Pierre Leroux
Leroux, an ex-Saint-Simonian, showed signs of dissidence as early as 1831 and openly challenged Saint-Simonian ideas in 1832 with the Revue encyclopedique which he had just taken over, by pointing to direct opposition between (1) the proletariat class producing the wealth of the nation and only possessing the daily wage by means of labour and working conditions they have no control over, and (2) the bourgeois class who owns the means of production, that is, proprietors and manufacturers who are the “feudal lords” of industry and pilot production only to match their own interests.
In this way, Leroux clearly identified a direct opposition between workers and capitalists in terms that are far less ambiguous than before. When it comes to economic activity, equality is not guaranteed, even though everyone’s right to industry and property is proclaimed (Leroux 1834-49 [1996]: 18-19). The interests of these two classes differ.According to Leroux, however, they are by no means contradictory as long as a regime of association and true equality is ensured. This would be done by a democratic government, whose aim is to elevate the proletariat - a republic which addresses social issues and strives to achieve real equality through legislative progress (multiplicity of legislators, representation of the proletariat, economic measures such as socialization of means of production, extension of the right of property to all, right to time off work, and restoration of the role of agriculture). As the main focus is not on economic measures (Frobert 2010), Leroux had to outline his definition of socialism. Having drawn attention to a contradiction between freedom and equality, he placed two extremes head to head (Leroux 1834 [1996]): on the one hand, individualism, which conceives society merely from the standpoint of individual contracts and cannot ensure real equality, and on the other, socialism, which he qualified as “absolute”, which is a sectarian aberration giving society total rights over the consciousness of its members (as advocated by the Enfantin variant of Saint-Simonianism).
The form of socialism defended by Leroux is a compromise between the individual and society. From an economic point of view, Leroux perceived equality as the possibility of enjoying access to the same goods and the acquisition of a universal right to information and knowledge. Equality should give its real meaning to sentiment (fraternity) and to the right to act (freedom), through a transformation of the Saint-Simonian trinitarian formula. This economic equality thus challenges the first Saint-Simonian principle based on ability - it points instead to a more Fourierist qualitative principle - but accepts the second principle (remuneration according to performance, hence meritocracy). Socialism is thus inseparable from a democratic republican context and from a tutelary state which, however, is not authoritarian (and not an abolition of the state as revealed by the debates between Blanc, Proudhon and Leroux). But it also depends on the non-institutionalization of a religion of humanity which is necessary to establish solidarity and the effectualness of society as a “mystical body”.