[411] We note that Sismondi does not accept Malthus’s theory of population. He never admits that population depends upon the means of subsistence; he holds that it varies according to the will of the proprietor, who stimulates or retards it according to his demand, but who is interested in its limitation in order to secure for himself the maximum net product. “Population has never reached the limits of possible subsistence, and probably it never will. But all those who desire the subsistence have neither the means nor the right to extract it from the soil. Those, on the contrary, to whom the laws give the monopoly of the land have no interest in obtaining from it all the subsistence it might produce. In all countries proprietors are opposed, and must be opposed, to any system of cultivation which would tend merely to multiply the means of subsistence while not increasing the revenue. Long before being arrested by the impossibility of finding a country which produced more subsistence population would be checked by the impossibility of finding the people to buy those means or to work and bring them into being.” (Nouveaux Principes, vol. ii, pp. 269-270.)
[412] Ibid., pp. 263, 264.
[413] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 153.
[414] Ibid., p. 235. This problem of the net and gross produce occupied Sismondi’s attention for a long time. We find a suggestion of it in his first work, Le Tableau de l’Agriculture toscane (Geneva, 1801), and though he does not definitely take the side of the gross produce, he shows some leanings that way. “Why is the gain of a single rich farmer considered more profitable for a State than the miserable earnings of several thousand workers and peasants?” The book, however, is a treatise on practical agriculture, and includes only a few economic dicta. It is here that we have his beautiful description of his farm at Val Chiuso (p. 219).
[415] It is true that Sismondi wished to get rid of the practice of producing corn for a market, so as to free the nation’s food from the fluctuations of that market. Neither is he over-enthusiastic in his praise of the gross produce. He recognises that the gradual growth of the gross produce might, in its way, be the consequence of a state of suffering if population were to progress too rapidly (Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 153). This shows what a hesitating mind we are dealing with.
[416] Ibid., p. 368.
[417] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 361.
[418] Elsewhere he remarks: “The petty merchants, the small manufacturers, disappear, and a great entrepreneur replaces hundreds of them whose total wealth was never equal to his. Taken altogether, however, they consumed more than he does. His costly luxury gives much less encouragement to industry than the honest ease of the hundred homes which it has replaced.” (Ibid., p. 327). The theory is more than doubtful. What we want to know is whether the demand will remain the same in amount, not whether there will be no change in its character—a contingency that need not result in a general crisis, but simply in a passing inconvenience.
[419] Sismondi applies the same principles to a consideration of a fall in the rate of interest as he does to the growth of production or the increase of machinery. “An increase of capital is desirable only when its employment can be increased at the same time. But whenever the rate of interest is lowered it is a certain sign that the employment of capital has proportionally diminished as compared with the amount available; and this fall in the rate, which is always advantageous to some people, is disadvantageous to others—some will have to be content with smaller incomes and others with none at all.” (Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 393.)
[420] Compare the Saint-Simonian review, Le Producteur, vol. iv, pp. 887-888.
[421] Nouveaux Lundis, vol. vi, p. 81.
[422] Études sur l’Économie politique, vol. i, pp. 60, 61.
[423] Nouveaux Principes, vol. i, p. 341; vol. ii, p. 459.
[424] Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 415, 435. See also Études, vol. i, p. 25.
[425] Nouveaux Principes, vol. ii, pp. 365, 366.
[426] Ibid., p. 451.
[427] Ibid., p. 338.
[428] Nouveaux Principes, vol. ii, p. 661.
[429] Ibid., p. 364.
[430] See section I of present chapter.
[431] Knies, strangely enough, classes him with the socialists.
[432] A. Blanqui, in his Histoire de l’Économie politique en Europe (1837), considers him a writer of the modern school, which he describes as follows: “Writers of this school are no longer willing to treat production as a pure abstraction apart from its influence upon the workers. To produce wealth is not enough; it must be equitably distributed.” (Introd., 3rd ed., p. xxi.)
[433] Droz (1773-1850) published in 1829 his Économie politique, ou Principes de la Science des Richesses. It is in this work that we find the famous phrase, “Certain economists seem to think that products are not made for men, but that men are made for the products.”
[434] Paris, 1841, two volumes. Buret died in 1842, when thirty-two years of age.
[435] It was not intended that any reference should be made in this volume to the doctrine of socialism before the opening of the nineteenth century, but the question whether the French Revolution of 1789 was socialist in character or simply middle-class, as the socialists of to-day would put it, has been so frequently discussed that we cannot ignore it altogether.
