Auguste Comte: a socialism for the 21st century? Social reformism against social liberalism (1)

A Society “in great nervous tension”

In 2010, the mediator of the French Republic, Jean-Paul Delevoye, published a completely unusual report as for the tone. It described  a French society “in great nervous tension, as if it were psychically tired ”, a “society which splits up, where the every man for himself replaces the desire for living together”. A decision was made… to suppress the function of mediator of the Republic.

The French society, like the European and American ones, indeed knows exploding social inequalities, which threaten social cohesion dangerously. “What does remain in common between a part-time  supermarket cashier and the boss of a CAC 40 company ? asked the Marianne editorialist  Jacques Julliard .. “What is the nature of the social bond which is supposed to still connect them ?  The nation ? it is threatened each day by globalization” (Marianne, February 25, 2011). With that are added a debilitating feeling that progress is broken down, or at least, does not benefit all any more, the risk, for the first time in recent history, that  the future of his/her children  might be more difficult than that of the preceding generations, and the uncontrolled migratory movements which involve confrontations of culture and question the national identity.

The question “what is society made of ?” is thus rather sharp and urgent matter, it has  been  a subject of regular meetings, during three years, within a group of economist. It appeared obvious to me that the inventor of the word sociology, Auguste Comte could not be ignored, in fact was certainly worth questioning, and that he has many things interesting to say to us on this topic. Comte is initially an essential thinker of science, progress and challenges which result from it for the society, and they are not so common, the philosophers with a strong scientific formation who know at this point the scientific mind. He is also the philosopher of public opinion as a social regulatory instrument. We should not be astonished by living in a  democracy of opinion – a generally pejorative notion ; he had announced it enough to us. National Education, the great positivist project -the only successful one ? - succeeded thanks to men like Jules Ferry, also the question “ how to educate” is also a fundamental comtienne question. Lastly, positivism is primarily a modest ideology, a reformism, that is not satisfied by the liberal spontaneously emerging order, affirms that his improvement  is always possible, but refuses as dangerous and counterproductive any violence allegedly “making” or accelerating history.

However we can all see that all our societiesspontaneously tend towards a social democrat compromise between total freedom and social constraint, between individualism and solidarism; but, oddly, political forces naturally carrying this project, and most capable to make it progress, are rather in retreat, do not manage any more to conquer the people, the opinions, the power. It is my conviction, firstly, that this paradoxical and unhappy situation is due to purely opportunist practices which are not based on solid doctrines, sure, precise, organizing and clearly asserted; secondly, that the essential elements of these doctrines, let us dare the word, of this ideology, can be found in Auguste Comte positivism.

Comte was a scientist who, starting from a history of sciences, build a theory of knowledge, then a theory of the evolution of civilizations and undertook to found a science of the society-which he called sociology.  He is initially a thinker of science, which he knew well better than a number of modern epistemologists –they would sometimes gain to read him again .

Furthermore, the destiny of the Occidental world was that of an extraordinary scientific and technical adventure, an adventure which is today globalized. Reading Comte remains more than ever useful to understand this world.

Count is also the thinker of progress. Whereas in Occident, at least, this concept of progress is disputed, whereas one has sometimes the impression that the conservatives do not know any more what they are supposed to preserve and promote “policies of rupture”, whereas the progressist forces, which used to think progress only in term of rupture and not of a positivist continuous process, seem to keep as only agenda the conservation of acquired social advantages, reading Comte again should not appear useless.

Comte is also a thinker of the public opinion, to which he grants a principal role in the social regulation, the ideologist and the inventor of a scientific and reformist socialism – by essence, not contingency. That made, I believe, many reasons which justify the necessary rediscovery of Comte and which one tries, again, to think starting from his work.

Eric Sartori,

Le socialisme d’Auguste Comte : Aimer, penser agir au XXIème siècle, l’Harmattan, 2012

Histoire des Grands scientifiques français, Tempus, 2012 (Plon 1999)

L’Empire des Sciences, Napoléon et ses savants, Ellipse 2003

Histoire des femmes scientifiques de l’Antiquité au XXème siècle, Plon 2006