ABSTRACT
The social privilege of the ruling class was defended and legitimized by a heterogeneous assembly of managerial ideologies: employers’ superiority, social Darwinism, and industrial betterment. The ideology of industrial betterment was an answer to the social malaise that not only legitimized the privilege of a dominant ‘natural aristocracy’, but also aimed at creating adequate living conditions for the workers. The main concern of the legitimating ideologies, nonetheless, was to emphasize that the status differences between owner-managers and workers were perfectly legitimate, just, and even desirable. Liberal capitalism started to change simultaneously with the appearance of a flood of technological innovations, in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. The passage from liberal capitalism to organized capitalism was gradual, and a transition phase existed, which extended from 1880 to the early twentieth century. Saint-Simon’s ideology was antithetic to liberalism, despite his praise for the figure of the entrepreneur.