There is no doubt that the leaders of the Revolution—including Marat even, who is wrongly regarded as a supporter of that agrarian law which he condemned as fatal and erroneous—always showed unfailing respect for the institution of private property. The confiscation of the property of the Church and of the émigré nobles was a political and not an economic measure, and in that respect is fairly comparable with the historic confiscation of the property of Jews, Templars, Huguenots, and Irish, which in no case was inspired by merely socialist motives. The confiscation of endowments—of goods belonging to legal persons—was regarded as a means of defending individual or real property against the encroachments of merely fictitious persons and the tyranny of the dead hand. When it came to the abolition of feudal rights great care was taken to distinguish the tenant’s rights of sovereignty, which were about to be abolished, from his proprietary rights, which deserved the respect of everyone who recognised the legitimacy of compensation. In practice the distinction proved of little importance. Scores of people were ruined during those unfortunate months—some through mere misfortune, others because of the muddle over the issue of assignats, and others, again, because of the confiscation of rents; but the intention to respect the rights of property remains indisputable still. It would seem that in this matter the revolutionary leaders had come under the influence of the Physiocrats, whose cult of property has already engaged our attention. And how easy it would be to imagine a Physiocrat penning Article 17 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man when it speaks of property as an inviolable, sacred right! But, on the other hand, it is true that Rousseau in his article Économie politique speaks of the rights of property as the most sacred of the citizen’s rights.
It was not only on the question of property that the revolutionists of 1789 showed themselves anti-socialist. They were also anti-socialist in the sense that they paid no attention to class war and ignored the antagonism that exists between capitalists and workers. All were to be treated as citizens and brothers, all were equal and alike.
However, those who claim the most intimate connection with the spirit of the Revolution remain undismayed by such considerations. They endeavour to show that the Revolution was not quite so conservative nor so completely individualistic as is generally supposed, and after diligent search they claim to have discovered certain decrees bearing unmistakable traces of socialism. But a much more general practice is to plead extenuating circumstances. “Are we to demand that the social problems which appeared fifty years afterwards, when industry had revolutionised the relations of capital and labour, should have been solved at the end of the eighteenth century? It would have been worse than useless for the men of 1789 and 1793 to try to regulate such things in advance.” (Aulard, Address to Students, April 21, 1893. Cf. his Histoire politique de la Révolution, chap. 8, paragraph entitled “Le Socialisme.”)
We must not lose sight of the communist plot hatched by François Babeuf during the period of the Revolution. But in this case, at any rate, the exception proves the rule, for, despite the fact that Babeuf had assumed the suggestive name of Gaius Gracchus, he found little sympathy among the men of the Convention, even in La Montagne, and he was condemned and executed by order of the Directory. Babeuf’s plot is interesting, if only as an anticipatory protest of revolutionary socialism against bourgeois revolution. Cf. Aulard, loc. cit., p. 627.
[436] Not to speak of celebrated Utopians like Plato, More, and Campanella, a number of writers who have been minutely studied by Lichtenberger undertook to supply such criticism in the eighteenth century. Morelly, Mably, Brissot, and Meslier the curé in France, and Godwin in England, attacked the institution of property with becoming vigour. Babeuf, who in 1797 suffered death for his attempt to establish a community of equals, has left us a summary of their theories. But the Saint-Simonians owe them nothing in the way of inspiration. Eighteenth-century socialism was essentially equalitarian. What aroused the anger of the eighteenth-century writers most of all was the inequality of pleasure and of well-being, for which they held the institution of private property responsible. “If men have the same needs and the same faculties they ought to be given the same material and the same intellectual opportunities,” says the Manifeste des Égaux. But the Saint-Simonians recognise neither equality of needs nor of faculties, and they are particularly anxious not to be classed along with the Babeuvistes—the champions of the agrarian law. Their socialism, which is founded upon the right to the whole produce of labour and would apportion wages according to capacity, aims neither at equality nor uniformity.
The Saint-Simonians seem to have remained in ignorance of the socialist theories of their contemporaries, the French Fourier and the English Thompson and Owen. Fourier’s work only became known to Enfantin after his own economic doctrine had been formulated. Saint-Simon and Bazard appear never to have read him. It is probable that Enfantin only became aware of Fourier’s writings after 1829, and when he did he interested himself merely in those that dealt with free love and the theory of passions. As Bourgin put it: “If Fourier did anything at all, he has rather hastened the decomposition of Saint-Simonism.” (Henry Bourgin, Fourier, p. 419; Paris, 1905.)
