#saint-simonians

Saint-Simon himself was a supporter of the Revolution who was interested in the Polytechnique and who was also familiar with the director of Napoleon’s Egyptian Institute. His mentors included Condorcet. Like Condorcet, Saint-Simon wanted France to be governed by an “elite” of enlightened, productive, competent people. Initially he had kind of an authoritarian bent, but during the Empire he decided Napoleon sucked and got with the liberals including Jacques Lafitte. He proposed that industrialists and businessmen should take a leading role in the state and was real big on Economics. He and his liberal pals founded a society for elementary instruction, which the author of this book describes as being concerned with educating the poor “to be submissive and useful at the lowest possible cost.” So, kind of sucked?

Towards the end of his life though he got a bit more radicalized and turned against the liberals, concluding that economic growth would be better achieved through public works and social change rather than liberal economics. He divided society into two groups, industriels (everyone who had to do some work to survive including farmers, artisans, doctors, journalists, etc) and oisifs (landowners and investors who didn’t work). Sounding kinda proto-Marxist now. He also got briefly jazzed about New Religion, which he wrote would “prioritise moral doctrine; religious belief and doctrine will only be seen as [...] accessories.”

Saint-Simon died in 1825 but these new ideas he came up with the end of his life were taken over by his followers, especially Olinde Rodrigues, and became a big social movement that went beyond his initial ideas. (ex. Saint-Simon said nothing about women, women would become a major part of the movement). The biggest notion of the movement was fraternity, above liberty and equality. Saint-Simonians stressed that association was the key to progress and social regeneration, and was able to reform the individual.

Who were Saint-Simonians?

1.) Young. The post-Revolutionary generation, born in the first ten years of the nineteenth century. They were the first generation educated in the new revolutionary schools.

2.) Outsiders. Though many of the movement [especially men] were well-educated and upper-middle-class, they still felt [and often were] excluded by society in one way or another. An eighth of the movement was Jewish. Prominent leaders were illegitimate, or mixed-race, or political outsiders (including members of the charbonnerie). Women fall under this label as well and later on the movement would even enlist uneducated Parisian needlewomen.

3.) Well-educated. A large proportion of recruits were graduates (or current students of) the Polytechnique. Medical Students were also well-represented and were “disappointed that their training seemed to ignore new empirical developments in medicine, such as the links between social deprivation and ill health”. They were also into homeopathy and phrenology.

4.) Attractive. The book literally says “almost all adherents were good-looking” and it seems to be more important than you would think. They were also theatrical and flashy and wore pretty flashy clothing including the famed back-fastening waistcoats. 

The group started up in 1825 but the first public meeting was held in December 1828. Members met on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in the rue Monsigny and rue Taitbout and had passionate debates as well as luxurious communal dinners with fine wines and meals-- the movement was about “enjoyment, not self-flagellation”. On Sundays they also met at midday for kind of an alternative “religious” service.

They talked a lot about philosophy and rejected Rousseau’s belief that “man is born free”, claiming instead that human nature is constructed and could be changed by the society they were in. This kinda doesn’t mesh with phrenology but whatever. They also believed in progress, that the Golden Age was ahead of them, but that “progress was not continuous but alternated between” phases of faith and scientific skepticism, reaching a kind of synthesis and then moving on to the next phase of faith. Pilbeam describes this as “a mixture of Hegel and Fourier”.

Saint-Simonians were not utopian and suggested practical solutions such as banking reform. While they were still big into economic growth, they thought that banks were a root cause of problems because they only cared about making profit for the wealthy. “The existing banks are founded by and for the idle.” Credit should be easily available for workers and entrepreneurs who would actually use the capital. They rejected revolutionary methods and liberal doctrines both, putting their trust in cooperation/fraternity. “To each according to his abilities, to each ability according to his efforts.” Property rights should not be dictated by conquest and birth but on a person’s potential ability and work; therefore they suggested an inheritance tax. They were also big on education.

