Introduction

Following on from what the last sentence of this quotation suggests, this work aims to clarify the role assigned to banks in Saint-Simonian economic thought. In spite of numerous references to the Saint-Simonians over nearly two centuries, in fact, their economic thought is not particularly well known. If they do not occupy the position which they deserve in what is accepted to constitute the literary corpus of political economy,1 it is principally because their conception of political economy precludes them from considering it as an autonomous discipline. This does not mean, however, that they renounced developing their own thoughts in the field of political economy. The Saint-Simonians developed this thought following analysis of authors who preceded them and contemporary economists.2 It is all the more important as the Saint-Simonians rose to highranking positions in nineteenth-century France and their ideas spread to several countries.3 The banks are central to Saint-Simonian economic thought, but paradoxically little research up to now has been devoted to the role of banks in Saint-Simonian economic thought (Vergeot 1918; Gille 1970) in spite of some recent efforts (Yonnet 2000; Benausse 2003). This work will make it possible for the reader to address the sources directly. It presents a selection of 18 texts published in

French, for the majority in the press, by the Saint-Simonians between 1826 and 1831. These texts, published at a period when the Saint-Simonian movement was still relatively unified, after the death of Saint-Simon in 1825 and before the breakup of its group of disciples in 1832, may be regarded as representative of the ideas of this movement. To fully comprehend the range of Saint-Simonian writings, it is first of all advisable to put them in their political and social context.