The English socialists are never as much as mentioned. The Ricardian doctrine of labour-value, which is the basis of Thompson’s theory and of Owen’s, and later still of that of Marx, seems never to have become known to them. “Questions of value, price, and production, which demand no fundamental knowledge either of the composition or the organisation of society,” are treated as so many details (Le Producteur, vol. iv, p. 388). Their doctrine is primarily social, containing only occasional allusions to political economy. Enfantin is careful to distinguish between Quesnay and his school and Smith or Say. The Physiocrats gave a social character to their doctrine, which the economists wrongfully neglected to develop. Aug. Comte, in the fourth volume of the Cours de Philosophie, has criticised political economy in almost identical terms, which affords an additional proof of his indebtedness to Saint-Simonism.
[437] Cf. especially Dumas, Psychologie de deux Messies positivistes, Saint-Simon et A. Comte (Paris, 1905), and for biographical details Weill, Saint-Simon et son Œuvre (1894).
[438] Weill, Saint-Simon et son Œuvre, p. 15.
[439] In 1814 De la Réorganisation de la Société européenne, by Saint-Simon and A. Thierry, his pupil; 1817-18, Industrie, in 4 vols. (the 3rd vol. and the first book of the 4th vol. are the work of A. Comte); 1819, La Politique; 1821, Le Système industriel; 1823-24, Le Catéchisme des Industriels (the third book, by A. Comte, bears the title Système de Politique positive); 1825, Le Nouveau Christianisme. Our quotations from Saint-Simon are taken from the Œuvres de Saint-Simon et d’Enfantin, published by members of the committee instituted by Enfantin for carrying out the master’s last wishes (Paris, Dentu, 1865), and from the Œuvres choisies de Saint-Simon, published in 3 vols. by Lemonnier of Brussels (1859).
[440] L’Organisateur, Part I, 1819, pp. 10-20. This passage was republished by Olinde Rodrigues in 1832 under the title of Une Parabole politique in a volume of miscellaneous writings by Saint-Simon, with the result that Saint-Simon was prosecuted before the Cour d’Assises. He was acquitted, however.
[441] “With the enfranchisement of the communes we shall witness the middle classes at last in enjoyment of their liberty, setting up as a political power. The essence of that power will consist in freedom from being imposed upon by others without consent. Gradually it will become richer and stronger, at the same time growing in political importance and improving its social position in every respect, with the result that the other classes, which may be called the theological or feudal classes, will dwindle in estimation as well as in their real importance. Whence I conclude that the industrial classes must continue to gain ground, and finally to include the whole of society. Such seems to be the trend of things—the direction in which we are moving.” (Lettres à un Américain, Œuvres, vol. ii, p. 166.)
[442] “Industry is the basis of liberty. Industry can only expand and grow strong with the growth of liberty. Were this doctrine, so old in fact but so new to many people, once fully grasped instead of those fictitious dreams of antiquity, we should have heard the last of such sanguinary phrases as ‘equality or death.’” (Œuvres, vol. ii, pp. 210-211.)
[443] “Lawyers and metaphysicians are wont to take appearance for reality, the name for the thing.” (Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. v., p. 12.)
[444] “Parliamentary government must be regarded as an indispensable step in the direction of industrialism.” (Œuvres, vol. iii, p. 22.) “It is absolutely necessary if the transition from the essentially arbitrary régime which has existed hitherto is to be replaced by the ideal liberal régime which is bound to come into being by and by.” (Ibid. p. 21.)
[445] Writing in 1803 in his Lettres d’un Habitant de Genève, he uses the following words: “Everyone will be obliged to do some work. The duty of employing one’s personal ability in furthering the interests of humanity is an obligation that rests upon the shoulders of everyone.” (Œuvres, vol. i, p. 55.)
[446] “I find it essential to give to the term ‘labour’ the widest latitude possible. The civil servant, the scientist, the artist, the manufacturer, and the agriculturist are all working as certainly as the labourer who tills the ground or the porter who shoulders his burden.” (Introduction to Travaux scientifiques, Œuvres choisies, vol. i, p. 221.)
