"As Monsieur Jourdain was doing prose, Macron is doing Saint-Simonism without knowing it"

Frédéric Rouvillois is a professor of public law and a writer.

He has published numerous books on the history of ideas, notably

L'Invention du progress, aux origines de la thought totalitaire

A history of the bestsellers

Liquidation, Emmanuel Macron et le Saint-Simonisme

FIGAROVOX.- What is Saint-Simonian doctrine?

And what is the relationship between Saint Simonism of the 19th century and the positions of Emmanuel Macron?

Frédéric ROUVILLOIS.-

We could start by noting that Saint-Simonism, which Karl Marx qualified as “utopian socialism”, is not a doctrine in the strict sense of the term, with the conceptual rigidity and internal coherence that such word.

No doubt the disciples of Saint-Simon, in the years which followed his death in 1825, wanted to constitute one, at the same time as a school, and even a religion: but the whole finally exploded. in many directions from the beginning of the 1830s. And all in all, one would be tempted to speak rather of an ideological nebula, of a sensitivity, of a tendency and of a Saint-Simonian method.

This doctrine, which is not one, could be summed up (although Saint-Simon does not use these terms) in a combination of socialism and liberalism;

or better still, by qualifying it as progressivism: a progressivism which sees in the development of science, technology, commerce and industry, the determining engine of emancipation and universal well-being.

Read also:

If this doctrine, unlike so many others, has not disappeared into the oblivion of history, and if so many contemporaries, intellectuals, businessmen or eminent politicians, continue today to claim more or less explicitly, it is because this program, outlined by Saint-Simon and systematized by his disciples, was then implemented by the latter within the framework of the Industrial Revolution - an expression that they are moreover the first to use in 1831. The Saint-Simonians were indeed the main actors in the industrialization of France, the rise of machinery and the development of networks, transport networks (canals, railways), financial networks (large bank, credit) and human networks (urbanization, etc.): in short, they will be the initiators of a forced modernization pursued with all the more energy as they give it both economic and political value , social and moral (work e

st sanctified, because he alone allows man to be fulfilled and free).

The Saint-Simonians, who call for the elimination of all that relates to the past in the name of the holy law of Progress, and for an opening, for a generalized fluidification.

However, is there any kinship between this doctrine and President Macron, when we will soon be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the death of Saint-Simon?

Even though it was hotly debated in the aftermath of the 2017 election, the answer, in my view, is beyond doubt.

And this, precisely, because Saint-Simonism does not constitute a doctrine in the strict sense, rigid, complete and therefore necessarily dated and obsolete, but rather a way of seeing, an orientation, a sensitivity.

For Emmanuel Macron, Saint-Simonism is not a model that should be reproduced as it is, by placing it on the real, but rather a kind of matrix - in the same way that Marxism constituted one for François Mitterrand in the years 1970-1980.

In the case of Emmanuel Macron, it is a matter of a perhaps unconscious matrix: as Monsieur Jourdain used to prose, he does Saint-Simonism without knowing it, or at least without needing to say it.

It is not a matter of a varnish, which is there to be seen while remaining superficial, but on the contrary of a kind of ideological spine invisible at first glance, but which sheds light on the “deep Macron” from within. : the one who presents himself, with a sincerity that we have no reason to doubt, like the herald of progressivism, the champion of the new world and of sovereign Europe.

Thus it is as heir to Saint-Simonism that he opposed, on September 14, the side of good to that of evil: the implementation of 5G, associated with Progress and the Enlightenment, with the "Amish model" of oil lamp and conservative environmentalists who claim to make nature prevail over economic and technological development.

You title your essay: "Liquidation, Emmanuel Macron and Saint Simonism".

According to you, this presidential mandate is an enterprise of liquidation of what we are?

The title,

, is obviously a play on the word, which means at the same time "to make liquid", and "to make disappear" (which, in this case, was not liquid).

This double dimension, we can already guess at the Saint-Simonians, who call for the elimination of all that relates to the past in the name of the holy law of Progress, and for an opening, a generalized fluidification.

Then we find it, enlightened by these intellectual origins, in the Macronian project and in its implementation: on all levels, it is for him to go beyond, if not to abolish the old world, and moreover, to promote mobility.

Symbolically, the choice of the name “En Marche” is not a matter of chance: it is a question of designating not only a movement, but movement, change, evolution, desirable in itself.

In his mouth or under his pen, this word comes back as a leitmotif:

, he declared to Congress in July 2017: all mobility, and mobility at all levels.

