ABSTRACT
The object of government is, or ought to be, the happiness of men united in society. It seeks the means of securing to them the highest degree of felicity compatible with their nature, and at the same time of allowing the greatest possible number of individuals to partake in that felicity. In none of the political sciences should one lose sight of this double goal of the legislator. Sismondi has been called the father of Christian Socialism, mainly because of his ameliorative, humanistic approach to social organization. As this first paragraph of his work makes clear, his view of an ideal social organization is derived from the concepts of Calvinistic, republican Geneva. No radical democrat, he sees a class stratification of society as inevitable, but he also desires no excessive extremes in the distribution of wealth and its concomitant, power.
