see Thierry, Récits des Temps Mérovingiens I, that is "Considérations sur l'Histoire de France", p. 178 ff. in 1840 edition. 3 The question of who first made the axis point of French history, the "enfranchisement of the communes" is then surely answered in Montlosier's favour. A possible second comer is Roederer who in his book, Vésprit de la Revolution de 1789, published in 1831, but apparently written in 1815, suggested that the revolution commenced really in the eleventh century "with the first sound of the toscin".

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Another author who is also often stated to have been influential in arousing an interest in history was Benjamin Constant with his book, De l'Esprit de Conquête. In this book, Constant made clear the principle of historical progress in distinguishing very clearly between the concepts of the ancient world and the concepts of the modern world insisting that the two like oil and water will not mix and accordingly it is senseless to liken, say, 1789 France to antique Rome. The man of the ancient world was a different being. He lived for his state, his country, his sole happiness lay in serving it, his sole liberty was his liberty to be a citizen, to participate in the affairs of his country. Moreover, since his life was comprised by the state, his horizon was completely bounded by it too so that for other people he had only a feeling of hatred and enmity whilst, moreover, the benefit of his state necessitated the destruction and domination of other states. But, in modern times, due to the rise of commerce and the free circulation of goods, all this had been changed. Man was free to indulge in the happiness of individuality and to pursue and enjoy many pleasures without desiring to be involved in government. The modern man's liberty was the liberty to enjoy private and civil rights, not public rights - he wanted to be left to himself, to trade freely, to make money, to enjoy his life as he wished with the minimum of supervision. The new commerce, industry and trade also meant that all people were one in their interests for all could benefit from the prosperity of others so that there was no need for wars and oppression. Of course, Constant was suggesting all this to support his own theory of politics and moreover most of it was not new. Mde. de Stael had in 1795 said much the same thing about the division between political and civil liberty and the difference this meant between the modern world and the antique world.4 Say, too, had always painted the peaceful virtues of industry. Yet Constant had the advantage of saying these things at the right time and formulating them in such a way as to express the convictions of those who read him. Certainly it was important to stress the demarcation between the past and the present for without it, it is impossible to create "progressive" history. One, in fact, has only to compare works written just before this period such as Paganal's Essai historique et critique sur la Révolution française and Chateaubriand's Essai historique sur les Révolutions, with the later works of say, Thierry and Guizot to realise the difference. Undeniably the two former works are historical accounts but since they constantly equate modern happenings to the happenings in the antique world, the impression aroused in us is of a rather meaningless 4 Mde. de Stael, "Réflexions sur la Paix Intérieure", Oeuvres complètes 2 (Paris, 1820).

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repetition without much sense in it. To us, nowadays, it seems obvious that each era is distinct from each other, that is indeed the historian's law. To put it crudely, the men of Rome did not look like nor act like medieval knights nor, indeed, like the deputies of 1795 with the corollary, of course, that it was very foolish for the deputies of 1795 to try to look like Roman senators. Of interest, too, in Constant is the fact that he explained the difference between the antique world and the modern world as being due to economic factors. Owing to the new method of production, the birth of commerce and industry, a new life had become possible so that without this development, the new life and the new man would be quite inconceivable, thereby erecting an effective barrier against any historical cyclicism. It was then merely a matter of time before the new history, now grafted on the new economy, would also be grafted on to the Condillac man. The incredible fact of man analysing man might lose its incredibility if man could analyse man's development over the centuries and thereby find the iron laws governing him, so that once these were known, they could be consciously followed and directed to create man as "history" was creating him. In other words, the onus of deciding what man was, what were his laws and what his path should be was transferred from the instability of reason to the constancy of "history". Obviously, of course, to study the history of man, it was still necessary to know what "man" was and so the definition always gets smuggled in. Naturally, it is hardly possible for us to say due to such and such an event 1815 saw the birth of historical economic thinking in France. For one thing, it can quite easily be shown that similar ideas had once been formulated before in the works of Barnave written in 1792. Unfortunately, no one had then taken the trouble to publish his writings so that he has ever since remained a neglected genius, for when his writings were actually published in 1843, they were nothing but a collection of worn out platitudes. 5 For another thing, it is clear we cannot determine why any special set of ideas should become popular at a certain time. All we can say is that such and such ideas did become widespread and that those writers who chanced to further them became immediately popular and widely read. 5

See Barnave, Oeuvres,3 vols. (Paris 1843). Barnave is altogether a mystery to me. Occasionally dragged forth from his obscurity to be paraded - with complete misunderstanding - as the theoretician of the "bourgeoisie", no one has even tried to explain how Barnave sketched out in outline the whole theory of "industrialism" 25 years before it was actually discovered - since his works were never read and there is absolutely no writer before the 1815-1820 period who ever wrote like Barnave did.

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Before considering the creation of the doctrine of "industrialism", let us first clear the field for these representatives of the idéologue tendency. Now, 1815 saw not only the birth of new ideas but also the first re-opening since about 1802 of the political struggles in France, one party against another and there were many parties, Ultras, Royalists, Ministerials, Doctrinaires, Bonapartiste, Lafayettists, Liberals, Jacobins, all ready to use any intellectual ammunition to help their cause. Yet few were interested in intellectual systems as such. For example, Constant, the chief exponent of "political" liberalism, was too absorbed in the actual political fight to create a definite system of liberalism with clearly defined concepts. The fact is that the opposition groups in France had to create ideological bases as best they could and from various ideas, picking out to a certain extent what suited the needs of the moment. If we consider, say, the liberal left such as was represented by Constant, we find that, whilst it supported individual rights and liberty, it tended likewise to reject democracy and certainly all forms of theism and atheism, mostly as a matter of conviction but possibly due too to the necessity of the times. Yet it was quite sharply distinguished from the doctrinaires of the Guizot pattern and in fact if Guizot did become a revolutionary, one could say he was driven to it in a manner quite unlike, for instance, that of the Republicans of the Lafayette type who were always willing to make common cause with the Bonapartists in any putsch going. The fact is that "liberalism" in France had many varieties and unless this is realized, the history of this period makes no sense. What we want to do is to distinguish from all these parties quite a different group, the real "revolutionaries" indeed, that is, those who did not want to change governments or to modify the charte but who wanted to change the whole system of thought in one radical operation, the new idéologues. If they were less daring than their forerunners, this was probably due to the circumstances they lived in for they had more to fight

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against than those of 1796 had. Unlike the Bonapartist putschists, however, they were the fermenting element; without their ideas, we certainly should not now have ours. The core of this group was formed by two men, Charles Comte1 and Charles Dunoyer, both lawyers and both young, both very impressed by the ideas we have mentioned above such as those of Say and Constant but mostly by the writings of the idéologues and both were very violently anti-Bonapartists - which sharply distinguishes them from other political liberals. They, by a fusion of old ideas with new ones, created an economic and philosophical doctrine which is now often given the word "liberalism" although in fact it had very little to do with any form of political liberalism, and at the time was usually termed "industrialism" with the formulators of these ideas being called the "Economists", terms we shall retain. Together with certain collaborators, in particular Augustin Thierry, they set forth their ideas in their most famous journal, Le Censeur européen, one of the rare left-wing publications of the time which was not in the pay of the Bonapartists. Le Censeur européen was the continuation of an earlier journal, Le Censeur which existed from 1814 to 1815 until it was suspended and the two editors were given a compulsory rest to reflect on their ideas. That this was very fruitful is obvious to anyone who compares the two journals. For the most part Le Censeur is a direct continuation of the ideas of the idéologues completely lacking in that new admixture of moral, economic, and political ideas which was to form what they later called "industrialism". How this admixture came about was described some time later by Dunoyer in his article on industrialism in the Revue encyclopédique of 1827.2 After listing the works of Say, Constant, and Montlosier and showing the influence they exerted on him and Comte, he goes on to show what they lacked. For instance, Say never connected the study of economics to the organisation of society whilst Constant, although he did stress the social benefit of industry was in fact solely interested in political forms. Having reflected on all these points, Dunoyer and Comte decided that the liberal opposition as such had no object and it was therefore high time to provide one by determining what exactly the aim of social activity was. The answer to this was "industrie" and it was their duty to publicise it. So Le Censeur européen was started in 1817. It was a successful though at times a dangerous undertaking. On various occasions it was seized by the censor and Dunoyer and Comte were 1 2

N o relation, of course to the n o w more famous Auguste Comte. See Dunoyer, Oeuvres (Paris, n. d.), "Notices historique sur l'industrialisme".

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imprisoned several times on account of articles published in it. It was indeed an inflammatory publication although now since we have progressed beyond "industrialism", it is easy to regard such journals as nothing but the voice of liberal capitalists and thereby, by seeing the whole movement through the eyes of the later "anti-industrialists", to condemn it as reactionary from the outset without any true appreciation of its historical importance. However let us turn to a consideration of industrialism and see how far it was related to the stream of ideas we have already considered. The coincidence of these ideas can be seen from a consideration of their fundamental principles, that is, the theory of man whereby Comte and Dunoyer simply refer back, as it were, to Locke and Condillac, to the notion of the sensualist man. More particularly they build on the Say/Destutt de Tracy theories of man, according to which man is a creature of needs with the faculty to satisfy them, his liberty consisting of the power to do this. Freedom is then free action, the freedom to use one's faculties, to exercise a force, to live by work and of course to obtain the product of one's work. Again arises the simile to bees and beavers. Man in society is like a bee, working to fulfil his law and thereby everyone's law, to fulfil his interest and thereby everyone's interest. The only evil is constraint, that is, any external force which prevents man from fulfilling this law. Obviously any idea of a moral will is not in favour here. Man has his interest which is his natural law and therefore duty is nothing but interest. There can be no conflict. If there is conflict, then there is ignorance, a lack of knowledge of the laws of economics, that is, those laws which are the laws of man's being so that he has only to follow them and be happy. And too his interest never conflicts with the interest of others. His prosperity is the prosperity of all. It is accordingly quite possible to find out the laws governing man - simply by observation for as Ch. Comte said, in a way similar to Say, "l'organisation de l'homme est aussi invariable que l'organisation d'une plante, et les phénomènes généraux qui en résultent, sont aussi indépendans du moraliste ou du législateur, que les phénomènes resultans de l'organisation des êtres inanimés... Dans toutes ses parties, la nature suit une marche constante et invariable." 3 From this it appears that bad habits are the results of ignorance, and this in turn results in bad government, slavery, oppression, Revue of Say's book Traité d'économie politique in Le Censeur européen I (1817), p. 165. Similarly see 2, p. 214 for an account of how political economy shows us how to avoid baseness without preaching against it, in other words how morality can be made a necessity ! 3

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exploitation. Until man follows the law, he must suffer, but once he follows it, he prospers and lives in happiness. So runs the iron law of nature. 4 And this is where industrialism comes in. These laws of man's being have been found. Happiness is at hand. It is now known how man can be free and what the conditions are for freedom. There is no longer any need to talk of man's right to be free. It is merely necessary to create the right conditions and he will be free. It is not a question here of man's will. As Thierry said, industry is essentially moral. 5 More truthfully he should have said industry replaces morality for once it is established, the "ought" disappears. The "oughts" of Christianity can then be transformed into the actualities of life. For as Thierry said in the same article the aim is to unite sentiment with interest. For instance, it is useless for Christianity to say we ought to be brothers. The fraternity of man can only be realised in a society where each produces something the others lack. "L'intérêt d'union, c'est l'intérêt des jouissances de la vie, le moyen d'union, c'est le travail." 6 Once this is realized, the whole of society is so arranged that the well-being of one is the well-being of all. All are free, all are at peace with each other so that the nation is nothing but one great society organised for industry. The natural end of man is thereby achieved, not by "unnatural" effort but merely by following the laws of his "being". "Une puissance invisible et toujours agissante, le travail excité par l'industrie, précipitera à la fois, dans ce mouvement général, toute la population européenne." 7 Industrialism is the end of man's strivings, the state when he will freely exercise his faculties, when he will realize freely his happiness in production, when all men will live peacefully together without war and oppression for it will be the interest of all to be peaceful because their happiness depends upon it. All this of course sounds rather Utopian, and Dunoyer for one doubted whether it could all be completely realised. Yet he never doubted that it could be legally established and that it would work if with a few imperfections. For him this state was

4

See also Dunoyer, De la liberté du travail, I. In his famous article "Des Nations" in L'Industrie (1817) (nowin Vol. 1 of Oeuvres de Saint-Simon, p. 41). For the relation of this journal to Le Censeur européen, see below. c Ibid, p. 50. ' Thierry reviewing D . de Tracy's book, Commentaire sur l'esprit des lois in Le Censeur européen, VII, p. 256. Since this book was published anonymously, Thierry did not know the author. H e did know, however, that the whole book reflected his own ideas and expressed his delight that two strangers should think the same thing which really must show that their ideas truly reflected the "nature of things". 5

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"où il est constitutionnellement établi qu'aucun homme ne peut rien exiger d'aucun autre à titre de dominateur, de maître, de privilégié, de monopoleur; où il est de principe que le prix que chacun obtient de ce qu'il fait ou de ce qu'il livre doit être tout entier le prix du produit livré . . . et non provenir . . . d'aucun droit exclusif, d'aucune faveur spéciale et telle pour les uns qu'elle dégénéré en oppression pour les autres." 8 The study of man is then virtually resolved into the study of economics so that the earlier talk of physiology and the science of man is now completely displaced by the study of production. Accordingly, the direct philosophical study of man is hidden behind the laws of economics so that the obvious errors of sensualism remain unperceived in a philosophy which presumes sensualism but hardly discusses it. This "displacement" pattern becomes even more obvious when the corollaries to industrialism are considered. The most vital sub-section of this was history. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine industrialism without its corresponding view of history because it is the historical perspective, the drawn-out view of progressive development which explains man and his environment. History is the hand of fate shaping man by trials and endurances so that eventually he realizes his own destiny and takes the reins in his hands. The first principle of this is that man progresses. In this respect - and perhaps the only one! - he differs from animals. 9 The second presumed principle is that man progresses according to a fixed law of which he was originally ignorant but is now known to him whereby man is drawn on to his predetermined end. In this purely materialistic content, the "forces" of history are regarded as blind laws automatically acting on man unlike say, the Spirit of Reason in Hegel's later work Philosophy of History. From these premises a history of man was composed. Man progresses. Therefore history has irreversible epochs such as the Ancient World, the Medieval Age, the Modern World. Each epoch is a step forward in the achievement of man's perfection but was - at least until the present time always accomplished without his knowing anything about it. The method of progression is via alterations in material conditions, so that the stage of progress could be divided off in the following manner: savages living simply off the products of nature or eating their enemies having no government, the appearance of agriculture which leads to slavery and 8

Dunoyer, "De la liberté du travail", Oeuvres 2 (Paris, η. d.), p. 307. For example in Le censeur européen, III, p. 1 ("Des Factions" by T.), we read, "le genre humain n'est pas, comme les autres espèces d'animaux, stationnaire par sa nature, il a des organes qui le rendent propre à se perfectionner". 9

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then oppression, the growth of industrialism which eventually leads to freedom. "Les moyens que ces peuples sont capables d'employer pour se procurer les choses nécessaires à leur existence, déterminent la forme de leur organisation sociale".10 This view of history can be illustrated by Comte's account of the causes which led to the end of slavery. When it was discovered how to give value to things by combining them with labour, it became possible to exchange these goods for food from the owners of land. As a result of this, the industrious class increased and slaves decreased since the owners of land now sold the agricultural produce formerly used to feed slaves. In this way, slavery died out "naturally" that is, it was not abolished due to any moral precepts.11 Similarly, Dunoyer said serfdom came about because of a shortage of slaves and had nothing to do with Christianity.12 All explanations must obviously have a material basis, that is, in this case, an economic one. The historical interest however revolved chiefly on the transition to industrialism because it was a transition still not completed and one which these writers were eager to terminate in a manner favourable to them. History had to be on their side. Therefore the state of pre-industrialism was viewed in very dark colours. It was the age when man preyed on man. For example, the Romans were complete barbarians, living on pillage, war, slavery without any concept at all of liberty. In fact Rome had been simply a great camp housing any army of oppressors.13 Feudalism had not been much better. The mass of the people were subjected to a horde of barbarian oppressors delighting in war, cruelty, and suppression, hardly in fact men at all since they knew nothing of the true end of humanity. Fortunately the civilized portion of society, that is, those who worked, very gradually grew to wealth so that with the turning point of the 12th century when the communes were enfranchised, it was possible for a class of free men to develop and over the centuries to gain so in strength that in 1789 this mass of the people, the workers, were able to throw off the parasites who had been living olf them for so long.14

10

Comte, "De l'Organisation Sociale", Le Censeur européen II, p. 5. Comte, "Considération sur l'état moral de la nation française", Le Censeur européen I (1817), p. 48 ff. 12 Dunoyer, "De la liberté du travail", p. 177 ff. 13 Whereby the Economists went further than Constant in denying the antique world any freedom at all - neither civil nor political. See Dunoyer, "De la liberté du travail" Oeuvres II, p. 177. 14 See Comte's "Considération sur l'état moral", Le Censeur européen I and Thierry's "Des Nations", L'Industrie (1817). 11

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As a postscript to this, it could here be stated that the events after 1789 had always to be explained away as an irritating diversion of the true stream of history. Something had gone wrong at that point for, instead of the industrious coming to their own and creating the industrial state, certain unwanted developments occurred. Various reasons were given for this ; for example, wrong ideas such as beliefs in the virtue of Spartan simplicity were the cause of much evil for it seems wrong ideas could lead to wrong government although in the end the true path would be followed for the forces of history would see to it that no one who followed the wrong laws could prosper; another version put the blame on the presence of lawyers and savants in the National Assembly instead of manufacturers, bankers, businessmen who were the natural leaders of the people for the savants were no good; they were, economically speaking, unrepresentative, they had no wealth to back their power and therefore in the end were forced to rely on the power of the military. Another reason offered by Thierry was that the Pilnitz alliance forced the French to make a war to end war. In any case, something went wrong, the industrial state was not established and in the end a new centralised government was formed to replace the former oppressors so that there was still a class of parasites living off the industrious. Obviously this view of history necessarily implies a theory of classes and class warfare. As we saw with Destutt de Tracy, the notion of value as productive work involves a distinction between idlers and workers. Carried over into history, the whole basic theme is then the conflict between oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited, or the attempt of one class to live at the expense of another. Since according to this theory, value and property are created by productive work, any class which lives without performing such defined work must live off the others. As Ch. Comte said, "nulle part il ne peut exister de richesse sans travail, et quand une classe de la population dédaigne de travailler, il faut qu'elle mendie ou qu'elle vole". 15 Viewed historically, this meant that society had constantly been divided into two parties - the idlers and the industrious with a permanent struggle being waged between them. Also since the exploiter class monopolized the government, it exerted collective exploitation via the whole system of administration. The most successful attack on the exploiters had been made in 1789 but since in the long run it failed, there was still oppression. There were, in fact, as Dunoyer put it, two parties in Europe, on the one hand, the workers on 15

Comte, Traité de Législation (Paris, 1827), p. 496. See also his "Considérations... " in Le Censeur européen, 1(1817).

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the land, the manufacturing and commercial elements, and industrial workers of all classes and all countries and, on the other hand, the great part of the old and new aristocracy of Europe, the functionaries and the professional soldiers, in other words, the barbarians desiring power, seeking war and pillage16. Although these groups are in conflict, it is obvious which one will win : the one which follows the laws of nature or the laws of history because, by doing so, it will automatically prosper, amass wealth, and become powerful. This thought lies at the back of the notion of historical justice, the idealisation of the lowly and the oppressed who overcome their brutal oppressors to achieve freedom and prosperity, such as the communes in the Middle Ages triumphing over the feudal lords, or the Dutch over mighty Spain and so on, whereby clearly in the long run it is not the courage, bravery, or will to resist which succeeds but merely the pursuit of the right economic laws. By his very manner of life the warrior dooms himself whilst the man of industry in realising his interest in true virtue economy, order, regularity, succeeds every time. And just as the growth of industry automatically ended slavery so will it end all kinds of domination with the result that in the end this idler class will become completely extinct and all will have property in accordance with merit, that is utility and no one will be miserable except the vicious and the useless. With this, we come to the important distinction always drawn by this group between society and government.17 Society has its own laws, it evolves, it moves to its pre-determined end whatever man or government does. This is what makes all political revolutions senseless for that results only in a change of oppressors. What does it matter whether you have a monarchy, or a republic, a tyranny or constitutionalism - it is all government, all an attempt to put a spoke in the wheel of automatic development. What is the aim of man, the aim of society? It is not to create a form of government. It is to achieve industry, work, production and so happiness. Achieve industrialism. All forms of government are completely secondary to this. Ideally in fact there should be no government at all, everyone should work and no one should govern.18 However 16

Dunoyer, "Sur l'état présent de l'Europe", Le Censeur européen, II, p. 73. It is perhaps interesting here to note the difference in the use of the word "society" to that of Rousseau. For the Economists, society is the sphere of the good natural man, the individual as he would be without the distortions introduced by the state. For the Economists' ideas on government, see e.g. Dunoyer, "Sur l'état présent" ... Le Censeur européen II; "Des Factions", III, and Dunoyer's review of Say's book in VII 18 Dunoyer, "Sur l'état"... Le Censeur européen II, p. 102. 17

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if it should be necessary, it must be limited to the provision of security. Everything else must be left to the individual for society must be free to work out its own laws. As Thierry said, liberalism must be equated to industry or the commercial state. Since in this state, man would serve the interests of all in serving himself, government would only be necessary to correct the unruly spirits, in other words to restrain the vicious or mad elements. Occasionally, however, there is a suggestion amongst these writers that a new administration will be necessary, one composed of farmers, factory owners, and businessmen for who should know better how to direct an industrial state than the leaders of the industrials ? For example, in Volume X of the Le Censeur européen is an account (admittedly rather isolated) of "objective" administration. "Si une société qui voudrait obtenir plusieurs résultats pouvait confier l'exécution de ses projects à diverses compagnies d'entrepreneurs, elle pourrait aussi ne les confier qu'à une seule, et même qu'à un seul individu... Lorsque les affaires d'une société sont ainsi concentrées dans les mains d'un ou de plusieurs entrepreneurs, ceux-ci... composent ce qu'on appelle un gouvernement, une administration... Ils gouvernent ou ils administrent, non pas les associés ou les biens particuliers des associés, mais seulement les affaires qui leur sont confiées." 19 In any case, whatever the final condition, the watchword was the end of politics, the end of parties, the establishment of the "objective" industrial society. Whether thereby some new administration was necessary or whether society could be left to itself was open to question. Perhaps we should here accept Dunoyer's later statement (although it was made against Saint-Simon) that as regards Le Censeur européen, the idea behind it was not economic control but a free society left to its natural laws to achieve peace and prosperity for all.20 To a certain extent it would be a great illogicality not to think so for the whole system of industrialism aims at just that. It might however be supposed that some "controller" could be necessary to jerk society into the right groove. Whatever it might be, the vital point is surely that one section of the so called "liberals" absolutely rejected the other section. The political liberals at this time, whilst not adverse to a little industrialism, concentrated all their energies on political forms which they deemed of absolutely overwhelming importance but the economic liberals saw no importance whatsover in the political struggles and looked to society

lü 20

Le Censeur européen X, p. 108-109. Dunoyer "Notices historique sur l'industrialisme" in Oeuvres I, p. 196 f.

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to realize itself. This is a distinction of some importance for, without it' all later developments cannot be understood. 21 How can it be if all liberals are confined together with an iron fence separating them from the later socialism so that indeed the latter appears to generate itself? At the same time, it might be asked why these writers should be classed as liberals at all. Indeed, according to the usage of the time, this group was distinguished as the Economists or the exponents of Industrialism. Yet now industrialism is simply seen as one facet of liberalism. Clarity could only be achieved by separating the many strands of liberalism and sharply distinguishing between them.

21

In this respect, I cannot agree with Professor Harpaz in his article " 'Le Censeur européen', histoire d'un journal industrialiste" in Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, 37 (1959) when he says that these Economists never separated the industrial society from representative government. For instance, Thierry wrote, "un régime constitutionnel, un régime libéral, dans le vrai sens moderne de ce mot, n'est autre chose . . . qu'un régime fondé sur l'industrie, commercial government, comme l'appelle un auteur anglais". ("Industrie", p. 108).

14 INDUSTRIALISM A N D HISTORY

In this chapter I would like to consider the theory of history developed by the group we have been discussing in particular the works of Thierry, and at the same time to distinguish this history from the history as developed at about the same time by Guizot. The reason for this is that it is still the custom to throw together all the French liberal historians of this period such as Mignet, Thiers, Thierry, and Guizot without perceiving any distinctions between them and therefore without understanding the links with the socialist history of later times. This custom - initiated apparently by Engels - should not be allowed to go on obscuring presentday vision. 1 It is a well-known fact that Thierry - just in fact as Guizot - came to study history in order to justify his political and economic ideas. Thierry often said so himself. "Né roturier, je demandait qu'on rendit à la roture sa part de gloire dans nos annales." 2 This is the explanation Thierry gives for his original interest. He suggests however that later he became interested in history for its own sake and desired to study it scientifically. This of course means that he desired to study history according to the norms of scientific procedure as laid down by the idéologues and especially according to the principles laid down for history by Daunou. 3 Observe facts, verify, and complete by experience; question nature and prise from her her secrets; observe absolute impartiality. These are the rules Thierry wished to follow. He wanted to get back to the facts, to let the facts talk. Therefore he saw the necessity of returning to the original sources, of consulting documents, of following as closely as possible the language of the ancient historians and where the texts failed, of filling in the gaps by the objective observation of detail and the use 1 See for instance, Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy and Engels letter to Starkenberg. 2 Thierry, Dix Ans d'éludés historiques in Oeuvres complètes, VI (Paris, 1846), p. 2. 3 Daunou, Cours d'études historiques 7.

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of induction. Yet, at the same time, Thierry felt the need to penetrate into things, to get at their real nature, to see things as they truly were and not as he in his age imagined they should be. For example, he says that in the 18th century, the historians modelled history on the facts of their age so that for instance Charlemagne was viewed as an absolute ruler and adds that, "aujourd'hui il n'est plus permis de faire l'histoire au profit d'une seule idée. Notre siècle ne le veut point. Il demande qu'on lui apprenne tout, qu'on lui retrace et qu'on lui explique l'existence des nations aux diverses époques, et qu'on donne à chaque siècle passé sa véritable place, sa couleur et sa signification."5 The aim was then to episodize history in order to comprehend the variety in its development and never to put in what was not there originally - each age on its own terms as it were. If indeed Thierry had ever attempted to follow these rules, he would certainly have met with great difficulty. What was his criterion of a fact? How in the mass of documents was he to determine the facts, their relevance, and their relationship. What was his standard of choice? How could he ever assess the true "colour" of an age? Even when he was illustrating this very point, he showed quite unconsciously the pitfalls to be experienced. Talking of the period after the Roman Empire, he wrote, about the historian, "il eût décrit la décadence graduelle de l'ancienne civilisation, l'oubli croissant des traditions légales, la perte des lumières, l'oppression des pauvres et des faibles par les riches et les puissants." 6 Every phrase there is solely related to us, how we see it now in our time. But would a warrior Frank have experienced it in that way? The fact is that Thierry had a whole framework of presuppositions into which he fitted his facts and without them he could not have even started to write history! Small wonder indeed that as he read the ancient documents, he was astonished at the speed at which the relevant passages sprang to his eye. Let us take a look at the assumptions. For one thing, Thierry obviously shared in the whole background of his age, the common meanings of language, of concepts, and relationship - for example, the particular idea of time, of progress and development. In addition he had his own ideas, shared mostly by the Le Censeure uropéen group which made him write history with a distinctly materialist or economically determined flavour. Whilst, for example, he would put liberty as the essence of man and there4 5 6

See, for instance, Thierry, Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre, Introduction. Ibid., p . 6 Thierry, "Lettres sur l'Histoire de France", Lettre III, p. 38, in Oeuvres Complètes V.

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fore the aim of history, he meant by this the freedom to exercise one's faculties, to live, to earn a living, to work, to fulfil oneself, and to find happiness in this work. This apparently was the sole aim of man and history was thus viewed as the removal over time of the obstacles on the path of its achievement. Anything else which might occur in this process was purely accidental. He wrote that the English never consciously worked out their constitution, it was not a premeditated piece of work bul rather the accidental result of the pursuit of interests. Again he stated that it was always the prosperous who made revolts for the more desires one has, the more obstacles are perceived to their achievement and the greater the longing for change. Connections were then established between those who felt this need for liberty so that a communal liberating movement could be started - "industry inspired in them the desire for communal liberty". 7 Again whatever the documents might say, Thierry was quite convinced that the parties of the English revolution were divided on economic lines - idlers on the one side, workers on the other. To him these were the true interests compared to the specious pretexts of religion and constitution. English freedom was the fruit of modern civilization, the result of the rise of the oppressed to freely won wealth. It was therefore a pointless endeavour to study pure constitutional history. Parliament was but a word, a variable term meaningless until set in its economic environment. And if he searched the sources for facts, he certainly did not approve of the spirit inspiring them. As when he complained of the habit of annalists of attributing all great movements - an emigration of a people, a new code of laws, the founding of an empire - to some great man for this denied that the people themselves could ever do anything alone. Whereby he then sets up his own law, "Voulez-vous savoir au juste qui a créé une institution, qui a conçu une entreprise sociale? Cherchez quels sont ceux qui en ont eu véritablement besoin ; à ceux-là doit appartenir la pensée première, la volonté d'agir et tout au moins la plus grande part dans l'exécution". 8 According to this rule then, the communes of France could not have been enfranchised on the initiative of the king but only by the interest-inspired action of the burghers themselves - a theory well-suited to Thierry's whole concept of history. As we saw, Thierry said he first studied history to tell of the glory of the people, at least to give them a history different to the stories of kings and nobles, battles and wars. This desire remained the mainspring of all his 7 Thierry's article o n "Histoire d'Angleterre" in Oeuvres complètes originally published in Le Censeur européen (1817). 8 Thierry, "Sur l'affranchissement des Communes", ibid., p. 276.

