ABSTRACT
Out of deference to the public’s habits, we have so far entitled our previous articles ‘political economy’, although we had no intention of reproducing or commenting on the works of Smith, Malthus, Ricardo or Monsieur Say; today we can turn our attention to its correct name by giving our political economy the name of industrial policy: our previous works justify this. Economists have claimed, out of shrewdness or reserve about their influence (we mean the latest economists and not those of the Quesnay sect), that they are not involved in politics, that their science made little account of the forms of government and that they were merely examining how wealth is produced, distributed and consumed, independently of the social organisation to which the producers, distributors and consumers are subjected. The result of this position is that their works are a perpetual mystical abstraction outside any form of reality, intellectual gymnastics which have given rise to precious thinking mechanisms, rigorous logicians, stunningly erudite statisticians, out-and-out calculators who treat men as if they were x and y, manipulating them like lowly matter, moving them around in their minds and in their books like machines; but not one single practitioner with a wide and generous vision has come from their hands, not one single powerful director of the material interests of the people, not one single politician, not one single governor who has urged humanity into the industrial way with the energy of genius. What can the man of genius actually do if he starts with the axiom of laissezfaire, laissez-passer? What can he order, command, lead? And what is a genius if it is not a man who orders, commands and leads? So for us, political economy is transformed into industrial policy, meaning the science whose object is to determine the social conditions in which the work instruments, the products of work and the workers themselves would best be combined and divided, in a word, organised. From this point of view, all the political questions which trouble societies today are given a new solution: all can be linked to this objective, and yet we hasten to add that this point of view would be incomplete and could easily lead to mistakes, since from this position one would directly embrace only one of the aspects of society, namely its material or industrial aspect; this would require a huge effort in order to include the intellectual or scientific aspect, or the moral or truly vital aspect of human society. We
insist on these three facets of social life so that our intentions will not be misunderstood when we choose our examples in the industrial field to explain Saint-Simonian policy. Let us repeat that each of the three faces of social life can and should be used to verify the ideas revealed by the other two; in other words, this policy may be seen either as an industrial law, or as an intellectual law, or as the moral law of society; it should express both the theory and the practice of social life. It includes the work of artists and scholars, as well as that of industrialists. It is the rule of man’s feelings, calculations and acts and, if we have often used arguments taken from the series of industrial events in order to teach our political views, it was because we wished above all to address men who have been involved only in that science which seeks to regularly coordinate social events, to address those who have studied political economy or who have engaged in higher industrial affairs. Today we shall take a quick look at the whole of politics before casting new light on the details.