[447] The national or industrial party includes the following classes:
1. All who till the land, as well as any who direct their operations.
2. All artisans, manufacturers, and merchants, all carriers by land or by sea, as well as everyone whose labour serves directly or indirectly for the production or the utilisation of commodities; all savants who have consecrated their talents to the study of the positive sciences, all artists and liberal advocates; “the small number of priests who preach a healthy morality; and, finally, all citizens who willingly employ either their talents or their means in freeing producers from the unjust supremacy exercised over them by idle consumers.”
“In the anti-national party figure the nobles who labour for the restoration of the old régime, all priests who make morality consist of blind obedience to the decrees of Pope or clergy, owners of real estates, noblemen who do nothing, judges who exercise arbitrary jurisdiction, as well as soldiers who support them—in a word, everyone who is opposed to the establishment of the system that is most favourable to economy or liberty.” (Le Parti national, in Le Politique, Œuvres, vol. iii, pp. 202-204.)
[448] Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 17, note.
[449] Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. vi, pp. 91-92.
[450] Œuvres, vol. iii, pp. 35-36.
[451] On this point see Halévy’s article in the Revue du Mois for December 1907, Les Idées économiques de Saint-Simon, and Allix, article mentioned supra, p. 117.
[452] In the following passage the opposition is very marked: “One must recognise that nearly all Government measures which have presumed to influence social prosperity have simply proved harmful. Hence people have come to the conclusion that the best way in which a Government can further the well-being of society is by letting it alone. But this method of looking at the question, however just it may seem when we consider it in relation to the present political system, is evidently false when it is adopted as a general principle. The impression will remain, however, until we succeed in establishing another political order.” (L’Organisateur, Œuvres, vol. iv, p. 201.)
Later on the Saint-Simonians abandoned this idea and demanded Governmental control of all social relations. “Far from admitting that the directive control of Government in social matters ought to be restricted, we believe that it ought to be extended until it includes every kind of social activity. Moreover, we believe that it should always be exercised, for society to us seems a veritable hierarchy.” (Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition, Deuxième Année, p. 108; Paris, 1830.)
[453] “Under the old régime men were considered inferior to things,” according to a brochure entitled Des Bourbons et des Stuarts (1822; Œuvres choisies, vol. ii, p. 447). “The object of the new system will be to extend man’s hold over things.” (Œuvres, vol. iv, p. 81.) “In the present state of education what the nation wants is not more government, but more cheap administration.” (Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. v, p. 181.) Engels, in his book written in reply to Eugen Dühring, makes use of identical terms in speaking of the socialist régime. “When the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production take the place of the governing of persons the State will not merely be abolished: it will be dead.” (Philosophie, Économie politique, Socialisme, French translation by Laskine, p. 361; Paris, 1911.)
[454] Lettres à un Américain, Œuvres, vol. ii, p. 189.
[455] Des Bourbons et des Stuarts, Œuvres choisies, vol. ii, pp. 437-438.
[456] L’Organisateur, Œuvres choisies, vol. iv, pp. 86 and 150-151.
[457] Lettres à un Américain, Œuvres, vol. ii, p. 188.
[458] This is not the only plan of government proposed by Saint-Simon, although it is the one most characteristic of him. It is to be found in L’Organisateur immediately after the Parable. We have to remember that Saint-Simon was very hostile to a Government of savants. Power was to be placed in the hands of the industrial leaders—the savants were simply to advise. “Should we ever have the misfortune to establish a political order in which administration was entrusted to savants we should soon witness the corruption of the scientists, who would readily adopt the vices of the clergy and become astute, despotic quibblers.” (Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. v, p. 161.)
[459] Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 96.
[460] F. Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, 4th ed., p. 277. French translation, Paris, 1911, p. 334. The whole of this chapter in Engels’ book is from the pen of Karl Marx.
[461] French translation under the title L’État socialiste, Paris, 1906.
[462] This is the full text: “The object of socialism is to set up a new system of society based upon the workshop as a model. The rights of the society will be the customary rights of the factory. Not only will socialism stand to benefit by the existence of the industrial system which has been built up by capital and science upon the basis of technical development, but it will gain even more from that spirit of co-operation which has long been a feature of factory life, drawing out the best energy and the best skill of the workman.” Earlier in the same volume he writes: “Everything will proceed in an orderly, economical fashion, just like a factory.” (G. Sorel, Le Syndicalisme révolutionnaire, in Le Mouvement socialiste, November 1 and 15, 1905.)
