SAINT-SIMON, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Count of. - B. in Paris on Oct. 17, 1760, d. there on May 19, 1825. From 1779 to 1782 he took part as a captain of the regular French army in the war for the independence of the United States of America. The spiritual repercussion of the American war was decisive for him; he had the impression of witnessing the beginning of a new historical era, founded on production and consequently oriented toward the future and no longer on inheritance and the defense of tradition.
Between 1787 and 1789 he was in Spain, where he entered into relations with the count of Redern, ambaskiator of Saxony in Madrid and later his business partner. Having returned to France, he adhered to revolutionary ideas, but without engaging in intense political activity. He sided with the extreme Hébertist left, linked to the milieu of the "patriots of industry" from whom Robespierre wanted to free the Republic; in this, and in his friendship with Redern, who was suspected as a foreigner, lay the reason for his arrest in Oct. 1793. Freed after Thermidor and restored to a wealth that allowed him a style of life worthy of his ancestors, he held a leading place in the elegant life of Paris under the Directory. In 1798 came his break with Redern and, immediately following, the decision to renounce business in order to devote himself to philosophy or, in his own terms, to open to human intelligence a new career, the physico-political one. His ineptitude at managing affairs, together with the lavish tone of his way of life, brought him in the years 1805-13 to a situation of true misery; until in 1823 he finally found a sure protector in the banker Olindo Rodrigues, who had taken an interest in his doctrine.
Three phases can be distinguished in the development of his thought. In the first, 1788-1813: Lettres d'un habitant de Genève (1802); Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXᵉ siècle (1807-1808), Mémoire sur la science de l'homme (1813), his effort is directed toward "systématiser la philosophie de Dieu". He thinks that the solution of social phenomena can be found only in dependence on a total synthesis, obtained through the maximal generalization of the most universal physical law, the law of gravitation. In this regard he is truly the initiator of the scientism of the 19th century. The thesis that politics and morality are nothing but aspects of "general science" naturally leads him to the idea that the direction of humanity should be entrusted to a magisterium of scientists (which would take the name of "Council of Newton"); they alone have the qualities to interpret the generalized law of gravitation and to derive from it the applications destined to make the earth a paradise. The work was placed on the Index by decree of 11 Apr. 1859.
Naturally this idea of a "new encyclopedia" (Esquisse d'une nouvelle Encyclopédie, 1810) could not meet with the favor of specialist scientists. The Bureau des longitudes declared that it was not within its competence to judge the ideas of the "founder of fiscism": hence his Lettres au Bureau des longitudes, harshly polemical, especially against Laplace. In this first phase he would like to associate his synthesis with the Napoleonic reconstruction and would aspire to the figure of "scientific lieutenant of the emperor."
A fundamental trait of the entire Saint-Simonian movement: the refusal to take a position against the dominant political forces, but rather to seek to use them for the implementation of the plan of social reforms. The whole history of the movement is troubled by this contradiction between the revolutionary character of its program and the opportunism of its practice.
In the second phase: De la réorganisation de la société européenne (1814); L'Industrie (1816-18); Le Politique (1819); L'Organisateur (1819-20); Du Système industriel (1821-22); Catéchisme des industriels (1823-24) — in which he availed himself of the collaboration of Augustin Thierry, from 1814 to 1817, then of Auguste Comte from 1817-24 — he renounces, at least in fact, the "total synthesis" and believes he finds in history understood as science the laws that must be applied in order to save the world scientifically. Here we have the most significant and best-known S.-S., the precursor of positivism and of socialism. With respect to the general vision of the historical course, one may say that he rethinks Condorcet through Bonald. From the former he takes progressivism; from the latter the distinction between organic ages and analytical ages, the positive evaluation of the Middle Ages and the consideration as a danger of crisis and dissolution in the age that opens with the Reformation and concludes with the French Revolution and with liberalism.
The organic periods are for him those in which social equilibrium is perfect, power is in the hands of the most worthy, each one is in his place. In the critical periods this order has been destroyed and society suffers until it has rediscovered its legitimate leaders. The new organic epoch will have its spiritual foundation in science and the basis of its temporal organization in production, "industry." Social life is nothing but the organization of social interests; the aim of political inquiry will be the definition of the organization most favorable to industry. In this phase S.-S. distinguishes between spiritual power and temporal power: the former still belongs to the scientists, who exercise it through the discovery of laws; temporal power, on the other hand, must pass to the producers. It is certainly easy to specify the sense in which S.-S. is a precursor of Comtean positivism; beyond general scientism, for the definition of the law of the three stages, theological, metaphysical, positive. Less close is his relationship with socialism. The social elements of his thought are certainly very clear: the critique of liberalism, the affirmation of the priority of the social over the political, the interpretation of the French Revolution as a bourgeois revolution, a phraseology that has remained in the history of socialism (opposition between the producers and the idle and parasitic classes), the concept that the administration of things must replace the government of persons, etc. But the critique of industrial capitalism is completely lacking and, consequently, so is the concept of class struggle; and as regards the problem of inheritance, he criticizes the inheritance of functions, but does not pronounce on the inheritability of goods.
A place apart, for its significance in the history of European ideas, is held by De la réorganisation de la société européenne, written in collaboration with Thierry. Interesting in this work is the critique, conducted with a rigor that is unusual in S.-S., of the policy of equilibrium followed by the European states after the Treaty of Westphalia. The European constitution is conceived on the model of the English Constitution: a hereditary European king and a European parliament, above the national parliaments, with two chambers, one hereditary and one elective. As regards the means, he thinks of the union of France and England as the first nucleus of the European confederation and seeks to bring out how this union is required by the interests of both countries.
