ABSTRACT
Socialism, on the contrary, is entirely oriented towards the future. It is above all a plan for the reconstruction of societies, a program for a collective life which does not exist as yet or in the way it is dreamed of, and which is proposed to men as worthy of their preference. It is an ideal. It concerns itself much less with what is or was than what ought to be. Undoubtedly, even under it most utopian forms it never disdained the support of facts, and has even, in more recent times, increasingly affected a certain scientific turn of phrase. It is indisputable that it has thus rendered social science more services perhaps than it received from it. For it has aroused reflection, it has stimulated scientific activity, it has instigated research, posed problems, so that in more than one way its history blends with the very history of sociology. Yet, how can one fail to note the enormous disparity between the rare and meager data it borrows from science and the extent of the practical conclusions that it draws, and which are, nevertheless, the heart of the system? It aspires to a complete remolding of the social order. But in order to know what the family, property, political, moral, juridical, and economic organization of the European peoples can and ought to be, even in the near future, it is indispensable to have studied this multitude of instutions and practices in the past, to have searched for the ways in which they varied in history, and for the principal conditions which have determined these variations. And only then will it be possible to ask oneself rationally what they ought to be now-under the present conditions of our collective existence. But all this
Edited and reprinted with permission from: Socialism and Saint-Simon, edited by A.W.Gouldner, translated by C.Sattler, Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch Press, and London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959; paperback edn. by CollierMacmillan, 1962, pp. 39-43, 56-59. Originally published as Le Socialisme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1928.