Symbolically, the choice of the name "En Marche", which also takes its own initials EM, is not a matter of chance: it is a question of designating not only a movement, but movement, tension, change, evolution, desirable in itself.

Conversely, another constant, Macron experiences a real phobia of immobility, perceived as the pillar of the “society of frustration”, and of course, as the marker of this execrated conservatism that he dedicates to gemonies.

Global liquidation, therefore: in my essay, I evoke those of family, gender, identity, politics absorbed by the economy, democracy replaced by the reign of experts, borders, cultures or religions ...

You talk about going beyond gender and say that equality between women and men is the great cause of the five-year term.

Is there a convergence between Saint Simonism and today's feminism?

First of all, it is not me, but Emmanuel Macron in person who presents himself, in 2017, as a feminist candidate, then who declares in 2018 that gender equality will be "the great cause of the five-year term".

Here again, this is one of the elements of the Saint-Simonian creed, which makes the liberation of women and their strict equality with men one of its essential objectives, one would almost be tempted to say , obsessive.

According to historians of feminism, Saint-Simonism places this question at the heart of its vision of the world, and with it, the indispensable liquidation of the patriarchal family in all its elements, in particular marriage and inheritance.

At the time, some Saint-Simonian journalists refused to bear the name of their husband or their father, and signed their articles or their works with their first name only, on the grounds that it was their own as women.

In the 19th century, this doctrine was to constitute the crucible of French feminism;

in the twenty-first century, it is always in the thread of this ideological tradition that the speech and the intentions of President Macron are situated.

These men who had dreamed of the golden age for all will help establish the silver age for some.

If the new world of which Emmanuel Macron wants to be the herald is working to "correct injustices", the president gave the impression of showing disdain for the yellow vests.

Which suggests that the popular classes have been excluded from the “holy human family”?

You touch here the fundamental ambiguity of Emmanuel Macron, but also, whatever the left intellectuals who claim to be saying these days, that of Saint-Simonism itself.

The disciples of Saint-Simon, for the most part polytechnicians from the middle or upper middle class, demanded that it be given

, and proclaimed the need to

.

However, through the industrial revolution and the rise of the high banking of which they will be the decisive actors, these men who had dreamed of the golden age for all will help establish the silver age for some. , in the cruel words of the poet Heinrich Heine: they will establish the reign of the very rich, big bankers and big industrialists, which will in turn lead to an unprecedented worsening of proletarian misery.

Macron declared in 2015 that

: and no doubt he thinks he is going in this direction when he uses, in October 2017, the image that has become famous of the

:

.

Who succeed better than the others, those he calls the first in line, the rich, the most capable in the sense of Saint-Simon.

First of the roped who, in this metaphor, necessarily lead the others upwards: in other words, towards more comfort, health, well-being, etc ... Which contribute, in short, to make them less and less poor as time passes and the ascent continues under their beneficial impetus.

Unless of course if the cord has broken, or it gives the impression of it to those who remained behind: which, basically, is precisely the problem of the yellow vests crisis.

The New World that Emmanuel Macron imagines in line with Saint-Simonian thought is not without a certain form of transcendence.

Once this crazy project of emancipation of people and society has been carried out, what will our world look like?

A world organized around the economy of men without transcendence, without a search for meaning?

Last year, France Culture entitled a program on the subject:

.

In fact, in his last work,

, Saint-Simon proposed to the world a religion which ultimately was no more than a moral one, aimed at uniting men in the common work of industrial development and emancipation. universal.

Macron, for his part, readily recognizes the need for a certain spiritual dimension, rejecting in this regard a strict materialism of the Marxist type.

However, here again, it is less a question of a particular religion (himself, baptized late, having had obviously complex relations with Catholicism, as his autobiography suggests), than of a rather vague "religiosity. »Substitution centered around the values ​​of work, progress, individual emancipation, non-discrimination and fraternity.

To read also:

In this regard, those who listened to his speech on September 4 could not but be struck by the religious, almost ecclesiastical tone he gave to the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Third Republic, a Republic that he defines lyrically like

.

While he celebrates, by evoking the attacks against Charlie Hebdo, the recognition of "

", he only excludes the obligation for all to "believe in the republic", refusing on this point any accommodation with those who could go against its values ​​and its principles.

Ultimately, the New World imagined by Emmanuel Macron in line with Saint-Simonian thought is not devoid of a certain form of transcendence: but the latter comes down to a religion of Man, of his rights. and his material well-being.