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V

We have not yet said anything about the relations of Saint-Simonism to later French socialist schools. But this part of their influence is on the whole so well known that we can be brief. The only one of the early French socialists who was independent of Saint-Simon was of 15.42course his contemporary Charles Fourier --who, with Robert Owen and Saint-Simon, is usually regarded as one of the three founders of socialism. But although the Saint-Simonians borrowed from him some elements of their doctrines--particularly with respect to the relations between the sexes--neither he nor, for that matter, Robert Owen contributed much to that aspect of socialism which is relevant here: the deliberate organization and direction of economic activity. His contribution there is more of a negative character. A fanatic for economy, he could see nothing but waste in the competitive institutions and surpassed even the Saint-Simonians in his belief in the unbounded possibilities of technological progress. There was indeed much of the engineer mentality in him and, like Saint-Simon, he recruited his pupils largely among the polytechnicians. He is probably the earliest representative of the myth of ``scarcity in the midst of plenty,'' which to the engineering mind seemed as obvious 120 years ago as it does now.

Victor Considérant, the leader of the Fourierist school which gave their doctrines more coherence than did their master, was a polytechnician, and most of the influential members, like Transon and Lechevalier, were old Saint-Simonians. 15.43 Of the rival socialist sects nearly all the leaders were former Saint-Simonians who had developed particular aspects of that doctrine: Leroux, Cabet, Buchez, and Pecqueur, or, like Louis Blanc, whose Organisation du travail is pure Saint-Simonism, had borrowed extensively from it. Even the most original of the later French socialists, Proudhon, however much he may have contributed to political doctrine, was in his properly socialist doctries largely Saint-Simonian. 15.44 It can be said that by about 1840 Saint-Simonian ideas had ceased to be the property of a particular school and had come to form the basis of all the socialist movements. And the socialism of 1848-- apart from the strong democratic and anarchistic elements which by then had been carried into it as new and alien elements--was in doctrine and personnel still largely Saint-Simonian.


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Next: VI Up: Saint- Simonian Influence Previous: IV   Contents