[463] Saint-Simon often quotes Say and Smith with distinct approval. But he charges Say with the separation of politics from economics instead of merging the former in the latter, and with inability to realise to the full extent what he “dimly saw, as it were, in spite of himself, namely, that political economy is the one true foundation of politics.” (Lettres à un Américain, Œuvres, vol. ii, p. 185.)
[464] Saint-Simon is classed among the socialists for two reasons: (1) the interest he takes in the condition of the poor; (2) his opinions concerning the necessity for reforming the institution of private property. But none of the texts that are generally quoted seem to have the significance that is occasionally given them. With regard to the first point, a celebrated passage from the Nouveau Christianisme is the one usually quoted: “Society should be organised in such a fashion as to secure the greatest advantage for the greatest number. The object of all its labours and activities should be the promptest, completest amelioration possible of the moral and physical condition of the most numerous class.” (Œuvres, vol. vii, pp. 108-109.) Already in his Système industriel Saint-Simon had said that the direct object which he had in view was to better the lot of that class that had no other means of existence than the labour of its own right arm. (Ibid., vol. vi, p. 81.) But is this not just the old Benthamite formula—the greatest good of the greatest number? Besides, how does Saint-Simon propose to secure all this? By giving the workers more power? Not at all. “The problem of social organisation must be solved for the people. The people themselves are passive and listless and must be discounted in any consideration of the question. The best way is to entrust public administration to the care of the industrial chiefs, who will always directly attempt to give the widest possible scope to their undertakings, with the result that their efforts in this direction will lead to the maximum expansion of the amount of work executed by the mass of the people.” (Ibid., vol. vi, pp. 82-83.) A Liberal economist would hardly have expressed it otherwise.
As to the question of private property, Saint-Simon certainly regarded its transformation as at least possible. This is seen in a number of passages. “Property should be reconstituted and established upon a foundation that might prove more favourable for production,” says he in L’Organisateur. (Ibid., vol. iv, p. 59.) Elsewhere, in a letter written to the editor of the Journal général de la France, he mentions the fact that he is occupied with the development of the following ideas: (1) That the law establishing the right of private property is the most important of all, seeing that it is the basis of our social edifice; (2) the institution of private property ought to be constituted in such a fashion that the possessors may be stimulated to make the best possible use of it. (Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 43-44.) In his Lettres à un Américain he gives the following résumé of the principles which underlie the work of J. B. Say (an incidental proof of his attachment to the Liberal economists): “The production of useful objects is the only positive, reasonable aim which political societies can propose for themselves, and consequently the principle of respect for production and producers is a much more fruitful one than the other principle of respect for property and proprietors.” (Œuvres, vol. ii, pp. 186-187.) But all that this seems to us to imply is that the utility of property constitutes its legality and that it should be organised with a view to social utility. Admitting that he did conceive of the necessity of a reform of property, it does not appear that he intended this to mean anything beyond a reform of landed property. We have already seen how he regarded capital as a kind of social outlay which demanded remuneration. The following passage bears eloquent testimony to his respect for movable property: “Wealth, generally speaking, affords a proof of the manufacturers’ ability even where that wealth is derived from inherited fortune, whereas in the other classes of society it is apparently true to say that the richer are inferior in capacity to those who have received less education but have a smaller fortune. This is a truth that must play an important part in positive politics.” (Syst. indust., Œuvres, vol. v, p. 49, note.)
[465] The exact title is Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition, Première Année, 1829. Our quotations are taken from the second edition (Paris, 1830). One ought to mention, in addition to these, the articles contributed by Enfantin to Le Globe and republished under the title of Économie politique et Politique, in one volume (2nd ed., 1832). But none of these articles is as interesting as the Doctrine, and they only reproduce the ideas already discussed by Enfantin in his articles in Le Producteur.
[466] Despite the fact that the oral exposition of the doctrine was the work of Bazard and was prepared for the press by his disciples—Hippolyte Carnot among others—most of the economic ideas contained in it must be attributed to Enfantin. Enfantin also was responsible for the majority of the economic articles that appeared in Le Producteur. But the doctrine set forth in Le Producteur differs considerably from that expounded in the Exposition. Interest and rent are subjected to severe criticism as tributes paid to idleness by industry. Inheritance, on the other hand, though treated with scant sympathy, is not condemned. A lowering of the rate of interest would, Enfantin thinks, help to enfranchise the workers, and a sound credit system would solve the greatest of modern problems—that is, it would reconcile workers and idlers, “whose interests will never again be confused with the general interest, inasmuch as the possession of the fruits of past labour will no longer constitute a claim to the enjoyment of the benefits of labour in the present or future.” (Le Producteur, vol. ii, p. 124.) These ideas are more fully developed in the Exposition.
