Unfortunately, under the influence of Enfantin the philosophical and mystical element gained the upper hand and led to the downfall of the school.
The Saint-Simonians considered that it was not enough to take modern humanity into its confidence and reveal to it its social destiny. It must be taught to love and desire that destiny with all the ardour of romantic youth. For the accomplishment of this end there must exist a unity of action and thought such as a common religious conviction alone can confer. And so Saint-Simonism became a religion, a cult with a moral code of its own, with meetings organised and churches founded in different parts of the country, and with apostles ready to carry the good tidings to distant lands. A striking phenomenon surely, and worthy the fullest study. It was a genuine burst of religious enthusiasm among men opposed to established religion but possessed of fine scientific culture—the majority of whom, however, as it turned out, were better equipped for business than for the propagation of a new gospel.
Enfantin and Bazard were to be the popes of this new Catholicism. But Bazard soon retired and Enfantin became “supreme Father.” He withdrew, with forty of the disciples, into a house at Ménilmontant, where they lived a kind of conventual life from April to December 1831. Meanwhile the other propagandists were as active as ever, the work being now carried on in the columns of Le Globe, which became the property of the school in July 1831. This strange experiment was cut short by judicial proceedings, which resulted in a year’s imprisonment for Enfantin, Duverger, and Michel Chevalier, all of whom were found guilty of forming an illegal association. This was the signal for dispersion.
The last phase was the most extravagant in the whole history of the school, and naturally it was the phase that attracted most attention. The simple social doctrine of Saint-Simon was overwhelmed by the new religion of the Saint-Simonians, much as the Positivist religion for a while succeeded in eclipsing the Positive philosophy. Our concern, of course, is chiefly with the social doctrine as expounded in the first volume of the Exposition. That doctrine is sufficiently new to be regarded as an original development and not merely as a résumé of Saint-Simon’s ideas. Both Bazard and Enfantin had some hand in it. But it is almost certain that it was the latter who supplied the economic ideas,[466] and that to the formation of those ideas Sismondi’s work contributed not a little. The work is quite as remarkable for the vigorous logical presentation of the doctrine as it is for the originality of its ideas. The oblivion into which it has fallen is not easily explicable, especially if we compare it with the many mediocre productions that have somehow managed to survive. There are not wanting signs of a revived interest in the doctrines, and for our own part we are inclined to give them a very high place among the economic writings of the century.
The Doctrine de Saint-Simon resolves itself into an elaborate criticism of private property.
The criticism is directed from two points of view—that of distribution and that of the production of wealth, that of justice and that of utility. The attack is carried on from both sides at once, and most of the arguments used during the course of the century are here hurled indiscriminately against the institution of private property. The doctrines of Saint-Simon contributed not a little to the success of the campaign.
(a) Saint-Simon had already emphasised the impossibility of workers and idlers coexisting in the new society. Industrialism could hold out no promise for the second class. Ability and labour only had any claim to remuneration. By some peculiar misconception, however, Saint-Simon had regarded capital as involving some degree of personal sacrifice which entitled it to special remuneration. It was here that the Saint-Simonians intervened. Was it not perfectly obvious that private property in capital was the worst of all privileges? The Revolution had swept away caste distinctions and suppressed the right of primogeniture, which tended to perpetuate inequality among members of the same family, but had failed to touch individual property and its privilege of “laying a toll upon the industry of others.” This right of levying a tax is the fundamental idea in all their definitions of private property.[467] Property, according to the generally accepted meaning of the term to-day, consists of wealth which is not destined to be immediately consumed, but which entitles its owner to a revenue. Within this category are included the two agents of production, land and capital. These are primarily instruments of production, whatever else they may be. Property-owners and capitalists—two classes that need not be distinguished for our present purpose—have the control of these instruments. Their function is to distribute them among the workers. The distribution takes place through a series of operations which give rise to the economic phenomena of interest and rent.[468] Consequently the worker, because of this concentration of property in the hands of a few individuals, is forced to share the fruits of his labour. Such an obligation is nothing short of the exploitation of one man by another,[469] an exploitation all the more odious because the privileges are carefully preserved for one section of the community. Thanks to the laws of inheritance, exploiter and exploited never seem to change places.
To the retort that proprietors and capitalists are not necessarily idle—that many of them, in fact, work hard in order to increase their incomes—the Saint-Simonians reply that all this is beside the point. A certain portion of the income may possibly result from personal effort, but whatever they receive either as capitalists or proprietors can obviously only come from the labour of others, and that clearly is exploitation.
It is not the first time we have encountered this word “exploitation.” We are reminded of the fact that Sismondi made use of it,[470] and the same term will again meet us in the writings of Marx and others. None of them, however, uses it in quite the same sense, and it might be useful to distinguish here between the various meanings of a term which plays such an important rôle in socialist literature and which leads to so much confusion.
Sismondi, we know, regarded interest as the legitimate income of capital, but at the same time admitted that the worker may be exploited.
Such exploitation, he thought, took place whenever the wages were barely sufficient to keep the wage-earner alive, although at the same time the master might be living in luxurious ease. In other words, there is exploitation whenever the worker gets less than a “just” wage. It is merely a temporary defect and not an ineradicable disease of the economic system. It certainly does occur occasionally, although there is no reason why it ever should, and it may be removed without bringing the whole system to ruin. Conceived of in this vague fashion, what is known as exploitation is as difficult to define as the “just price” itself. It appears under several aspects, and is by no means peculiar to the master-servant relation. An individual is exploited whenever advantage is taken of his ignorance or timidity, his weakness or isolation, to force him to part with his goods or his services at less than the “just price” or to pay more for the goods or services of others than they are really worth.
The Saint-Simonians, on the other hand, considered that exploitation was an organic defect of our social order. It is inherent in private property, of which it is an invariable concomitant. It is not simply an incidental abuse, but the most characteristic trait of the whole system, for the fundamental attribute of all property is just this right to enjoy the fruits of labour without having to undergo the irksome task of producing. Such exploitation is not confined to manual labourers; it applies to every one who has to pay a tribute to the proprietor. The entrepreneur, in his turn, becomes a victim because of the interest which he pays to the capitalist, who supplies him with the funds which he needs.[471]
The entrepreneur’s profit, on the other hand, is not the result of exploitation. It represents payment for the work of direction. The master may doubtless abuse his position and reduce the wages of the workers excessively. The Saint-Simonians would then agree with Sismondi in calling this exploitation. But this is not a necessity of the system. And the Saint-Simonians look forward to a future state of society in which exceptional capacity will always be able to enjoy exceptional