Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/149

 SOCIALISM 141 der to enlarge his views ; gave balls, dinners, and festivals, to extend his knowledge of man- kind ; and finally, when his wealth had been scattered, found himself abandoned to the most painful privations. He was thus fitted, as he thought, by a trial of all the conditions of hu- manity, to become their exponent and their reformer. He contrived what he denominated a new Christianity, or a scheme for the recon- struction of the religion, politics, industry, and relations of mankind. To each man according to his capacity, to each capacity ac- >rding to its works ; such was the grand f or- lula of the St. Simonian gospel. But the au- lor did not live to witness its propagation. It was reserved for Rodrigues, Enfantin, Ba- zard, Buchez, and others to disseminate it over France. By their lectures and a journal estab- lished by them called Le Producteur, it soon lined many disciples, and at one time seemed >n the. point of absorbing the best youthful lind of the nation. Many men,' who have attained distinction as statesmen and len of letters, took part in the famous expo- sitions of the rue Taranne, Paris, where the sw school had its academy. But Saint-Simon md left his doctrine in the vague state of an ispiration or a sentiment rather than a system. His followers began to differ when they be- to define. Sects arose in the bosom of le new faith. A common family was estab- led in the rue Monsigny, but the order of motions had not been arranged in a satisfac- >ry way. An open quarrel between two of le chiefs, Enfantin and Bazard, led to other lissensions. The finances of the general asso- tion failed, and the police interfered with its jetings, which had become, in consequence the vivacity of the discussions and the ap- irance of women on the tribune, more at- stive than the theatre. Enfantin collected lis friends again at a patrimonial estate which le held at M6nilmontant, where a multitude )f laborers were organized into groups of in- lustrials, artists, priests, &c. ; but the exped- ient could not be made to pay, Enfantin was sized and imprisoned, and the new family radually dispersed. In spite of its want of 3ractical success, the school of Saint-Simon ex- ercised and continues to exercise a powerful in- fluence over the French mind. Charles Fourier (1772-1837) saw very clearly what his prede- sssors had not seen, that society was a growth, id not a construction ; he saw that as it had followed fundamental laws of development in "le past, so it must follow the same laws in the future ; these laws, he also discerned, must be in analogy with the other laws of the living universe ; and he concluded that the science of society must be the flower and consummation of all other sciences. But not satisfied with these grand generalizations, and the practical applications to which they inevitably lead, he assumed the character of a universal social philosopher and legislator, and lost himself in magnificent a priori speculations as to the for- mation and propagation of worlds, and the future destinies of all humanity. His vigorous thought procured him many disciples in France, England, and the United States ; many efforts have been made to reduce his more practical maxims to practice, but no signal or decisive result has anywhere been achieved. (See FOURIER.) While Fourier and his disciples intended to carry out their socialistic reforms by their own exertions and without receiving any material aid from the government, Louis Blanc wanted the government to undertake the regeneration of society by the "organ- ization of labor," holding that the evils of large capital and destructive competition could and ought to be cured by means of the state, the largest capitalist of all, from which every laborer that needs it has a right to demand employment (droit au travail). The govern- ment should purchase or gradually absorb the large industrial institutions of the country, and eventually render it more profitable to every laborer to join the large governmental work- shops than to follow his calling on his own account. The wages of all laborers should be equal. As soon as the state had succeeded in becoming the only and general controller of production in the country, and the work- men had had sufficient opportunity to appre- ciate the abilities of individuals among them, the governmental administration should be superseded by the self-government of the la- borers, on democratic principles. Louis Blanc opposed to the maxim of Saint-Simon, " To each according to his ability," his own, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The revolution of 1848 put him in a position to experiment with his scheme. The provisional government erected public workshops, and paid wages to hundreds of thousands of laborers ; but these were produc- tive only of confusion, and contributed toward the socialistic insurrection of June, which end- ed in a crushing defeat. Proudhon (1809-'65) desired to carry out his reforms without the aid of the state, and argued in opposition to Louis Blanc that the state not only should not, but could not inaugurate new social systems. In fact, Proudhon was opposed to systematic socialism of any sort. Though himself a Uto- pian, he combated the Utopias of everybody else. The infallibility which he claimed for his own doctrines he rendered still more odious in the eyes of his opponents by his peculiar manner of expressing his ideas. In one of his earlier principal publications, Qu'est ce que la proprietef (1841), he seemed to attack all property as being a kind of theft, while his in- tention was only to demonstrate the illegality of incomes received without labor. Similar- ly, his expression that he wanted to reduce the state to- " anarchy " utterly obscured his real meaning, which was that the artificial central- ization of the French government should give way to a government controlled by the masses. Like most socialists, Proudhon considered the