Industrialism in the mirror: Edward S. Mason, reader of the Saint-Simonians

Abstract

In this article we will first briefly discuss Edward Mason’s biography (I) and then recall his contribution to the birth of the field of Industrial Organisation (II). We then focus on his series of contributions to the study of French socialism, from around 1930 (III), and finally we assess his reading of Saint-Simonianism (IV).

Keywords:

• Harvard
• Paris commune
• Saint-Simonianism
• Edward Mason
• French utopian socialism

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on the earlier version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Sée’s thesis was discussed by Henri Hauser (1926), and then by Paul Harsin (1930). Unless a published translation is available, all quotations from French sources are translated by the author.

2 I owe my knowledge of this document to Professor Irwing Collier, whom I thank here.

3 “Dumping: A Study of Certain International Trade Practices” presented under the direction of F. W. Taussig. See also Mason (1926).

4 In his article on Blanqui, observing the vitality of modern communist historiography on L’Enfermé, Mason points out that its objective “is to inquire into the relation between the revolutionary thought and method of Blanqui and that of Bolshevism”. He concluded his study by noting that “Blanqui is half Jacobin and half socialist”. Socialist (i.e., communist) in his account of the role of class violence and revolutionary action, Blanqui is, on the other hand, in no way a supporter of materialism but on the contrary a doctrinal heir to the eighteenth century: “Blanqui’s view of history envisages the idea as being the sole engine of progress” (Mason 1929, 504).

5 Mason quotes Franz Mehring here as saying that Marx wrote “the classical account of the Commune of Paris”.

6 “The Marxian history of the Commune is, from the beginning to end, almost pure myth. His vested interest in the economic interpretation of history and the theory of the class struggle made him see in the revolution of March 18th and internationalist, a proletarian, and a socialist movement in what was in reality an essentially patriotic, not to say chauvinist revolt, only partially proletarian and only secondarily socialist. Nevertheless this myth is the generally accepted socialist history of the Commune”, (Mason 1930, 321).

7 The article on Fourier raises a similar problem. Fourier’s work is typical of the anarchist tradition which, like the political economy of the Classics, stems from the eighteenth-century idea of a natural order resulting from the spontaneous and free action of individuals. Fourier, Mason underlined, “was interested in demonstrating also that organization does not necessarily involve an expansion of authoritarian control. Complexity of organization and an effectiveness in the application of human energy are compatible with an extensive sphere of human autonomy”. However, on the economic level, the Fourierist conception of human action is less rich and above all less realistic than that of the Classics: “While both the anarchists and the 18th-century economists take a contractual view of society, they differ in the proportion of existing society that they are willing to include in this view. To describe the persistent uniformities of social life involves a consideration of the totality of human institutions as natural; to construct an ideal future state out of the miserable present necessitates a rejection of much of our existing order as unnatural. The predominant description and analytic aim of economics has gradually moulded a conception of the natural order widely divergent from the predominantly ethical and evaluative conceptions of anarchism” (Mason 1928, 262, 241).

8 “The economic well-being of society, the maximum of productivity with a given quantity of resources, could be achieved by allowing private economic enterprise a considerable freedom in the disposition of these resources. This was its end and this was its policy; this was also its direction sociale, its social control”, (Mason 1931, 646).

9 “The Saint-Simonian conception of economic organisation … represents a considerable amplification of the thought of Saint-Simon. Its envisages a society in which the enterprisers in every industry are organised in a trade association which seriously limits the free initiative of its members; in which the extent of the operations of each enterpriser are determined by an industrial bank with regard to the claims of competing enterprisers and the well-being of the industry as a whole; in which the distribution of economic resources between industry is regulated by a central bank upon consideration of the economic well-being of society as a whole; and, finally, in which the expansion or contraction of the economic activity of society as a whole is under the control of the same central agency”, (Mason 1931, 680).

10 “Yet, some form of economic rationalisation is the only conclusion to be drawn from a body of thought which eschewed collectivism and condemned communism, proclaimed the potency of economic incentive and the individual ownership and management of the instrument of production, while at the same time condemning unlimited competition and its progenitors, laissez-faire liberalism”, (Mason 1931, 675).

11 On this double dimension of vision/analysis in Mason in the 1930s, see the following articles (republished in Edward Mason (1959)): “Industrial Concentration and the Decline of Competition” (1936); “Monopoly in Law and Economics” (1937).

12 Harold Marcuse, UC Santa Barbara faculty website, http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/index.html