VI, p. 51 -

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historical writing so that in 1848 when he saw his people split into two enemy groups, he was completely discouraged and "plusieurs fois on l'entendit s'écrier avec amertume qu'il ne comprenait plus rien à l'histoire". 9 To Thierry's mind, history was a struggle between two classes, oppressors and oppressed, warriors and peace-lovers, idlers and industrials, nobles and the bourgeois-people. Admittedly the basis of his thought rested on the idea of a race conflict rather than a class conflict since to his mind, political and economic oppression was always the result of a conquest of one race by another, for example, the Franks over the Gauls or the Normans over the English. However, he did not deny that over the centuries the original race conflict tended to become rather a class conflict as the actual racial differences were blurred. 10 Thierry's history is one of conflict, a conflict still existing in his own day but he hoped it would shortly be terminated in a commercial government, or at least in a republican democracy based on all industrials. Looking at this theory in relation to France, we see with the fall of the Roman Empire, the barbarians, that is, the Franks (the warriors) invading Gaul, subjecting its inhabitants (the industrious) to their domination and forcing them to work for the victors' benefit, with the result that the oppressors could live in idleness and pursue their games of war. In this manner two peoples arose in one country and although in time the clear lines of racial difference disappeared, the dichotomy continued to exist and to be embodied in the two distinct codes of behaviour. The original people, the mass of the inhabitants were either serfs or town-dwellers, they lived by work, they were industrious, they were peaceable and they loved equality. The conquering people were the nobles and clergy who loved to dominate and to make war, who scorned work and had no respect for the life and property of the feeble. Two notions stood in perpetual enmity. However by a fortunate chance not all of the original people were enslaved. Those living in the remaining towns retained something of their original independence. Secure in this base, they were able to increase their wealth by industrious pursuits. They also offered a useful asylum for escaping serfs. Over the centuries the towns and the burghers in them grew prosperous and therefore sought to secure their independence from the noble oppressors. Here was the cause of the communal movement of the 11th and 12th centuries known as the "enfranchisement 9

Quoted in Allix, "J. B. Say et les Origines de l'Industrialisme", Revue d'économie politique (1910), p. 362. 10 This idea of conquest resulting in oppression was derived from Simonde Sismondi in his work, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age 1. Thierry himself acknowledges his debt to Sismondi.

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of the communes" when the burghers rose up in a body to secure their rights. Although this was not a national movement, it served to strengthen the bonds between the oppressed and create the notion of a "bourgeois" class. In the long run the whole movement was a failure. By the 16th century the communes were all subdued and ruled completely by officials from the king - the légistes, that branch of the original people which had gone over to serve the oppressors. Just at this point of decline, another force appeared to inject new strength into the movement for freedom - the freed serfs appeared on the scene and in this way formed the connecting link between the communal revolution of the 12th century and the national revolution of the 18th century. "Lorsque ce vieux titre (bourgeois) eut perdu ses privilèges et son prestige, l'esclavage par une sorte de compensation, fut aboli pour les campagnes ; et ainsi se trouva formée cette immense réunion d'hommes civilement libres, mais sans droits politiques, qui en 1789 entreprit, pour la France entière, ce qu'avaient exécuté, dans ces simples villes, ses ancêtres du moyen âge. Nous qui la voyons encore, cette société des temps modernes, en lutte avec les débris du passé, débris de conquête, de seigneurie féodale et de royauté absolue, soyens sans inquiétude sur elle; son histoire nous répond de l'avenir; elle a vaincu l'une après l'autre toutes les puissances dont on évoque en vain les ombres." 11 All this is class history in the sense that economic groups arise at materially determined periods, but naturally it is only a two-class history. Whatever Thierry called his original oppressed - Romans, bourgeois, people, he meant the vast mass of the nation united finally in 1789 to win their long lost rights. The third estate is formed from the communes and the serfs, that is, from the vanquished of the conquest ; the nobles formed the privileged orders and so were the conquerors, that is, the original warring barbarians. Therefore, the history of the people, the national history which Thierry aspired to write was obviously not a history of the nobles and indeed it envisaged the final overthrow of the remnant of this class of oppressors.12 By stripping Thierry to his bare bones in this manner, it is not our intention to decry the value of Thierry's historical works. He, more than anyone else, contributed to the creation of the New History in France which has in time become more or less The History. We are not here 11

Thierry, "Lettres sur l'histoire de France", p. 363 and passim for above section. Thierry also applied Iiis theory to other countries. In England he similarly looked forward to a third revolution when the British people would at last achieve their freedom. See Dix Ans, p. 179. 12

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discussing the value of his actual historical works as related to this history. What we do say is that his history is not "scientific", in the sense of recording "objective" truth. Thierry himself did say that he put science as his leading principle, meaning thereby the principles of the idéologues deduced by them from their idea of what was the method of the natural sciences. But too Thierry meant the notion of man as defined by the idéologues and for which he claimed scientific value. And that brings out another point. By this time, the word "scientific" was beginning to exert such a spell-binding influence that the whole set of Thierry's material and economic presumptions were presumed "scientific" along with the method. As if the quest for facts meant their automatic reduction to material factors. Even the opponents of these ideas were coming to believe that they were "scientific", "objective", "positive" so that their opposition was often reduced to the mild objection that science was not enough. So it was in this field that Thierry's great influence lay. He created a history for the Condillac man as modified by the school of Economists so that whereas originally this "man" had only a very sketchy past, he was now provided with a solid historical background. We can thus say that the age of "historical justification" began with Thierry, all the problems resulting from this concept of man being from now on referred to the "science" of history. Anyone who has studied Guizot will realize that the ideas and theories of Thierry must have been quite foreign to him. He was a supporter of the Royer-Collard idealist school, a follower of Kant and later adopted a form of eclecticism as developed by Victor Cousin. The materialism and utilitarianism of Le Censeur européen could hardly have appealed to him. On the other hand, it is impossible to deny that during a certain period from about 1821 to 1827 he at least gave the appearance of supporting ideas such as the conflict of classes, the rise and triumph of the bourgeoisie, the liberating influence of commerce and so on13. However this is not sufficient to class Guizot along with Thierry for in fact on analysis most of Guizot's historical writings are a point by point denial of the Thierry thesis. For this reason, Guizot does not come within the scope of this book. He believed most firmly in the moral principles as expressed in Christianity. Let us provide a brief illustration of this. Guizot regarded man as the creation of God, being led, guided, and perfected by the Divine Will. Man is therefore more than a social being 13

In particular in his book, Du Gouvernement (Paris, 1821).

de la France depuis la

restauration

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and history is more than a story of social development ; it is also the story of the moral regeneration of man, the story of religious development. God has given to man Reason so that he can perceive the part he has in the Divine plan although not the whole of the plan. Liberty is the right of our divine nature refusing to submit to our earthly needs. On this basis, Guizot goes on to show that the God-inspired man creates his world so that society depends on the ideas and sentiments of man and not vice versa. In fact he touches the core of the problem when he writes, "the question which is here encountered is higher and greater than it appears : it is a question whether events, the life of the social world, are, as in the physical world, under the empire of external and necessary causes, or whether man himself, his thought, his will concur to produce and govern them; a question what is the share of fatality and that of liberty in the lot of the human race... I content myself by claiming for liberty, for man himself, a place, a great place, among the authors of events in the creation of history." 14 The other point to consider is that of class. What of Guizot as the historian of the bourgeoisie? Guizot did indeed recognize the existence of classes and class struggles but he never believed in the triumph of any one class. How could he indeed, when in accordance with his religious and philosophical ideas, nothing triumphed but God's will, the realisation of the Divine intention for man, the achievement of truth and justice as perceived by the God-inspired reason. Classes are the instruments of ideas, the class does not win but its idea. For example, according to Guizot, the bourgeoisie as a class vary considerably over the centuries in composition - first they were the timid merchants and small property holders, later they were the king's officials, the prévôts and baillis, then they were the literary men, the lawyers, the doctors so that over the ages various groups, as it were, arise to take up the idea and further its development - in this particular case the idea of liberty and representative government so that eventually this idea could be realized when, in the clash of groups, man changed man and so changed the social environment. The result was that what had once been a vague possibility could finally be actualized in this world. This whole pattern has a strong resemblance to the pattern of Hegelian dialectic.15 14

Guizot, Histoire de la civilization en France, first published 1829, here translated by Hazlitt (London, 1846), p. 349. See also Histoire générale de la civilization en Europe (Paris, 1840), pp. 315-6. 15 And to Marx. Anyone reading the Communist Manifesto must be struck by Marx's use of the term "bourgeoisie" where it seems to mean any group which embodies within it over the ages the "bourgeois spirit".

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As we can see Guizot hardly fits into our pattern. Undoubtedly certain weaknesses in Guizot's method of presentation may give rise to superficial judgments on him. He was something of an eclectic, a devotee of the juste milieu. He liked to be popular and therefore he liked to be considered up-to-date in his ideas. Nor does he wish to appear "unscientific". Therefore he never denies anything outright but seeks to modify a little here and there so that finally nothing is left of it. There is no head-on opposition; everything is gently but, at the same time, completely criticized. This is in fact the whole problem of Guizot - his indecisive decisiveness so that not only in history but in politics the basically constitutional conservative appears at time to long for the trappings of a radical liberal. And it has also been in the interest of certain groups, for instance the Communists of 1848, to suggest that there was not much difference between Guizot and the other "bourgeois" liberals. Yet if Guizot is a liberal, the Thierry—Le Censeur européen group is anti-liberal and if that group is liberal, Guizot is not a liberal.

15 SAINT-SIMON AND INDUSTRIALISM

The relationship of Saint-Simon to the Le Censeur européen group was obviously very close. Thierry who became his secretary in 1814 left him in 1817 to become a collaborator with that journal and Saint-Simon's own publication, L'Industrie was started in 1817 at about the same time as Le Censeur européen and, moreover, in the same building. This naturally gives rise to the problem of deciding who first thought up "industrialism", although at the same time it must be stated that it is highly questionable whether any one thought it up as a whole. In any case, considering Saint-Simon's amazing ability of absorbing current ideas and digesting them into his own systems, and considering also his own statements together with those of Dun oyer, it is not very likely that Saint-Simon alone initiated "industrialism" although indeed he was certainly very ready to propagate it once he had heard of it. 1 In addition, we must not forget the period of his collaboration from 1814-17 with Thierry which must have led to a fruitful exchange of ideas between the two men with, in my opinion, the younger considerably affecting the older.2 Certainly by 1817 Saint-Simon was full of the new doctrines of the Economists. Yet he was no mere imitator since he had already from his earlier days whole

1

For instance, see Saint-Simon's acknowledgment to Smith, Say and Ch. Comte in "L'Industrie' 1818", Oeuvres 2 (1966), p. 153 f. and also "Catéchisme des Industriels", 4, p. 170. For Dunoyer's views on industrialism and the difference of his version of industrialism to that of Saint-Simon, see his article "Notice historique sur l'industrialisme" Revue encyclopédique XXXIII e (February 1827), printed in Oeuvres de C. Dunoyer, I (Paris o. d.). On Saint-Simon's relationship to Le Censeur européen and the question of the origins of industrialism, see Further Reading. 2 Of course, the best and most clear statement of "industrialism" is to be found in Thierry's article in L'Industrie I, "Des Nations". This article very much impressed Comte and Dunoyer as can be seen from their review of it in Le Censeur européen. Moreover, after writing this, Thierry joined them in their enterprise.

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systems of ideas and beliefs which had now to be fitted into "industrialism" 3 so that it is impossible to class Saint-Simon simply as a follower of the Le Censeur européen group or even an Economist or Industrialist. He constantly strove beyond all these systems because he always retained his burning interest in enveloping systems of development and progress with the fixed idea of finding some general idea behind everything, all accompanied by his concept of science as a new set of doctrines rather than a new mode of thought. In this respect, he showed a zest for knowledge and a belief in reason more resembling the thought of the 18th century than that of the 19th when, the fundamentals having been laid, men tended to a cooler and more "scientific" approach. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Saint-Simon adopted many of the ideas of industrialism although, of course, he carried some of them to such extremes that Dunoyer later found it necessary to disown the Saint-Simonist brand of "industrialism". 4 It was, in fact, a repetition of his earlier experience with ideology. However, it could be said roughly that in the earlier days of his industrialism to about 1820 he was on the whole a follower of the general line but later he tended more and more to go his own way although he did retain certainly many features of that doctrine. For instance, if we read L'Industrie of 1817 we see a complete summary of the general principles of industrialism - ideas such as the end of society is the production of utility, wars are bad, producers are the only useful men in society, there are only two classes in society, "robbers" and "producers", the national associations are one big industrial enterprise, industry is the realisation of morality. 5 From this basic position, Saint-Simon retained some of the ideas and changed or abandoned others. Let us then consider the varying position of Saint-Simon in respect to the fundamental principles of industrialism. Firstly, let us consider the question of government and society. In this respect, he quite clearly upheld the view of industrialism that government should be reduced merely to police functions, with the sole duty of making sure that useful work was not troubled. It was all then simply a question of administration, politics was merely the science of production so that in this way there would be an end to all domination, there would no longer be any need for governing over others since there would be no need to 3

Needless to say the word "industrialist" has no relation to its present meaning. It was then used either to mean a follower of "industrialism" as a system or the industrious, the productive section of society - "workers" in fact ! 4 Dunoyer "Notice historique... " 5 See "L'Industrie", 2nd Vol. (1818) in Oeuvres 1 (1966), p. 185ff.

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secure the interests of a governing body. France, in fact, was becoming a great workshop and therefore required merely an administrative body to direct the enterprise, to see to the control of production, to harmonise the interests of entrepreneur, workers and consumers just as the management of any big factory does, whereby within these administrative acts the measures taken to stop stealing and other disorders occupy a very subordinate role. In fact, it remained a constant theme of Saint-Simon that government should be replaced by administration and in 1825 he was still complaining of the dreadful mistake of the French revolution in that it tried to perfect government instead of subordinating it to administration. 6 Here, it could be imagined that Saint-Simon was representing the trend dominant in industrialism to regard politics and government as superfluous forms superimposed on the vital life of man, society, the sphere of work, production and property whereby, of course, the conflict of interests is solely between government and governed and never between members of the industrial society. As we can see from the above, however, and as Dunoyer has also pointed out, Saint-Simon went too far. His administration was virtually growing into another government, seeking to reconcile interests in a society where, according to Dunoyer and the other Economists, there should be no interests to reconcile for once the old feudal structure had gone, particular interests would then automatically work out as the general interest. Why should then SaintSimon have an administration to regulate work, to institute forms of production ? All this aroused the suspicions that Saint-Simon wanted to create a new social system founded on a priori ideas and put them into effect by force. 7 Yet, undoubtedly, such notions of Saint-Simon represent in general a gradual development and only took on weight after 1820 when he came definitely to the conclusion that parliamentary democracy was useless to achieve industrialism and that the only hope to establish it was in an alliance of King and industrials. On the other hand, however, this point reveals that Saint-Simon had to a certain extent missed the whole purpose of industrialism and accidentally - for indeed he always felt he was maintaining the ideas of Comte and Dunoyer 8 - proposed the establishment of some form of planned economy which meant, of course, 6

See "De l'Organisation sociale", Oeuvres 5 p. 129. For ideas on government see, for instance, "L'Industrie", 1 p. 132, 168, 188; "L'Organisateur", 2 (2nd part) p. 42., "Du Système Industriel", 3, p. 91(7). 7 Dunoyer in 1827 is most insistent that he does not want any supreme regulator and that all must submit to a system of free competition. 8 Saint-Simon invariably had a good word for Ch. Comte and Dunoyer, e.g. "Du Système Industriel", 3, p. 27(7).

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nothing but a return to the hated compulsion the Economists so hoped to escape. Similarly in 1817, Saint-Simon set off with the typical Economist class division. On the one side, was the huge industrial class, 9 on the other a small class of idlers and parasites living on them. This industrial class comprised every kind of worker, including, of course, workers on the land, all entrepreneurs and all trades which helped the producers whilst the opposing class comprised all those who lived on the fruits of stolen property - landowners in particular, with the addition of bureaucrats, and officials and such like, for although they might work, it was completely useless work, that is, it was unproductive. Saint-Simon also upheld the well-established view that the industrials originated from the communes, that the enfranchisement of these communes had marked the rise of the class of industrious citizens to wealth and prosperity, a class ever increasing in numbers and influence so that in time they would form the whole of society and therefore had to run it in their interests. They had, in fact, attempted to do this in 1789 but unfortunately something went wrong - in particular they failed to develop the correct body of ideas and, even worse, they allowed themselves to be seduced by wrong ones. They did not realise the principles of their class although Smith had already laid them down. All such ideas as these could also be found in Le Censeur européen or in the number of L'Industrie written by Thierry alone. 10 In fact, as far as the industrial class was concerned, Saint-Simon never deviated from the ideas of this group, at least to no important extent. It is true, Dunoyer was in 1827 objecting to Saint-Simon's use of the term "industrial class" for as Dunoyer said, the word "industrial" must be applied solely to a system and not to any group within society, that is "the industrial system, the industrial society . . . a society where all the professions have an industrial character, where all produce utilities, where the men of all classes, forced at last to renounce violence, can only live from the utilities they create by peaceful w o r k . . . " . 1 1 Yet as we know the views expressed by Le Censeur européen were different. 12 In any case, if all were going to live from work, it must be supposed that there were going to be certain radical alterations in society. Perhaps, however, the point at issue was rather Saint-Simon's treatment of the 9 Composed variously from 20 million to 29.5 million Frenchmen, e.g. "Du Système Industriel," 3, p. 187(6). 10 For all this see "L'Industrie", 2. 11 Dunoyer, "Notice historique. . . " Oeuvres, p. 194. 12 See Chap 13.

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idler class. Contrary lo the Economists, Saint-Simon developed many ideas and theories on the history, composition and character of this class, ideas which in time tended to distinguish him very sharply from the Economists so that by 1827Dunoyer's main aim was to dissociate himself in every way from Saint-Simon. The fact was that Saint-Simon was acutely interested in a problem which the Le Censeur européen group tended to neglect, that is, if the industrials had been steadily increasing in power and influence up to 1789 why had they not openly taken over the supreme direction of affairs at that time. Why, in fact, did not the French Revolution see the triumph of "industrialism"? At first, Saint-Simon gave the Economists' a n s w e r - i t was due to wrong ideas, it was due to the war and so on, but obviously in consideration of his full-scale notions of historical development, SaintSimon was not likely to be satisfied with an "accident". All events have a reason and he was eager to find it. For the moment, let us solely consider the matter from the aspect of classes in order to see how in dealing with the problem of the French Revolution, Saint-Simon tended to develop class ideas which were in the eyes of the Economists too extreme and, in a way, even contradictory to theirs, although again less by intention than by chance. In 1817, Saint-Simon still viewed the revolution as the work of liberalindustrialists (or the industrious) who were able to destroy feudalism but were unable to establish their own system due to their own inability to conceive exactly what their system was because of a lack, in fact, of general ideas. Instead then of taking control they confined their cause to the avocats or the légistes but they indeed were false helpers. They had, in fact, originally appeared as "Gaulish" agents of the Franks, then "aides" of the king but had later branched oif on their own with the sole desire to secure power for themselves firstly by destroying the old nobility with the help of the industrials and then turning on the industrials and dominating over them. Typical representatives of the légistes were the Girondins and the Jacobins, typified by such figures as Robespierre and later by Napoleon. 1 3 In other words, as yet, Saint-Simon regards the Revolution as a good thing until the appearance of the Girondins when this sub-class of idlers comes to the fore - a point already unique to Saint-Simon. Saint-Simon continued to develop his ideas on this sub-class. With his increasing opposition to the Bonapartists, the légistes come to be regarded 13

See "L'Industrie", 1 and 2.

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as a new aristocracy formed by Bonaparte, bitterly opposed to the Bourbons. In fact, the parties in the French Chamber represented merely the two aristocracies, the old and the new, fighting each other for power with no interest at all in the fate of the industrials. In other words, the liberal party was nothing but the party of the feudality of Bonaparte - at least it was lead by this group so that once again the industrials had let themselves become the dupes of the légistes.u However, Saint-Simon sought to put the whole annoying situation into an historical setting, to explain it all as a necessary stage. Accordingly, about 1820, he developed the idea that industrialism cannot come about without a period of transition, an intermediary system formed of a class derived from the old yet in some way independent of it, a kind of transitional aristocracy which provided the required critical force to break up the old yet was itself unable to create the requirements of the new. The mistake of this transitional class was to imagine that it had a creative function - a right to establish a system of its own. Nothing could be more erroneous. Since Saint-Simon was convinced there could only be two ways of living, by stealing or by producing, these légistes must necessarily be part of the old - quite unable to establish any new social organisation. They should make way for the rule of the industriels, the artistes and the savants, the only really peaceful men. Developing this theme still further, by 1821, Saint-Simon has divided the old Régime into three class groups - one, the nobles and the clergy, two, the idle landowners who were not nobles, the non-noble military element, all persons attached to the judiciary and all those who exercised any other profession reputed to be honourable, and three, all those who exercised degrading professions such as the manufacturer, businessmen, the bankers etc., in fact, all industry. How was the second class formed? Firstly, the nobles impoverished by the crusades and by their own love of luxury sold some of their lands to non-nobles who then took the title "bourgeois". Secondly, the invention of gunpowder necessitated a new type of soldier - the engineers and artillery officers of non-noble origin. Thirdly, the barons to save themselves the trouble of holding their courts themselves created a judicial order, the légistes who, in fact, became the leaders of the second class. From this, it is obvious that since this class was derived from the feudal order, it was itself feudal and its sole aim was to establish a new feudalism by means of the "bourgeois dynasty" (i.e. the Bonapartes). In this respect, of course, Saint-Simon, although he 14

S e e " L ' O r g a n i s a t e u r " , 2.

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had explained the presence of this class as necessary, could never overcome his dislike of it so that their necessary function was very often obscured in his eyes by their very unnecessary strivings for power. 15 Finally, in the Catéchisme politique des industriels, Saint-Simon says that this second class is formed of bourgeois, it is the bourgeois class opposed to the industrial class. It is the class which seeks to recreate the feudal system for its own profit. It is the class which directs the liberal party and therefore this liberal party is nothing but a party of neofeudalists so that accordingly the industrials should break with the liberals and cease to use the word for that can only associate them with the critical and revolutionary spirit of the "bourgeois". Only the organic and constructive class - the class of the industrials - can achieve a new system and realise the public good and only under their natural leaders, i.e. the directors of the industrial works; for they alone can lead the workers to their true benefit and prevent their seduction by intriguers who seek to use the people only for their own benefit. Here again, it is certain that the Economists would say Saint-Simon had gone too far. Obviously, Saint-Simon's class notions, in particular his ideas on an intermediary class, tend to upset the economic view of history especially the historical development from warring feudalists to peaceful industrials and therefore, of course, cast some doubt on the belief that once industrialism rules, there will be no more classes. SaintSimon, in fact, seems to suggest that it was not a question of two economic classes but various classes, administrative, military and spiritual, all composing society as a unit. As one solid social unit disperses, loose classes of an administrative and spiritual nature are formed to bridge the gap to the new solid social unit. It is true that of course to Saint-Simon the coming revolution would be economic because it is based on industrialism. It did not say, however, anything about the other eras since industrialism was unique. The explanation of man on a "scientific" basis by his reduction to economic categories had been completely overlooked by Saint-Simon, and thereby as we shall see when we consider his historical scheme his ideas could indeed be reduced to nothing but his own reason. 16 The second point is that, as we have seen, Saint-Simon divided the idler class into two groups. The new feudalists were admittedly not given an economic viability of their own being merely a branch of the old nobles, yet it was an easy step from this to the concept of three stages instead of 16

For this section, see "Du Système Industriel", 3. For a description of the "idle subalterns" called "bourgois" see p. 93(7). 16 See Further Reading for writings on this theme.

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two. Moreover, by a singularly unfortunate choice of words, this subclass of feudalism was termed the bourgeois class, the bourgeoisie, just at the time when Thierry was developing the notion that the bourgeoisie was, in fact, the vast mass of the nation - the industrials themselves. From now on, the bourgeoisie take on the alarming ability of shrinking to a vicious elite or expanding to the industrious masses, dependent on the views of the writer. Similar then to his treatment of administration and government, Saint-Simon again more by chance than design, completely dissects the industrial scheme and suggests instead of the picture of a happy harmony of all under industrialism, the notion of a class rule established by a new form of administration whereby not only the few nobles but all the superfluous bourgeoisie must submit to the direction of industrialists and scientists. The class ideas of Saint-Simon are, however, rather the symptoms of deeper and more fundamental attitudes of opposition to the doctrines of the Economists - ideas which to us with our knowledge of the future tend to stand out more clearly than they did to Saint-Simon or the Economists. After all, what seemed chiefly to annoy Dunoyer about Saint-Simon was not his incipient socialism but his vulgarity, his coarseness of style, his eccentricity which harmed the cause of industrialism instead of furthering it. Indeed, if we consider Saint-Simon's complete lack of political strategy in attacking both the Bonapartists and Liberals and in putting all his hopes on the Bourbons it would seem that the chief offence of Saint-Simon was his wild activity not his divergent notions. Yet, of course, it is not strategy we are considering but ideas so let us now consider the fundamental point of the whole theory under discussion - the moral question. As we have said, the Economists continued the ideas of the idéologues in seeking to establish the science of morality and no one can deny that Saint-Simon was not in favour of such notions. It had long been his dream of reducing the "ought" to the "is", to find one fundamental law binding man and nature and no doubt the enthusiastic welcome he showed to industrialism was partly due to belief that at last he had found the solution to his problem. Not the Law of Gravity was the answer, but the Law of Work. Long had he searched for the unique principle derived from discovered truths and from which the same truths could be deduced and now at last he had found it. At last morality could be made positive for, of course, industrialism was morality; in perfecting society, it likewise perfected man. Christianity had laid down the principle of this morality only instead of it being realised in heaven, it was due to be realised on

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earth by means of production, that is, by the establishment of a system whereby you are necessitated to love your neighbour and to do to others as you would be done by. Therefore, religion need no longer serve as the basis of morals. It could now be replaced by positive facts deduced from observation. The nature of things had so brought it about that religion had been replaced by the new principle of industrial society and it was now only a question of recognising this. 17 This notion was one of the dominant thoughts of Saint-Simon. Morals was, or is or will be or must be positive. The theory of morals should be a scientific theory of social organisation with politics merely the instrument to apply this science, that is, organise human beings in society so that each man finds the greatest advantage in employing his moral and physical force in a way most useful to himself and his like. It was then the duty of this science of morals to determine what makes men happy and at least as regards physical happiness, Saint-Simon himself had the answer ready. The physical means of happiness were good food, clothes and housing so of course in this way we come to productivity and industrialism. In 1824, Saint-Simon was still writing of the need to make morality positive based on the observation of sentiments and their effects. 18 If we refer these notions to Saint-Simon's pattern of history, we see that the system of positive morality as based on industrialism had in fact been the end to which the world had been developing over the centuries, compelled onwards to it by some iron law of progress so that SaintSimon's views of the present and the future were well buttressed by a string of historical theories. Having long decided that man perfects himself, Saint-Simon looks back in history and, observing the facts there, notes with satisfaction that they reveal that it is the law of man's nature to be perfected by history. Of course, history is a science and the historian must observe solely the march of progress by co-ordinating the facts and inducing therefrom general laws. 19 That was the true scientific means of discovering the march of civilisation - s o much so indeed that Saint-Simon from now on devotes most of his time to studying it. We saw how in the heighday of the idéologues, his immense enthusiasm for ideology led to a point when Saint-Simon snapped over as it were, into what was virtually an anti-idéologue position, that is, he pressed the presuppositions of this theory to the point where they appeared to fly over into the opposite position. It might be said we have reached the same point as regards 17 18 19

See "L'Organisateur", 2, p. 106 and passim. Also ' "Le Politique", 2, p. 197 See, for instance, " D u Système industriel" (3rd Part), 6, p. 464. See, for instance, "L'Organisateur", p. 70.

