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Saint-Simon's vision of a united Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Richard Swedberg
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European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 1994 , pp. 145 - 169
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1994

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References

(1) The quotation at the opening of this chapter comes from Henri de Saint-Simon (together with ‘his pupil’ Augustin Thierry), De la réorganisation de la société européenne, p. 247 in vol. 1 of Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, Œuvres (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977). For the secondary literature on Saint-Simon, see Walch, Jean, Bibliographie du saint-simonisme (Paris: Vrin, 1967)Google Scholar and Derre, J. R., Bibliographie du saint-simonisme de 1965 à 1984, p. 186–206Google Scholarin Derre, J. R. (ed.), Regards sur le saint-simonisme et les saint-simoniens (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1986)Google Scholar. The author would like to thank HSFR, Centre Culturel Suèdois and J.-C. Garetta of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris for all their kind support.

(2) Durkheim, Emile, Le Socialisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960), p. 114–115Google Scholar. This work constitutes the text of a course that Durkheim gave at Bordeaux in 1895–96. Durkheim did not follow up this statement with a systematic analysis of the theme of European unity in Saint-Simon's thought.

(3) The first of these was an 8-page pamphlet entitled A la Société du Lycée, which probably dates from March 1802 (see the reproduction of Saint-Simon's pamphlet in Dautry, Jean, Sur un imprimé retrouvé du Comte de Saint-Simon, Annales historiques de la révolution française, 20 (Janvier-Mars 1948), p. 290–293)Google Scholar. Saint-Simon here says that he has come up with a brilliant new idea that will benefit all of mankind, but does not say in what it consists. There is no reference to Europe in this pamphlet.

(4) See e.g. Introduction, p. xxv in Henri de Saint-Simon, , Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporaines (Paris: Alcan, 1925)Google Scholar; Manuel, Frank E., The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 62Google Scholar. There exist two slightly different editions of Saint-Simon's pamphlet, one entitled Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporaines (1802 or 1803) and another entitled Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à l'humanité (1802). The former is the one that is usually cited.

(5) The quotations in the rest of this section come from Saint-Simon, Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporaines, p. 13, 25, 44, 47, 48, 53 and 55 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(6) See e.g Dumas, George, Psychologie des deux messies positivistes: Saint-Simon et Auguste Comte (Paris: Alcan, 1905), p. 72Google Scholar; Leroy, Maxime, Henri de Saint-Simon: Le Socialism: des producteurs (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1924), p. 123–134.Google Scholar

(7) Saint-Simon, Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporaines, p. 56 in vol. 1 of Œuvres. It may be added that many commentators have chosen to ignore these passages about non-European peoples and have instead insisted on the similarities between Saint-Simon's ideas and those embodied in the League of Nations. See e.g. Maxime Leroy, La Société professionelle des Nations, p. 123–34 in Henri de Saint-Simon: Le Socialisme des producteurs (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1924)Google Scholar; Célestin Bouglé, Introduction, p. xiii in Saint-Simon, , Textes choisis avec une introduction par C. Bouglé (Paris: Alcan, 1925)Google Scholar; and Polinder, Elliot H., Saint-Simon, the Utopian Precursor of the League of Nations, Journal of the History of Ideas 4(1943), p. 475–483CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But as Henri de Jouvenel put it when Saint-Simon's pamphlet from 1814 was reissued in 1925: ‘Saint-Simon did not invent the League of Nations; he limited his horizon to the European society’, Henri de Jouvenel, Préface, p. xx–xxi in Saint-Simon, De la réorganisation de la société européenne (Paris: Les Presses Françaises, 1925).

(8) The following note was suppressed in the standard editions of Lettres: ‘The revolutionaries applied the principles of equality to negroes. If they had consulted the physiologists they would have learned that the negro, because of his basic physical structure, is not susceptible, even with the same education, of rising to the intellectual level of Europeans’, note 36, p. 408 in Frank E. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon.