The religion started out without a god or supernatural elements, and was more of a program of social reform and a philosophical worldview involving the role of science, the arts, and industry. Later mystical elements included a belief that “all living creatures, including humans, shared attributes which survived death and were reincarnated.” The way this line is phrased reminds me of one of Combeferre’s [cut] lines from the musical...

The Arts -- “The arts are a part of religion, and the artist is a priest.” Artists represented the spiritual component, and were seen as able to portray the feelings of a group or society. Pilbeam says this is counter to “contemporary views that the artist spoke as an individual.”

Science -- “The essence of Science is knowledge of God, and might properly be defined as theology.” The scientist/philosopher represented reason, which I guess is sort of in-between the spiritual and material worlds.

Industry -- “[in exploiting the earth’s resources,] the earth will be changed, man will [...] carry on the work of creation. By these means industry will become faith.” Industriels or workers spoke for the material world.

God was defined as “the unity of the spiritual and material world”. In another idea clearly influenced by Romanticism, there was also a major focus on “an androgynous spiritual authority” and the union between masculine and feminine, with the masculine representing the material and the feminine representing the spiritual. Women were also placed in high regard within the structure of the organization, including the desire for both a “male and female pope”. More practically, they shared leadership of the sections and played a major role in implementing the more practical ideas of the organization. Actual women Saint-Simonians had a close affiliation with the cult of Mary and melded the ideas together, but men “never referred to” it at all.

Saint-Simonains adopted Fourier’s views on free love and sexual liberation. The free love thing wasn’t all great though because it gets pretty cult-y especially with Enfantin becoming pope and going all “the more sexual partners, the more love”. The religion also tended towards a hierarchial authoritarian structure and ritualistic elements incorporated from Freemasonry, the Knights Templar [a bunch of whom joined up early on] and the Catholic Church, and involved mass confessions. There was a lot of disagreement about this trend of the religion and at this point the group splintered, as well as having a major element of dissatisfaction within the sect.

ASIDE from the structural change within the organization, they also shifted gears from having public meetings and lavish dinners and into “the first attempt at practical social reform in France.” They set up two hostels for workers and their families with common cooking, eating, and laundry facilities, nurseries, evening classes in literacy that were taught by middle-class members of the sect, and free medical services that were provided by the doctors and medical students within the organization. This was all happening starting in late 1829 and with accelerated intensity after 1830 so it would be an interesting thing to have Combeferre involved with, I think. The hostels housed 25 families and “1,200 non-resident worker members” and were in the rue Popincourt and the rue Tour d’Auvergne. They also supported an association to provide free education for girls and boys that was set up in the medical school. 

Despite Rodrigues claiming that “the sacred flame of enthusiasm cannot be ignited by the puny nourishment of philanthropy”, the Saint-Simonians increasingly took on “the aura of a charitable foundation, rather than a radical creed.” “All the directors spend most of their time on practical and charitable matters”, with a massive workload of unpaid charitable labor that was primarily put on the women who were more involved in the practical programs. And despite some substantial donations from the wealthy, and the initial thought that the workers’ hostels would be self-sustaining from worker residents’ contributions, funds were always a problem, both of the hostels got into debt pretty quickly and another two were unable to be set up due to a lack of capital.

The organization also did continue having public meetings on Thursdays and Sundays from 4-6 PM at rue Taitbout, with up to 500 people sometimes attending on Sundays. There were other meetings headed up directed at a smaller audience, for workers, middle-class people, and even one held in Italian for immigrants. For a while the Saint-Simonians got past the laws against open meetings by using the religious exemption, but there was also a belief that the law banning associations with over 20 members was defunct after July 1830 (it wasn’t). Around this time they also started recruiting outside of Paris, and had particular success in Lyon, with the silk weavers; workers outside of Paris were attracted by the focus on workers’ associations, and inside Paris they even created a new tailors’ association with uniforms, which the book claims was the “first such worker organisation created in France”.