Pareto and Saint-Simonianism. The history of a criticism

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to understand Vilfredo Pareto’s reading of the Saint-Simonian system, namely the project of a new social order based on an industrial organisation. Why did Pareto rank this system among modern socialist systems and why did he qualify it as a pseudo-scientific system and nothing more than a religious system? The reason why he perceived Saint-Simonianism as a non-science can be inferred from both pure theory of political economy and the theory of social evolution. The identification of Saint-Simonianism with a religious system probably derives from the first historians and commentators of socialism in the mid-nineteenth century.

Keywords:

• Pareto
• Saint-Simonianism
• socialism
• equality
• capacity
• distribution

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• B10
• B13
• B14
• D60

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Constant (1992, 50–51). According to the author of the report, Léon Halévy (1802–1883), Constant presents the Saint-Simonians as industrialists only concerned by human action on “physical nature” (see Harpaz, 1992, 47–48).

2 On the industrialist plan, see Leroux (2015).

3 The translations of all quotations in French language are ours.

4 Bazard (1825a). See also the criticism of Constant by Bazard in the December edition of the same journal (1825b).

5 See “L’Industrie or ou discussions politiques, morales, et philosophiques dans l’intérêt de tous les hommes livrés à des travaux utiles et indépendant” document dated 1816–18 (Saint-Simon 2012 II, 1444); also “De la réorganisation de la société européenne” document dated 1814 (Saint-Simon 2012 II, 1247): “The philosophy of the last century was revolutionary, that of the 19th century must be organising.”

6 Dunoyer’s work was published in December 1825. Constant’s review was first published in the volume 9 of the Revue encyclopédique and then rewritten and included in the Mélanges de littérature et de politique under the title “De M. Dunoyer, et de quelques uns de ses ouvrages.” See Constant (1829).

7 Constant ([1813] 1814, 8) and Dunoyer (1827, 370).

8 A phrase imperfectly taken from Le Producteur (1826 II, 168). Its author, Pierre-Isidore Rouen, presented Dunoyer as a champion of “individualism” (Rouen 1826, 169), i.e., a thinking focused on “the individual man” (Rouen 1826, 159) rather than on society, in short, a non-organic thinking, still marked by the 18th century. On the use of this word in France at the beginning of the 19th century, see Lukes (1971, 45–48), Piguet (2018).

9 Constant (1825, 664) indicates that industrialism is the search for an improvement in the material condition of individuals, together with the deployment of their freedoms: “The dominant requirement of the 15th and 16th centuries was self-examination. The dominant requirement of our era is not only freedom of beliefs and opinion, but the independence of material existence, without which intelligence… is always threatened with falling once again into servitude.”

10 See also Rouen (1826, 167).

11 See for example Le Censeur (1817). The word is frequently used. Coming from life sciences, plant and mineral sciences in the 18th century, (see for example the works of Buffon), the word has the meaning of the internal constitution of a body with a view to its operation (see also the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers 1765, vol. 11, 629: “arrangement of parties which make up living bodies”). This is also to be found in Condorcet, Saint-Simon or Say.

12 See Dunoyer (1827, 370, 374, italics in text): “By his admission [Say], it [the organisation] does not influence public prosperity and… wealth is mainly independent of the organisation of society”, “As for M. Say, no phrase in his book proves that he has expanded beyond what is the special purpose of this, production, distribution, consumption of wealth, and it does not seem that the study of political economy has revealed to him the real end of politics. The definition that he gives to the latter science would indicate on the contrary, that he has not had any very correct ideas of what the purpose is.” See also Say (1803, ii–iij).

13 The word ‘liberal’ is used more frequently than ‘liberalism’, both in the 18th century as at the beginning of the 19th century. In fact, Trévoux’s dictionary gives two meanings to it: (i) which gives in abundance, (ii) which is free, not depending on a master.

14 See Rossi (1855, 22).

15 The creation of the term ‘socialism’ is generally attributed to Pierre Leroux (1797–1871), a former Saint-Simonian; see Leroux ([1832] 1850, 123). In a later work, Leroux (1846, 92 ital. in text) fairly clearly links socialism to liberty. Opposing two harmful systems, “absolute socialism” and “absolute liberty”, he adds a note on absolute socialism: it is “Socialism which denies liberty rather than constituting it. I am obliged to make this remark because, since these pages were first printed ten years ago, the term socialism which I was first, I believe, to employ, as opposed to individualism, has had its true meaning twisted. Those who are willingly called today socialists are those who concern themselves with moral and political philosophy, and socialism any kind of reforming theory.”

