Henri de Saint-Simon
in full
Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte (count)
de Saint-Simon
born
Oct. 17, 1760, Paris, Fr.
died May 19, 1825, Paris
French social theorist and one of the
chief founders of Christian socialism.
In his major work, Nouveau Christianisme
(1825), he proclaimed a brotherhood of
man that must accompany the scientific
organization of industry and society.
Life.
Saint-Simon was born of an impoverished
aristocratic family. His grandfather’s
cousin had been the Duke de Saint-Simon,
famous for his memoirs of the court of
Louis XIV. Henri was fond of claiming
descent from Charlemagne. After an
irregular education by private tutors,
he entered military service at 17. He
was in the regiments sent by France to
aid the American colonies in their war
of independence against England and
served as a captain of artillery at
Yorktown in 1781.
During
the French Revolution he remained in
France, where he bought up newly
nationalized land with funds advanced by
a friend. He was imprisoned in the
Palais de Luxembourg during the Reign of
Terror and emerged to find himself
enormously rich because of the
depreciation of the Revolutionary
currency. He proceeded to live a life of
splendour and license, entertaining
prominent people from all walks of life
at his glittering salons. Within several
years he had brought himself close to
bankruptcy. He turned to the study of
science, attending courses at the École
Polytechnique and entertaining
distinguished scientists.
In his
first published work, Lettres d’un
habitant de Genève à ses contemporains
(1803; “Letters of an Inhabitant of
Geneva to His Contemporaries”),
Saint-Simon proposed that scientists
take the place of priests in the social
order. He argued that the property
owners who held political power could
hope to maintain themselves against the
propertyless only by subsidizing the
advance of knowledge.
By 1808
Saint-Simon was impoverished, and the
last 17 years of his life were lived
mainly on the generosity of friends.
Among his many later publications were
De la réorganisation de la société
européenne (1814; “On the Reorganization
of European Society”) and L’industrie
(1816–18, in collaboration with Auguste
Comte; “Industry”). In 1823, in a fit of
despondency, Saint-Simon attempted to
kill himself with a pistol but succeeded
only in putting out one eye.
Throughout his life Saint-Simon devoted
himself to a long series of projects and
publications through which he sought to
win support for his social ideas. As a
thinker, Saint-Simon was deficient in
system, clearness, and coherence, but
his influence on modern thought,
especially in the social sciences, is
undeniable. Apart from the details of
his socialist teachings, his main ideas
are simple and represented a reaction
against the bloodletting of the French
Revolution and the militarism of
Napoleon. Saint-Simon correctly foresaw
the industrialization of the world, and
he believed that science and technology
would solve most of humanity’s problems.
Accordingly, in opposition to feudalism
and militarism, he advocated an
arrangement whereby businessmen and
other industrial leaders would control
society. The spiritual direction of
society would be in the hands of
scientists and engineers, who would thus
take the place occupied by the Roman
Catholic church in the European Middle
Ages. What Saint-Simon desired, in other
words, was an industrialized state
directed by modern science, and one in
which society would be organized for
productive labour by the most capable
men. The aim of society would be to
produce things useful to life.
Saint-Simon also proposed that the
states of Europe form an association to
suppress war. These ideas had a profound
influence on the philosopher Auguste
Comte, who worked with Saint-Simon until
the two men quarreled.
Although the contrast between the
labouring and the propertied classes in
society is not emphasized by
Saint-Simon, the cause of the poor is
discussed, and in his best-known work,
Nouveau Christianisme (1825; “The New
Christianity”), it takes the form of a
religion. It was this development of
Saint-Simon’s teaching that occasioned
his final rupture with Comte. Before the
publication of Nouveau Christianisme,
Saint-Simon had not concerned himself
with theology, but in this work,
beginning with a belief in God, he tries
to resolve Christianity into its
essential elements, and he finally
propounds this precept: that religion
“should guide the community toward the
great aim of improving as quickly as
possible the conditions of the poorest
class.” This became the watchword of the
entire school of Saint-Simon.
His movement and its influence.
Saint-Simon died in 1825, and, in the
subsequent years, his disciples carried
his message to the world and made him
famous. By 1826 a movement supporting
his ideas had begun to grow, and by the
end of 1828 the Saint-Simonians were
holding meetings in Paris and in many
provincial towns. In July 1830
revolution brought new opportunities to
the Saint-Simonians in France. They
issued a proclamation demanding the
ownership of goods in common, the
abolition of the right of inheritance,
and the enfranchisement of women. The
sect included some of the ablest and
most promising young men of France. In
the following years, however, the
leaders of the movement quarreled among
themselves, and as a result the movement
fragmented and broke up, its leaders
turning to practical affairs.
Despite
this, the ideas of the Saint-Simonians
had a pervasive influence on the
intellectual life of 19th-century
Europe. Thomas Carlyle in England was
among those influenced by the ideas of
Saint-Simon or his followers. Friedrich
Engels found in Saint-Simon “the breadth
of view of a genius,” containing in
embryo most of the ideas of the later
socialists. Saint-Simon’s proposals of
social and economic planning were indeed
ahead of his time, and succeeding
Marxists, socialists, and capitalist
reformers alike were indebted to his
ideas in one way or another. Felix
Markham has said that Saint-Simon’s
ideas have a peculiar relevance to the
20th century, when socialist ideologies
took the place of traditional religion
in many countries.