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industrialism. Saint-Simon presses into its historical foundations with such ardour that he develops a theory quite at odds with it, without realising however just how far he has diverged from the original. The first point is that Saint-Simon for all his "positivism" was hardly ever interested in "facts" at all. At least not in the normal definition of a fact so that his history has, indeed, very few of these facts in it, being mostly composed of his ideas and presuppositions which make it, of course, suspect to those who prefer a greater proportion of facts to fancy, although indeed it was still the history of the Economists if but reduced to the bones of pure speculation and therefore a rather unwelcome apparition. The second and vital point is that Saint-Simon, in recounting his history, deserts the secure and scientific basis of economics and therefore establishes a wide gulf between himself and his fellow "industrialists" for it was just their economic interpretation of history which they felt saved them from the bog of idle reasoning. No doubt there are some passages in Saint-Simon where he apparently stresses the primacy of economics. 20 Yet these passages are isolated and in any case it is doubtful what he meant by them. As I have already pointed out, the industrialist stage is an economic stage of history because it established production and industry but there is no sign that Saint-Simon always believed other periods of history were economic. From the general tenor of his work, it is quite clear that Saint-Simon even stresses the progress of man, and his ideas as the determining factor. In this connection, however, I feel compelled to agree with the statement of Pechan that these ideas were actually all part of the physiological-biological scheme once so favoured by Saint-Simon, that is, that man advanced as a physical being but, as he progresses onwards into an intellectual being, the forces of man's ideas become the driving impulse to perfection. 21 The explanation will also clarify the rather obscure passage in U Organisateur which say that 20

This is, of course, one of the well-disputed if rather by now out-moded problems of Saint-Simon, ultimately derived from the much-discussed issue-was Saint-Simon a socialist? I hope I am showing that there is no point in such a question but for works on this theme, see "Further Reading". 21 Pechan writes "Saint-Simon's philosophy of history is a branch of the general science aiming at explaining and determining the movement of whole cosmic events from one single law. The outline plan of a theory of the universe is followed by the attempt to give a systematic and scientific explanation of the development of the whole of social life on a natural and socio-biological foundation. On the higher stage of human development, the intellectual element increasingly overcomes the natural and physical forces." Louis Blanc als Wegbereiter (les modernen Sozialismus (Jena, 1929) pp. 21/22, Note 1.

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"the superior law of progress of the human spirit entrains and dominates all ; men are only instruments of it. Although this force derives from us, it is no longer in our power to withdraw from its influence or to master its a c t i o n . . . All we can do is to obey this law by discovering the path it lays down for us." 22 It is therefore impossible simply to say Saint-Simon was an "idealist". It seems with Saint-Simon we approach almost the common ground of idealism and materialism and see, as it were, their mutual dependence. 23 The point is, however, that Saint-Simon never accepted the idea of referring man's development solely to economic categories and laws, and insisted on continuing the earlier idéologue position of considering progress in terms of the growth of reason, the perfection of the intellectual faculties of man so that instead of overcoming the difficulties inherent in the idea of the progress of reason by reducing the laws of the progress of man to the laws of economic progress, as did the Economists (though, of course, the problem was only veiled, not solved, but still they felt they had secured their beliefs to the rock of a science), Saint-Simon continued the old and the new as two strands so that he is almost back to the starting point - still without any necessary law binding all development, still with a mysterious and unexplained factor-force, Providence or whatever it is called, the factor which drives man on. All this plan, this progress however is solely a product of Saint-Simon's brain and unless it is accepted that his ideas are the necessary ideas of man, his theory has no foundations but his own belief in it. 24 In this respect then, Saint-Simon was not exactly helping the spread of materialism and economic determinism and accordingly, his system might well come into the Marxist category of Utopian. Any study of Saint-Simon's work will show that it was his aim to reveal the intellectual and spiritual development of man and its corresponding reflection in social and political life. 25 Looking backwards, he believed 22

"L'Organisateur"2, p. 119. For instance, if you presume progress, that is, the development of men from savages to enlightened beings, you must presume some impelling force, acting externally o n man - say, material factors which in time so affect man that he can see what these material factors are and work with them. However, at the same time, he can only realise these material factors intellectually, only his ideas make them material. Accordingly, it might equally be said - as with Hegel - that man is impelled inwardly and outwardly to the realisation of his true nature by the idea of his true nature - at first unconsciously and then consciously.

23

The difference between Saint-Simon and the Economists is then that Saint-Simon referred to his reason for corroboration; the Economists referred to the development of economic life - which might be regarded as one remove from reason. 25 See "L'Industrie", 2 p. 23.

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he saw a distinct pattern of development, the progress of man via spiritual or intellectual stages or leaps, each conducting him to his final aim, science and industrialism. As applied to Europe, the old system was based on theology reflected in the social institution of feudalism. This bore within it the seeds of its own destruction, the science transmitted by the Arabs and the rise of industry in the towns (enfranchisement of the communes). Here, of course, Saint-Simon automatically presumes that science is the new intellectual force to replace religion. He expressed this often enough; for instance as regards Copernicus and Galileo, he said, "tout le système théologique est fondé sur la supposition que la terre est faite pour l'homme et l'univers entier pour la terre; ôtez cette supposition et toutes les doctrines religieuses s'écroulent". 26 In a word, the theological doctrines are absolutely incompatible with the obvious convictions of modern astronomical theory. Of course in this respect, Saint-Simon is again transgressing against the economist line. His ideas suggest that science is a doctrine, not a method, so that a body of scientific ideas replaces a body of theological ideas whereby the suggestion is aroused that both are innately similar, equally dogmatic in their scope.27 As regards the epochs, Saint-Simon, in spite of long extensions into Antiquity, tends like the Economists to concentrate on the change-over from theological feudalism to positive-industrialism with the same tendency to see only two general stages in man's development, that is, from stealing to working, from war to peace. As he said in Du Système Industriel, "c'est aujourd'hui pour la première fois, qu'en résultat final de toutes ces modifications préparatoires, l'espèce humaine passe au système absolument opposé (to the one before)". 28 Now if we consider the economic transition from feudalism to industrialism, it is clear at least there is not obviously any other system in between. However, if like Saint-Simon, we consider also the intellectual development, the passage from theology to science, then it is perhaps not so obvious - at least there are certain unwelcome intellectual manifestations such as we have seen when discussing the question of class. For this reason, a transitional or intermediatory period had to be invented in order to connect up the légistes or metaphysicians to the demi-science of metaphysics and all its false notions about 20

See "l'Organisateur", 2, p. 100. In 1825 he said a similar thing - Copernicus proved that the universe was not made for men. A view which generally presents itself when anyone approaches these theories for the first time and one wonders if Copernicus and Galileo had similar ideas. See 5, p. 86. 27 For Dunoyer's opinion, see his Oeuvres I, p. 197. 2R "Du système industriel", 3, p. 61(6).

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the Ancient World, the rights of man and sovereignty of the people. Since, however, nothing is unnecessary, the metaphysical era could be regarded as a bridge to the new age, a vital link to that period which would be the final stage of man's development, the result of "tous les progrès que la civilisation a faite depuis six cent ans, et m ê m e . . . depuis son origine". 29 The critical age, as this transitional period became called, must necessarily disappear into a new organic era - the final one. Before, however, considering the question of organic and critical eras, let us be quite clear what are Saint-Simon's ideas on history. In the Catéchisme des Industriels, he wrote, "L'espèce humaine a été destinée par son organisation, à vivre en société. Elle a été appelée d'abord à vivre sous le régime gouvernemental. Elle a été destinée à passer du régime gouvernemental ou militaire, au régime administratif ou industriel, après avoir fait suffisamment de progrès dans les sciences positives et dans l'industrie; enfin elle á été soumise, par son organisation, à essuyer une crise longue et violente lors de son passage du système militaire au système pacifique." 30 This is a clear statement of his ideas and considerably illuminates his position as regards "industrialism". It was, however, in developing the notion of critical and organic epochs that Saint-Simon moved away from the Economists in a most decided fashion. We have seen howDunoyer reacted to organic ideas regarding them as an attack on the spirit of free enquiry. But a greater gap opens up when Saint-Simon begins to question the automatic equation of interests so happily presumed by the Economists in their new state of industrialism. Saint-Simon approaches "moralism". 31 But let us see how his development occurred. The notion of critical or transitory epochs was originally developed in order to explain the mystery of the French Revolution - why it went wrong. Why, in fact, did it see the propagation of abstract and irrelevant ideas about rights instead of getting down to the reality of industrialism - the state in which there would be no rights nor duties but all that was useful to the species would be useful to the indi-

29

"Du système industriel", 3, p. 100(5). "Catéchisme des industriels", 4, p. 87. The word "organisation" means here the way man is made, his make-up, the physical form of man which automatically creates the social form of man. Just as man is organised as a unified whole, operated automatically by the laws of nature, so in SaintSimon's eyes society should also be organised. See also Stark, "Saint-Simon as a Realist" in Journal of Economic History, III (1942), p. 49, note 23. 31 This point of difference between Saint-Simon and the Economists is pointed out by Halévy in "La doctrine économique de Saint-Simon", La Revue du Mois (1908), p. 673. 3(1

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vidual and vice versa? The more angry Saint-Simon gels with the liberals the more critical becomes the transitional era and the more he demanded some form of unified ideology. "La société ne vit point d'idées négatives, mais d'idées positives. Elle est aujourd'hui dans un désordre moral extrême, l'égoïsme fait d'effrayants progrès, tout tend à l'isolement."' 32 The system evolved by physicists, chemists, physicians, and geometricians should be realized. Here, the disorder in Saint-Simon's thinking seems to excel the disorder he sees around him. In spite of the iron law of progress, in spite of the end of "oughts" in the "is" of industrialism, SaintSimon himself urges more and more insistently an "ought". There must be one law, one doctrine, one principle. Organisation, wholeness, unity, are his watchwords and this immense preoccupation of his lifetime achieves more and more expression after the initial ardour for industrialism wears off. He gradually comes to admire the organic unity of the Middle Ages so that it appears to excel all others with the result that the period so despised by the idéologues becomes for him the model age, the pattern for the future organisation. It was not, of course, a question of simple return. Saint-Simon was still too convinced of progress to imagine such a thing. The theological-scientists and the feudal-industrialists must be replaced by the positive-scientists and the people-industrialists - so he states in De Γ Organisation Sociale and of course thereby considerably upsets the industrialist scheme. 33 For how can warring feudalists ever be equated to the peaceful industrialists? Saint-Simon with his critical and organic epochs comes very near to confining the ideas of the Economists to the critical epoch whilst at the same time seeking to make his version of industrialism the base of the next organic epoch. Moreover, there is an ever-increasing religious strain in Saint-Simon's writings so that ideas of positive morality begin to alternate strangely with ideas of divine morality. The first expression of this religious impulse is to be found in the Adresse aux Philanthropes of 1821. In it, he suggests that the moving force of man is the moral sentiment which is the belief that all political principles must be deduced from the general principles that God has given man. This law of God seems to be mainly the moral commandment that all men must be brothers, a law due at last to be realised on earth - "cet heureux état des choses, auquel Dieu a destiné l'espèce humaine pour l'époque où son éducation sociale serait entièrement terminée, est aujourd'hui devenu possible. Les chrétiens

32 33

"Du système industriel", 3, p. 51(6). "De l'Organisation sociale", 5, p. 157 iï,

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d'aujourd'hui sont appelés par Dieu à tirer les grandes conséquences politiques du principe général que a été révélé aux chrétiens primitifs". 34 Admittedly, Saint-Simon saw this realised via science and industry but the moral aspect of divine realisation was emphasised rather than the positive aspect of scientific realisation. These ideas of Saint-Simon, however, were not expressed again until Nouveau Christianisme in 1825. In that work one of the chief themes was the reconciliation of spiritual aims with temporal practice by fulfilling the tenets of Christianity. The Christian Church was seen to have consistently worked for the realisation of its moral aims over centuries so that it, in fact, appeared now not as a supporter but as an opponent of feudalism, representing the free rise of talent rather than the privileges of birth. Moreover, for the first time (at least after 1817) Saint-Simon openly deserts his beloved physical and mathematical sciences, "mais il est une science bien plus important pour la société que les connaissances physiques et mathématiques, c'est la science qui constitue la société, c'est celle qui lui sert de base, c'est la morale; or la morale a suivi une marche absolument opposée à celle des sciences physiques et mathématiques. Il y a plus de dix huit cent ans que son principe fondamental a été produit, et depuis cette époque toutes les recherches des hommes du plus grand génie n'ont point fait découvrir un principe supérieur par généralité ou par sa précision à celui donné à cet époque par le fondateur du Christianisme... Quand la société a perdu de vue ce principe, quand elle a cessé de le prendre pour guide général de sa conduite, elle est promptement retombée sous le joug de Cesar." 3 5 This is a very surprising statement, returning not only to a religious basis for morality but even denying, at least in that field, that there has been any progress. The scene is now quite obviously set for the teaching of the Saint-Simonists since at the same time, Saint-Simon was showing an unusual interest in the people or proletariat or workers, stressing that their well-being must be the aim of society. The conjunction of these two sets of ideas - anti-positivism and concern for the poor obviously forms the basis of Saint-Simonism. Yet it must be stated that the system based on these ideas was founded by the Saint-Simonists not Saint Simon. If Saint-Simon had lived longer, one would not be surprised to have received another work from him restating his old positive belief with the best of confidence just as he had done in 1822. Of course, the most noticeable trait of Saint-Simon is his utter inconsis-

34 85

"Du système industriel", 3, p. 231 ("Adresse aux Philanthropes"). "Nouveau christianisme", 3, p. 187.

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tency whereby it is not so much that he changes his ideas consciously but that he flitters from one view to another, all the time seeking to reconcile the irreconcilable. For us, it is therefore a fruitless task to make consistent the inconsistent, and all statements on Saint-Simon often resolve themselves to a judgment of him on those writings found understandable to the reader. Yet I think it might be said that although Saint-Simon considered himself at least on the whole to be an "industrialist" from 1817 onwards, he diverged from this doctrine on certain vital points and, in doing so, virtually negated it. By some strange chance, too, the erratic meanderings of Saint-Simons' thought had just reached the supreme anti-industrialist position on his death so that his utterances of 1825 could be carried on by his followers of that time to create a completely new doctrine which surely even Saint-Simon himself would hardly have recognised as his. It was his moralism of 1825 which was the first obvious sign amongst the Economists of a break-away from positivism, that is, from the positive position of the automatic union of interest to the moral position whereby unless man follows the precepts of God's teaching, his interests cannot be reconciled so that man has always two interests, a moral one and a natural one, whereby the natural interest is egoism and the moral or divine interest is the brotherhood of man. It is strange, however, that at the same time another follower of Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, went on to develop the earlier ideas of Saint-Simon, to found the science of man and so on to achieve sociology whilst, of course, the "Industrialists" of the Le Censeur européen, pursued the pure economic line until Marx took it over and gave it a new twist. Altogether, the period we are considering was a true melting pot of ideas and out of it have appeared most of our "isms". Finally, I think it can be shown from the above that any talk of Saint-Simon as a socialist is purely irrelevant, as irrelevant to ask if an apple tree is an apple. More to the purpose is to know if Saint-Simon was an "industrialist" and it is most unfortunate that the set of ideas once called "industrialism" should have been forgotten, for how often is Saint-Simon called a socialist just because of those ideas he had in common with the liberal Economists. In fact, more often that not, SaintSimon is attributed ideas which were actually developed by Le Censeur européen so that Saint-Simon appears to stand as a solitary thinker whilst, in fact, he was surrounded by people all thinking the same thing.36 3C

Even Manuel in his works on Saint-Simon never gets to grips with the ideas of the age.

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Often, too, his terms lead to confusion so that because he called his strange class of légistes and metaphysicians the "bourgeois", it is presumed he is referring to the same bourgeois class as Marx with the consequent presumption that he was a socialist. On the whole, as befits the inventor of the transitional age, Saint-Simon was in many ways a transitional bridge himself from the idéologues to the moralists. The problem is, of course, who were the fathers of socialism - the idéologues or their opponents, the moralists?

PART IV

THE REVOLT AGAINST POSITIVISM AND ECONOMISM

16 EARLY CRITICISM O F THE ECONOMIST DOCTRINES

If, with Saint-Simon, we have seen a certain turning away from the true doctrine of "industrialism", this tendency was more or less unplanned, without aim or purpose, and anyone studying Saint-Simon without knowing anything of the vast amounts of literature which came after him might be at a loss to define his position clearly. Was he a Rationalist, an Economist or a Moralist? It is our knowledge of later works which permits us to presume that Saint-Simon pointed to the future. Actually, it is much more likely that the works directly attacking industrialism were more influential in determining later ideas than the tedious meanderings of Saint-Simon. 1 The most notable attack was launched by Simonde de Sismondi. He had originally been a supporter of the School of Adam Smith and Say. In addition there is no doubt that his Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Âge had been influential in determining some of the ideas of Thierry. Yet in 1820 he published his book Nouveaux Principe d'Fconomie politique containing a very rigorous criticism of the new Economism, listing in fact most of the points which have ever since been used against it. For instance, he broke the vital links between the free play of interest, industrialism and happiness by showing that whilst the free play of interest might lead to industrialism, it did not automatically lead to happiness. Without regulation or control, industrialism could bring misery and starvation to many just as it could bring wealth and riches to some. Sismondi, in fact, criticised both unrestrained competition and unrestrained production. Unrestrained production led not to the wealth of all but to the wealth of the few, for the more goods produced beyond consumption, the more they had to be absorbed by luxury. The progress of industry thereby increased inequality. In addition, industrialisation 1 For instance, even when reading the Saint-Simonists, the impression is sometimes gained that their fundamental attitude is derived more from Sismondi than SaintSimon.

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concentrated capital in the hands of the few and resulted in the increasing dependence of the lower classes on the capitalists, and it also squeezed out the small-scale proprietor so that in the end a small class of rich faced a huge mass of wage-earners. As regards competition, Sismondi saw this to mean that each producer was forced to sell as cheaply as possible so that the desire to reduce prices caused wages to be cut to a minimum so that again riches went to the rich and the poor became even poorer. Not, of course, that master and workman were not dependent on each other in the long run, not that their interests were completely opposed, yet in the eyes of Sismondi the false system of competition meant that this harmony of interests was quite destroyed. 2 In this way, production was deprived of all the magic virtues with which the Economists had endowed it. It was no longer the automatic route to the happiness of all. To achieve an all-round happiness, there must be government regulation and control - reviving thereby the absolute nightmare of the Economists-Mercantilism. They had completely pinned their hopes on the belief that all government interference, all force and regulation would be quite unnecessary under their scheme yet here was Sismondi asserting exactly the opposite. Moreover, he also showed that laissez-faire far from being "natural" was itself merely a form of organisation with the result that the opposition of interest which he saw in that system was only due to the "artificial organisation which we have given to human society". 3 If the criticisms of Sismondi were to be accepted, there had then to be virtually a return to the beginning or another leap forward. This is particularly true as regards Sismondi's idea on class. He asserted that the industrial class imagined by the Economists and Saint-Simon was really composed of two classes - capitalists and prolétaire - whose interests under laissez-faire were absolutely opposed to each other since it was the aim of the capitalist to grind all his profits from the surplus work of the workmen and the aim of the workers to fight back in order to obtain at least something above subsistance level.4 Well might Leroy say about the prolétaire that "a new class was born with the word". 5 It was never again possible to talk simply of the "industrial class" as the Economists and Saint-Simon had done. From now on that class was split apart - the line

2

Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes (Paris, 2nd ed. 1827), I, p. 377ff and II, p. 336 ff. Sismondi, ibid., II, p. 347. 4 Undoubtedly all these ideas were ultimately derived from Adam Smith himself. On this point see the interesting article of Paul H. Douglas "Smith's Theory of Value and Distribution" in Adam Smith 1776-1926, 7 lectures (Chicago, 1929). 5 Leroy, Histoire des idées sociales en France (Paris, 1946), 2, page 319. 3

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of the division might vary but at least there was from now on the fixed idea that there existed two almost irreconcilable classes within industrialism. The industrial class becomes the class of the capitalists and the class of the workers, the prolétaires and, as Leroy points out, this was not simply a division of rich and poor as Babeuf conceived it but a division necessarily arising from the industrialist social organisation, a necessity due to this form of production so that reform lay not in more to eat or more to wear but solely in a new form of economic organisation whereby the excess of wealth produced by the workers would go to them and not to the rich. Another point of interest in this book of Sismondi is the use of the words "social" and "society" to mean the general as opposed to the particular; for instance, to him the social interest means the interests of the generality opposed to the individual interest. 6 Quite opposed to this Rousseauan usage, the Economists invariably meant by society the sphere of individual interest which would likewise be the sphere of the general interest once the interest of the oppressive governmental class had been removed. In this way, of course, the split of interest between the general and the particular, the society and the individual, was revived by Sismondi in a manner opposed to the views of the Economists. It is a return to "moralism". The whole theory of liberty, of action and reaction, as developed by the idéologues and later by the Economists was now simply denied and the duality of man virtually reinstated with all the Rousseauan undertones that had so long been rejected. Naturally the Economists did not accept this criticism of their ideas. In answer to it, they asserted that the defects of nascent industrialism were due to the earlier conditions of conquest still persisting so that all men were not equal in possessions and it would therefore require some time before the true system could straighten out these difficulties. In the end, free competition would work because it was the "natural" system and it would lead to ever increasing happiness for, as Dunoyer said, "l'histoire de la civilization, depuis la chute de l'empire romaine, n'est, à proprement parler, que l'histoire de l'avancement de classes laborieuses". 7 Yet, of course, all the statements were becoming passé in the rush of new interests.

r ' For instance, Sismondi wrote, "c'est en mettant ainsi les producteurs en opposition avec eux-mêmes, qu'on leur a fait suivre une route diamétralement contraire à celle de l'intérêt de la société". Nouveaux principes II, p. 359. 7 Dunoyer, De la liberté du travail (Paris 1846), p. 470 and, for his interesting criticisms of Sismondi, see his review of Nouveaux principes in the Revue encyclopédique (June, 1827), republished in Oeuvres 1 (Paris n. d.).

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The spirit of the times, it might be said, was against "industrialism" and that system was, in fact, approaching the point when it would be completely denied and vilified in such a way that it was to become what most of us now tend to think of, when we say, "Oh, laissez-faire". Why that should be is not clear and when we turn to Fourier we might imagine that it could have been a mystery to him too (if, of course, he had not been so sure of himself and his ideas!). Had he not, ever since the early 19th century, preached against the Economists? Had he not known even before Industrialism existed that the ideas on which it was based were wrong? Yet for years his works had been neglected and unknown until the tide turned and in the 1830s he came out from his long period of obscurity. Not that he, of course, initiated the actual revolution of ideas that was the work of the Saint-Simonists but it is useful to know the kind of criticisms he was making before 1830, although for the most part it was almost unknown to his contemporaries. Of course, positively speaking, Fourier could hardly be considered to fall under our theme since he had his ideas directly from God or at least he alone seemed to be aware of the Divine plan, that great scheme for the development of man stretching over enormous periods of time and all arranged and categorised by Fourier in the most careful detail. At a pinch, we might of course regard his system of attraction as a psychological reconciliation of interests so that the moral "ought" disappears in the free play of passions. It seems that Fourier regarded our experience of internal discord as being due to the fact that God has made us for the coming age and not for this one so that in the "combined order" all will be well. 8 Accordingly, Fourier like everyone else at this time seemed to want to reconcile the conflict within man and was probably the first to suggest doing so by letting instinct have free reign so that "morality" becomes the rule of passion and desires. Possibly he might thereby have anticipated "psychologism" yet there is something unsatisfactory in the notion of Fourier as a strict determinisi. We cannot know how he knew what he did know and in addition he had no other substance for his assertion that the rule of the passion was good except God's word for it. In any case, Fourier never aimed at being "scientific". He hated science about as much as he hated commerce. It was all part of the despised age of Civilisation soon to be replaced by the next stage.

8

See, for instance, Oeuvres Completes, I, "Théorie des Quatre Mouvements" (Paris, 1841).

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However, there is some relevance for us in his criticism of Civilisation,9 for if we saw Sismondi establishing a division between the industrial class, we now see Fourier suggesting Civilisation is only one stage in the mighty march of progress due to be replaced by an infinitely better system. Until then the Economists and Saint-Simon had been content to see their end realised in the establishment of some form of Industrialism but Fourier is the first to see much further into the future, to suggest a complete transformation of the economic scene. Here, as always with Fourier, we can never be sure whether it is because he sees ahead or he looks back - so many of his ideas and projects seemed derived from the 18th century rather than the 19th.10 Still, it is undeniably true that his picture of Civilisation had a very influential effect on thinkers of the 1830s and 40s. How did he picture Civilisation ? In the main, he sees it as the rule of commerce with commerce regarded as the parasite living on agriculture and industry, the perverter of ideas and philosophy, characterised by the commercial spirit, the reign of the monopolist and the cheat. It is an age where the rich get richer and the poor poorer, when feudalism is revived in the ever-growing power of the merchants so that the little man - the small owner, shopkeeper and craftsman are ground down into the mass of dependent poor so that the rich monopolist can exercise a continually tightening grip on the whole community. It is the curse of God with free competition the devil setting everyone against everyone else, leading to the war of the rich against the poor, in fact, the methodical development of all vice, the enthronement of egoism.11 Here, of course, appears the invariable criticism of this system, that is, the so-called reconciliation of interests is a farce. Fourier scorns the notion that free competition leads to perfection and that the interest of each is the interest of all. Some benefit by it; the interests of the commercial feudality are secured, but the interest of the people is forgotten. Here, Fourier differs from Sismondi for he seems to see the triumph of one particular interest represented by one group or class over the general 9

In the Fourier scheme, Civilisation was the stage between Barbarism and Guaranteeism. 10 For instance, see Talmon's ideas in Political Messianism (London, 1960). It might be said Fourier and Sismondi both found their ideal in a peasant and artisan economy yet there was a vital difference in their notions of achieving this. Sismondi saw it merely as a question of government action but Fourier saw it as all part of a great system, the plan of God to be realised by itself, as it were. 11 For instance, see "Théorie des Quatre Mouvements" and "Théorie de l'Unité Universelle" (Vols. 1 - 4 of Oeuvres Complètes).

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interest as represented by the majority of people instead of, as Sismondi sees it, the triumph of the particular interest of one group over the social interest of everyone including themselves. 12 Fourier, too, has more than a moral condemnation. Behind it stands his system. Civilisation is the transient stage when the feudality of commerce extends its grip over the vast mass of the people, grinds down all intermediate classes into the neo-serf class so that in the end there is nothing but a few monopolists and a huge mass of workers in monstrous industrial and agricultural compounds. By simply dispossessing the minority of oppressors, the age of Guaranteeism can be achieved and the phalanstries founded by taking over these former "labour camps". This might not be altogether convincing but it has an air of economic determinism about it, something, in fact, which more impressed Marx than perhaps Fourier. For Fourier, although he could invent fine systems, was less interested in economic forms than in securing happiness so that in his phalanstries the economic type of production matters little so long as happiness reigns. Of course, in the eyes of economic determinism, he was throwing away his hand but, surely, he never realised it contained so many trumps.

12

That is, Sismondi seeks to prove that the pursuit of particular interest is ultimately in no one's interest, for instance, he says that the manufacturers, on the one hand, reduce the workers to poverty but, on the other hand, arc forced to keep them by charity and the poor tax. Nouveaux Principes II, p. 360.

17 THE MORALISM A N D INDUSTRIALISM O F THE SAINT-SIMONISTS

Although, as we have seen, Fourier and Sismondi had very pertinent criticisms to offer on the new Economism, they were hardly the dominant forces in breaking the back of Industrialism. Sismondi tended to be too conservative, to have too little to offer to replace the system he criticised and Fourier had not yet found his Considérant to make his works intelligible. For the forceful element of destruction, we must turn to the Saint-Simonists. They are the influential elements of the period from 1826 to 1832 and however great the failure they later endured, this period clearly saw them on the ascendant so that their influence extended over the whole coming generation and from that time on the ideas and terminology of the Saint-Simonists were dominant. Yet, interesting though they are, the Saint-Simonists can only appear to us as a negative influence, that is, they neither furthered the line of economic determinism nor the Rousseauan criticism, that is, they confined man neither to his physical organisation nor to his social condition; they confined him to God and based their doctrines on a definite religious belief with the image of man patterned on Christ. Nowadays, of course, the religious beliefs of the Saint-Simonists are often looked upon as eccentric and quite irrelevant details on the fundamental socialist or sociological pattern. Their economic ideas are given full prominence, their ideas on government are not ignored, but their religion - that apparently is something only to smile about. Due, however, to this neglect, they are often viewed in strange lights - sometimes as forerunners of totalitarianism, sometimes as positivists and perhaps still more recently as forerunners of the planners for progress on the 1968 pattern. 1 Yet how can you understand the 1 For instance, Iggers in the introduction to his translation of the Doctrine of SaintSimon: Exposition, 1st year 1828¡29 (1958), says "they emerge as the forerunners of the modern totalitarian state", p. IX. Hayek in The Counter-Revolution of Science, to my mind, is completely unjust to the Saint-Simonists and, strange though it might seem to Hayek, 1 do not doubt that the Saint-Simonists would have heartily supported his criticism of 'scientism' - in fact they made themselves the very same criticisms of it!

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Saint-Simonists if you ignore the fundamental tenets of their beliefs? Before then considering the importance of the Saint-Simonists to our theme, let us take a quick look at their beliefs as regards man, science and religion for, indeed, if some of the views on the Saint-Simonists are not corrected, we might be accused of ignoring a fruitful field! The first point to notice is that the Saint-Simonists were completely opposed to any notion of a Condillac man - the men as depicted by "science" and accordingly they attacked both this notion of man and the science upon which it was founded. How, for instance, could men coldly observe facts without any feelings or desires? Man is part of the world, active in it, imposing on the facts he sees the forms of his being; he wishes, he orders, he invents in contrast to those observers of science who, it seems, do nothing but obey, listen and verify the facts quite out of their control (a criticism very reminiscent of Rousseau). To this coldly calculating and passive object, the Saint-Simonists opposed their view of man - a being full of sympathy, sentiment and love : sympathy as the vital bond between man and man, man and the world, man and God - "the revelation of God", 2 sentiment the vital companion of reason, the pointer of the wayfor reason and sentiment go hand in hand, one does not develop at the expense of the other and sentiment leads for reason can only verify the inspiration, the revelation, the divination of sentiment. It is sentiment which makes man love and desire the end set him and therefore gives him the will to reach it. We must love the aim we have set ourselves and, whilst science can help us reach it, it can never tell us why that aim and no other. From this it was but a step to a general criticism of science, at least the science as taught in the Ecole Polytechnique, the teachings of Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy and Bentham.3 In the eyes of Bazard, this science taught the denial of all beliefs, the rejection of immortality, and the futility of the search for causes. Its prime aim was to discredit and disprove religion. But was it a science? Was there, in fact, such a thing as "science"? Were there not only sciences, without any unifying link between them? The sciences themselves furnished no proofs of the doctrine against God. It was positivism or the critical philosophy which asserted on the basis of its beliefs that there was no God. The aim of that philosophy was the destruction of all religion, picturing the world devoid of spontaneity, life, love. "Une méthode qui couvrait d'un suaire de mort l'univers et l'homme 2

Exposition première année ed. Bouglé et Halévy (Paris 1924), p. 490. Compare here the bitterness of their attack on the teachings of the Ecole polytechnique with Hayek's!

