Readings for this class
Great Political Theories, Section V: Early Socialism and Positivism, pp. 130-154.
Critiques of Liberalism & Conservatism:
Technocratic Socialism, Libertarianism, Anarchism
Notes on Saint-Simon and Pierre Proudhon
Saint-Simon (1760-1825) Technocratic Socialism
1. Inefficiency of Government (140-141) > Industrial Technocracy
Government is a holdover from feudal Europe, is unproductive and based on privilege and inheritance, not on merit or productivity. - Following Smith, believes that the new economy has the potential to be a self-regulating system, provided it can be restructured along scientific guides - the origins of ‘sociology’ - the science of society.
Government can be replaced by a rationally-organized industrial society optimized along utilitarian grounds to focus on genuinely positive (quantifiable material well-being) for all.
2. The incompetence of the noble, “idling” class (142) > Meritocracy
Eligibility to rule is not based on sound rational principles but privilege or liberal concepts of popular sovereignty, but neither is rational.
Technocratic socialism - rule by merit-based experts, intellectuals, scientists, economists. - an authoritarian view which cuts against liberal-democratic views of political rights. Need for hierarchy of expert beaurocrats.
3. The immorality of individualism (143-44) > Secular religion of Love
Modern culture which focusses on individual liberty is creating ego-centric people who are morally superficial, materialistic, selfish, recapitulating feudal caste and increasing misery for the working poor.
The need for civil religion, a “New Christianity” - moral vision divested of theology and superstition, creating a brotherhood of man. The need for “spiritual reorganization.”
“New Christianity is called upon to achieve the the triumph of the principles of universal morality in the struggle which is going on with the forces aiming at the individual instead of public interest.” (145)
4. Influence on the “utopian socialists”
Focussed not on abstract slogans of liberty and equality but more rationally-organized social-economic existence, created and managed by scientific experts.
Examples
Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman, student of J. S. Mill who devoted much of his profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing.
1. New Lanark - improving conditions for the working poor
Owen's utopian model changed little during his lifetime. His fully developed model considered an association of 500 to 3,000 people as the optimum number for a good working community. While mainly agricultural, it would possess the best machinery, offer a variety of employment, and, as far as possible, be self-contained. Owen further explained that as the number of these communities increased, "unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circle of tens, hundreds and thousands"[35] linked in a common interest.
2. New Harmony
New Harmony, Indiana - Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least sixteen were Owenite or Owenite-influenced communities. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious experiment. Robert Owen, purchased the town in 1825 with the intention of creating a new utopian community and renamed it New Harmony. While the Owenite social experiment was an economic failure two years after it began, the community made some important contributions to American society. New Harmony became known as a center for advances in education and scientific research. Town residents established the first free library, a civic drama club, and a public school system open to men and women.
4. Auroville
Auroville (/ˈɔːrəvɪl/; City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India with some parts in the Union Territory of Puducherry in South India.[3] It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as "the Mother”) The inauguration ceremony attended by delegates of 124 nations was held on Wednesday 28 February 1968. Handwritten in French by the Mother, its four-point charter set forth her vision of integral living:
Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.
Pierre Proudhon (1809-1865) Anarchism as Libertarian Socialism
5. “Property is Theft”
Modern concept of private ownership includes three senses of right:
1. Usus (use) is the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, directly and without altering it.
2. Fructus (fruit, in a figurative sense) is the right to derive profit from a thing possessed: for instance, by selling crops, leasing immovables or annexed movables, taxing for entry, and so on.
3. Abusus (literally abuse), the right to alienate the thing possessed, either by consuming or destroying it (e.g. for profit), or by transferring it to someone else (e.g. sale, exchange, gift).
“The earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.” - Jefferson
6. “Property is despotism”
“Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and powerful, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the Government.”