(9) Saint-Simon, , Lettre aux Européens, p. 71–83 in Saint-Simon, Lettres (ed. Peréire, A.).Google Scholar

(10) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 129 in vol. 6 of Œuvres (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1977). Saint-Simon's Œuvres contain the enlarged 1808 edition of ‘Introduction’.

(11) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 144 in vol. 6 of Œuvres. ‘Negroes’, Saint-Simon also states, are not equal to the Europeans for physiological reasons. See Saint-Simon, Introduction aux oeuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 129 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(12) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 209–11 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(13) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle p. 210 in vol. 6 of Œuvres. From an early stage Charlemagne was to play a key role in Saint-Simon's fantasies in general as well as in his thought of a unified Europe. Saint-Simon, for example, thought that he was a descendant of Charlemagne, something that has been proven wrong. And in the mid-1790s Saint-Simon had a vision in which Charlemagne appeared to him. Saint-Simon describes the encounter with his celebrated ancestor in the following terms: ‘During the most cruel part of the Revolution and during one night when I was detained at Luxembourg, Charlemagne appeared to me and said, “Since the beginning of time no family has had the honor of producing both a hero and a philosopher of first rank—this honor has been reserved for my house. My son, your success as a philosopher will equal mine as a soldier and as a states-man”. And then he vanished’. Saint-Simon, Epitre Dédicatoire, p. 101 in vol. 15 of Saint-Simon and Enfantin, Œuvres.

(14) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 209 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(15) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 211 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(16) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 157 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(17) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 157 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(18) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 24 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(19) Saint-Simon, Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, p. 170 in vol. 6 of Œuvres.

(20) Saint-Simon, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme, p. 40 in vol. 5 of Œuvres.

(21) Saint-Simon, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme, p. 55 in vol. 5 of Œuvres.

(22) Saint-Simon, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme, p. 243 in vol. 5 of Œuvres.

(23) Saint-Simon, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme, p. 184, 187 in vol. 5 of Œuvres.

(24) The pamphlet is sometimes presented as having been co-written by Saint-Simon and Thierry. This, however, is not the scholarly consensus; and in all likelihood the basic ideas came from Saint-Simon while Thierry wrote the pamphlet, now and then adding sections based on his own considerable knowledge of England's political history. It may be noted that the reader of the pamphlet was not supposed to think that it was a co-written product since the author's voice is ‘je’ and since the cover of the original two editions from 1814 both have Saint-Simon's name on a separate line and in considerably larger print than ‘A. Thierry, son élève’. (See on this point especially Alfred Péreire, Introduction, p. xxxvi in Saint-Simon, , De la réorganisation de la société européenne (Paris: Les Presses Françaises, 1925)Google Scholar; Gouhier, Henri, La Jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme. Vol. 3. Auguste Comte et Saint-Simon (Paris: J. Vrin, 1941). P. 81Google Scholar; and Frank E. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon, p. 195.

(25) Saint-Simon, De la réorganisation de la société européenne, p. 173 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(26) Jean Jaurès, La Doctrine saint-simonienne et le socialisme, La Revue Socialiste 38 (Août 1903), p. 146.