3

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139

lui-même, qui les preséntait l'un à l'autre comme des assemblages fortuits de molécules soumises à un ordre purement mécanique, comme des cadavres privés de ce feu sacré qui jusque-là les avait unis l'un à l'autre." 4 In following the fundamental tenets of positivism, science had then, too, taken on atheistic forms. Yet with what justification? They cannot even order facts without believing that a certain arrangement exists between them. They cannot make any law without believing in some regularity, the presupposition that there is order in the succession of phenomena. The situation was similar as regards morals. What was the base of materialist morality? The aim, the materialist said, was to strengthen the social tie. But why a social tie, why a united society? Everywhere there was belief and often it took the form of belief in pseudo-Gods, such as liberty, reason, one's country, providence, but never in the true God. It was then not the sciences that the Saint-Simonists condemn but positi vist atheism. In fact, they insisted that in past organic ages, science was religion and in future organic ages it will discard atheism and be seen as "l'expression de la faculté qui a été donnée à l'homme de connaître successivement et progressivement les lois par lesquelles Dieu gouverne le monde". 5 In fact presumably the sciences would throw off their submission to positivism and accept the direction given it by the new faith of the Saint-Simonists. This faith, of course, would be openly religious, for God would then have returned to the heart of men. Men could rise to the heights of harmony, unity, and morality since, without God, there can be none of these things for God is the sole basis of morality. Politics too would become part of religion for faith would provide the aim for the whole of society and this aim would be loved, known, and wanted. In the form of a church it would realise the future needs of humanity and just as the Catholic Church destroyed slavery, so this Church would destroy the indirect slavery of the poor and feeble. In fact, like their prophet, SaintSimon, they believed that the time had come to realise the reign of God on earth, to end all antagonisms and to create the universal association of all men, with the aim of constantly improving the moral, physical, and intellectual state of man. This new religion was the religion of Love. The hierarchy of rulers would be a hierarchy based on love. There would be neither oppression nor servility for obedience would be the expression of devotion and the leaders would be those most capable of loving and 4 5

Exposition, première année, p. 191. Ibid., p. 408.

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the most eager to find God. The aim in fact, was to "do what Jesus did" - to put at the head those who know how to say like Peter, "Yes, Lord, I love you." 6 This summary will I hope show what was the basis of Saint-Simonism and I am sure that the Saint-Simonists for the most part would not have imagined their political and economic forms without it and therefore I feel they must be absolutely freed from all charges of dictatorship and tyranny for their system was never more oppressive than say, our own. For instance, you will rarely find nowadays a scientist who feels it is oppressive to be taught that the earth goes round the sun, or that there is a law of gravity, yet these are beliefs.7 The question of course is: was the Saint-Simonist system ever realisable, would ever the sentiment of love be strong enough to establish a heaven on earth? Was, in fact, the earth ever intended to be a heaven? In addition of course, they had the weaknesses of their age. For instance, there was their involvement with the old automatic progress idea of which they had no need at all - all they really needed was a change of heart, a recognition of God. Yet, because of this concern with progress, they did in some ways contribute, if only indirectly, to the furtherance of the doctrine they in fact opposed. One of the most important contributions to our theme was the SaintSimonists' creation or, at least, popularisation (if Saint-Simon started the idea) of the notion of "liberalism" as we know it or at least how it is still often regarded. We saw earlier that sets of ideas had been formed in France as regards the method according to which a country should be governed in order to secure the basic rights of man - one, for instance, was developed by Constant. Of course, there were various notions on exactly what this form of government should be - ranging, say, from the Doctrinaires to the Republicans. In addition, we have also seen that there was a doctrine called "Industrialism" which suggested that, once their system of economic life was introduced, no government would be necessary at all since more or less everything could be left to the play of interest. This doctrine held no belief in the rights of man nor in any religion ; it was strictly a form of economic materialism whilst, of course, the liberalism of a Constant or a Guizot was for the most part Christian in some form. Yet the Saint-Simonists merged the two together to form "the liberal critical era". Let us be clear on this point. The industrialist would no doubt have looked on the liberals as their allies in the struggles Letter of Enfantin, 1829 in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon ei d'Enfantin, XXV, p. 228. On this theme, see Michael Polanyi's book Personal Knowledge (London 1958).

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against the common feudal oppressors yet their aims were quite separate. In addition, Saint-Simon who might be said to have initiated the attack on the "liberals" was certainly not attacking them because they believed in the free play of interest but virtually because they did not believe in it because they were seeking to dominate and oppress. Therefore, it should be clear that the Saint-Simonists were initiating quite a new line here. They rejected all shades of political liberalism and at the same time split off from the doctrine of "industrialism" a section on the free play of interest, "laissez-faire" and tied it on to political liberalism. They made, in fact, "liberalism" into a system - an epoch apparently originating with L u t h e r - i t s religion was Protestantism, its science was analysis and the observation of facts, its morality was Γ intérêt bien entendu, its literature was Romanticism, its politics was Liberalism and its form of industry was Competition 8 We could also add that the Saint-Simonists further regarded it as a system of egoism, greed, disorder, with the oppression of the rich by the poor. It is interesting to note that whilst the link between liberalism and analytic science has nowadays fallen into disfavour it is still common enough to view liberalism as "laissez-faire". Another point is that in their criticisms of the liberal critical era, the Saint-Simonists were careful never to mention the doctrine of "industrialism" as developed by Ch. Comte and Dunoyer although any perusal of SaintSimon's works would have clearly revealed his connection with that school. 9 On the other hand, they were not averse to taking over certain aspects of industrialism and presenting it as if it were solely their doctrine. For instance, they asserted that their view of historical stages, with one epoch necessarily leading into the other from the cannibal stage to the industrial era, was unique although, in fact, Ch. Comte had suggested the very same thing and moreover since Comte's transitions have a pattern of economic causation, they might be viewed by some to be more "necessitous" than the Saint-Simonists' cycles of antagonism and association. In addition, the Saint-Simonists took over the idea of industry as the apex of man's development, a period originating with the enfranchisement of the Communes and on achievement, representing the final stage of 8

Letter of Enfantin, January 1830 in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin XXVII, p.

28. 9 Still more remarkable, perhaps, is that in the whole mass of footnotes in the Bouglé-Halévy edition of the Exposition, no mention is made of the great importance of the Le Censeur européen group in forming the ideas of the Saint-Simonists although, in fact, this was clearly known to Halévy as we can see from his other works.

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man. Here, of course, we do not wish to detract from the importance of the Saint-Simonists but it is important to know exactly what they did innovate and one has to be especially careful in assessing their own statements - not that they lied consciously but being more propagandists than thinkers they tended to see only what they wanted to see. Admittedly, their industrialism is different to that of Le Censeur européen group. Quite obviously, it cuts off the whole purpose of it in the eyes of the Economists, that is, the automatic reconciliation of interests. Such a notion for the Saint-Simonists represents nothing but a brutal free for - all, the exploitation of man by man so that, far from looking forward to the approaching end of government, they emphasise its increasing importance only of course not in the from of liberal representative government but in that of industrial administration. Viewed from this angle, it is clear that the Saint-Simonists had never comprehended the meaning of industrialism, that is, as an end of morals but merely viewed it as a means to the fulfilment of their own moral "ought".

18 THE SAINT-SIMONISTS AND THE CONCEPT OF CLASS

It would be impossible to leave the Saint-Simonists without considering their vital contribution to the concept of class without which the development of later materialist socialism would be quite unthinkable. The Saint-Simonists had, in fact, taken over from the Economists the notion of an industrial class developing from the enfranchisement of the Communes. Over the years, this class had acquired political freedom but it was still in economic subjection because the means for material production remained in the hands of the oppressors so that the producers 1 were held at ransom, as it were, by the right of property - which in fact was nothing but the right of conquest. Society was then - as ever - divided into two classes the exploiters and the exploited or the capitalists and the rest. Since the former had a monopoly of wealth, it could hold the rest in subjection. This oppressor class was made up of idlers who for the most part controlled the capital and funds of production (land) and lent it out for interest or rent, thereby living on the surplus production of those who did work, and on top of it bolstering up their economic exploitation by legal measures derived from their control of the state. The other class, the class of producers was solely restricted to workers.2 There are, of course, varying kinds, of workers and the Saint-Simonists did make a distinction between the ordinary workmen and the managers of industry or the entrepreneurs yet they were all subject to exploitation if to varying degrees. The vital point was that within this class there were no differences of interest. All kind of workers formed a harmonious whole to establish in time a universal and peaceful association.3 The 1 Enfantin preferred the word "producer" to "industrial" because it was more comprehensive including 'savants' and 'artistes'. See his letter of 1825 in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et D'Enfantin, XXIV, p. 73. 2 Travailleur of course, not ouvrier. 3 A point which of course later socialist writers could only regard as a perverse disregard of "reality".

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determinate of class was : do you work in any productive capacity or do you live completely off interest and rent? This criterion, in fact, is not so obscure as it has been painted and the only dubious point of course is "productive" work. Certainly the Saint-Simonists firmly believed that once the exploiters had gone, all would live in harmony and although there would be inequalities due to variations in talent, there would be no exploitation and that was the decisive point. One might say, of course, what of all this. Even Destutt de Tracy put the idler capitalists into the non-productive group and suggested many limitations on the right of property. The Saint-Simonists do not seem to be the great innovators here. What is important, however, is not the central idea but the word for the Saint-Simonists virtually created the notion of a bourgeois class, the bourgeoisie. Admittedly the term changed its meaning somewhat before Marx got hold of it but undoubtedly they created it, they made the term famous so that we could say again, as Leroy said of the prolétaire, "with the word a new class was born". Having created the system of "liberalism", the Saint-Simonists go on to create the class to go with it, the bourgeoisie. The Saint-Simonists first began propagating this term early in 1830 when Transon gave a series of lectures to the pupils of the Ecole polytechnique and he used it to designate the idler class in general - the mixture of conquerors and ex-industrials who no longer worked but lived on others, that is, the class of rentiers, of capitalists, of landowners. Now it is true that Saint-Simon in 1824 had given his intermediary class this designation because he wished of course to distinguish it from the true feudalists. Transon, however, is not considering Saint-Simon's intermediary class of légistes, bourgeois military and bourgeois landowners at all. He is considering an amalgamated class of idlers - an economic class in the strict sense so that the ancient conquerors (the nobles) become fused to the new exploiters (the bourgeois) to form the latest class of oppressors. As he said, "peu importe que L'OISIVETÉ ne s'appelle plus marquis, comte, baron, GENTILHOMME, s'il faut la saluer encore sous des noms de rentier, capitaliste, propriétaire, BOURGEOIS". 4 By a continuance of the twist in meaning started by Saint-Simon the bourgeoisie considered in the Economist theory to be the huge industrial class now turns into its opposite, the class of economic oppressors. The liberal critical era assumes ever more solid proportions. It now has its own class and although the Saint-Simonists never made any great distinction between oppressors 4

Transition,

De la religion Saint-Simonienne,

(Paris, 1830), p. 50.

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145

so that only two classes are generally considered, we can now clearly see the Marxian prospect opening out before us. Still it is difficult to imagine the term ever attaining the popularity it did if it had not been for the Revolution of 1830. That Revolution made it and the Saint-Simonists. Whatever might have been the influence of the Saint-Simonists before 1830, it becomes absolutely determinative afterwards for it is quite impossible to understand the doctrines of this period without knowing the Saint-Simonist propaganda. Sometimes it seems indeed as if the revolution was the event for which the Saint-Simonists were waiting, so well did they know what it was about before it was even over - and it was very short. Certainly it was their opportunity and they made full use of it. Of course, the Revolution of 1830 had nothing to do with them originally. It originated purely as a political struggle primarily induced by various shades of political liberalism mostly aiming at a 1688 to complete 1789, that is, it was a question of settling the conflict between legislative and executive. Once started, it was naturally possible that it might entrain within it other groups but, in fact, it was too short for even the Republicans to be able to rally their forces, let alone any other groups with notions of social revolution. Yet, although without any influence whatsoever on the course of the events at the time, the Saint-Simonists were of incomparable influence in determining how these events were later to be interpreted. From the start they were in a most favourable position to do this since, thanks to Saint-Simon, they alone knew the true meaning of the revolution ; it was, in fact, the revolution of liberal-bourgeois against the old feudalism with the aim to secure power for themselves. 5 In this light, then of course it was not their revolution. This did not, however, prevent them wishing it had been. Already by August 1st they had established one myth of 1830. They were asserting that the people or prolétaires6 had made the revolution, had achieved the victory but it had not been for themselves, it had been solely for the benefit of the bourgeois. They had needed the people to help them but once they had gained their object they called in the Orlean to put the people down. Yet there was nothing to worry about. 5

Saint-Simon was fond of predicting a new revolution made by the liberal-bonapartists to put their "bourgeois" king on the throne, that was, of course, Napoleon. Although 1830 did not result in a Bonapartist triumph, latest research shows considerable Bonapartist activity in the Revolution, see for instance, D . H. Pinkey "The Crowd in the French Revolution of 1830", American Historical Review L X X (1964). 6 As Leroy points out in Histoire des idées sociales en France II, p. 405 the word peuple is taking on the definition of workers, the poor, the prolétaires - similar in fact to the Jacobins' use of the word.

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This Revolution was simply the last consequence of the French Revolution, the fight of two aristocracies. It was the last stand of the old order. It had cleared the air and shown where the struggle really lay, no longer between people and nobles but between people and bourgeoisie. The next event would not be a mere political struggle but a complete social transformation and the bourgeoisie had better heed the words of the SaintSimonists to prevent a still more terrible revolution. In fact they went so far as to say, "la classe ouvrière, la classe qui forme l'immense majorité de la population, ces hommes enfin qui nos doctrinaires libéraux ont scientifiquement condamnés à un éternel ilotisme, sous le titre insolent de prolétaires, viennent d'être les maîtres de l'opulente capitale de la France." 7 In all this one cannot but feel a certain sympathy for the liberal revolutionaries. They had hardly completed the revolution before they were being assailed as bourgeois and idlers not to mention the revival of terms of abuse from the earlier revolution such as hommes d'état and gens de loi. Throughout 1830 to the end of 1831, they were constantly attacked. There was an insistent repetition of certain primitive ideas such as that the people fought the revolution but the liberal bourgeois had robbed them of the fruits, the revolution was not a real revolution but the tail end of the critical era and therefore the workers, that is, the people or the prolétaires could never benefit from it, political changes were useless so long as the liberal-bourgeois controlled industry. Here we notice of course the inevitable equation of political forms to economic structures. We see too the bourgeois opposed to the prolétaire so that for the first time these two concepts stand in opposition. In addition there is the opposition of political revolution to social revolution. These ideas were then hammered home by the propaganda technique of the Saint-Simonists, by means of their daily newspaper, the Globe, by means of lectures and campaigns to arouse the interests of the workers. The point to note about the Saint-Simonists and their class concepts is the extraordinary violence of their language which contrasts strangely with their doctrine of peace, love, and, reconciliation. Yet again they were setting the pattern for those to follow them. There seemed at times a purposeful desire to bring about a class war. Certainly they firmly accepted the idea there was a class war and thereby furthered the notion of it with constant repetitions about the war between the poor and the rich, haves and have-nots, whereby the bourgeoisie take on something of 7

"L'Organisateur", Oeuvres de Saint-Simon

et d'Enfantin

II, p. 242.

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a Satanic aspect, the designation of evil. Yet of course the Saint-Simonist idea of preaching such notions was apparently not to bring about a class war but strangely enough to prevent one. The true reality had to be pointed out in all its detail so that all could see what would happen if the Saint-Simonist doctrine were not accepted. They pictured themselves standing between two warring armies raising up the flag of peace and reconciliation, overlooking the fact that by picturing two warring armies they were doing much to give life to them. In all this there was amongst the Saint-Simonists themselves some contradictions. For instance, at the end of 1831, there was some argument over policy. Had they not too greatly emphasised the class war, had they not stressed too much the workers as opposed to the "industrial" ? 8 Moreover, what did they really mean by the "bourgeoisie"? We saw that on the whole they applied the term to idlers, anyone who did not perform productive work. Yet they were not always so exact in using it. For instance during the Lyons uprising in 1831, the Saint-Simonists used the term bourgeois-maîtres in referring to the working employer and the word "bourgeois" to refer to employers in general. 9 This, of course, might be due to the fact that the word "bourgeois" in its more normal sense could be so used yet it was thereby sowing the seeds of confusion and opening up the possibility that the élite of their system, the entrepreneurs, were going to be themselves comprised in the idler class presenting thereby quite a different picture of the divisions in society. After 1831, the Saint-Simonists toned down their language but likewise it might be said their influence declined. The seeds were sown in 1830 and 1831 and very quickly they were to ripen. The fruit was not exactly what they expected, yet he who sows dragons' teeth cannot expect lilies to grow from them. There were too many contradictions in the SaintSimonists' ranks and conseque ntlyin their doctrine. I do not doubt that they wanted to achieve a universal brotherhood of man based on peace and love but the means they used were often opposed to their ends and more than anyone else they conjured up the notion of an evil "bourgeois" class. Not only that but they also conceived the liberal system, the "critical" age that must be abolished before the reign of peaceful industrialism could come. In fact, they produced all the ingredients still required 8

A s d'Eichtal said in December 1831, "Je crois que lorsque nous aurons bien fait sentir que notre politique est loin d'être fondée sur l'hostilité des classes tous les bruits que l'on fait courir contre nous dans le monde tomberont." Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin XVI, p. 139. ,J See "Instructions adressés à PEIFFER, chef de l'église de Lyon", Oeuvres de SaintSimon et d'Enfantin XLVII.

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for a new ideology of industrialism based on economic determinism but they made no use of it because of course as we have seen if there was one thing they hated, it was the concept of determinism on the basis of the "scientific" man. It was that very notion which in fact they were revolting against - the mechanisation of man, the soul-destroying misery of scientific economics, the destruction of all that was worth living for. That was what their social revolt was about and that in fact was the chief ingredient of the "socialism" of the 1830s.

19

THE CONFUSION O F THE EARLY 1830S

What was there against the formation of a new materialism based on economic determinism? The answer could be that though the ingredients were there, the will was lacking. If such ideas had roused the enthusiasm of young men after 1815, the very opposite spirit seized the new generation after 1830. We saw how the Saint-Simonists loathed the teachings of Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy and found, for instance, their ideas of eliminating feeling and passion from thought utterly wrong. Materialism in all its forms was completely rejected and on the whole this was undoubtedly an age which in its own way wanted to return to God. Yet where was God? The search in some ways led to a revival of the ideas of Rousseau and Robespierre with the notions of a national deity rather than a heavenly one and the end of evil seen as the end of the particular, the mergence of the individual into the social man. Yet, of course, 1830 and afterwards was not 1794 so that there was not so much nationalism and patriotism for indeed the state had still to be captured but there was clearly the same deification of the people, developing almost into a cult of the God-people as the true saviours of society, expressing that supra-personal force into which the individual with his particular interest could merge himself so completely that he became solely part of the General Will of the People. The revival of interest in such notions as the general will, the social interest and such like became very noticeable after 1830 and quite pushed aside the ideas of the Economists (although, of course, they went on their way - but no longer the voice of their age). The see-saw thus tilts back to "moralism" and the French Revolution after 1792 comes to the fore. By some favourable chance Buonarroti published in 1828 his book Conspiration pour Γ Égalité in time to reap a new popularity - not indeed so much for his hero Babeuf but certainly for Robespierre. Buonarroti's work, being quite untouched by any of the ideas after 1795, had a sort of genuine revolutionary vintage about it. The divisions in the revolutionaries are to him nothing but divisions

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1830s

between the rich and poor in other words, between good and evil for the rich, whatever might be their political views, are basically wicked, greedy and selfish so that their ideas can only be a reflection of their cupidity and egoism. For instance, the notions of Adam Smith on economics were but fig leaves for the creation of a new inequality. Buonarroti did not deny that there was a struggle in 1789 but it was a struggle between two aristocracies with the new aristocrats (bankers, merchants, lawyers etc.) being merely jealous of the privileges of the old, anxious solely to secure these privileges for themselves. They accordingly represented the particular interest of vice based on avarice. Opposed to this greedy élite are the people, the centre of all virtues who, with true leadership, can substitute for cupidity a love of their country and can end all privilege by establishing the reign of equality and liberty. In the new age, there will be no opulence, no riches, only modest frugality such as ruled in Sparta. With a plunge we seem to be right back into 1794 but of course we cannot say all this Buonarroti doctrine was unreflectively accepted. The notions he spread on Babeuf were rarely adopted and probably his notions of honest frugality did not penetrate too far. 1 Yet his sentiments certainly appealed to the extreme left after 1830 with the adulation of virtue, of morality and of the fatherland - all finely expressed of course by Robespierre, from whose speeches Buonarroti gave numerous extracts. In any case, this adulation of the Revolution from 1793 is an influence which must be added to that of the Saint-Simonists - an influence to which in fact they too often submitted, 2 so that this age is one of Saint-Simonism plus Robespierrism - a strange combination perhaps but eventually to produce quite a dominant set of ideas. At this time directly after 1830 all was, however, still confusion and it is quite difficult to sort out the many strands of vague notions and sentiments which issue forth. The main set of ideas was at first clearly Republicanism centred on hopes of pushing the Revolution ever more to the left - first into universal suffrage (1792) and then apparently to a 1793 with notions of a social democracy. 3 Moving ever leftwards the Republicans never deserted their guiding light in the midst of all the darkness and agitation - the belief in the people a belief common to both Saint-Simonism and Robespierrism and to which 1

See "Further Reading". " See, for instance, the book of the Saint-Simonist, Laurent, Réfutation de Γ histoire de France de l'Abbé de Montgaillar (1829). 3 There were, of course, numerous Republicanism groups representing the various shades of opinion, e.g. the "right" wing of Lafayette and the "left" of Cavaignac See TchernofT, Le parti républicain.

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they both clung. Convinced too of the moral Tightness of their beliefs, they were certain that the triumph of the people was at the same time the triumph of virtue or if that was too Robespierrist at that time, at least the aim was to improve constantly the lot of the most numerous class, to achieve in fact the social revolution - all of which was of course pure Saint-Simonism. In all this we cannot expect perhaps much logical consistency. Revolutionaries are men of action, not theoreticians and the Republicans went on putsching until 1834. Yet it might be of interest to know what they imagined the nature of the rock was to which they clung so firmly. Firstly the people were the vast mass, they were everyone who worked in some way or other but at the same time they were the prolétaires, the ground down serf-like exploited. The people created all the wealth in the country therefore they alone should be the state. Sovereignty had then to be accorded to them. Happiness was also seen as the government of the people. One has only to think of the very high esteem in which Blanqui held the people at that time. To him the people were always ready to risk their well-being and life for moral interests. It was not the desire for bread which moved them. "Il n'obéit point à des vils intérêts d'argent, mais aux plus nobles passions de l'âme, aux inspirations d'une moralité élevée." 4 The people were then truly good and the aim was to achieve universal suffrage so that the people could effect their will, achieve their social revolution - for under the Saint-Simonist influence this latter point was becoming the vital one - to alter society in order to achieve equality and happiness for all. Political action becomes solely the means to achieve the real end - social action whereby of course it was still clearly believed that political action had some force - unlike the Saint-Simonists themselves who, for the most part, rejected it altogether. The Republicans still felt that open political struggle could achieve at least something. All this was backed of course by moral beliefs. For instance, it was said in a pamphlet of 1833, "les républicains sont ceux qui, dominés d'un ardent amour de la justice, renoncent à leur intérêt particulier pour établir, aux dépens de leur vie, les lois de la justice et de la raison". 5 Virtue is the perfect conformity of the individual will with the General Will. The moral order must enter into the political order, the only nobility that of virtue and so on. Here is the ever-recurring synonymity of virtue and people.

4

"Rapport sur la situation intérieure" (1832), Textes choisis, ed. Volguine (Paris, 1955), p. 93. 5 Pamphlet of June 1833 quoted in Gisquet, Mémoires 2 (Paris, 1840), p. 289,

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But what of vice ? Here comes the reverse side of the picture - the evil that has to be overcome, "la canaille aristocratique". Just as after 1789, there now appeared the same tendency to divide society into a mass of hopeless oppressed, crushed down by a small top layer of privileged - only this time it was not sansculottes and aristocrats but prolétaires and bourgeoisWe have already seen how the Saint-Simonists made popular the motion of the "bourgeois class", the class of oppressors, the idlers, those who lived off others. N o w we go perhaps even a step further for we see them as the absolute embodiment of vice or in the words of the pamphlet mentioned above, those who are, "dominés d'un ardent amour d'eux-mêmes, renoncent à leur conscience et à la justice naturelle pour établir aux dépens de l'humanité les lois de leur égoisme et de leur perversité." 7 Whilst of course there is not much point in considering "reality" here, it perhaps should be pointed out that as regards the actual government after 1830, the liberals had definitely failed to gain a footing so that it was rather Guizot with his notion of enlightened élites who began to dominate so that it could be said there was some justification for the Republicans' view that an élite ruled and that an élite prevented the legal extension of political rights although more truthfully they should have said an élite notion ruled. To complicate the position still more, Guizot always regarded himself as representing the bourgeoisie so it is little wonder that the Economist notion of people-bourgeois-industrials tended to be increasingly obscured. We do not mean to say, of course, that French society really was divided in this way if it ever was divided at all. We refer strictly to ideas and merely wish to show that Guizot's way of thinking provoked the Republican way of thinking. One unpleasant consequence, however, of the élite notions on the right was the frustration of the left in political action which in turn led to the search for more and more violent remedies, left wings sprouting forth still more leftish wings so that for a long time the political scene becomes one of confused agitation seemingly without rhyme or reason. Since we are exploring ideas and not the substratum of ideas, it is hardly our business to ask exactly where those vicious bourgeoisie or virtuous prolétaires were to be found. However, it is interesting to note that for the

c It is interesting to see that Gisquet in the above work, 1, p. 247, makes an impassioned defence for the bourgeoisie as a term meaning the great mass of the people just as André Chénier had done forty years earlier. The fight over concepts starts again!

7

Ibid., 2, p. 289.

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first time there appears to be some movement on the part of workers themselves as perhaps the first discomforts of mechanisation made themselves felt as also the first results of Saint-Simonist propaganda. For instance, the first notable workers' newspaper L'Écho de la Fabrique, started in Lyons during the troubles of 1831 - is full of Saint-Simonist phrases. Yet, some things are obvious. For instance, whilst the workmen were by no means always in opposition to their "masters", it was clear that in times of stress they were more likely to turn on the "entrepreneurs" than the idle capitalist so that Saint-Simonism was not altogether an ideal doctrine for the defects of industrialisation. For, if the workers were slaves of some kind, then they might be expected to attack their slave drivers - the overseer, the foreman, the "boss" rather than the governing "bourgeoisie". There lay the task. To turn industrial discontent to class discontent and class discontent to aspirations for a political and social revolution. There was still a long way to go - a lengthy abstraction from the direct anger with machines or slumps. The other side - the leaders of the left had still a long way to go too. It was easy to say "no hope except in the prolétaires''' and to visualise this class as forming the mass of the people - 22,000,000 to 30,000,000. 8 Yet how could that be? In all this, there can be no doubt then that the 1830 Revolution represented an important turning point. We have no further need to discuss industrialism. As far as the trend of ideas is concerned, that doctrine is finished. If anything, the Left after 1830 represented one big moral protest against anything to do with this doctrine - against economics, "ideology" and materialism - all classed together with aristocratism and oppression. As we have seen, there was a vague search for a basis in the "people", reviving in this way ideas of Rousseau and Robespierre but the leap into the state or the patrie was complicated by all the new ideas on economics, the new notion of social revolution and organisation of work. They could not avoid the industrialist heritage so the easy solution evades. Everything is confused. Was the answer to be found in a new morality, the triumph of virtue over egoism or was it to be in economics, the triumph of the prolétaire over the bourgeoisie ? The two concepts become hopelessly confused. Was too the solution to be political, the establishment of democracy, the triumph of the General Will or was it 8 In the 1830s the proletariat was variously estimated at 22 to 30 millions. This must therefore comprise "the productive class" in the Saint-Simonist sense, farmers, peasants, craftsmen, manufacturers etc. as has often been pointed out (see "Further Reading"). Yet how does that accord with the picture invariably painted of the proletariat at this time as an army of slaves?

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to be social, the reorganisation of society or could the two be amalgamated? What too was happiness - more goods for all or modest frugality? Should then the new manufacturing system be encouraged but controlled, or should it be rejected? At first, in this flux of ideas nothing seemed fixed and definite, all were absorbed in violent action rather than reflection. Yet eventually certain doctrines emerged which we shall now consider.