In the last period of his life a new ethico-religious phase of his thought announces itself, of which the document is the Nouveau christianisme (1825), which appeared posthumously. S.-S. thinks that, in order to move men, his ideology must reach their "heart," that is, take religious form. The Nouveau christianisme is of notable interest as an attempt at a total reduction of Christianity to humanitarianism. The task of Christianity in the last moment of its development resolves itself into that of directing society toward the improvement of the lot of the poorest class. On the basis of this reduction S.-S. condemns as "heresies" both Catholicism and Protestantism. This religious moment was seen as an involution, a return to the "theological" stage, by Comte, and was the reason for their break. To its development, on the other hand, the Saint-Simonian movement in the strict sense devoted itself.
SAINT-SIMONISM
At his death S.-S. left not a school in the strict sense of the term, but a group of friends whose guiding spirit was Olinde Rodrigues. They set out to bring to life one of the master's last projects, the founding of a journal of doctrine and propaganda, Le
Producteur, which lasted until Oct. 1826. It fulfilled the task of making Saint-Simonian thought known to a wider circle; doctrinally it remained at the scientific stage of the master's thought, merely sharpening the anti-liberal polemic. In the years 1826-29 the Saint-Simonians organized themselves in the form of a school and gave systematic ideological expression to their principles in the Exposition de la doctrine (1829). From the social point of view, the abolition of inheritance is decisively affirmed there; only the capacity to put the instruments of production to use confers the right to possess them; "to each according to his capacities, to each capacity according to its works." Privileges of birth must entirely disappear; and the right of inheritance will belong only to the state, once it has become an association of workers. But the most characteristic trait of this writing is the transformation of the doctrine into a religion and the affirmation of the religious future of humanity. The conflict of science and religion is proper to critical epochs; organic ages, by contrast, are characterized by their intimate unity. In the history of religion too one must see a development, and therefore the religious revolution of our times cannot be a simple restoration of Christianity, by reason of the fundamental error contained in it, the separation of the spiritual from the temporal. To affirm their unity and consequently the rehabilitation of the flesh is the task of the Saint-Simonian revelation. By now the way was open for the transformation of the doctrine into a religion and of the school into a church. At Christmas 1829 St-Amand Bazard (1791-1832) and Prosper Enfantin (1796-1864) were elected "Fathers" of the Saint-Simonian "Family." The former represented the rationalist tendency, inclined also to agreements with liberalism, albeit limited to the struggle against reaction; the latter, the religious and theocratic tendency, intransigently anti-liberal. Between 1830 and 1832 the church was constituted through the two experiments in communal life of the rue Monsigny and of Ménilmontant. Enfantin succeeded in gaining the upper hand, even through Bazard's schism and the subsequent breaks with Olinde Rodrigues and with Michel Chevalier, who had directed the journal Le Globe, which had become, from the end of 1830, the organ of the school. The disagreement between Bazard and Enfantin arose over the latter's ideas on the rehabilitation of the flesh and the abolition of marriage; but it also had its origin in the fact that Bazard intended to remain faithful to the idea of liberty, whose sacrifice was demanded by Enfantin's theocratic line. Enfantin's philosophical-religious ideas are in substance a transposition into a fantastic pantheistic metaphysics of S.-S.'s anti-individualist social doctrine: the linking of individual life with collective life has its metaphysical sanction in the thesis that all souls, finite manifestations of the infinite, participate in the divine eternity. There is neither birth nor death, because the same soul is incarnated in different individuals without ceasing to be itself.
The scant echo aroused by his ideas shifted Enfantin's attention toward the East, as the land of religious revelations. Practical Saint-Simonism must, in his judgment, begin by realizing the unity of East (religion) and West (industry). "A great act of worship" that must bear the traits of the new industrial civilization will symbolize this unity; Enfantin, a curious mixture of bizarre dreamer and realistic man of action, discerned it in the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez. Therefore the Saint-Simonian family moved to Egypt, in the hope of Mehmet 'Ali's support. Failing to convince him, the Saint-Simonians accepted his proposal to devote their activity to the construction of a dam on the Nile: the success of this work was to have signified the beginning of the industrial organization of the East. But the works were postponed; many Saint-Simonians were left without employment, others died in an epidemic of plague. Three years (1834-37) were lost in the Egyptian expedition. After this failure Enfantin thought that the best path for the realization of his program was the support of princes, and he placed his hopes in Louis Philippe, who was to have become the "king of the workers." This "apostolate among princes" brought him nothing but an appointment as a member of the Scientific Commission of Algeria (1840-
1841), which allowed him to write a book on the colonization of that region, but nothing concrete for the success of the Saint-Simonian idea. After 1841 he devoted himself to industrial activity, in the belief that only the industrialization of society could create the conditions favorable to the realization of his politico-religious program. He concerned himself with the problems of the French railway network and played a decisive part in the merger of the small railway companies into large companies. Politically he increasingly accentuated, especially after the experience of 1848, his opposition to liberalism as well as to revolutionary socialism. From this he was naturally led to adhere to the Second Empire: it seemed to him that only authority was capable of guaranteeing the conditions for social reforms. The same evolution was undergone by other Saint-Simonians, the most notable of whom is Michel Chevalier, who became one of the most listened-to economic advisers of Napoleon III. Thus the Saint-Simonian movement attained reality by collaborating in the industrialization of France, but letting go (confining it to distant hopes) the revolutionary and messianic aspect. To the organic exposition of the philosophical-religious element of his work Enfantin still devoted two books, La Science de l'homme (1858) and La vie éternelle (1861), which had few readers. With his death (Aug. 31, 1864) the Saint-Simonian school may be said to have come to an end.
Bibliography8 works
Augusto Del Noce