Socialist Prophet of Atlantic Unity

...Saint-Simon was in the forefront of the thought of his time, a time pregnant with all the developments which have shaped our world of today...

...During the last years of his life he exercised a growing influence, and August Comte and modern sociology owe as much to him as Karl Marx and modern socialism...

...Beyond that, he foresaw developments like technocracy and the role of elites...

...being then the only liberal and parliamentary states, they could form the nucleus of a free Europe...

...There has been no detailed study of the whole thought of Saint-Simon and its development for a long time...

...Other thoughts of Saint-Simon were naturally less fertile and promising than these two concepts of culture and political reorganization...

...But in every respect he had a mind which abounded in fruitful and challenging thoughts...

...Saint-Simon saw as the cornerstone of such a free Europe the closest collaboration between Britain and France...

...Like most liberals and socialists of his time, like Mazzini and others, Saint-Simon unquestioningly accepted the white man's burden...

...Britain, Saint-Simon wrote, had behind her in 1814 some 130 years of free government upon which the French were only then embarking...

...Saint-Simon was a major figure in the intellectual history of the Atlantic Community, he has deserved to be presented again to the students of modern Western thought, and Professor Manuel deserves well of all these students for opening to them in a highly readable way the new world of Saint-Simon...

...In the Anglo-French parliament which he suggested, there would be two-thirds Englishmen and one-third Frenchmen, because in entering the union England would make a greater sacrifice while France would gain more by acquiring a stability and liberty which she lacked...

...Within this community he foresaw, like so many other Europeans of his time, that the center of gravity would shift from Europe to America and that the implementation of European theory would actually take place first in America...

...Saint-Simon clearly recognized the sharp dividing line between the spirit of the political and social systems of the West and the East of Europe, and his whole thought was dominated by his knowledge and understanding that Western Europe, Britain and the United States constitute modern civilized society, what we have since come to call the Atlantic Community...

...The broad outline of his synthesis is even more important today than it was in his own time...

...The industrial society of which he was a prophet demanded the preservation of peace and the securing of individual liberty...

...Reviewed by Hans Kohn Professor of History, City College of New York Henri Saint-Simon's importance rests in the fact that he sensed better than others the new age which started for the Western world with the end of the 19th century and appealed for a new synthesis of thought and a new form of organization appropriate to this age...

...Both his thought and his personality come fully to life in the comprehensive and unusually well documented study which Professor Frank E. Manuel of Brandeis University has devoted to him...

...Knowing France and French history, he rightly foresaw that only a Franco-British union under British guidance could heal the ills of French society and promote ordered liberty there...

...Therein present developments strengthen Saint-Simon's position, though we shall not follow him in his uncritical insistence that this civilization, of which he felt part and the development of which he well foresaw, has a calling or the right, the will or the need to lead and rule the world...

...He went farther...

...Of even greater importance for the future of Europe was the suggestion that Saint-Simon made in 1814 of reorganizing European society as a federation of free peoples, who he believed must federate for the sake of the safety and growth of their liberty...