20 SOCIAL MORALISM AFTER J 833

If we were to be asked to characterise the thought of this period in a few words, we could only say moralism or social moralism, and since of course it was at this time that the word socialism appeared, it would perhaps not be altogether wrong to see Socialism as just that, the moral protest against all the ideas of the previous 30 years or so - materialism, industrialism, economism, atheism and so on, seen all from the standpoint of the good of society. Clearly, on this basis, the protest movement was a desire for a return to some spiritual principle as opposed to the cogging permeations of materialism. Let us consider this in detail, for although spiritual ideas are not to our theme, we still have to know what the Socialism of this age was and what it was not. In general, it could be said that, from out of the many writings of these Socialists, there emerges one dominant spiritual doctrine which is constantly used as a basis for the whole subsequent theory. The idea can roughly be said to be as follows : The earth is the place on which God unrolls his Divine plan for the perfection of humanity. Man by his heart or his conscience or by some other faculty can perceive this plan and, if he wishes, can co-operate with it. The purpose of God can then be known, in particular now since men can view the development of God's purpose over history. The aim of God can accordingly be seen to lie in the realisation of fraternity, or justice (Buchez) or equality (Leroux) or liberty (Lamennais) or social unity (Pecqueur). The main emphasis was usually on equality, social unification and harmony. For instance, the laws which Pecqueur believed God had engraved on the soul of man were, not to do to others what you would not have done to yourself, to do to others as you would be done by and to love your neighbour and humanity as yourself or more so. 1 It was then God's will that there should be no privilege, no domination, no castes and no classes. This equalitarian aim in their 1

Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d'économie sociale et politique (Paris 1842), p. 2.

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eyes could most clearly be seen in the course of history, especially in that vital turning point, the establishment of Christianity so that, for instance, Buchez views all history subsequent to the birth of Christ as merely the working out of the possibilities inherent in Christianity. 2 For him, the basis of modern civilisation was to be found in the Gospel. For Leroux too, Jesus Christ was a most important figure, being the destroyer of castes. In fact, to Leroux and others, the French Revolution was solely derived from his teachings, being merely the most advanced consequences of Christianity. The rule of brute force and domination had been gradually worn down over the centuries by the new moral principles so that its achievement would soon be realised in the complete end of all distinctions, all classes. 3 In fact, the time was approaching when the Christian principle could be achieved not only in the individual but in society. God would preside over the inauguration of this new era for the economy of society rests on its moral and religious beliefs, so that all material improvements were dependent on the limits of morality o f t h a t time. 4 God has prepared the way. The coming of Christ meant the destruction of slavery and serfdom and now this force would destroy too all traces of the remaining oppression in order to realise the truly religious society, which might be anything from Pecqueur's industrialism to Cabet's Communism. In any case, it would mean the end of evil, the end of egoism and greed, force and cruelty. It meant too the end of materialism and atheism, a return to the belief in the moral liberty of man, and the trust in God as the controller of all things. 5 All processes and progress were merely the working out of the will of God. Man could either help to achieve it all voluntarily by working harmoniously with God and so reaching the determined end peacefully, or he could reach it involuntarily by suffering and misery until he came back to God, ceasing thereby to be the plaything of blind forces. Furthermore society would be the place where man would enter into his true self for his true self was beyond his individuality. It lay in the community, in the fraternity of men working harmoniously together in their society which in fact was the harmony of God. "Nous sommes principalement un ctre collectif, en ce sens que nous sommes solidaires devant Dieu et dans 2

Bûchez, Introduction à la science de Γ histoire, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1842). L e r o u x , De l'égalité, nouvelle ed. (Boussac, 1848). 1 P e c q u e u r , Des Ameliorations matérielles dans leurs rapports avec la liberté 2nd ed. (Paris 1843), p. 124. 5 Sentiments well expressed by L a p p o n e r a y e in his Mélanges d'économie sociale, de littérature et de moral (Paris 1835-36), 2 vols. 3

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l'accomplissement du but terrestre qu'il est manifestement dans sa volonté de nous faire poursuivre de concert comme une condition d'harmonie universelle."0 Without the belief in God, there was nothing but force and the might of the strongest but, with this belief in God, man could go beyond himself to love, union, and sacrifice. We will not say that Bûchez, Leroux, Lammenais, Pecqueur, Cabet, Laponneraye, and others all subscribed exactly to the above summary but surely it was the essence of the ideas of these early socialists. Even Blanqui accepted such notions, for he certainly praised Jesus Christ just as he praised Robespierre and spoke too of the struggle of the true principles of equality against privilege. In any case, he was certainly an idealist and moralist at this time7 - there were very few who were not and these we shall consider later. For all the others, it was this religious background which made sense of their other views. For clearly if the law of God was to achieve equality, love, harmony, and justice without any oppression or exploitation, something was obviously wrong with the existing society. Somewhere someone was not loving enough, somewhere egoism was rife. Forgetting rather the Christian principle of looking at the beam in your own eye rather than the mote in your neighbour's, these socialists saw quite clearly the source of evil as existing in the rich and the powerful because of course they could not have become rich and powerful without being greedy and dominating. To attain the perfect society, then, there must be some moral change on the part of this section of the community - a moral change effected, however, by a social change - a new organisation of property or maybe the abolition of property but some such solution which could bring about the state where everyone would love everyone else and all could live happily together. This quite clearly excludes notions of force, of compulsion and of social warfare. Now, of course, if this was all there was to offer from the early French socialists, we might well say Marx had better have saved his time reading them. In fact, however, like the Saint-Simonists, whose followers they mostly were, there were a few points in which their criticism of society tended to spark off the possibility of a new concept of historical materialism. We have seen that for the most part these socialists made a moral criticism of certain elements in society but at the same time the moral criticism became an economic criticism so that the disease of society lay not only in greed, egoism and selfishness but in its economic forms, in particular, that economic class embodying greed, egoism and selfishness. 6 7

Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle, p. 193. See Dommanget's and Spitzer's books as listed in "Further Reading".

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It is therefore to this criticism we must look and not the remedies for which indeed Marx had the most profound contempt. We saw then that in the minds of the Socialists there was in the world a moral struggle, a struggle between the principles of Good such as love, equality, fraternity and justice against the principles of Evil such as egoism, greed and privilege. God had so arranged the world that Good would ultimately triumph with man eventually realising on earth a perfect society, a reflection of the God-like society. All this expresses the deep moral longings for a good world so characteristic of socialism at least until recently when they have been usually dismissed as political messianism or something equally disreputable. The other notable feature of this world view was that the evil lay not so much in the individual as in a class - a tendency derived from the earlier ideas when a collective concept such as the people was apparently viewed as the whole into which the class of the particular, the individual with its evil will, must merge itself. Such ideas became widely prevalent in the 1830s. Society, it seemed, was mostly definitely divided into two classes. Yet, under the influence of the Economists, it was quite impossible to view this division as simply between good and evil, that is, rich and poor. Ideas on class categories had progressed and therefore the class divisions had become much more precise and economically specified so that, for instance, evil has a much greater economic look about it than it had in the days of Robespierre. It did still remain, however, that same moral evil without, of course, any attempt to pretend otherwise. Moreover, as we saw, God stands behind the people so that in this respect the doctrine is most definitely transcendental. The people too were in the majority. Although apparently a mass of serf-like workers, they formed the immense mass of the inhabitants of France. Since the nobles had been ejected in 1830, the centre of evil was clearly the "bourgeoisie" for the Saint-Simonist propaganda had been most effective in this respect. And it was this class which interests us because, of course, stripped of its moral or immoral function (or was it ever stripped of it?) it was to play a very active role in the new version of economic materialism. It was, of course, the Saint-Simonists who really made the "bourgeoisie" into an economic category and a centre of hate. Moreover, we have seen if this view of society was to be effective where it was desired that it should be effective, namely, amongst the workers, the view of the bourgeoisie as solely the idler class with the class of prolétaires comprising the "bosses" was going to need some revision and it is interesting to note that the man who did revise it was, in fact, most

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concerned with workers' associations - Bûchez. He was the first to distinguish between exploited workers and exploiting workers with the latter, that is, the chefs d'industrie appearing as allies of the exploiters or the capitalists - not of the workers so that in his view this category should also be regarded as parasitic, living off the mass of the people. In the association, of free workers as imagined by Buchez, the "intermediate" group was due to disappear along with the idler capitalists. At first this might appear but a slight modification of the original SaintSimonist doctrine but in reality it opens up a whole set of problems and it is the real commencement of the complete and final break-up of the doctrine of "industrialism". For instance, it opens up an immense gap between grades of "industrials" so that the remedy for abolishing idlers - the end of inheritance and interest, had to give place to a much more radical shake-up, in fact, a complete re-formation of industry. Again this concept leads invariably to the notion of "workers" as the vital class. Yet who are they and who are the chefs d'industrie? If we think of France at that time as covered with vast factories, it would then be an easy matter to say the vast mass of wage slaves are the workers and their managers are the chefs d'industrie. Buchez, in general, probably thought on these lines8 but he surely could not help at times seeing the numerous small enterprises and thinking of all those little "masters" with one or two workmen. Were they too chefs d'industrie? If France were not covered with vast factories, then the workers were by no means the vast masses at all. Here we approach the condition when it seems we are looking through distorting mirrors. One moment there are the people-the exploited poor, the prolétaires, big and extensive; the next moment we look and there they are small and insignificant and the same of course for their Ebenbild, the bourgeoisie. There seems little sense in it all, yet the power of ideas was so strong that none of these socialists seemed to be at all aware of, firstly, the contradictory character of their concepts and, secondly the complete irreality of them. 9 The fact is that the economic analysis was embroidered on to the people concept and the people have to stay in the majority even if that means, in terms of economic concepts, making France one big factory. That the people concept comes first is quite obvious from the notions of Blanqui. 8

For instance he wrote, "les salariés forment la masse de la population européenne .. .En Angleterre, ils en composent les trois quarts, et en France davantage encore." Introduction à la science de Γ histoire I, p. 25. 8 Leroux was talking about France being in a reality a house of commerce directed by 196,000 bosses, employing 30 million workers. See his De la ploutocratie. Lamennais wrote in a similar strain in De l'esclavage moderne.

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These notions have aroused much discussion and he has, in fact, been denied any true economic insight into classes on the Marxist pattern. 10 The truth is that Blanqui was proceeding from the people concept of Robespierre and in the early period had not much interest at all in the economic basis of this class. Of course, later this indifference to economic categories was regarded as "backward" and in the words of Plekhanov, "such views of the socialist Utopists form theoretically and practically a retrograde step in comparison t o . . . the views of the idéologues of the revolutionary bourgeoisie".11 But that all merely shows the difference in interest. Blanqui was typical of the revolutionaries of the 1830s. He saw the proletariat as the vast masses with the class of idlers living off them - in the usual Saint-Simon fashion. For him the bourgeoisie were but a bastard branch of feudalism and 1830 a squabble between rival nobilities - "deux principes se partagent la France, le principe de la légitimité et celui de la souveraineté du peuple. Le premier, c'est la vieille organisation du passé,... Le principe de la souveraineté du peuple rallie tous les hommes d'avenir, les masses, qui fatiguées d'être exploitées, cherchent à briser ces cadres dans lesquels elles se sentent étouffer. Il n'y a pas de troisième drapeau, de terme moyen. Le juste milieu est une niaiserie, un gouvernement bâtard... " 12 Any study of all his writings at this period clearly reveals him to be - as regards classes - a Saint-Simonist-Robespierrist, not even having advanced to the Buchez notion of separating the entrepreneur from the workers. Moreover it is extremely doubtful whether he had any notion of class struggle beyond the Saint-Simonist ideas for although he wrote, "il y a lutte... dans cette lutte, l'un des partis doit succomber",13 so did, in fact, the Saint-Simonist Bazard and anyway considering that Blanqui at this time believed in universal suffrage, the solution could easily rest in the rule of the majority over the minority. The point to note here is that these Socialists of the 1830s had imagined a class cut off from the people-society - the bourgeoisie, the composition of which was not quite definite, ranging over men of government, bankers, capitalists, idlers and possibly chefs d'industrie too. This class 10

D i d Marx either? See Sorokin, "Qu'est-ce qu'une classe sociale?", Cahiers internationaux de sociologie (1947). For the discussion on Blanqui, see Dommanget, p. 232. ff. and Spitzer, p. 96 ff. 11 Plekhanov, "Über die Anfänge der Lehre vom Klassenkampf", Die Neue Zeit (1902-3), p, 296. 12 Textes Choisis (1832), p. 94. 13 From a Blanqui manuscript from the beginning of the July monarchy, quoted in D o m m a n g e t , p. 251.

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had usurped a false position in the state, had by evilly adopting the old feudal notions of conquest, domination etc. again established a régime of oppression. But the socialists did not advance from this position to declaring class war, for in their eyes this situation could be quite easily remedied since these bourgeois were after all nothing but a branch of the good people and all they had to do was to see the light, return to the fold and cease their stupid strivings for power. In other words, we have the term "bourgeois class" but still not much to go with i t - t h e most advanced position still being that of the Saint-Simonists. Look, for instance, at Cabet. He had even reached the point when only the abolition of property could bring about the reign of virtue and was therefore one of the feared Communists yet one look at his class ideas makes him appear much less revolutionary than the Economists in the 1820s. Cabet had in fact no more than two classes, oppressors and oppressed. The oppressed were the people ; they had risen up in the Middle Ages from slavery and serfdom to freedom and industry, because they loved work and hated idleness, cruelty, and war. Unfortunately some of these virtuous people took the wrong path, their wealth went to their heads, they began to behave oppressively, they became the bourgeoisie although in actual fact their interests were the same as those of the people. For Cabet, the root of this evil lay in property, since property caused greed and egoism and therefore resulted in oppression and domination. Abolish property, and you abolish egoism and therefore you abolish strife and so you can establish the harmony so urged upon man in the teachings of the Gospel. On no account had there to be force or compulsion in this for, "vous pouvez détester l'égoïsme et surtout sa cause ; mais rien ne me paraît moins raisonnable, moins juste et surtout plus maladroit que d'insulter et de menacer la nombreuse classe des marchands et des fabricants".14 Here, of course, we can see by the way how the bourgeoisie become "numerous" when good whilst they invariably shrink to an aristocratic élite when bad. Although it is possible to produce hundreds of violent, virulent statements against the bourgeoisie, no theory of the war of classes appears - no one ever really defined the "bourgeoisie", and no one ever declared war on it. In spite of all the hatred scattered around, the ultimate desire was a grand reconciliation when the bourgeoisie would become people again and so together could go hand in hand to build the promised land. 14

See Cabet, Voyage en Icarie (Paris, 1848), p. 562-3. Pecqueur too for all his reputation as a forerunner of Marx was a determined campaigner for class reconciliation and social harmony. His remedy was always the "association and solidarity of capitalists and workers". See "Further Reading".

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Even that famous workers' journal L'Atelier founded originally by Buchez which certainly contained the clearest economic definition of classes, posing Capital and Talent against Labour and setting forth in unmistakable language the struggle of workers against the capitalists, almost in fact suggesting a state of Socialism as opposed to a state of Capitalism, did in the end always come back to reconciliation - the two classes were solidaire for after all they had all only one master, Jesus Christ, and all were brothers. 15 And, in this way, the bourgeoisie-capitalist is suddenly transformed in the prodigal son. Undoubtedly all this confirms to the chameleon character of the "bourgeois" idea. Who, indeed, were these "bourgeois" - "industrial barons" or the "shopkeeper round the corner" ? That obviously depends on whether you love them or hate them - at least at this period. In spite of all this "solidarity", it was however equally undeniable that certain class concepts were developed in this period and increasingly the picture was drawn of society divided up into two camps whereby something had to happen before the state of latent warfare could end. To our mind, it sometimes seems that the French Socialists obstinately refused to draw the obvious conclusions from their own doctrines. At the same time, it cannot be denied that they formed the basic notions, constructed the pieces as it were, so that a formative mind could use them to construct a pattern not recognisably theirs. All the same, a vital piece was still missing. The people or prolétaires face the bourgoisie, that is clear. But why? How did it happen? What is the historical process which caused this? The Economists had developed a very neat theory on the development of the people-industrials from the womb of feudalism. For the most part, the Socialists copied this scheme with the mere addition of the bourgeoisie as an errant branch of the people, hardly even making use of the Saint-Simonist idea of a bourgeois-liberal stage of economic development. For the return to a theory of historical development in stages, we must consider the most popular sect after the Saint-Simonists, the Fourierists. 15

See A. Cuvillier's Un Journal d'Ouvriers - L'Atelier (Paris 1954), p. 131 and passim. Although Cuvillier points out that L'Atelier defined class in terms of industrial production and not in terms of living standard, he fails to point out the weakness of the definition. If the majority of society was not involved in such production, the definition is not very helpful unless some theory is formed whereby such a form of production will become general. L'Atelier did not do this and consequently was constantly becoming entangled with the idea of the bourgeoisie as a small number of exploiters and the idea of the bourgeoisie as "petits employeurs", "ouvriers patentés", "chefs d'ateliers", "contre-maîtres" etc.

21 COMMUNISTS

Two groups are still left to consider - the Communists, sometimes seen as the forerunners of Marx, and the Fourierists who, if anything, were in fact the forerunners of Marx. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that in the spirit of materialist Communism we see the spirit of Marx, but in the system of Fourierism we see at least something like the system of Marx. Looking first at the Communists, it is difficult immediately to see anything at all. To study them indeed is to delve into chaos for their distinguishing feature is a complete lack of order, system, or regularity of thought, their works being mere propaganda tracts rather than expositions of political and social ideas. Here, of course, we refer to what Lorenz v. Stein termed the materialist Communists not the religious Communists of the Cabet variety. Morange adopted another form of classification, distinguishing between them according to the criterion of fraternity or equality, that is, those whose aim chiefly was fraternity and those whose aim was equality. Admittedly these groupings are useful in dividing up the various schools of thought but at the same time it should be remembered that the "materialist" were very small in number, although of course it is they who, with their anti-religious, anti-idealistic convictions, correspond more to the tenor of the Communist Manifesto, that is, as regards its call to battle, to class warfare, to the demand for rights and justice than do, for instance, Cabet's "sentimental" desires for class solidarity and harmony. 1 Yet although these materialist Communists contributed perhaps the feeling, they could hardly be said to have added much to the reasoning. In fact, their systems lack even the justifications of those of a Cabet or a Laponneraye. Those who saw evil in property because property created egoism, selfishness and greed might be said to have at least a moral justification for removing it if they believed this would establish the brother1

Lorenz v. Stein, Geschichte des Sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich II (1921 München), p. 380. See also Morange, Les idées communistes dans les sociétés sécrètes (Paris 1905).

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hood of man, the harmonious co-operation of all with all which was what they desired. Indeed, they all ultimately believed that the economic aspect of life was the manifestation of evil so that any mere modifications were useless ; the economic aspect had to disappear completely and with it the evil in the shape of passion and egoistical desires - one could almost say the particular will. These views might be regarded as correct if evil were in property and not in men, so that communism would mean the end of the root of evil and the restoration of harmony. If the Economists had been saying, follow our economic system and the particular will will become the general will, the Communists were saying follow our system and there will be no particular will. These ideas are the basis of all types of Communism at this time just as they had been the basis of Babeuvism earlier but as we saw with Babeuf the basis is a very shaky one on the whole without the religious buttress, which of course the idealists such as Cabet and Laponneraye had. They had not to concern themselves about economic justification for they postulated love and Christian harmony as the aim. But what of the true Babeuvists of this period? We hear much of Babeuvism before 1840 but it is very difficult to pin it down and probably in fact these materialist Communists are the first active manifestation of this line.2 Communism as a definite doctrine appeared about 1839 and by 1844 the movement apparently was dying away, absorbed in the general reform movement initiated at that time. It was thus merely a sporadic episode of the period when all extremes were greeted by a small group with enthusiasm. The representatives were chiefly Dézamy, May and Pillot with such journals as L'Humanitaire, Tribune du Peuple, L'Homme Libre. This materialist branch of Communism naturally waged bitter warfare on the idealists, in particular, Dézamy and Cabet seemed to have maintained a fierce hatred of each other. Dézamy in fact was completely opposed to the Cabet notion of dévouement. He resisted all ideas of the reunion of classes and therefore all strivings for fraternity, insisting on the establishment of equality by the simple removal of the egoistical aristocracy on top. For Dézamy was, just as everyone else in that circle, convinced that his proletariat was the huge majority of the people consisting of all workers, - peasants included 3 , whilst the bourgeoisie comprised solely the rentiers, the capitalists, the 2

It is true that in the mass of propaganda in the early 1830s Babeuvist phrases appear but the main line is derived clearly from Robespierre. The first definite manifestation seems to have been in VHomme Libre (1838). See "Further Reading". 3 And, of course, as any work on French economic history of this period shows, the vast majority of Frenchmen were still peasants in 1840.

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landowners, the factory owners, and all those with the vote. He hated towns, he hated commerce and could see no advance or progress, for he was convinced the present day slavery was worse than the old. Pillot did concede some advances in the arts and in science but otherwise the position was very dark, history being nothing but the constant repetition of power struggles between castes or coteries with the mass of the people in dull enslavement. The slogan was thus death to all coteries, the aim the happiness of the people with the satisfaction of all true needs and the restoration of the natural equality - all to be achieved by Communism. In all this, we can but agree with Plekhanov when he said that the idea of struggle certainly appears in these writings and the enmity of classes is most suitably emphasised ; just as in fact Thierry opposed the nobles, so they oppose the money aristocracy - but that was all. We can follow Plekhanov too in saying that their class notions were not so clear as Guizot's, although we would prefer to say not so clear as Dunoyer's. 4 These Communists in fact show not the slightest interest in relating classes to forms of economic production. What indeed are Pillot's coteries and Dezamy's bourgeoisie - an agglomeration of oppressors with unchanging historical continuity over the centuries. What is their class war but the war of the non-privileged against the privileged, the have-nots against the haves so that harmony is a simple achievement - merely the removal of a small but persistent class of parasites. As Cuvillier says, there is nothing here but the war of the rich and the poor, the chateaux and the chaumière without any notion of industrialism at all, let alone the idea of absorbing it into a third phase.5 Their vision of the future too had the rural simplicity imagined by Babeuf - the end of luxury, the abolition of capital and the reduction of towns. Accordingly there is truly not. much intellectual meat here, although it might represent some food for the feeling.

4 5

Plekhanov, "Die Anfänge".. Die Neue Zeit (1902-03), p. 297. Cuvillier, Hommes et idéologues de 1840 (Paris, 1956), p. 237.

22 THE FOURIERISTS

With the collapse of the Saint-Simonist movement in 1832, several followers went over to another doctrine which was being very successfully propagated by Victor Considérant at this time - Fourierism. Such figures as Transon, Lechevalier and Pecqueur all changed their convictions but perhaps not their tactics. The same proselytizing force so noticeable in the Saint-Simonist movement became the characteristic feature of the Fourierists too. They founded the journal Le Phalanstère. Lectures and courses were given so that this movement became very popular and influential in the 1830s and 40s. The active figure behind it all was not so much Fourier as Victor Considérant, an early believer who was able not only to make the unintelligible intelligent but also popular, so that on top of the widespread Saint-Simonist vocabulary must now be added that of the Fourierists. In the works of Considérant we see one very characteristic feature of the Socialists and Communists of this period - semi-determinism, that is, the belief that society and therefore man is ruled by certain economic laws which prevail until their system arrives when man is as it were reborn and by an act of will or moral determination completely ends all the iron laws and establishes the system he prefers. This, of course, raises the questions why should man be once determined and then not? And why does man prefer the new system? The usual answer was because God wills it or because of some moral intuition. But why then prefer Fourierism to another system? How does it in particular guarantee perfection? How can it be certain that exploiters will still not arise in the phalanges? All this, of course, makes all these systems "Utopian" in the Marxian sense, that is, there is nothing compulsive about their attainment, their achievement depending solely on the will of man. Yet there is, as we shall see, something in the system of Fourierism which did contribute to the formation of a more "determined" system. The Considerant-Fourier system of history bears at first a very remar-

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kable resemblance to that of the Economists. In their view the era called by them Civilisation was divided into four stages, the first stage was feudalism based on the aristocratic principle, chivalry, the rule of the few over the many. The second stage began to appear with the enfranchisement of the communes when the suppressed people started to demand their rights, began to oppose work to force, democracy to aristocracy, Christianity to chivalry, with the fundamental principle being liberalism. The mass of the people were involved in this struggle but they were led by the educated and more prosperous section of the people - the "bourgeoisie"-the intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, merchants, craftsmen and such like. In 1789 it was this "bourgeoisie" which made the revolution in order to achieve political rights for all the people, to achieve freedom for everyone by eliminating forever the special privileges of the nobles. So far I am sure, Thierry would find little to object to in this account. It is the next stage which is novel. This was initiated by the principles of 1789 in their negative aspect, that is, absolutely unlimited freedom, in particular, free competition which led directly into a third stage, the stage of the mercantile principle which killed the liberal spirit. This stage was typified by anarchical competition, by the struggle of everyone against everyone else, the workers opposed to the capitalists, the consumers opposed to the producers, the industrialists opposed to the commercial element, manufacturers opposed to manufacturers and workers opposed to workers. Egoism and disorder permeated the whole of society owing to the prevalence of this economic spirit whereby everything had its price so everything was debased. Gradually arising from this anarchy appears the first signs of the fourth era - monopoly - the last stage of Civilisation. Monopoly is the natural product of free competition since the system of negative liberty reduces the proletariat to collective slavery whilst at the same time it progressively eradicates all the intermediary classes (the bourgeoisie), that is, the small and medium-sized property owners, the craftsmen, the businessmen and peasants, all doomed to be destroyed by the power of the big capitalists, the big financiers, the big property owners. Finally in the fourth stage, there will only be two classes - one small class possessing everything and the huge mass possessing nothing "living in an absolute collective dependence on the holders of capital and the instruments of labour". 1 Free competition in fact diverts all the national riches into the hands of the new aristocracy so that again

1

Considérant : Principes du Socialisme, Manifeste 2nd ed. (Paris 1847), p. 11.

de la Démocratie

au XIX-

siècle,

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a form of feudalism appears, only this time the nobility is composed of the lords of finance, industry and land. The country will be divided up into huge industrial and agricultural complexes where the masses are driven to labour for the few. This was then the inevitable march of events. No political remedies could do anything about it because whatever might be the forms of government, the power would in fact belong to the capitalists and financiers who held in their hands the economic life of the nations so that all governments were helpless against them. Such a development could be seen in England where the financial aristocracy had already been formed and the middle classes wiped out - falling down to pauperization in the proletariat. Of course, there would be resistance to the collective enslavement of the people, that progressive depression of the mass of the nation. That meant there would be a wave of revolutions, the fight of those who had nothing against those who had everything - in fact, the whole of Europe was then forming up into two classes in preparation for a wholesale jacquerie, for Monopoly transcended all national frontiers and government. All were heading for the abyss. From this it can be seen, Considérant paints in very vivid colours the coming age of horror and misery. But is it coming? Does not he with all the Fourierists behind him stand there to prevent it? Truly, it does sometimes seem that Considérant stands there like God and, as the two classes line up for the final bloody conflict, he lifts up his hand and says "Stop : let peace reign." He has indeed the answer to Civilisation, he knows how to prevent the strife and misery. Those camps of enslaved workers will be transformed into phalanges where all will live in harmony - capital, talent and labour. The magic word is Association - to secure the harmony of all; to prevent the bloody revolution by combination, fraternization and solidarity - as foreseen by Fourier. But can we believe that? Does not it seem an alien piece in the otherwise harmonious pattern ? Maybe those labour camps can be transformed into phalanges by state action but where will then be the Capital and Talent and indeed will there not have been revolutions long before Guaranteeism appears ? The fact is of course Considérant never expects the terrible events to be realised at all. He holds up Destiny. It all will not happen if . . . you all become Fourierists. What were all his depressing descriptions of Monopoly but warning pictures to scare the waverers, in particular those middle classes, the bourgeoisie, who like foolish children imagine because they are happy and contented now, they will always be so ? Let them see where their foolish principles will lead them and then show them what can be if they reform themselves.