Capitalism as based on the skimming of surplus value of labor by capitalists, leads to class conflict:
What Proudhon really objected to with respect to private property was the earning of income from the labour of others through such means as rent, interest and wage labour. After paying employees their wages, the capitalist retains the remaining profit without contributing any productive labour himself. Associated together, the workers create a productive capacity greater than the sum of their individual powers, but it is the capitalist who reaps the benefit. The workers acquiesce in their own exploitation because their only alternatives are starvation and misery.
He contrasts property with possession, the former being “the right to use [something] by his neighbour’s labour.” Property results in the farmer toiling for a landlord or the worker producing for a capitalist. Possession is when those who use a resource control it: the worker in a co-operative or the self-employed artisan. Only the former creates “the exploitation of man by man” and authoritarian social relationships.
Property must be socialised for just “as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows” and “all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.” Workers’ self-management must replace wage-labour as managers “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves.”
7. Implications
Anti-capitalism: Need to socialize property - possession versus property rights or “ownership in usufruct” - use-rights
Self-management: Workers’ self-management must replace wage-labour as managers “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves. Beginning of the cooperative movement.
2. New Harmony
New Harmony, Indiana - Of the 130 identifiable communitarian experiments in America before the American Civil War, at least sixteen were Owenite or Owenite-influenced communities. New Harmony was Owen's earliest and most ambitious experiment. Robert Owen, purchased the town in 1825 with the intention of creating a new utopian community and renamed it New Harmony. While the Owenite social experiment was an economic failure two years after it began, the community made some important contributions to American society. New Harmony became known as a center for advances in education and scientific research. Town residents established the first free library, a civic drama club, and a public school system open to men and women.
4. Auroville
Auroville (/ˈɔːrəvɪl/; City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu, India with some parts in the Union Territory of Puducherry in South India.[3] It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as "the Mother”) The inauguration ceremony attended by delegates of 124 nations was held on Wednesday 28 February 1968. Handwritten in French by the Mother, its four-point charter set forth her vision of integral living:
Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.
Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.
Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.
Pierre Proudhon (1809-1865) Anarchism as Libertarian Socialism
5. “Property is Theft”
Modern concept of private ownership includes three senses of right:
1. Usus (use) is the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, directly and without altering it.
2. Fructus (fruit, in a figurative sense) is the right to derive profit from a thing possessed: for instance, by selling crops, leasing immovables or annexed movables, taxing for entry, and so on.
3. Abusus (literally abuse), the right to alienate the thing possessed, either by consuming or destroying it (e.g. for profit), or by transferring it to someone else (e.g. sale, exchange, gift).
“The earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.” - Jefferson
6. “Property is despotism”
“Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and powerful, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the Government.”
Capitalism as based on the skimming of surplus value of labor by capitalists, leads to class conflict:
What Proudhon really objected to with respect to private property was the earning of income from the labour of others through such means as rent, interest and wage labour. After paying employees their wages, the capitalist retains the remaining profit without contributing any productive labour himself. Associated together, the workers create a productive capacity greater than the sum of their individual powers, but it is the capitalist who reaps the benefit. The workers acquiesce in their own exploitation because their only alternatives are starvation and misery.
He contrasts property with possession, the former being “the right to use [something] by his neighbour’s labour.” Property results in the farmer toiling for a landlord or the worker producing for a capitalist. Possession is when those who use a resource control it: the worker in a co-operative or the self-employed artisan. Only the former creates “the exploitation of man by man” and authoritarian social relationships.
Property must be socialised for just “as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows” and “all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.” Workers’ self-management must replace wage-labour as managers “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves.”
7. Implications
Anti-capitalism: Need to socialize property - possession versus property rights or “ownership in usufruct” - use-rights
Self-management: Workers’ self-management must replace wage-labour as managers “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves. Beginning of the cooperative movement.
Anarchism: anti-statism- the concept that the state is not necessary for order and stability, rather the source of chaos.
Liberal democracy by justifying the state as having a monopoly on the use of force, is still an oppressive structure. (137).
When the economy becomes more cooperative, government will be unnecessary.
Critique of hierarchical order (139)
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