[467] Doctrine de Saint-Simon, p. 182.
[468] Ibid., p. 190.
[469] Ibid., p. 93.
[471] “The mass of workers are to-day exploited by those people whose property they use. Captains of industry in their dealings with proprietors have to submit to a similar kind of treatment, only to a much less degree. But they occasionally share in the privilege of the exploiters, for the full burden of exploitation falls upon the working classes—that is, upon the vast majority of mankind.” (Doctrine de Saint-Simon, p. 176.)
[472] “It is our belief that profits diminish while wages increase; but the term ‘wages’ as we use it includes the profits that accrue to the entrepreneur, whose earnings we regard as the price of his labour.” (Le Producteur, vol. i, p. 245. The article is by Enfantin.)
[473] We might sum up the different senses of the word “exploitation” as used by Sismondi, the Saint-Simonians, and Marx respectively as follows:
(1) Sismondi thinks that the worker is exploited whenever he is not paid a wage sufficient to enable him to lead a decent existence. Unearned income seems quite legitimate, however.
(2) Exploitation exists, in the opinion of the Saint-Simonians, whenever a part of the material produce raised by labour is devoted to the remuneration of proprietors through the operation of ordinary social factors.
(3) Marx speaks of exploitation whenever a portion of the produce of labour is devoted to the remuneration of capital either through the existence of social institutions or the operation of the laws of exchange.
[475] Doctrine, p. 191.
[476] See p. 79, note.
[477] Doctrine, pp. 191-192.
[478] The Saint-Simonians never make use of the term, but they describe the doctrine admirably.
[479] “We may provisionally speak of this system as a general system of banking, ignoring for the time being the somewhat narrow interpretation usually placed upon that word. In the first place, the system would comprise a central bank, which would directly represent the Government. This bank would be the depository for every kind of wealth, of all funds for productive purposes and all instruments of labour—in a word, it would include everything that is to-day comprised within the term ‘private property.’ Depending upon this central bank would be other banks of a secondary character, which would be, as it were, a prolongation of the former and would supply it with the means of coming into touch with the principal localities, informing the central institution as to their particular needs and their productive ability. Within the area circumscribed for these banks would be other banks of a more specialised character still, covering a less extensive field and including within their ambit the tenderer branches of the industrial tree. All wants would be finally focused in the central bank and all effort would radiate from it.” (Doctrine, pp. 206-207.) The idea is probably Enfantin’s, for there is an exposition of the same idea in Le Producteur, vol. iii, p. 385.
[480] Doctrine, p. 210, note. Elsewhere (p. 330): “We are weary of every political principle that does not aim directly at putting the destiny of the people in the hands of the most able and devoted among them.”
[481] “We come back with real joy to this great virtue, so frequently misconceived, not to say misrepresented, at the present time—that virtue which is so easy and so delightful in persons who have a common aim which they want to attain, but which is so painful and revolting when combined with egoism. This virtue of obedience is one to which our thoughts return ever with love,” (Ibid., p. 330.)
[482] The formula in the third edition of the Doctrine is a little different. “Each one,” it runs there, “ought to be endowed according to his merits and rewarded according to his work.” We know that the first part of the formula refers to the distribution of capital, i.e. to the instruments of labour, while the second refers to individual incomes. The word “classed” was substituted for “endowed” in the second edition.
[483] Published as an appendix to the second edition of the Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition, Première Année, 1829.
[484] In his small volume Le Collectivisme (Paris, 1900).
[485] Littré has disputed Comte’s indebtedness to Saint-Simon in his Auguste Comte et le Positivisme. Saint-Simon, however, in his preface to Système industriel remarks that in political matters the jurists form a connecting link between feudal government on the one hand and industrial government on the other, just as the metaphysicians are intermediate between the theological and the scientific régimes. In a note which he adds he states his position still more clearly (Œuvres, vol. v, p. 9). It is true that the Système industriel dates from 1821, and is consequently subsequent to the beginning of the friendly relations between Comte and Saint-Simon. But textual evidence, however precise, cannot decide the question of the reciprocal influence which these two Messiahs exercised upon one another. A similar idea had already found expression in Turgot’s work.