(27) Saint-Simon, De la réorganisation de la société européenne, p. 200 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(28) Saint-Simon also advocated that the European Confederation tried to colonize the rest of the world: ‘To colonize the world with the European race, which is superior to every other race: to make the world accessible and habitable like Europe—such is the sort of enterprise by which the European Parliament should continually keep Europe active and happy’. That Saint-Simon still felt that ‘Negroes’ were inferior to Europeans is also clear. See Saint-Simon, De la réorganization de la société européenne, p. 204, 236 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(29) Saint-Simon, De la réorganisation de la société européenne, p. 205 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(30) For the history of the French word ‘industrie’, see ‘Industria, Betriebsamkeit’, p. 654–655 in vol. 4 of von Wartburg, Walther, Französiches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Basel : Heilbing & Lichtenhahn, 1952)Google Scholar. Saint-Simon is usually credited with having introduced the two words ‘industriel’ and ‘industrialisme’ into French. Stated without any further reservations these claims are exaggerated. It should nonetheless be noted that according to standard dictionaries Saint-Simon helped shape the meaning of industriel through his works in 1817–1818, and he was apparently also the first to use the word industrialisme in 1823 (the term was then introduced into English in the early 1830s). See e.g. p. 236 in vol. 5 of The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford : The Clarendon Press, 1933); P. 2659–2660 in vol. 4 Grand Larousse de la langue française (Paris : Librairie Larousse, 1975); p. 543–544 in vol. 5 of Le Grand Robert de la langue française (Paris : Le Robert, 1985). Additional information on the word ‘industrie’ can also be found in the following works : Harsin, Paul, De quand date le mot ‘industrie’ ? Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, 2 (1930), 235–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in Braudel, Fernand, The word ‘industry’, The Identity of France, vol. 2, 502–505, trans. Reynolds, Siân (London, Fontana Press, 1991).Google Scholar

(31) Saint-Simon, Cathéchisme des industriels, p. 3 in vol. 4 of Œuvres. There exists a certain difficulty in translating Saint-Simon's term industriel into English since he sometimes meant entrepreneurs and sometimes ‘any person engaged in productive activity’. As Keith Taylor suggests, the most suitable translation is probably the old-fashioned term ‘industrial’. See Keith Taylor, Note on the Translation, p. 10 in Henri de Saint-Simon, , Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation, trans, and ed. by Taylor, Keith (London : Croom Helm, 1975).Google Scholar

(32) Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, p. 186 in vol. 1 of Œuvres. For ‘thieves’ and ‘parasites’, see e.g. L'Industrie, p. 130, 202 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(33) Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, p. 165 in vol. 1 of Œuvres. The next quotation, containing the rhetorical question is also taken from here.

(34) Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, p. 137 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(35) Saint-Simon, Cathéchisme des industriels, p. 200 in vol. 4 of Œuvres.

(36) Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, p. 160 in vol. 2 of Œuvres.

(37) Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, p. 188 in vol. 1 of Œuvres.

(38) Saint-Simon, Du système industriel, p. 167 in vol. 3 of Œuvres.

(39) Saint-Simon, Du système industriel, pt. 2, p. 24 in vol. 3 of Œuvres. In this work, it may be added, Saint-Simon introduced a distinction between l'Europe occidentale and l'Europe orientale. By the former term Saint-Simon meant what we today call Western Europe, while the latter term included countries like Poland and possibly also Russia.

(40) Sant-Simon, Du système industriel, pt. 3, p. 40–1 in vol. 3 of Œuvres.

(41) Saint-Simon, Catéchisme des industriels, p. 26 ff. in vol. 5 of Œuvres.

(42) Alexander Gerschenkron has noted the following: ‘In the new hymn the man who had once called upon “enfants de la patrie” to wage ruthless war upon tyrants and their mercenary cohorts (that is, Rouget de L'Isle) addresses himself to “enfants de l'industrie”—the true “nobles”—who would assure the “happiness of all” by spreading industrial arts and by submitting the world to the “peaceful laws of industry”. Ricardo is not known to have inspired anyone to change “God Save the Queen” into “God Save Industry”’ (Gerschenkron, p. 24–25 in Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

(43) Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme, p. 192 in vol. 3 of Œuvres.

(44) Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme, p. 108 in vol. 3 of Œuvres. Emphasis in text.

(45) Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme, p. 109 in vol. 3 of Œuvres.

(46) Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme, p. 186 in vol. 3 of Œuvres.

(47) Saint-Simon, Nouveau Christianisme, p. 148, 163 in vol. 3 of Œuvres.