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So might Considérant have considered it. But that makes a very unsatisfactory theory. If you have a system of determined progression, you should at least let it work for your scheme-the triumph of the class you picture as the epitome of virtue be it bourgeoisie, people or proletariat. It is then more compelling than the mixture of moral free will and economic determinism the Fourierist offered. Picturing first society divided into two warring classes, they then wave their wand and all is changed back to 1789 it seems. Of course the Fourierists really depend on the moral Tightness of their ideas but like all the movements of this time, they never elevate themselves to questioning the notions of determination and "scientific" progress, so they fall between two stools. Yet for all that, Fourierism undoubtedly was important. Guaranteeism did not seem very likely of attainment but at least the history of Civilisation fulfilled many of the demands of a Socialist economic history. Firstly it accepted completely the Economists' pattern until 1789, secondly it showed how the Economist system of economics must "automatically" lead to another stage of economic life, and thereby another set of principles beyond the liberal era; free competition necessarily dug its own grave and that was certainly a step forward in the concepts of economically determined history. We have now a well-organised system for economic progression from feudalism via the liberal era and the mercantile era to a new harmonious era, whereby at least in outline the process fulfills itself without interference, i.e. one system automatically generates the new system which will replace it without anyone doing anything about it. Of particular importance is the Fourierist transition from the liberal era to the mercantile era and from the mercantile era to the era of monopoly. Here it is perhaps necessary to emphasise that Fourier and Considérant have four stages in Civilisation. There is feudalism with the nobles in power; there is the liberal era with the people in power, their leaders being the "bourgeoisie", i.e. the people's elite fighting for universal democracy; there is the mercantile era with the anarchy of competition and the gradual depression of the people and rise of a new class and finally the new feudal era when that new class of capitalists rules over the mass of the proletar i a t - a class arising from the pauperisation of the bourgeois-people. There are, then, at least four classes - the feudal nobles, the peoplebourgeois, the feudal capitalists and the proletariat. Here it perhaps will help to clarify concepts if it is noted that Considérant consistently uses the term "bourgeoisie" in the sense exactly opposite to that so widely propagated by the Saint-Simonists. Considérant, in fact, returns to the meaning used by the Economists. He always uses the

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word to mean the better-off people - the craftsmen, the owners of a workshop, the small manufacturer, the small trader and the intellectuals. Being intelligent and educat ed, they were the natural leaders of the people to freedom and democracy. But things did not work out as they intended due to the false principle of free competition. Similarly in 1830, the bourgeoisie saw only a change of masters - an aristocracy of money instead of an aristocracy of nobles. In fact, as leaders of the people, the bourgeoisie according to Considérant ought to realise their common interest with the proletariat, should perceive that if the present system went on they would all be ground down to slaves, living in misery. From this it should be obvious that Considérant had a very favourable opinion of the bourgeoisie on the whole. In his eyes, they were the supporters of liberty and progress, of democracy and harmony. It was then their task to co-operate with the proletariat to resist the financial aristocracy and re-form industry on the Fourier pattern. It is equally obvious from all this that this bourgeoisie have nothing to do with the Saint-Simonist idler class bourgeoisie. In fact the latter were the feudal financiers, bankers and capitalists of the Fourierists whilst a Fourierist bourgeois is clearly a Saint-Simonist industrial. To make the confusion still deeper, both parties agree that the bourgeoisie made the revolution of 1789 only in the one case it was the fairly good liberal impulse and in the other case it was the pretty bad semi-feudal impulse. Here, in fact, is a very fruitful field for error and confusion. 2 Summarising, we could say that Fourierism is the last great system before Marxism. Of course, we cannot say, as does Cherkezov, that Marxism is just Fourierism. There is one very obvious reason for that. Fourierism is still by far not a full-scale system of economic determinism such as the Economists had originally presented. Although it has carried history beyond the stage of the Economists, it has not shown economically why the Fourier system was right. In fact, it had completely failed to reconcile "oughts" and "ises" in the correct manner. Of course, I am sure it never entered the heads of the founders to do so and if it had they would probably have not wanted to do so. Although full of economic and social interests, these Fourierists were certainly not philosophers - least of all 2

As anyone must know, of course, if they trouble to analyse the many variants of the use of the word "bourgeoisie". Dommanget in Victor Considérant (Paris, 1929), finds it necessary to point out that Considérant meant by the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie (p. 81), whatever that means! And if Considérant meant by bourgeoisie, petite bourgeoisie so likewise did Thierry and that makes him, I suppose, the historian of the petty bourgeoisie.

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FOURIERISTS

Condillac philosophers! They presumed their philosophy of man and thus might be said to have built their system on sand. Still Considérant sketched out certain points of detail without which it is difficult to imagine the next great system. For instance, we see the idea of the formation on an international scale of two classes - one possessing all, the other nothing, the concept of economic concentration and, in particular, the reduction of peasants to the mass of wage slaves, the notion of the transformation of free competition into monopoly with the small group possessing all the instruments of labour, together with the complete elimination of the middle classes.3 We might add, too, the vivid forcefulness of presentation for anyone reading Considerant's Destinée Sociale can not help but be struck with the dynamic attack on the old system - just as we see it in the Communist Manifesto. Completely lacking, of course, is the appreciation of the role of the proletariat and their part in achieving the determined economic evolution and revolution to the end stage, the final reduction of the "ought" to the "is" in economic progress or the absorption of the moral criticism of the 1830s into a new scheme of economic progression.

3

See Dommanget, Victor Considérant, p. 204 and Leroy, Les précurseurs français du socialisme (Paris 1948), section on Considérant.

23

MORALISM OR DETERMINISM?

The period we have just considered presents, for the most part, a picture of confusion in ideas and concepts. Undoubtedly, the French Socialism and Communism of this period can be considered as one huge moral protest, in particular against the materialist doctrines of the Economists. Yet these protestors cannot themselves escape economistic explanations and interpretations, although, since in their case they are deprived generally of their material basis, they become gratuitous and confusing additions to moral doctrines. In no case did these Socialists and Communists seek to prove their moral claims by reducing them solely to economics, by making them "scientific", yet they cannot help mixing up the two. Nor can they resist the tendency to make common human virtues and vices into class characteristics. This, of course, was a trait of very longstanding but at this point one often wonders if moral categories are being reduced to economic groups or economic groups elevated to moral categories. Certainly, it is quite easy for us to see the origin of classes in the moral division of good and bad. The only difficulty of that age was in determining exactly who were good and who bad. Of course, the people were good. But who were the people? Of course, the bourgeois were bad. But who were the bourgeois ? One has, for instance, only to study Louis Blanc's Histoire de Dix Ans to see into just what knots he ties himself by using a very slippery definition of the bourgeoisie. On some pages this class shrinks to the Saint-Simonist idler elite, on other pages it fattens out to the Fourierist-Economist bourgeois-people. Sometimes it is a terrible monster, an ogre, eating up all the property of the people and, at other times, it designates a peaceful kindly group, perhaps gone astray a little, but, of course, just waiting to rejoin into the mass-people again.1 Let us look, too, at the people. Are they the mass of starving, crushed down wage-slaves, is France indeed one huge factory? In fact at this time 1

See throughout L. Blanc's Histoire de Dix Ans (Bruxelles, 1846).

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only 8 million out of 34 million lived in towns at all and if we consider the peasants, it is clear they did not, by any means, view themselves as crushed down wage slaves. Why then this preoccupation with wageearners or wage-slaves and industrial exploiters ?2 Still we cannot deny these ideas were widespread, and used to interpret "reality". Everywhere was that intense moral indignation - the hatred of the doctrines of the Economists, the doctrine of the Liberals, materialism, free competition and everyone was very voluble. Yet for all that, they seemed quite incapable of changing it all. Their moral protest seemed to lack the substance required to storm the economic fortress. Moreover all their "oughts" differed so greatly from one another that often enough they tended to hate their fellow socialist more than the capitalist enemy. Discordant, and disharmonious amongst themselves, there seemed little hope of influencing the masses in any way. They lacked too the necessary force of argument. Always they took over the basic concepts from the Economists themselves, accepting the whole determined process as if it were a facet of reality - except as it affected the present. Everything came because it must but it should not be there now. Therefore their protests appeared merely futile ravings at the iron laws of nature. In fact, to convince they would surely have had either to supersede these laws by other laws of their own making or at least would have had to reveal them to be not laws, to prove in fact that man was completely free to make and break them at will. Such an idea - the freedom of man to create everything as he wished and to see all created in respect to himself at least as his own work, to be changed, altered and modified at will, as he desired - that was in fact an idea most alien to the whole intellectual atmosphere of this time. Always there were subterranean forces working off stage as it were to influence man and his society even with the "moralists". Only one man at this time (pre-1848) even attempted to transcend this position and see man as a free being and that was Proudhon who at times seems to bring a breath of fresh air in the vaporous ramblings of this period. Admittedly, Proudhon himself can hardly be exempt from the charge of rambling, tending as he does to delight in displaying at every available occasion his excessive erudition, but he alone tried to tackle the problem of man as man and not of man as a social projection. For instance, he had no truck with the notion of idealising the people in the shape of the proletariat any more 2

A s Thureau-Dangin says in his Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet 6, p. 123 on Blanc, "He only saw in society industrial work and in industrial work only the problem of competition."

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175

than the notion of the complete vilification of the rich. He asks simply why is man capable of the heights of grandeur and the depths of infamy. And his answer is: not because of society and its contradictions: not because of economic oppression and the evil of capital : not because of alienation and religion but because man is made like that. He has in him both good and evil. He is dual and you cannot explain it away by projecting it all into society or classes. In Proudhon's eyes, this "economizing" reduction meant leaving reality for imagination - as did, for example, humanism with its talk of the true man as opposed to the actual man. That, for Proudhon, was simply divinizing man and making the "true" society heaven. As he said, "humanism is the most perfect theism". 3 Look at man as he is, suggests Proudhon. By nature he is a sinner, not because he is an evil-doer but because he is evil made. Instinctively he could do good but instinct combined with thought and reflection can lead to actions which are evil - which, in fact, deny his whole nature and end. Perhaps by synthesizing this conflict of instinctive good and egoistic reflexion, he could raise himself to the knowledge of good but to do this he must overcome part of himself - morality must conquer animality. This applied to all men, poor as well as rich, for as Proudhon said, the heart of the prolétaire, just as the heart of the rich, was a "sewer of gushing sensuality, a centre of debauchery and deceit".4 Everyone was conceited, jealous and egoistical. There have been many systems where it seems men should have been happy but he was not. Passion prevented him so that in fact society and government but reflect the nature of man - "man is a tyrant or slave by will before being it by fortune". 5 Clearly then, Proudhon is not greatly in harmony with the wishful beliefs of his age and it is particularly obvious why Marx found his ideas extremely irritating - disturbing as he did, the very source of innate presumptions, returning to the hopeless riddle of man, the dual being of good and bad, putting forth the moral alternative instead of scientifizing it all into economics and society. Still Proudhon was the only voice. His fellow protestors trudged on in their confused mixture of economics and moralism until Marx came to put them straight.

3

See Proudhon, Oeuvres complètes IV (Paris 1872), "Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la misère", p. 369. 4 Ibid., p. 331. 5 Ibid., p. 331.

PART V

THE RETURN TO DETERMINISM

24 MARX AND THE RELATIONSHIP OF HIS IDEAS TO THE FRENCH ECONOMISTS AND SOCIALISTS

The complete divergence of the German philosophical thought from the economic type of thinking so prevalent with the French Economists and even the French Socialists is quite startlingly obvious from the writings of the young Marx. The only French thinker we have considered to whom he bears any resemblance is, of course, Rousseau but even then he had to wade through the immense idealistic terminology to get at him. Starting apparently from the original problem of Rousseau - the active man versus the passive man and the general will versus the particular will, the German philosophers had created whole systems of thought specifically designed to reconcile all divisions in man. The greatest of these systems was naturally that of Hegel. He, by an immensely sustained effort of thought created a complete web of ideas covering every aspect of man so that Rousseau's problem of man is solved philosophically by the application of this rational construction to all the manifestations or moments of man's being. This was indeed the fundamental step for, after all, the problem of man can only be solved by the mental processes of man - if indeed these powers are capable of the task - a problem which did not seem to enter into Hegel's calculations assured as he was of the innate rationality of man and the universe. In any case, Hegel might be said to have thought the problems out of existence by perceiving the ultimate progress of man in ideas. Once man can attain to reason, the problem of division is no longer actual. Since, however, not all men are philosophers and even philosophers are not ever philosophizing, the various moments of man will still exist in the state, society, family and so on. Man in ceasing to project from himself, ceasing to objectivize or alienate part of himself has, in fact, sublimated man. This in fact is beyond our whole comprehension - we would surely be completely absorbed again in spirit.1 1

It was of course Marx's criticism of Hegel that he equated objectivation to alienation. For an interesting discussion of this see Jean Hyppolite, Logique et Existence (Paris 1953) and, too, J. Y. Calvez, La Pensée de Karl Marx (Park 1956), p. 619 ff.

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Such a notion of course is that of the philosopher or even the saint. The man who still conceives the object as "objective reality" will still want to go on "alienating" himself, still want to alter not himself but that external "reality" from which he will not be deprived. In this sense, there is something in Landhut's charge that Marx de-philosophises Hegel and returns to "commonsense".2 In fact, the chief characteristic of the young Marx appears to be a firm determination to escape from philosophy into reality but yet the burden of Hegelianism weighs heavy. In particular, he cannot escape from the notion of man as "activity", making, creating his world by putting himself into it. Yet neither can he escape from his own fundamental desire to end this process - not by "philosophizing" it but by ending it in "reality". In other words, man should cease to be two, cease to oppose self to self, world to world, genera] to particular and so on. Of course, from the Hegelian standpoint this is tantamount to the desire to end the world altogether since without "projection" there is no object but for Marx it is all rather the Rousseauan question of achieving the higher self, the good self, the universal, general-will self as opposed to the lower self, the bad self, the individual, particular-will self. In this respect, the active man as pictured by Marx at this time is much more in keeping with the Rousseauan man than the Hegelian man. It, of course, is based too on Feuerbach's concept of the divided man - the man of "Verstand" and "Herz", or the world of the general, the universal, the species as opposed to the world of individuality, the senses, the passions. We know that Rousseau's solution to the problem was the jump into the state - a return almost to the antique concept of the state-society, connected with some kind of a moral regeneration of man whereby he loses his particular will in becoming part of the state, the nation, by living beyond his individuality in the universality of citizens. In achieving this transformation man acts, he works on the externality and appropriates it by shaping it to him and then letting it shape him. This all implies some revolutionary act. Hegel, of course, as a true philosopher could not possibly assent to this for what is that "externality", what is that "state", that "nation" ? Man could only realise his essence after a long process of being and by the final ultimate perception of the eternal deception. There were no shortcut leaps. The state and the society were then the necessary forms for all types of men and not revolutionary formers of man. Here, Hegel could join hands with Guizot and the doctrinaire liberals of France, 2

See Introduction to K. Marx: Die Frühschriften, 1953).

ed. by Siegfried Landhut (Stuttgart,

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whereby the political forms are necessary for man as he is and that the man beyond that "everyday" man must seek his realisation in such things as art, philosophy and religion, which thereby are not the concern of state or society but of man as the achieved individual. The very hopes and desires of Marx then put him in a class apart from the Hegelian idealistic tradition and directed him clearly to the much more practical French tradition where problems were not philosophized out of existence but solved in "reality". Marx then starts as we might see from the Rousseau position - how to resolve the "heart" or the "passion" of man by creating solely the universality, the general will. Like Rousseau, Marx tends first to see this problem resolved in democracy with society capturing the state by becoming the state or by becoming universal - all men as the lawgivers.3 So long in fact as state opposes society, man as the universal opposes man the particular, man as the communal being opposes man the egoist, citizen opposes bourgeois. Man in his particular form is the egoist and is typified by the civil society (bürgerlicher Gesellschaft), - the place in fact where everyone is at war with everyone else. The individual egoist opposes the universal in himself as present to his consciousness in the form of the state with the result that the political emancipation of this civil society is only the attempt to drag the universal down to the level of the particular - as in fact typified by the French Revolution. It did not elevate man to the universal but attempted to abolish the universal and leave solely the egoist, the civil society which being indeed an impossible condition must result in other impositions from above. Here, we see Marx firmly denying the equation that the general interest are the particular interests once bad government has been abolished. In other words, he maintains the duality of man - there is for him in 18434 a "real" man - the egoistic, individual man and the "true" man, still considered in the French Revolution as the abstract and artificial citizen. Man must emancipate himself from this real man, that is, there must not only be a political emancipation but a human one. Man must take into himself that abstract notion of the citizen and make it reality - man as the individual must become the universal, must cease to be ruled by his passion, his greed and moreover must cease to regard such as the "natural" man. In all this we see Marx opposed to both the idéologues and the Economists and indeed to a certain extent his criticism appears remar3 4

See here Kritik der Hegeischen Staatsphilosophie (1841-42). See Zur Judenfrage.

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kably familiar. We seem to have heard it all before in the mouths of the French socialists and communists who were all moralists of a similar type, if not so philosophically educated.5 It would naturally be foolish to deny that Marx was a moralist at this stage and an idealist for he knew what was the "true man", he knew that money-making was evil, he knew that the duality of man had to end. c What in fact is alienation but the duality of man - the externalisation of an 'ought' into religion, morals, government? The problem of Marx then revolves on this very question, the ending of man's duality - in the first aspect by seeing how the alienation of man can be terminated and in the second and later aspect of his thought in abolishing altogether the concept of man's duality and resolving it into "reality". Let us consider the original problem. Marx wants to end the duality of man and not by a simple denial of the "universal" impulse in man as did the idéologues but rather by the opposite process, denying the particular interest. This in some respect demands a rather more complicated scheme since it was not merely a question of explaining possible deformations of man due to wrong beliefs, bad governments or laws, the removal of which will permit the "natural" man, the happy egoist as it were to follow his desires without conflict, it is rather a matter of showing that the happy egoist is not natural but is himself a deformation and secondly by proving that the universal man is ultimately the "natural" man and is, in fact, the end of all progress. As regards the second problem, Marx had, in addition to resolving the dual man into the universal man, the very difficult task of "demoralising" the moral objections to the Economists, that is, his later task was to fit these moral claims to a "scientific" scheme, in this case the economic pattern of progress so that these claims were no longer moral commands but merely part of developing reality. In other words, he had to adapt the system of the French Economists so that it included another stage and also to re-adapt the whole system of economic progression to fit his concept of man - that is man as an active participator in his environment. This "active" concept of man is fundamental to Marx at this time and although in some ways such an idea of man is contradictory to economic materialism, in other ways it was a useful concept for "demasking" the Economists - the picture of man made by his economic life but in turn making his society, state and ideology. Certainly from early on he always resisted in a true Hegelian manner the mechanism of 18th century mate5 β

This does not mean, of course, Marx directly copied them. See, for instance, Popitz, Der entfremdete Mensch (Basel 1953), p. 82.

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rialism and insisted on the dialectic activity of man and the world. It is this principle which of course distinguishes him from Comte. 7 It is perhaps interesting to recall here Marx's statement on bees in Capital, "what distinguishes the most incompetent architect from the best bee is that the architect has built the cell in his head before he builds it in wax", 8 and compare it to the idéologues'' statements on men and bees (or beavers) ! Here, Marx's thought suggests in some ways the theories of Saint-Simon before he took to economics, that is, the split in man is projected into modes of thinking prevalent in certain eras. However, Marx no more than Saint-Simon could of course solve the problem in this way which of course reveals the pointlessness of all the return to Marxist "humanism". To solve what he felt was Hegel's unreality, Marx had to get away from all the philosophizing, had to get to reality. In a similar way to Saint-Simon, he felt he had solved the problem of reality by holding on to economics. Anyone who rejects this eventual solution of Marx must reject all Marx and get back to Hegel.9 However, let us now consider how Marx did solve this problem - in other words, how Marx demoralised Socialist morality and so got back on the level - if at a different position - as the Economists. In the young Marx, we have the dichotomy of man as universal and particular, as state and civil society, as citizen and bourgeois. By some strange chance of course, the German for civil society is bürgerlicher Gesellschaft, the society of the burgher or "bourgeois" although in fact of course neither Hegel nor the early Marx had any acquaintance with the French term "bourgeoisie" as it developed in France, particularly after 1830 when it virtually became a mere term of abuse. The burgher living in the bürgerlicher Gesellschaft is simply man in his particular aspect - the egoist. However, undoubtedly Marx's contact with the French concept of "bourgeoisie" 10 provided a certain clue out of the impasse of the divided man for Marx now begins to equate bürgerlicher Gesellschaft - once the sphere of the particular - to the "bourgeoisie", the class of "bourgeois" so that civil society does not reflect a particular 7 See Kurt Lenk's article "Die Positivistische Ideologienlehre", Dialéctica 16 (1962) - he points out the difference between Comte's idea of the science of nature and society as one and the Marx idea of the difference between natural and social sciences. See, however, for the other point of view, Acton: The Illusion of the Epoch (London 1955). On Marx's difference to the "enlightenment" man see, too S. Hook "The Enlightenment and Marxism", Journal of the History of Ideas 29 : 1 (1968). 8 Capital 1 (Everyman's Ed.) p. 170. 9 On this point see the article of D. Henrich "Karl Marx als Schüler Hegels" in Universitätstage 1961 (Berlin 1961), p. 18. 10 This trend first appears in Zur Kritik der Hegeischen Rechtsphilosphie (1844).

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aspect of man so much as a type of man - the particular man in person a class so that the duality of man becomes now the duality of class for the bourgeois or the particular man is opposed to the other French concept - the proletariat (derived ultimately of course from the Rousseau and Robespierre "people") that is, the universal man. 11 This is naturally a very vital step, representing as it does a complete break away from the German philosophical tradition and an acceptance of the whole line of French thought we have been considering. As yet, however, it could be said Marx stands no further than the French socialists or communists who of course were continually projecting moral duality on to classes - without however getting beyond that for in their eyes the reconciliation of classes lay in a moral reconciliation, the bourgeoisie in fact accepting the virtues of the proletariat. Marx did not in this reckless manner reject the anti-moral position once he had gained it. Having reached the notion of class conflict instead of moral conflict, his aim was then to show how this class conflict was "scientific" or how the economic laws automatically effect the desired moral end. Here we see the root of his violent rejection of Utopianism - not for him the idea of class reconciliation on moral terms; he wanted the "scientific" standing of the Economists. In this theory of Marx then the true man is the proletariat - he is outside the bourgeois society so that he is not in any way "particular" or alienated in himself. His struggle against society is then the struggle of the universal man against the particular man and will ultimately result in the overcoming of all such estranged conditions in man - religion, property, family, state so that man can live solely in his universal quality. The proletarian is then the saviour of all men because he ends all conflict and achieves the aim of man - the perfectly natural man in the perfectly humanized nature (the virtuous man of Rousseau). Consciousness will now simply reflect the communal existence so that man can be nothing but the social being. All duality ends - even the ideological as the reflecting spirit unites with the active real spirit. In other words, the problem of duality is, in fact, a problem of economics and society which of course is also to be found in the thought of the French Economists - although without all the complicated details of man's alienation. It is, however, this more complicated view of man which forces Marx in his early writings at least to justify his economic explanation in terms of his philosophical man. 12 11

See Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (C.U.P. 1961), p. 147 IT. See also "Further Reading". 12 In particular in Zur Kritik der Hegeischen Rechtsphilosophie.

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Having now obtained classes and the economic resolution of duality from the French, the last problem of Marx is to create a history in order to accomplish his aim. We know the history of Le Censeur européen writers and the history of Saint-Simon. Their "true" man virtually emerges in the middle ages when the rule of conquest and domination, of oppression and the exploitation of man by man was finally overcome due to the discovery of a new means of production, "industry". Marx, of course, cannot accept this. His pre-history was to be post-dated up to the rule of the proletariat. He has in fact to show that until the appearance of the proletariat, man has been imperfect, deformed, not so much by conquest and war as by greed and egoism. In this respect, his history whilst in detail very similar to the doctrine of Industrialism, and in part also to Fourierism, is in substance very close to the ideas of Rousseau. We have the good simple man - the era of primitive Communism, we have the deformation of man - according to Marx the result of the division of labour. This division of labour produces first classes, oppression, government and then the ideology to justify it all. This apparently arises from the nature of man himself, for man is not only an animal, he lives beyond himself, he can think, foresee, he can produce beyond the immediate need and therefore his immediate nature, as it were, conflicts with his higher nature until he is able by this very manner of economic production to produce his own salvation - to break away from the "civil society" and attain to conscious Communism. All this, of course, seems very much like Rousseau although it was clearly Marx's task later to "economise" to it to a much greater extent so that all would have the pattern of rigid necessity. Here, of course, the impact on Marx of the French economic doctrines and terms such as "bourgeois" and "proletariat" were important in arousing in him the feeling of having reached "reality". At last, he believed he has broken through to real actuality away from all philosophical speculation. In fact, he had only broken through to another level of thought - a more commonsensical one, perhaps, but certainly, as we have seen, no more real. Moreover, apart from the completely factual element, Marx was forced to accept without criticism certain fundamental tenets of Economism such as the notion of progress and the inevitable necessity of industry.13 la

See Popitz op. cit. As well, of course, as accepting the presuppositions of Economism, Marx of course accepts the presuppositions of the critics of Economism. Think of all the theories of Sismondi presented as facts in National Ökonomie und Philosophie, (i. e. Ökonomisch-philosophischen Manuskripte). In this respect, it is refreshing to see that Engels' work, Die Lage der arbeiteiíden Klasse in England is now coming under criticism.

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Here, it might be interesting to consider Marx's discussion of his predecessors in Die Heilige Familie. Whether the division he draws between the two lines of French thought is very relevant is open to doubt. Why Cabanis should be separated from Condillac is rather a mystery. Perhaps of more interest is Marx's notion that the ideas of Locke, Condillac and Helvetius lead straight to Communism, that is, ideas such as the influence of environment on man, the justification of pleasures and so on must lead to insight into the necessity for a humane society as it were. If man is made by his environment, man must make his environment fit for man. If man is by nature sociable then he must make his society likewise fit for man. Of course, this might all be deemed a play on the concept of man. The Helvetius system is a justification for the Helvetius man, the happy egoist, whereby the system is to ensure that public interest will never conflict with this man's private interests - when, in fact, man as Helvetius conceived him, could exist without oppression. Of course, man as he was in Marx's eyes would have some difficulty existing in the Helvetius society so that a definite change of environment would be required. Yet it is true that to a certain extent the concepts of the French philosophes but more particularly I would think the French idéologues like Destutt de Tracy were just those concepts Marx was striving to get hold of, especially the ideas concerning man's relationship to his society - after all, did not too Destutt de Tracy define freedom as the freedom to act, to express one's self in free, uncompelled activity, considering thereby that if man could not so act owing to outside forces he was unfree? These idéologues, just as Marx after 1845, had no desire whatsoever to explore man and his ideas but rather to reach out for some "scientific" certainty - i.e. to study the action and re-action of man and society. Surely then this is the attractive feature to Marx but, of course, it does not lead to Communism - it only leads to a socially and economically determined man - and as the definition of that "man" varies so will also the "determinates" of society and economics. For instance, if the "natural" man is the acquisitive man, he must have property, if he is the "universal" man, he must have no property. Here, I do not wish to deny that, on the basis of the German idealist concept of man, Marx tended at this time to have a more active man than the idéologues, that is, not only acting and being acted upon by external forces, but reflecting on and composing ideologically that society so that in turn this ideology reflects back on man. It would, however, be quite erroneous to accept simply Marx's ideas on mechanical mate-

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14

rialism. For we know for a fact that the idéologues and the Economists did not separate man from economic and social activity, far from it. They put man very firmly in it. Moreover, above all, they stressed the value of work - for was it not in fact work which had spelled the end of the long age of oppression of man by man ? In this respect, Marx owes much more to the general intellectual atmosphere created by these Economists than he either knew or recognised. His basic difference to them lies in his concept of man. The idea of Destutt de Tracy that society was nothing but a series of exchanges aroused his scorn (although in point of fact he does not show the philosophical basis for this idea).15 He was convinced that the science of economics was de-humanizing man, abstracting part of man's being - his activity, his work and subjecting it to "impersonal" laws. In this respect, he was quite at one with the French socialists. The aim must be to overcome the "science of economics" by attaining to a completely new system where man as Marx conceives him can truly exist. Yet, Marx still uses the "science of economics" to show how economically speaking the natural laws are working to achieve the end Marx destines for man. In other words, Marx uses the "science" of the Economists to overcome the "ideology" of the Economists, although clearly all their "economizing" was absolutely nothing but "ideologizing". Here lies, of course, the fundamental relationship of the two movements. Marx did not escape the ideology of the Economists. He only carried it a stage further by reducing the whole moralism of Socialism to the so-called science of economics. This was an achievement not to be despised and the results might be said to have justified it - at least, it could be said Socialism had escaped the bog of moralism as, in the form of scientific socialism, it marched onward from success to success. Yet, on the other hand, in assessing the work of Marx one should not underestimate that of his predecessors, in particular, the very fundamental spadework of those despised idéologues and Economists who, whilst perhaps having the wrong concept of man, at least showed with the utmost clarity the way to the economic interpretation of man, his society and his history. In this respect, when assessing the importance of Thierry and others in producing the notion of class and class struggle, several writers appear to find it a great defect of these authors that they did not perceive the

14

As does Cornu in The Origins of Marxian Thought (Springfield 1957). Γη "Nationalökonomie und Philosophie", Die Frühschriften (Stuttgart, 1953), p. 291.

15

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role to be played by the proletariat. 16 Such strange statements can only arise of course from a very misplaced realism. The proletariat is but a concept and since the Economists' system was completely alien to such a concept and since indeed their good class - whatever it might be calledwas necessarily the last class embracing everyone in society, it is hardly any wonder that they were completely oblivious to any subsequent class stages and indeed could only regard such notions as the "proletariat" as mere foolish perversities bearing no relation to "reality". 17 For the French predecessors to Marx's proletariat, we must of course look to the opposing strand - to Rousseau, to Robespierre and all the post-1830 Socialists whence springs the idealisation of the good people or the good proletariat - as we have seen the two terms were originally synonymous - with the bourgeois as the reverse - the egoistical man of selfish desires. Here we see then the other link of Marx to French thought - the vital role of the French socialists and communists. It is of course very easy to find many similarities to Marx amongst the French socialists and indeed he did adapt much from them although as we have already pointed out none of them ever imagined the economic system as worked out by Marx with the proletariat playing the vital role of the "excluded" man in the bourgeois society, achieving thereby the desired Communism by means of iron economic laws. That was really a tour de force - perhaps only achievable by someone who was not so vitally in opposition to the thought of the French Economists as were the French socialists.18 In coming to consider Marx's history, especially as it appears in the Communist Manifesto, one cannot help feeling that although the whole dynamic, the ideological framework is from Marx, there is as well as all the basic tenets of the French Economists a considerable proportion of Fourierism in it. This indeed was the only Socialist system in France which had any concept of economic progression whereby classes come into 16

For instance, Grossman in his article "The evolutionist revolt against classical economics", Journal of Political Economics LI (1943), says that Thierry, Mignet and Guizot only saw class struggles in the past and "failed to see their continuation in their own time". 17 For instance, see any later edition of Dunoyer's De la liberté du travail for arguments against the theories of the Socialists. 18 Whilst doubtless, as Kägi points out, in Genesis des historischen Materialismus (Vienna, 1965), p. 203, the French ideas on the proletariat were vital in forming Marx's ideas of the role of the proletariat, Marx surely contributed the system of thought for the economic role this class was supposed to play.