16 See Doctrine de Saint-Simon (1830, xxviii).

17 See Harpaz (1968).

18 See the articles in the Censeur. See also Leroux (2015).

19 Two paraphrases here. See for example Doctrine de Saint-Simon (1830, xvi): “The exploitation of the globe by industry.”

20 See Prochasson (2005).

21 Pareto ([1891] 1982, 389–98). “Liberal systems” were divided into “a priori systems” and “experimental systems”.

22 See also Pareto ([1896–7] 1964, §673): “The socialists want to change completely the social organisation. They do not even seem to suspect the difficulty of the problem of finding the new form of government appropriate for this new society and they leave this question entirely aside.”

23 See Pareto ([1902–3] 1978 II, 149).

24 On the link between social equilibrium and economic equilibrium see Lenfant (2001).

25 For Pareto, it is meaningless, from a scientific point of view, to talk of a liberal or socialist political economy: “A scientific proposition is either true or false, hereafter it may satisfy another condition, such as being liberal or socialist.” (Pareto [1902–3] 1978 I, 2)

26 For example, a “real man endowed with altruistic feelings” who “does not consider merely the advantages he will have directly” but “also the pleasure he will experience at the idea of transferring to others, either during his life or posthumously, those same advantages.” (Pareto [196–7] 1964, §418)

27 Pareto relies on Molinari here: “Mr. G. de Molinari has understood perfectly well that any concrete problem has to be synthetic and that economic science alone does not suffice to allow us to judge a given social organisation.” (Pareto [1902–3] 1978 II, 70) See also: “A [governmental] organism is principally related not with isolated individuals, but with ‘crowds’.” (Pareto [1902–3] 1978 I, 86) See further Pareto ([1896–7] 1964, §672): “A society being given, what is the organisation of government which will ensure him the maximum utility? This is an insoluble problem at the current state of science.” See also Bobbio ([1969] 2001, 73).

28 Spencer ([1862] 1865, 495); Pareto ([1896–7] 1964, §654; [1902–3] 1978 II, 13).

29 Pareto ([1896–7] 1964, §654; [1902–3] 1978 II, 69–70). See de Molinari (1887).

30 See Steiner (1995).

31 This point is clearly taken by Busino (2008, 187).

32 Even if both had the project of rationally reorganizing society, nevertheless Saint-Simon's project was not exactly that of Comte: “The former wanted to reorganize the social system according to the industrial system as he conceived it; the latter wanted to reorganize all the theoretical conceptions before carrying out any application.” (Littré 1864, 16)

33 See on this question, Pareto ([1917] 1968, §2039). The subject of merit seems to divide Pareto and Mosca, who nevertheless agree on the notion on elite. Unlike Pareto, Mosca considers that Saint-Simon’s formula “to each according to his capacities, to each capacity according his works” represents “absolute justice in a political system” (Mosca 1939, 453).

34 For Pareto, capacity can be understood for better or for worse: “It would be the aptitude for theft which would determine the distribution of the revenue earners. It would, on the other hand, be the aptitude for work, thrift, spirit of order and good conduct which would determine distribution in a collectivity where the production of wealth would be the only path for procuring revenues.” (Pareto [1896–7] 1964, §1026)

35 See for instance Saint-Simon (2012 II, 1444); see also this another passage of L’Industrie (Saint-Simon 2012 II, 1468): “Men engaged in industry, and the collection of which forms legitimate society, need only one thing: liberty. Liberty, for them, is to be in no way impeded in the work of production. It is to be undisturbed in the enjoyment of that which they have produced.”

36 On the relation between Saint-Simon and political economy, see Bellet (2011), Musso (2017).

37 “A new science, a science just as positive as all those which merit the title has been thought up by Saint-Simon: that science is that of the human species.” (Doctrine de Saint-Simon 1830, xxv–xxvi; ital. in the text)

38 See Barrault (7th–9th March 1832).

39 See Picon (2003).

Additional information

Funding

This text was widely discussed at the 44th Annual Meeting of the History of Economics Society at the University of Toronto held on 22nd–25th June 2017, at the study days of the ANR “Saint-Simonianism 18–21” at Lyon on 1st–2nd March 2018 and at the 17th conference of the Association Charles Gide at Nancy on 27th–29th September 2018. We thank the two anonymous referees of our paper for their helpful comments and valuable suggestions. Any remaining errors are ours.