(48) Emile Durkheim, Value Judgments and Judgements of Reality, p. 91 in Sociology and Philosophy, trans. Peacock, D. F. (New York: The Free Press, 1974).Google Scholar

(49) Mathiez, Albert, Les Origines des cultes révolutionnaires (1789–1792) (Paris: Société Nouvelle de la Librairie d'Édition, 1904).Google Scholar

(50) Ozouf, Mona, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Sheridan, Alan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. The original French edition appeared in 1976. See also various articles by Ozouf in Furet, François and Ozouf, Mona (eds.), A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

(51) Hunt, Lynn, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar and The Sacred and the French Revolution, p. 25–43 in Alexander, Jeffrey (ed.), Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(52) See on this point Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste, Europe: A History of Its Peoples, trans. Mayne, Richard (London: Viking, 1990), p. 251–252.Google Scholar

(53) Again it should be emphasized that ‘growing out of’ does not mean ‘being positive to’. A large part of Saint-Simon's work was devoted to a critique of the French Revolution. The ‘reorganization’ of Europe that Saint-Simon spoke so much about, was e.g. always presented as an alternative to a future revolution.

(54) Saint-Simon, Lettres d'un habitant de Genève, p. 8–9 in vol. 1 of Œuvres. Saint-Simon wrote in a letter to Napoleon that accompanied a copy of his work, ‘j’ ai employé la plus grande partie de ma vie à méditer [cet ouvrage]’(p. 8).

(55) Jaurès, Jean, La Doctrine saint-simonienne et le socialisme, La Revue socialiste 224 (Août 1903), p. 137.Google Scholar

(56) Frank E. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon, p. 172.

(57) Durkheim, Emile, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), p. 301.Google Scholar

(58) Constant, Benjamin, De l'Esprit de conquête (Lausanne: Editions Favre, 1980), p. 34Google Scholar. For the argument that the idea of European unity is implicit in Constant's work, see de Rougemont, Denis, Vingt-huit siècles d'Europe. La conscience européenne à travers les textes d'Hésiode à nos jours (Mesnil-sur-l'Estrée: Christian de Bertillat, 1990), p. 200–201Google Scholar as well as Rougemont's preface to De l'Esprit de conquête, p. 22–24.

(59) Considérations sur la situation de l'Europe, sur la cause de ses guerres, et sur les moyens d'y mettre fin (1), p. 29 in Le Censeur (Paris: Chez Mme Marchant, 1815). The article is not signed and its author is not known.

(60) Allix, Edgard, J.-B., Say et les origines de l'industrialisme, Revue d'économie politique 24 (1910), p. 357.Google Scholar

(61) There is also the fact that while Saint-Simon emphasized the importance of industry, Benjamin Constant tended to focus on that of trade. For the idea in the 17th and 18th century that trade and peace go together, see Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton Universirty Press, 1977).Google Scholar

(62) D. de Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles d'Europe, p. 202.

(63) Jacques Delors, Préface, p. v in Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles d'Europe.

(64) D. de Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles d'Europe, p. 201. Emphasis added.

(65) D. de Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles d'Europe, p. 202.

(66) J. Delors, p. v in Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles. The quotation is from Saint-Simon's De la réorganisation de la société européenne.

(67) Henry Rieben, 1814–1957–1967, p. 6 in de Saint-Simon, Henri, De la réorganisation de la société européenne (Lausanne: Centre de Recherches Européennes, 1967).Google Scholar

(68) According to Richard Mayne, who knew Monnet personally and who translated his Mémoires into English, ‘he [that is, Monnet] didn't read much apart from the newspapers, and his personal library was mostly full of books by friends and disciples who'd given or dedicated them to him’ (letter to the author dated June 23, 1992).

(69) Several people in Monnet's surroundings were interested in and influenced by Saint-Simon's ideas, including Robert Marjolin and François Perroux. In his well-known work In Search of France, Stanley Hoffmann calls Monnet a saint-simonist (see p. 145–146 In Search of France (New York: Harper & Row, 1965))Google Scholar. When asked by the author of this article why he did so, Hoffmann answered, ‘I called Jean Monnet a Saint-Simonian because he fits into that tradition. I have no idea whether he ever read Saint-Simon or books (such as those by Durkheim and Bouglé) on Saint-Simon’ (letter to the author dated March 31, 1992).