Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de
Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de (1760–1825)A most unusual French aristocrat who lived through remarkable times. His powerful liberal and republican sympathies saved him from the guillotine during the French Revolution, and after the Bourbon restoration he developed a system of ideas about social progress. What he created has been called the ‘characteristic ideology of industrialism’: that everyone must work and be rewarded according to merit, that all progress is based on science, and that the society of the future will be peaceful, prosperous, and run on strictly scientific principles. Saint-Simon gathered a band of enthusiastic disciples who were regarded as radicals and even socialists—although there was not much about his system that would be called socialist today. From 1817 to 1824, when they quarrelled, Auguste Comte worked with Saint-Simon, whose influence on...
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