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conflict and from this conflict one class triumphs to assert its system against the rest until another class in turn appears and then overturns that system. We cannot say, however, that Fourierism had the same powerful economic basis as Marxism since, of course, it is not founded on any determination to economise morals. It is mainly a question of detail, in particular filling in the historical minutia - quite ignored by Marx until the Communist Manifesto. All these details are in general Fourierist - except one and it is this indeed which leads to the most confusion, the question of the progression of the "bourgeoisie". We have seen how the Economists pictured the industrial system arising in the towns, from the industry of the burghers, the bourgeois and gradually spreading over all France so that the old feudal system of oppression was eventually overcome as the whole of society gradually became industrialised or "bourgeois". We have also seen how via various theories from Saint-Simon to Louis Blanc the term "bourgeois" comes to mean a class of feudal capitalists, financial aristocrats etc. Yet we also noted that Fourier and Considérant avoided this latter use of the term "bourgeois", keeping it for the small man, the mass of society before the coming to power of the new feudal monopolist crushed them all down into a proletariat class. There was thus quite a collection of meanings to choose from. Now Marx never adopted the Fourierist four-tier scheme which might roughly be interpreted as feudal, bourgeois, capitalist and harmony. He has only three stages - at least in economic divisions - feudalism (the nobles), capitalism (the bourgeoisie), communism (the proletariat). This means Marx falls completely into the confusion of a Louis Blanc. Anyone reading the Communist Manifesto must immediately be struck by the variability of the "bourgeoisie", this class at times possessing quite amazing abilities such as, for instance, fighting itself and destroying itself in order to give birth to itself - it plays indeed a highly dynamic role in history and resembles more than anything the Hegelian Weltgeist or perhaps still more appropriately the Guizot bourgeois class which although varying all through the centuries in composition and interest remains firm to the task assigned it by God - to be the bearer of Liberty and Equality. But whilst for Guizot as an idealist there is nothing wrong that a class should be the bearer of an idea, how can Marx explain the notion economically when his "bourgeoisie" covers numerous economic stages - so many, in fact, that bourgeois economic interest conflicts with bourgeois economic interest. It is all logically absurd. Yet clearly it is the fate of anyone who takes up those French terms without defining them. Marx felt he had got a grip on reality when he found

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the "bourgeoisie" but in fact he had merely hold of a very slippery term. 19 Such points may not seem to weigh much in view of the whole system but to my mind they are important in revealing the chief weakness of Marx - using ideology and calling it reality. And how often has it been repeated that, for instance, when Marx came to Paris he saw the proletariat for the first time.20 How remarkable ! Did he too see the "bourgeoisie" ? It would be very interesting to contact a concept in this way. Marx did not travel from speculative philosophy to reality. With remarkable ability he merely adapted two systems of ideology to create a third. And his weakness lay in the fact that unlike the Economists, he was not interpreting the past as the triumph of his class, he was interpreting the past as the triumph of another class. Only the future would see the triumph of his class and that, of course, is a much more risky speculation than the Economists would on the whole have dared to make. It is easy indeed to create the past and even the present but it is something of a problem to create the future. However, we have now completed the circle. The separation of man from morality has again triumphed - in a way indeed which the earlier exponents of this view would certainly not have liked but still only their own weapons were being used if against them. All can be interpreted as "interest" and so that group passes on as the "interest", the "ideology" of the bourgeois class. No one has as yet revealed the interest or ideology of the proletariat probably because it is very difficult to accord the class itself any shimmer of reality, let alone ideology. But, of course, the system could be carried on indefinitely if necessary. Once the belief in that system fades, it can be shown up, "demasked" as ideology. The desire to achieve man as he should be is reduced to peeling off the layers of man's delusions - so Marx comes too just as near as the Economists did to "reducing" man to his basic elements instead of elevating him to his "universal" nature. In fact, so long as this whole outlook is maintained 19

It has, of course, remained slippery. See, for instance, Garaudy, Karl Marx - the evolution of his thought (London 1967), pp. 176-7 and pp. 183-4 where bourgeoisie is sometimes equated to middle class and sometimes not. To add to the confusion "bürgerlicher Gesellschaft" is occasionally called bourgeois society and occasionally civil society. 20 Of course this might be termed "progressive" in view of those writers who are determined that Marx got nothing at all from the French. For instance, Cornu in Karl Marx, Vhomme et l'olevre (Paris 1934), says Marx got the idea of the proletariat from Bakunin - but where did he get it from? The emphasis given to the influence of Stein's ideas on Marx is quite irrelevant too since often Stein was only an account of the French ideas - in Hegelian dress.

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man can only be demoted and never promoted because man is only in fact "common" as regards his fundamentals, never as regards his aspirations. Although Marx sets off with the concept of the universal man to aspire to, the solution he adopts from the French steadily condemned him to accept more and more the "fundamental" man as his unit. The non-hierarchical scheme of man instead of becoming the scheme where all the lower moments are completely absorbed into the higher resolves itself into the scheme where all the higher moments are reduced to the lower. Man is again subject to the tyranny of his own concept of man, forced to fit himself to a most unpleasant Procrustean bed.

CONCLUSION

I have attempted in this work to trace out the story of an ideology and its counter-ideology, starting with one concept of man which arose in the Enlightenment, showing how it acquired more and more actuality in founding first a philosophical system, then an economic system, and finally a whole history whilst, at the same time, the counter-ideology equipped with another concept of man provided a corrective criticism until finally the two acted jointly as material for the construction of Marxism. This concept and counter-concept created a whole range of interesting ideas from 1789. It did indeed seem at first that, after the fiasco of the French Revolution, economic determinism had the field to itself. The rapidity with which a whole new structure of thought was created is amazing. Moreover, it seemed that everywhere these ideas were being realized. Science moved from one triumph to another, technology shot ahead and everything seemed set for the full realization of "industrialism". Yet the revival of the old Rousseau-Robespierrists, ideas albeit with a Christian setting showed that the idea of social moralism was still active - man longed to live beyond himself and not be confined within a society of pure commerce. Thus we see the growth of socialism and similar manifestations appearing rather as reactions to the down-to-earth rationality of the economic man. However it was Marx who jerked sentimental socialism into the old course of economic determinism - with a difference of course but not sufficient to save the "moralism". Socialism became "scientific". It was a victory of the Condillac over the Rousseau man. In any case, whichever way we look at it, it is interesting to see the growth of an ideology and to discover that our picture of the past is often shaped in a manner quite opposed to the original picture present in the minds of those who lived at the time. For example, we tend to view "liberalism" often through the eyes of later socialists as they thought of the Economists or perhaps contrariwise we see it solely in terms of one

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individual, a Constant, or a Guizot. The result is that we obtain a confused notion and it is accordingly worthwhile to trace out the whole development. Similarly with classes - we tend to view them as stable rocks of factual reality instead of hazy and fluctuating concepts often generated in the clash of ideologies merely as terms of abuse for one's opponents and only later rationalised into a system. They were certainly far from being "scientific" terms. The same could also apply to the concept "socialism". How often is it asked whether such and such a person was a socialist long before the ideology of socialism was ever formed ? Likewise I think it could be said that an analysis of the situation reveals that the so-called open systems were on the contrary rather closed - in the sense that they were all ideological schemes resting on a priori suppositions. In other words even "liberalism" (however we consider it) was not some ideology-less production automatically reflecting some absolute truth. Each system started out with some dogmatic assertions about the nature of man and could in no case prove them, yet these principles had to be maintained or the whole system would have collapsed. Therefore, freedom lay not so much in the systems themselves as in the presence of varying systems whereby the restrictions of one could at least be counteracted by the strictures of the other. It seems no one scheme can comprise the whole of actuality and therefore, the more we have, the more we are free to express different aspects of the whole. Certainly it seems to me that the restricting notion of the utilitarian man produced its counterpart in the collective man. Furthermore the complete failure of these movements to achieve full reality seems to me to lie in the determination to assert claims to the sole valid truth. The dogmatic attitude was indeed very productive of interesting notions, especially in the idea of evil classes or bad wills yet it was also detrimental to harmony in the world of man. The failure to comprehend the psychological depths of man led to many misconceptions, to much hatred, and bitterness as ideology clashed on ideology. Furthermore, the attempt to apply the new knowledge to society in the same way as the new science was being applied to technology was to my mind a case of misdirected zeal. The malleability of man cannot be compared to the malleability of metal. Finally I hope this study will throw light on the period and on our notions of the period and reveal at the same time some purpose in the history of ideas. Our concepts of history, our formation of historical frameworks are often produced rather haphazardly and without much analysis of the material, naturally so if history is used as it has generally been used to

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shape the past in terms of the present. Since, however, the present does change, so too must the past and therefore occasional revisions of our ideas can be enlightening and while they, of course, can never show us "what really" was, they can serve to suggest possible new interpretations which may be helpful not only in viewing the past but in realizing the future.

FURTHER READING

This bibliography lists only those works I have found in some way useful to the theme or about which I feel the reader might be interested to know.

CHAPTERS 1 & 2 For this introductory section I shall not attempt to list the innumerable works which the interested reader can easily discover for himself. There are two books however - not usually listed - which I found of interest here: Hans Barth, Wahrheit und Ideologie (Zürich, 1945) - the section on Helvetius and Holbach is well worth reading and J. Γ. Merz, European Thought in the 19th Century I (1896) is useful in showing the primacy of the French in the field of "science" that is, the method of scientific thinking. Two articles on Helvetius can be noted - Jean Rostand, "La Conception de l'Homme selon Helvétius et selon Diderot" in Revue d'Histoire des Sciences (1951) and Everett C. Ladd Jr., "Helvetius and D'Holbach" in The Journal of the History of Ideas 23, (1962). As for Rousseau, Rousseau et la Philosophie Politique (Annales de Philosophie Politique, Paris, 1965) gives another airing to all the perennial Rousseau problems. Whatever Cassirer might say, I feel convinced that Rousseau was inconsistent and for Rousseau idea A it will always be possible to produce Rousseau counter-idea B. Two articles of interest are Henry Guillemin, "L'Homme selon Rousseau" in Annales de la Société J. J. Rousseau 30, (1943-45) and in the same volume, Franz Haymann "La loi naturelle dans la philosophie politique de J. J. Rousseau".

CHAPTERS 3 & 4 Condorcet: Oeuvres de Condorcet, ed. O'Connor and Arago, 12 ν. (Paris, 1847-49). A detailed biography of works on Condorcet can be found in Frank E. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris (N.Y., 1962). Additional suggestions are Henryk Grossman's article "The Evolutionist Revolt against Classical Economics", Journal of Political Economy LI (1943), Heinrich Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafts- und Staatstheorie (Berlin, 1923). The best book for assessing Condorcet's role in the revolution is Franck Alengry's work, Condorcet, Guide de la Révolution française (Paris, 1904). It is unfortunate that most general works on the revolution seldom mention Condorcet at all. Robespierre: Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1914) onwards and still progressing. Textes choisis, 3v. (éditions sociales, Paris, 1958) and Oeuvres ed. Laponneraye (Paris, 1840).

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Biographies are Bessand-Massenet, Robespierre (Paris, 1961), J. M . Thompson, Robespierre (Oxford, 1935), G . Walter, Robespierre (Paris, 1961). See too, of course, J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London 1952) and Cobban's article "The Political Ideas of Maximilien Robespierre during the period of the Convention", English Historical Review LX1 (1946). See too books listed for Chapters 5 and 6. Mention might here be made of J. McDonald, Rousseau and the French Revolution (London, 1965) although one would wish here that the author had told us where the French revolutionaries actually did get their ideas from and how it came about that these ideas bore such a remarkable resemblance to the Rousseau ideas of the Contrat Social. CHAPTERS 5 & 6 Pre-1789 ideas of class: Léon Cahen, "L'idée de lutte de classes au XVIII e siècle", Revue de synthèse historique, 12 (1906). A. Lichtenberger, Le socialisme au XVIII' siècle (Paris, 1895), Alfred Espinas, La philosophie sociale du XVIII siècle et la Révolution (Paris, 1898), Talmon as above. Terms are discussed by A. Cobban in "The Vocabulary of Social History", Political Science Quarterly LXX1 (March, 1956). 1789 ideas: E. Champion, La France d'après les cahiers de 1789 (Paris, 1897), Ch. L. Chassin, Les Élections et les Cahiers de Paris de ¡789 (Paris, 1888).F. Braesch, 1789: L'Année cruciale (Paris, 1940), B. Groethuysen, Philosophie de la Révolution française (Paris, 1956), P. Leuilliot, "Bourgeoisie en 1789", Revue d'histoire modèrne et contemporaine I (1954). The whole concept of "bourgeoisie" and the French Revolution has been recently raised in articles in the American Historical Review - for instance, see Elizabeth L. Eisenstein " W h o intervened in 1788?" in AHR, L X X I (1965), and the criticisms of it in AHR (1967). The whole argument is neatly summarized by R . Palmer in his article "Sur le rôle de la bourgeoisie dans la révolution française", AHRF(Oct., 1967). To my mind, however, the argument is completely bogged down by the failure to perceive that the word "bourgeoisie" does not refer to any tangible reality like apples and stones - is in fact merely a concept word which varies in meaning with the various theories. Property Qualifications: See, for instance, Condorcet, "Lettres d'un bourgeois de New-Haven" (1787) in Oeuvres 9, ed. O'Connor and Arago. Interesting are the reasons Bailly gives in his Mémoires, ed. Berville et Barrière (Paris, 1821). Barnave has something to say on this too, see his Oeuvres, ed. M . Bérenger de la Drome (Paris, 1843). Saint-Just too was on the side of property qualifications then - see Oeuvres complètes, ed. Vellay (Paris, 1908). Jaurès has many extracts from this period in his Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française (Paris, 1901). There is a very interesting article by Edgard Allix, "La Rivalité entre la propriété foncière et la fortune mobilière sous la Révolution", Revue d'histoire économique et sociale (Paris, 1913). Class and Social Struggles 1791-92: See, l'or instance, Petion's letter to Buzot, reproduced in Jaurès, Vol. 3 and see A n d r é Chénier's reply to it " D e la cause des désordres qui troublent la France" (Feb. 1792) in Journal de Paris, reproduced in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Walter (Paris, 1950). For Barnaves' ideas see his Oeuvres 2. Chénier, Barnave and others were at this time fighting to maintain the view that people and bourgeois were the same, i.e. the vast mass of the nation - a view strangely enough once upheld by M a r a t in 1789 - see "Offrande à la Patrie ou Discours au Tiers Etat de France" in Textes Choisis, ed. Vovelle. See also René Roux, "La Révolution française et l'idée de lutte de classe", Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, 29 (1951).

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Early social discontent is manifest in Le Père Duchesne, ed. Braesch (Paris, 1938); see also Marat's works in Textes Choisis, Dommanget in Sylvain Maréchal (Paris 1950) gives several extracts from Maréchal's works. Prudhomme's journal Révolutions de Paris is always interesting on the social question. The Girondins: One feels nervous of talking about the "Girondins" after Sydenham's book The Girondins (London, 1961) yet Professor Sydenham's main aim was only to show they were not a party with a clear cut party line as the "Robespierrists" sought to prove. However, there was a definite breach of ideas between the so-called Brissotins and Robespierre as can easily be seen from a perusal of any of the numerous Brissotin m e m o i r s - i n particular those of Brissot h i m s e l f - Mémoires, ed. Barrière et Lesure. See also Buzot, Mémoires sur la révolution française, ed. M . Guadet (Paris, 1823), Louvet, Mémoires, ed. Barrière et Lesure, Petion, Mémoires, ed. D a u b a n (Paris, 1866), Mme. Roland, Mémoires. Several speeches are in H. Morse Stephens, Orators of the French Revolution (London, 1892). 1793-94: F o r Robespierre see above. F o r Saint-Just, there are his Oeuvres complètes, ed. Vellay (Paris, 1908) and Discours et Rapports, ed. Soboul (éditions sociales, Paris). Social agitation is pictured in Dauban, La Démagogie en 1793 (Paris, 1868) whilst numerous documents of the Paris sections are reproduced in French and German in Die Sansculotten von Paris, ed. Markow and Soboul (E. Berlin, 1957). M a r k o w has also written a bibliography on Jacques Roux entitled Jacques Roux oder von Elend der Biographie (E. Berlin, 1966). He has also edited a series of articles on this period entitled Jakobiner und Sansculotten (E. Berlin, 1956). There are many extracts from Roux's works in Dommanget, Jacques Roux, le curé rouge (Paris, 1948). Extracts from Hébert can be found in L. Jacob's Hébert, le père Duchesne (Paris, 1960). A fine picture of the general atmosphere can be obtained from A. Schmidt, Tableaux de la révolution française (Leipzig, 1867-71), extracts from the reports of police agents as also is PCaron's, Paris pendant la terreur. Interesting information on the activity of the representatives on mission can be found in H . Wallon, Les Représentants du peuple en mission (Paris, 1889) and in P. Caron, Rapports des agents du Ministre de Γ Intérieur dans les départements (Paris, 1913). It was here, of course, that we see the most noticeable manifestations of class warfare. A picture of the ideas of this time from a Marxist point of view can be found in Roger Garaudy, Les sources françaises du socialisme scientifique (Paris, 1948). Finally the question of property in the revolutionary ideas is well discussed by Lichtenberger in Le socialisme et la révolution (Paris, 1899), Espinas, as above and Maxime Leroy, Histoire des idées sociales en France (Paris, 1946). Babeuf: A good selection of his writings can be found in Pages choisies de Babeuf, ed. Dommanget (Paris, 1935), also Textes Choisis, ed. Mazauric, (éditions sociales Paris, 1965). O n Babeuf, there is of course Advielle, Histoire de Gracchus Babeuf et du Babouvisme (Paris, 1884), Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l'égalité dite de Babeuf (éditions sociales, Paris, 1957), Dommanget, Babeuf et la conjuration des égaux (Paris, 1962), G . Walter, Babeuf 1760-1797 et la conjuration des égaux (Paris, 1937), C. Mazauric, Babeuf et la conspiration pour l'égalité (Paris, 1962). The latest position on Babeuf studies can be seer in Babeuf et les Problèmes du Babouvisme, Colloque international de Stockholm (Paris, 1963). See also the articles of V. M . Dalin Babeuf-Studien (E. Berlin, 1961). There are also three fairly recent articles - two in AHRF- Dautry "Le pessimisme économique de Babeuf et l'histoire des Utopies" (1961) and C. Mazauric, "Le Rousseauisme de Babeuf" (1962), and the third Friedrich Jonas, "Die Gesellschaftslehre des Babeuf", Jahrbuch für Sozialwissenschaft (1964).

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CHAPTER 7 Perhaps one of the best impressions of this period can be gained from the police reports printed in Tableaux de la Révolution française by A. Schmidt. V. M . Dalin in his Babeuf-Studien has an interesting article on "Marc-Antoine Jullien nach dem 9. Thermidor". There are of course generalhistories such as those of Mathiez and Lefebvre - usually very critical of the Thermidorians and without much insight. A detailed and interesting study of the educational policy of the idéologues is to be found in Vol. L1I1 (1935) of the John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science entitled Contribution of the Idéologues to French Revolutionary Thought by Charles Hunter van Duzer. A thorough study of cults etc. can be found in Mathiez, La Théophilantropie et le culte décadaire (Paris, 1904).

CHAPTERS 8 & 9 The only general work on the idéologues is F. Picavet, Les Idéologues (Paris, 1891 ). Details on them are to be found in van Duzer's work mentioned above and Destutt de Tracy is considered in H. Barth' s, Wahrheit und Ideologie, and Leroy's book mentioned above. Mignet, Notices et Portraits (Paris, 1854, 3rd. ed.) gives short biographical accounts of Destutt de Tracy, Cabanis, D a u n o u and Roederer. The journal La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique gives some of the ideas of the idéologues during this period. The most important work of Destutt de Tracy for this section is his Élémens d'idéologie - Traité de la volonté et de ses effets (Bruxelles, 1827). Interesting too is his Analyse raisonnée de l'origine de tous les cultes (Paris, 1804). F o r Cabanis, there are his works published in two volumes (Paris, 1956) Vol. XLIV of the Corpus Général des philosophie française. Volney, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1821) and Saint-Lambert, Principes des moeurs ou catéchisme universel (Hambourg, 1798). Saint-Simon: In 1966 in Paris a new reproduction of Saint-Simon's works was published so that at least all his published works are now comprised together in six volumes. Vol. 5 of this 1966 edition contains Mémoire sur la science de l'homme and Travail sur la gravitation universelle (Vol. 40 of the Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et D'Enfantin) whilst Vol. 6 contains the works originally printed in Oeuvres Choisis (1859), including Introduction aux travaux scientifiques, Lettres au Bureau des Longitudes, Projet d'Encyclopédie. F o r secondary works on Saint-Simon, the reader is referred to the bibliography for Chapter 15.

C H A P T E R S 10 & 11 There is something about the split between natural science and moral science in Picavet but it could be with more detailed treatment. As regards the physiocrats and the idéologues there are two admirable articles by E. Allix - "Le Physicisme des Physiocrates" in Revue d'économie politique (1911) and "La rivalité entre la propriété foncière et la fortune mobilière sous la révolution" in Revue d'histoire économique et sociale (1913). In the latter article are some interesting details on G a m i e r who, although translator of A d a m Smith, was also a great upholder of the landowning interest as might be seen from his introduction to the translation. Constant at a later date also supported the landowning idea - see his Principes de Politique, although he changed

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his mind later. Interesting are the seven lectures in Adam Smith 1776-1926 (Chicago, 1928) in particular the lecture by Melchior Paly, "The Introduction of Adam Smith on the Continent". Roederer's views are expressed in his journal, Journal d'économique, de morale, et de politique. Cabanis' ideas on this subject can be found in "Quelques principes et quelques vue sur les secours publics", Oeuvres 2. Say's ideas are presented in his Traité d'économie politique, first published in 1803. Saint-Simon's "Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporains" is now in Vol. 1 of the 1966 edition and is also in part translated in Social Organisation, The Science of Man and other writings, ed. F. Markham ( N . Y . , 1964). Destutt de Tracy wrote all his works before 1815 although most were not published until later. These are Élément d'idéologie, Commentaire sur l'esprit des lois de Montesquieu, and Traité d'économie politique. On the economics of Destutt de Tracy, there is a little in Baudrillant, Études de philosophie morale et d'économie politique 2 (Paris, 1858) A little too in Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science ( N . Y . , 1955). General books which include this period are ivi. Leroy, Histoire des idées sociales en France (Paris, 1946), P. Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie (Leipzig, 1922), H . Michel, L'idée de l'état (Paris, 1896), Gide and Rist, A History of Economic Doctrines, trans, by R. Richards (London, 1915), R . Flint, History of the Philosophy of History (Edinburgh, 1893).

C H A P T E R S 12 & 13 A s well as the general books mentioned above, there are D . Bagge, Les idées politiques en France sous la Restauration (Paris, 1952) E. Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dixneuvième siècle, première série (Paris, 1890), R. Garaudy, Les sources française du socialisme scientifique (Paris, 1949), P. Thureau-Dangin, Le parti liberal sous la Restauration (2nd. ed, Paris, 1888). G . de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism (Beacon paperback, 1959) (which book completely confounds the issue - throwing together such diverse thinkers as Constant, Daunou, Tracy, Guizot and RoyerCollard in one bag). Also F. B. Artz, France under the Bourbon Restoration (Harvard U. P, 1931). For Napoleon and the idéologues, see the work of van Duzer mentioned above. For the development of "industrialism" see Allix "J. B. Say et les origines de l'industrialisme", Revue d'économie politique (1910), E. Halévy, " L a doctrine économique de Saint-Simon" (also to be found in his book The Era of Tyrannies, trans. R . K . Webb [London, 1967]), H . Gohier, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme (Vol. I l l of his Auguste Comte et Saint-Simon) (Paris, 1941), E. Harpaz, "Le Censeur européen, Histoire d'un journal industrialist" Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 37 (1959). Daunou, Cours d'études historique, in particular Vol. 7. For the ideas of the émigrés, see F. Baldensperger, Le mouvement des idées dans l'émigration française 1789-1815 (Paris, 1925). Comte de Montlosier, De la monarchie française (Paris, 1814) whilst Constant's " D e l'ésprit de conquête" is in Oeuvres ed. Roulin (Paris, 1957). Barnaves' Oeuvres ed. by M . Bérenger de la Drome, were published in Paris, 1843 Thierry's first contribution to the doctrine of industrialism can be found in Vol. 2 of the new edition of the Oeuvres de Saint-Simon (or Vol. X I X of the Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin). Bonnal de Ganges' book Manuel et son Temps (Paris, 1877) gives an insight into the various liberal strands.

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Charles Dunoyer, Oeuvres 2 vols. (Paris, n.d.) and there are many editions separately of his De la liberté du travail. Compared to his contributions to Le Censeur européen, Charles Comte's books are disappointing, see Traité de législation (Paris, 1827) and Traité de la propriété (Paris, 1834). On these two men, see Mignet who wrote an account of Comte in Vol. 2 of Notices et portraits, 3rd. ed. (Paris, 1854) and an account of Dunoyer in the introduction to Dunoyer's Oeuvres.

CHAPTER 14 For Thierry's historical works of this period, see Dix Ans d'études historiques, and Lettres sur l'histoire de France, Vol. VI and Vol. V. resp. of his Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 8th ed., 1846). See also his Histoire de la conquête de l'Angleterre (1825) and also his interesting history of the history of France forming the introduction to Récits des temps mérovingiens précédé de considerations sur l'histoire de France (1840). On Thierry, see A. Augustin Thierry, A. Thierry, 1795-1856 d'après sa correspondence et ses papiers de famille (Paris, 1922) Friedrich Engel-Janosi, "Four Studies in French romantic historical writing", in The John Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science LXXI, No. 2 (1955). Guizot's writings of relevance to this chapter are Du gouvernement de la France depuis la Restauration (Paris, 1821), Essai sur l'histoire de France (1823), Histoire de la civilization en France (Paris, 1829) and the lectures he gave 1828, 29 and 30 published as Histoire de la civilisation en Europe. The association of Guizot and Thierry is a commonplace idea. After Engels came Plekhanov with his article "Über die Anfänge der Lehre vom Klassenkampf", in Die Neue Zeit (1902/3) and also F. Mückle in his book, Saint-Simon und die ökonomische Geschichtstheorie (Jena, 1906). It is therefore refreshing to see a distinction made in Dietrich Gerhard's article "Guizot, Augustin Thierry und die Rolle des Tiers Etat" in Historische Zeitschrift", Bd. 190 (1960). See too D. Johnson, Guizot: Aspects of French History (London, 1963) and Charles Pouthas, Guizot pendant la Restauration, 1814-1830 (Paris, 1923). There is also P. Stadler "Politik und Geschichtsschreibung in der Französische Restauration", Historische Zeitschrift, Bd. 180 (1955) (especially interesting for pointing out the connection of the ideas of Maine de Biran in the formation of system of the "Doctrinaires"). Of some relevance is also Charlton's Secular Religions in France, 1815-70 (O.U.P., 1962).

CHAPTER 15 It seems to me the editions of Saint-Simon's works have always been rather complicated - there was the two volume numbering as Oeuvres de Saint-Simon and as Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin and now we have the additional volume numbering of the 1966 edition. In addition, of course, there is Oeuvres choisies (Brussels, 1859), three volumes in one and the one volume Oeuvres ed. by Rodrigues in 1832. In an attempt to make matters clear, I herewith give the 1966 volume number with contents and corresponding volume numbers of the Oeuvres de Saint-Simon and the Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin. For readers not using the 1966 edition, I have in the footnotes given the individual titles of the various works so that using the following guide, they can see in which volume of the old edition the text is to be found.

