Freedom and Its Betrayal by Berlin Isaiah Hardy Henry Krause Enrique

Author:Berlin, Isaiah, Hardy, Henry, Krause, Enrique
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

Félicien David in Saint-Simonian Attire by Raymond Bonheur

It is quite clear in what way Saint-Simonism influences us whenever there is an attempt to construct a coherent society by applying science to the solution of human problems – not as in the eighteenth century, when it is a question of the solution of perennial problems which are always the same, and in terms of principles which are always the same, which never alter, because they are engraved in the human heart, or because they are discovered in nature or by metaphysical insight or by whatever means; but in terms of values which themselves evolve with the times. We ask which invention affects which other invention, which human beings affect which other human beings, and the notion that one must make human society coherent, that one must create some kind of planned single entity out of it, and not allow human beings to freewheel, not allow them to do what they want to do simply because they want to do it, because this might interfere with a state of affairs in which many more of their faculties might be realised, if only they knew – that is the Saint-Simonian idea.

It takes mild and humane forms in the case of, for example, the American New Deal, or the post-war socialist State in England. It takes violent, ruthless, brutal, fanatical forms in the case of directively planned Fascist and Communist societies. In their case the notion of a new secular religion which should be an opiate for the masses, urging them on towards an idea which they may not intellectually be able to understand, has been taken over from Saint-Simon also. So too has the conflation of the notion that we are part of the historical stream going forward – and therefore there are no absolute ideals, and any ideal is to be estimated in terms of its own perfection, the degree to which it satisfies present needs, not the needs of some past or future age – with the notion that history is a history of altering technology, because technology represents the human spirit at its most active, and humanity is to be divided into those who work and those who do nothing, the drones and the producers, the active and the passive, the doers and the done-to.

At the heart of the whole conception is science, or scientism – the belief that unless things are done under a rigorous discipline by people who alone understand the material of which the world is composed, human and non-human, chaos and frustration are the result. This can be achieved only by the elite. The elite cannot but practise a double morality – one for themselves, one for others. Liberty, democracy, laissez-faire individualism, feudalism – all these metaphysical notions, slogans, words which do not mean very much, must go in order to make room for something clearer, bolder, newer: big business, State capitalism, scientific organisation, an organisation of world peace, a world parliament, a world federation. All this is Saint-Simonian.

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