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Vol. 1 = Vol. I and II = Vol. XV and XVIII and contains Lettres d'un habitant de Genève Vie de Saint-Simon, Introduction à la philosophie du XIX siècle, Correspondance avec M. de Redern, De la réorganisation de la société européenne. L'Industrie (Vol 1 Part I). Vol. 2 = Vol. Ill and IV = Vol. XIX and XX contains L'Industrie Naissance du Christianisme, Le Parti National ou Industriel, Sur la querelle des abeilles et des frelons (Both last from Le Politique) L'Organisateur Vol. 3 = Vol. V, VI and VII = Vol. XXI, XXII and XXIII contains Du système industriel, Nouveau Christianisme Vol. 4 = Vol. VIII and IX = Vol. XXXVII and XXXVIII contains Catéchisme des Industriels, 1, 2, 3, cahiers. Vol. 5 = Vol. X and XI = Vol. XXXIX and XL contains Catéchisme des Industriels, 4 cahier, Quelques opinions philosophique, De l'organisation sociale, De la psychologie sociale, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme, Travail sur la gravitation universelle. Vol. 6 = contains reproductions from Oeuvres Choisies not contained in other editions, i.e. Introduction aux travaux scientifiques, Lettres au Bureau des Longitudes, Projet d'Encyclopédie, Les Communes, Lettres de Saint-Simon à Messieurs les Jurés, Lettres à MM. les Ouvriers, Du Système Industriel 3rd. part. Des Bourbons et des Stuarts. There are many articles but few books on Saint-Simon. The latest book is by F. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Harvard, 1956) and has, at least, a very comprehensive bibliography. As regards the question of Saint-Simon and his relationship to the Le Censeur européen group, see the works mentioned for Chapters 12 and 13, in particular Gouhier, Halévy, Allix and Harpaz. The question of Saint-Simon and classes was once of considerable interest since it was, of course, related to the burning theme: was Saint-Simon a socialist? There are Plekhanov's article in Die Neue Zeit mentioned above and Heinrich Cunow's Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschaft- und Staatstheorie (Berlin, 1923) and too his article "Saint-Simon als Geschichtstheoretiker" in Die Neue Zeit, 38 Jg. (1919/20). This theme is also treated with insight in Hermann Pechan's book, Louis Blanc als Wegbereiter des modernen Sozialismus (Jena, 1929). More recently there have been Armand Cuvillier's article "Les antagonismes de classes de Saint-Simon à 1848" in

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International Review of Social History I (1956). The very latest article is written from quite a different point of view - not socialist but sociological, see P. Hassner, "Les industriels comme classe dirigeante", in Le Contrat Social X: 2 (1966). The problem of classes leads to the problem of whether Saint-Simon was an economic determinist. This again is a very old theme. In particular, see F. Mückle, Saint-Simon und die ökonomische Geschichtstheorie (Jena, 1906). Also Samuel Bernsteins "SaintSimon's philosophy of history", in Science and Society XII (1948), Henryk Grossman, "The Evolutionist Revolt against classical Economics", in the Journal of Political Economy LI (Feb. -Dec. 1943) and W. Stark, "Saint-Simon as a Realist", in the Journal of Economic History III (Ν. Y., 1943). Very critical is Walter Simon's article "Saint-Simon and the Idea of Progress" in the Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956). See also Troeltsch, Die Dynamik der Geschichte (Berlin, 1919). On the moralism and religious ideas of Saint-Simon, there is an account of the development of Saint-Simon's moral ideas in Pierre Ansart's article "Les cadres sociaux de la doctrine morales de Saint-Simon" in Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 34, n. série, 10 yrs. (Jan-June, 1963). The old issue of whether Saint-Simon's New Christianity was Christianity at all is dealt with in Regnier's article, "Les idées morales et religieuses de Saint-Simon" in La Nouvelle Revue 20 (1903) and by Jean Dautry in his article "Nouveau Christianisme ou Nouvelle Théophilanthropie" in Archives de Sociologie des Religion 20 (1965). Of course many details on the life and ideas of Saint-Simon can be found in the general works covering this period.

CHAPTERS 16, 17, & 18 J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes d'Économie Politique, first published in 1820. On Sismondi is Grossman's book Simonde de Sismondi (Warsaw, 1924) and his article mentioned above. See also Halévy's book The era of tyrannies, mentioned above. There is also Mao-Lau Tuan, Simonde de Sismondi as an economist (New York, 1927). As Sismondi is obviously the key figure in reviving "moralism"and moreover obviously prepared the path for all Socialist and Marxist ideas, it is a pity we do not know more of the origin of his ideas. For Fourier there are his Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1841) anu on him H. Bourgin, Fourier (Paris, 1905). Manuel has a section on him in The Prophets of Paris, (Harvard, 1962) and as usual can be recommended for the bibliography. Saint-Simonists : Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin (Paris, 1877) in particular Vols. 2, 3, 4 containing "L'Organisateur" (1829-31), Vols. 14,15, 16 and 17 containing "Enseignements" (1831-32), Vols. 24, 25, 26, 27 containing the "Correspondance d'Enfantin 1825-1831", Vols. 41 and 42 containing the "Doctrine Saint-Simonienne, Exposition par Bazard" (Vol. 41 has also been edited by Bouglé and Halévy [Paris, 1924] and translated into English by Iggers [1958]), Vols. 43, 44, 45 containing "Predications, 1830-32" and Vol. 47. with the account of the trial. Also Transon, "De la Religion Saint-Simonienne" (Paris, 1830). On the Saint-Simonists are Henry René D'Allemagne, Les Saint-Simoniens, 1827-1837 (Paris, 1930) with many illustrations and documents; Sébastien Charléty, Histoire du Saint-Simonisme (Paris, 1896) (Paperback in éditions Gonthier) and Georges Weill, L'École Saint-Simonienne (Paris, 1896). Willy Spiihler has a book on Bazard entitled. Der Saint-Simonismus : Lehre und Leben von St. -Amand Bazard (Zürich, 1926).

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As for general works, there are details in the works of Pechan, Hálevy and Leroy as mentioned above; also in G. D . H. Cole, Socialist Thought: The Forerunners, 1789-1850 (London, 1953), G. Isambert, Les idées socialistes en France (Paris, 1905), I. Tchernoff, Le parti républicain sous la monarchie de Juillet (Paris, 1901), P. Thureau-Dangin, Histoire de la monarchie de Juillet I (Paris, 1897,3rd. ed.), J. Talmon, Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase (London, 1960). F o r the religious ideas of the political liberals see for instance Constant in his "Principes du Politique" and "Sur la Religion" all in Oeuvres ed. Roulin. F o r the SaintSiraonists and class see Cuvillier's article mentioned above and Henri Sée, La notion de class sociales chez les Saint-Simoniens (Paris, 1926) - which is not very good. There is also C. Mazauric, "Babouvisme et le Saint-Simonism" in Babeuf et les problèmes du Babouvisme (Paris, 1963). Regarding the influence of the Saint-Simonists on the workers, see Octave Festy, Le mouvement ouvrier au début de la monarchie de Juillet, 1830-34 (Paris, 1904).

C H A P T E R 19 The best book on the Republican party is 1. A. Tchernoff's Le parti républicain sous la monarchie de Juillet (Paris, 1901). There is also Georges Weill, Histoire du parti républicain en France, 1814-1870 (Paris, 1928). A very detailed work is Paul ThureauDangin's Histoire de la monarchie de Juillet, 3rd. ed., (Paris, 1897). Interesting though not exactly to our theme is the article of D. H. Pinkey "The Myth of the French Revolution of 1830" in Festschrift for F. B. Artz (C.U.P., 1964). Of importance is Octave Festy's book mentioned above. Buonarroti's Conspiration pour l'égalité dite de Babeuf is now available in two volumes in Les Classiques du Peuple (éditions sociales, Paris, 1955). Likewise Auguste Blanqui, Textes Choisis (Paris, 1955). The question of Neo-Babeuvism is treated in Georges Sender's Le Babouvisme après Babeuf, ¡830 -1848 (Paris, 1912) and by Samuel Bernstein in "Le Néo-babouvisme d'après la presse 1837-1848" in Babeuf et les Problèmes du Babouvisme (Paris, 1963). F o r Blanqui (and too discussions on the size of the proletariat) see M . Dommanget, Les idées politiques et sociales d'Auguste Blanqui (Paris, 1957) and Alan B. Spitzer, The Revolutionary Theories of Louis-Auguste Blanqui (Ν. Y., 1957). There are two articles on Buonarroti by A. Lehning - one entitled "Buonarroti" in The International Review of Social History I (1956) and the other "Buonarroti's Ideas on Communism and Dictatorship", in the same journal, Vol. II (1957).

C H A P T E R 20 C. Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d'économie sociale et politique, 2nd. ed. (Paris, 1842), Des améliorations materielles dans leurs rapports avec la liberté, 2nd, ed. (Paris, 1843), Économie sociale des intérêts du commerce (Paris, 1839). On Pecqueur, there is a long article by Bourgin, "La doctrine de Pecqueur", Revue socialiste (1907) and of course Cole's book - although both authors tend to stress - incorrectly in my opinion - the fore-runner-of-Marx Pecqueur instead of discussing what he really wanted. P. J. B. Buchez, Introduction à la science de l'histoire, 2nd. ed. (Paris 1842,) and also the introduction to Histoire de la révolution française I by Buchez and Roux (Paris, 1834). Of importance for Buchez is Cuvillier's "Les antagonismes de classes" International Review of Social History (1956) and by the same author Un journal d'ouvriers: L'Atelier (Paris, 1954) - likewise vital, of course for the L'Atelier group.

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Pierre Leroux, De Γ égalité, nouvelle ed., (Boussac, 1848) and De l'humanité (1840) F o r extracts from the works of all these socialists see M . Leroy, Les précurseurs français du socialisme (Paris, 1948). Lamennais wrote Paroles d'un croyant, Le livre du peuple, Du passé et de l'avenir du peuple, De l'esclavage moderne which I have found comprised in one book called Divers écrits pour le peuple (éditions Lutetia, Paris, n.d.) On Lamennais there is JeanR e n é Derré, Lamennais, ses amis et le mouvement des idées à l'époque romantique (Paris, 1962). Albert Laponneraye, Mélanges d'économie sociale, de littérature et de morale (Paris, 1835-36), Histoire de la révolution française, 3rd. ed. (Paris, 1838) and his introductions to the two versions of his Oeuvres de Robespierre - 1834 and 1840. There is very little of Blanqui's writings of this period in Critique sociale (Paris, 1885) but Textes choisis, ed. Volguine (éditions sociales, Paris, 1955) is more useful. On Blanqui, there are the works of Spitzer and Dommanget mentioned early. Etienne Cabet, Voyage en ¡carie (Paris, 1848)-much milder in tone than his Révolution de 1830, 2nd, ed. (Paris, 1833) and his Histoire populaire de la révolution française de 1789 à 1830 (Paris, 1839). In general, there is D. G. Charlton's book Secular Religions in France, O.U.P. especially useful for Buchez and Leroux whilst for the influence of Rousseau on these socialists, see C. Rihs, "J. J. Rousseau et les origines de l'éthique socialiste en France au XIX 6 siècle", Mélanges d'histoire économique et sociale en hommage au Professeur Antony Babel 2 (Geneva, 1963).

C H A P T E R S 21, 22, & 23 Apart from the works already mentioned for the two previous chapters, there are Roger Garaudy, Les sources françaises du socialisme scientifique (Paris, 1949), Lucien de la Hodde, Histoire des société secrètes et du parti républicain de 1830 ú 1840 (Paris, 1850), Georges Morange, Des idées communistes dans les sociétés secrètes et dans la presse sous la monarchie de Juillet (Paris, 1905), Lorentz von Stein, Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich (1921 édition, Munich), C. Bouglé, Socialismes françaises (Paris, 1932). T. Dézamy, L'almanach de la communauté (Paris, 1843) and Code de la Communauté (Paris, 1842), Jean-Jacques Pillot, Ni châteaux ni chaumières (Paris, 1840). Fourierists: Victor Considérant, Destinée sociale (Paris, 1835) and Principes du socialisme: Manifeste de la démocratie au XIX siècle, 2nd. ed. (Paris, 1847) and on him, M . Dommanget, Victor Considérant (Paris, 1929) and too H. Bourgin, Fourier (Paris, 1905). Louis Blanc, Histoire de dix ans, 4thed. (Bruxelles, 1846). Interesting is Leo Loubère's article "Louis Blanc's Philosophy of History", Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956). Hermann Pechan's book Louis Blanc als Wegbereiter des modernen Sozialismus (Jena 1929) credits Blanc with many ideas he simply took over f r o m others.

C H A P T E R 24 All Karl Marx's early works can of course, be found in Marx/Engels, Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe, Vols. 1 to 7 but a very handy edition of them is to be found in Karl Marx Die Frühschriften, ed. S. Landshut (Stuttgart, 1953) which might be said to have left out only the irrelevant. In this edition, however, the manuscript of

FURTHER READING

207

Marx first published in 1932 usually called "Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte" is entitled "Nationalökonomie und Philosophie". There are naturally a mass of works on this period of Marx's life but strange to say very few related to our theme - most in fact being absolutely ignorant of French thinkers. F o r the relationship of Hegel to Marx I found Jean Hyppolite's Logique et Existence (Paris, 1953) interesting also Jean-Yves Calvez, La Pensée de Karl Marx (Paris, 1956). There is also an article by Hyppolite - "La conception hégelienne de l'état et sa critique par Karl Marx", Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie (1947). Valuable too is Siegfried Landshut's introduction to Die Frühschriften. Of course, the theme is also dealt with in the usual books such K. Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, S. Hook, From Hegel to Marx, and H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution. In general, I found of interest C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, (C.U.P., 1961) and H . B. Acton, The Illusion of the Epoch (London, 1955) By contrast, Roger Garaudy's Karl Marx - the evolution of his thought, trans. N a n Apotheker (London, 1967) can hardly be recommended. Most interesting is Heinrich Popitz's book Der entfremdete Mensch (Basel, 1953) although Popitz does not deal with the French influence. The section on Marx in H . Barth's Wahrheit und Ideologie (Zurich, 1945) is also worth reading. There are two articles in Universitätstage 1961 (Berlin, 1961) - "Mensch und Natur beim jungen M a r x " by Gustav Wetter and "Karl Marx als Schüler Hegels" by Dieter Henrich. On the ethical position of Marx there is Eugene Kamenka's book The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, although the theory of Kamenka seems a trifle far fetched. Turning to books dealing directly with our theme, the most comprehensive is still H . Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafts- und Staatstheorie (Berlin, 1923). There is also G. Plekhanov, "Über die Anfänge des Klassenkampfes" in Die Neue Zeit (1902/3) and Roger Garaudy, Les sources françaises du socialisme scientifique (Paris, 1949) and H. Grossman, "The Evolutionist Revolt against classical Economics" Journal of Political Economy LI (1943). There is also Auguste Cornu, The Origins of Marxian Thought (Springfield, 1957) where in contrast to his two previous books (Karl Marx, Γ homme et l'oeuvre [Paris 1934] and the extended version Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels [Paris, 1955]) the French socialists are actually mentioned as a possible influence. The best of recent books is Paul Kägi, Genesis des historischen Materialismus (Vienna, 1965) which deals thoroughly and fairly with the French influence on Marx. As regards Marx and the Enlightenment, there is an article by Sidney Hook, "The Enlightenment and Marxism" in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 29 (1968). There are also three recent articles of little importance - Bruce Brown, "The French Revolution and the Rise of Social Theory" in Science and Society X X X : 4 (1966) (on the French Revolution in German thought from Hegel to Marx) Bertram D . Wolfe, "French Socialism, German Theory and the flaw in the foundation of the Socialist International", in Essays in Russian and Social History in honour of G. T. Robinson, ed. Curtiss (Leiden, 1963), and E. Kander, 'The Intellectual Sources of K. Marx", Kyclos, Vol X X (1968). On Karl Marx and the Fourierists there is the article of Cherkesov (or Tcherkesoff) "The Origins of the 'Manifesto of the Communist Party'" in Pages of Socialist History, (1902) which suggests that the Manifesto is pure Considérant. Dommanget in Victor Considérant is more cautious but both he and Leroy in Les Précurseurs... give lists of similarities.

INDEX

(Page numbers in italics refer to section, Further Reading) Acton, H. B., 207 Advielle, V., 199 D'Alembert, J., 12 Alengry, F., 197 D'Allemagne, H. R., 204 Allix, E., 198, 200, 201 Ansart, P., 204 Artz, F. B„ 201 L'Atelier, on class, 162

Babeuf, G., 52-55, 149, 150, 164, 199 Babeuvism, 164 Bagge, D., 201 Bailly, J. S., 198 Baldensperger, F., 20/ Barnave, Α., 91 η., 198, 201 Barth, Η., 197, 200 Barth, P., 201 Baudrillant, M. H., 201 Bazard, St. Α., 138 Bernstein, S., 204, 205 Bessand-Massenet, P., 198 Blanc, L., 206; on classes, 173; and Marx, 189 Blanqui, Α., 205, 206; on people, 151, 159f. ; on Christ, 157; and SaintSimonists, 160 de Bonald, L., 88 Bouglé, C., 206 Bourgeois and bourgeoisie, as a class concept, in French Revolution 1789 44; in Thierry's theory of history, 107; as used by Guizot, 109; by SaintSimon, 116f.; by Saint-Simonists, 144f„ 147; by the Socialists, 152, 158, 160, 161; by the Fourierists, 168, 170; by Blanc, 173; by Marx, 183f., 189

Bourgin, H., 204, 205 Braesch, F., 198 Brissot, J. P., 199 Buchez, P., 205, 155; on class, 159 Buonarroti, P., 199, 205, 149 Buzot, F., 199 Cabanis, P., 200, 201, 58, 60, 62, 138; and Marx, 186 Cabet, E., 206,161,163; and Dézamy, 164 Cahen, L., 198 Calvez, J.-Y., 207 Caron, P., 199 Le Censeur, 94 Le Censeur européen, 94-102 Le Censeur européen group, see Economists Champion, E., 198 Charléty, S., 204 Charlton, D. G., 206 Chefs d'industrie, Bûchez' theory of, 159 Chénier, Α., 198 Cherkesov, W., 207 Christianity, and philosophes, 16; and Rousseau, 17; and Thierry, 96; and abolition of slavery, 98; and SaintSimon, 125f.; and Socialists, 156f. Civilization, as used by Fourier, 135; Considérant, 169 Class, idea of, in French Revolution 1789, 44, 50, 51 ; in Say, 75; in Le Censeur européen, 99; in Thierry, 106; Guizot, 109; Saint-Simon, 114f., Sismondi, 132; Saint-Simonists, 143f. ; Buonarroti, 150; Socialists, 158; Buchez, 159; Cabet, 161; L'Atelier, 162; Communists, 165; Fourierists, 170f. ; Marx, 182f.

210

INDEX

Class war, in French Revolution 1789, 51-52; French Revolution of 1830, 146f. ; idea of in 1830s, 146f. Cobban, Α., 198 Cole, G. D. H., 205 Communes, theories on enfranchissement of, Montlosier, 89; Le Censeur européen, 98; Thierry, 105, 106, 107; Saint-Simon, 114; Saint-Simonists, 141; Fourierists, 168 Communists, early French, 163-165 Comte, Α., 126; and Marx, 183 Comte, C., (see also Economists), 202, 94, 98; and Saint-Simonists, 141 Condillac, E., 11, 27, 95; and Marx, 186; his concept of man, 71, 72, 83, 91, 108, 138, 172 Condorcet, Α., 197, 198, 27-34; on property suffrage, 44; and Girondins, 45 Considérant, V., 206, 167f. Constant, B., 200, 201, 205, 90-91, 93 94, 140 Cornu, Α., 207, 190η. Culte décadaire, 59 Cunow, H., 197, 203, 207 Cuvillier, Α., 203, 205, and L'Atelier, 162n.; and Communists, 165

Dalin, V., 199 Dauban, C., 199 Daunou, P., 201, 88, 105 Dautry, J., 199, 204 Destutt de Tracy, Α., 200, 201, 88, 95, 144, 149; science of ideas, 61-65; theory of economics, 77-83 ; and Marx, 186, 187 Dézamy, T., 206, 164 Dommanget, M., 199, 205, 206, 171η. Dunoyer, C., (see also Economists), 202, 94, 98, 101, 111, 118, 165 van Duzer, C., 200

L'Echo de la Fabrique, 153 Economics, theories on, Condorcet, 31 ; idéologues, 65, 71-75; Le Censeur européen, 97; Saint-Simon, 112ÍF. Economists (name of Le Censeur européen group, see also Comte, C and Dunoyer, C), 94, 113, 114, 158, 164, 170; criticized by Sismondi, 131f., by Fourier, 138, by Saint-Simonists, 140f.,

by Socialists, 174; in relation to SaintSimon, 115, 117-118, 123, to Considérant, 170, to Marx, 181f., 185 Education, importance of, to Helvetius 13, Condorcet, 30, Thermidorians, 58, Destutt de Tracy, 80 Eisenstein, E., 198 Engel-Janosi, F., 202 Entrepreneur, concept of, in Say 74, Destutt de Tracy, 81, Saint-Simonists, 143f. Socialists, 153 and in Buchez, 159 Equality, materialist idea of, 14; Babeuf's ideas on, 53f. Espinas, Α., 198

Faguet, E., 201 Festy, O., 205 Feuerbach, L., 180 Flint, R., 201 Fourier, C., 204, 134-136 Fourierists, 167-172; and Marxism, 171, 188f. Franks, theory of, in Montlosier 89, in Thierry, 106 Freedom, materialist idea of, 14-15; Rousseau on, 20; Destutt de Tracy on, 78 French Revolution. of 1789, 25-26, 41; property qualifications in, 42-43, role of Girondins, 45 ; problem of property in, 50; question of class, 50-51 ; interpretations of, in Le Censeur européen, 99, in Saint-Simon, U 5f., 123f. French Revolution of 1830, role of SaintSimonists, 145f., 145n.; Fourierist interpretation, 171

Ganges, Bonnal de, 201 Garaudy, R., 199, 201, 206, 207 General Will, in Rousseau, 20; in French Revolution, 42; Socialists idea of, 149, 151; and Marx, 179f. Gerhard, D., 202 Girondins, 199; and Condorcet, 33; in French Revolution, 45-46; SaintSimon's theory of, 115 Gohier, H„ 201 Government, representative, Destutt de Tracy's idea of, 80; as distinct from society, 100; Saint-Simon on, 112 Groethuysen, B., 198, 42n.

INDEX

Grossman, H., 197, 204, 207 Guillemin, H., 197 Guizot, F., 202, 87, 93, 103, 152; theory of history, 108-110; and Hegel, 180; and Marx, 189

Halévy, E., 201, 204 Harpaz, E., 201, 102 Hassner, P., 204 Hayek, F., 201, 137 Haymann, F., 197 Hébert, J., 199 Hegel, G. W., 179-180 Helvetius, C. Α., 13; theory of morality, 13; and Marx, 186 Henrich, D., 207 History, theories of, Condorcet, 26n.; New History, 81, 91; ideologues and, 88; emigré history, 88-89; Economists and, 97f. ; Thierry and, 103f.; SaintSimon and 69f., 119f., 124f.; Fourierists, 168f., Marx, 185f. Hodde de la, L., 206 Holbach, P. H., 13 Hook, S., 207 Hypollite, J., 206

Idéologues, 62-65; and Saint-Simon, 67f. ; and Economics 71-75, 87-88 ; influence on Economists, 94, on Thierry, 103, 108, on Marx, 181f. Idlers, as a class, in Say, 75; Destutt de Tracy, 80-81; Economists, 99f. ; in Saint-Simon, 116f.; Saint-Simonists, 143 Industrialism, definition, 112n.; Say and, 74, Economists and 94f.; Saint-Simon and 126; Saint-Simonists and 140, 141f.; criticized by Sismondi, 131f.; administration and 11 If. Industrials as a class, Say, 74; Economists, 99; Saint-Simon, 114f., SaintSimonists, 143n.; Buchez, 159 Institut National, 67, 87 Isambert, G., 205

Jaurès, J., 198 Johnson, D., 202 Jonas, F., 199

211

Kägi, P., 207 Kamenka, E., 207

Ladd, E. C., 197 Lamennais, F., 205, 155 Lapponneraye, C. Α., 205 Légistes, in Thierry's theory of history, 107; in Saint-Simon's theory, 115f., 122f. Lehning, Α., 205 Lenk, Κ., 183η. Leroux, P., 205, 155 Leroy, M., 199, 201 Leuilliot, P., 198 Liberalism, 87, 93-94, 101, 102; SaintSimon's idea of, 140f. Liberals, political and economic, 101— 102; Saint-Simon on, 116 Lichtenberger, Α., 198, 199 Locke, J., 11, 27 Löwith, K „ 207 Loubère, L., 206 Louvet, J., 199

McDonald, J., 198 Maine de Biran, F. P., 63 de Maistre, 88 Man, the concept of man in Condillac, 11-12; Rousseau, 17f.; Condorcet, 27f. ; Robespierre, 35; Cabanis, 62; Destutt de Tracy, 62, 77; Saint-Simon, 67f.; Say, 74; Economists, 95; Guizot, 108; Saint-Simonists, 138; Proudhon, 175; Marx, 181f. Manuel, F., 197, 203, 204 Marat, J. P., 198,199 Marcuse, H., 207 Markow, W., 199 Marx, Κ., 206, 157, 162, 175, 179-191 Marxism, and Fourierism, 171 Mathiez, Α., 200 Mazauric, C., 199, 205 Merz, J. T., 197 Michel, H., 201 Mignet, F., 200, 202 de Montlosier, M. le Comte, 201, 88-89, 94 Morality, theory of, philosophes, 12-13; Rousseau, 17f. ; Robespierre, 35f. ; Condorcet, 28f.; Destutt de Tracy, 62, 65 ; Volney, 65 ; Economists, 95, Saint-

212

INDEX

Simon, 68, 118f.; Fourier, 134; SaintSimonists, 139; Socialists, 155-156; Marx, 182f., 190 Moralism, 49, 149, 153, 155, 173; SaintSimon and, 123; Sismondi and, 133; Saint-Simonists and, 137f. Morange, G., 206 Mornet, D. ( 25n. Morse Stephens, H., 199 Mückle, F., 202, 204

Napoleon, 26, 59, 87, 89, 115 Newton, I., 11, 13, 15, 16, 79

Organisation, 123n., 124

Palmer, R., 198 Paly, M., 201 Pechan, H., 203, 206, 120η. Pecqueur, C., 205, 155, 167 People, Robespierre's concept of, 36f., 49; Socialist's idea of, 151, 158; Blanqui's idea of, 160; relation to proletariat, I45n., 184 Physiocrats, 14, 43, 72; different to idéologues, 72 Physiology, 65, 67; and Cabanis, 62; and Saint-Simon, 67, 68; and Destutt de Tracy, 80 Picavet, F., 200, 61 η. Pillot, J. J., 206, 164-165 Pinkey, D. H., 205 Plekhanov, G., 202, 203, 207, 160, 165 Popitz, H., 207 Pouthas, C., 202 Probability, and Condorcet, 30n. Productivity, as defined by Destutt de Tracy, 81 Progress, concept of, 15; in Condorcet, 27f., Volney, 64; Saint-Simon, 69, 120f., Economists, 97; Saint-Simonists, 140 Prolétaire, as used by Sismondi, 132-133; Saint-Simonists, 145f. ; Buchez, 159; and people, 145n., 151 f. ; estimation of number, 153n. Property, idea of in philosophes, 15; Rousseau, 19; Condorcet, 32; Robespierre, 38-39; Babeuf, 53-54; Roederer,

73; Destutt de Tracy, 77; Cabet, 161, 163; Communists, 164-165; problem of, in French Revolution, 42, 50 Proudhon, P. J., 174; criticism of Destutt de Tracy, 78 η. Prudhomme, L., 199 Race, Montlosier's theory, 89; Thierry on, 106f. Rationalism, 12 Regnier, 204 Religion, as superstition, 14, 16, 25, 30, 59, 63; Saint-Simon on, 69f., 138f. Rihs, C., 206 Robespierre, M., 197,35-40; on property suffrage, 44; renewed interest in 1830s, 149, 150, 153; and Blanqui, 157, 160 Roederer, P., 201, 73, 89n. Roland, J. M me ., 199 Rostand, J., 197 Rousseau, J. J., 197, 17-21; and Robespierre, 36; criticized by Say, 75; SaintSimonists and, 138; revival of interest in 149, 153; Marx and, 179, 180, 181, 185 Roux, J., 50 Roux, R., 198 Royer-Collard, P., 108 Ruggiero, G., 201 Saint-Just, L., 199, 51 Saint-Lambert, J., 200, 77 Saint-Simon, H. de, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 67-70, 109-127 and SaintSimonists, 140, 141; and Marx, 183 Saint-Simonism, 150 Saint-Simonists, 204, 137-142, 143-148, 150, 157, 158, 167; and Blanqui, 160; and Fourierists, 170f. Say, J. B„ 201, 73-75, 94, 95 Schmidt, Α., 199 Sée, H., 205 Sencier, G., 205 Sieyès, E., 41, 42 Simon, W„ 204 Sismondi, Simonde de, 204, 131-133 Smith, Α., 73, 81, 114, 131, 132n., 150, 158 Soboul, A.,199 Socialism, and Saint-Simon, 126-127; and Saint-Simonists, 148; relation to social moralism, 155

INDEX

Socialists, early French, 155-162 Society, and man, philosophes, 14, Rousseau, 19, Condorcet, 29, Robespierre, 36, Saint-Just, 51, Babeuf, 53, idéologues, 64, Destutt de Tracy, 7879; Sismondi, 132; and classes, Le Censeur européen, 99, Saint-Simon, 114f., Saint-Simonists, 142f., Socialists, 158 ; and government, Le Censeur européen, 100, Saint-Simon, 112-113; and revolution, 146, 151; opposed to state, 181; differing definitions of, lOOn., 133; bourgeois society in Marx, 183-184 Spitzer, A. B., 205 Spühler, W„ 204 Stadler, P., 202 de Stael, M me „ 90 Stark, W„ 204 Stein, von L., 206 Sydenham, M., 199

Talmon, J., 197, 205, 135 Tchernoff, I., 205

213

Theophilanthropists, 58 Thermidorians, 57 Thierry, Α., 201, 202, 96, 101, 165, 168, 187; and history, 103-110; and SaintSimon, 111; and Destutt de Tracy, 96n. Thompson, J. M., 198 Thureau-Dangin, P., 201, 205 Troelsch, E., 204 Tucker, C„ 207 Virtue, concept of, in Rousseau, 18-19, Condorcet, 28-29, Robespierre, 39f., 49, 53, Socialists, 150, 151 Volney, C„ 200, 63, 64 Voltaire, 13 Wallon, H., 199 Walter, G., 198, 199 Weill, G., 204 Wetter, G., 207 Work, as the basis of wealth, 73 ; Destutt de Tracy on, 78 Workers (travailleur), as a class, 143