Society Is Purely and Solely a Continual Series of Exchanges; the Two Contracting Parties Always Both Gain; Society Is an Uninterrupted Succession of Advantages

Liberal class conflict theory emerged in a polished form in France, in the period of the Bourbon Restoration, following the defeat and final exile of Napoleon. From 1817 to 1819, two young liberals, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, edited the journal Le Censeur Européen; beginning with the second volume (issue), another young liberal, Augustin Thierry, collaborated closely with them. The Censeur Européen  developed and disseminated a radical version of liberalism, one that continued to influence liberal thought up to the time of Herbert Spencer and beyond. It can be viewed as a core-constituent—and thus one of the historically defining elements—of authentic liberalism (see “Liberalism, True and False,” in the present work). In this sense, a consideration of the world-view of the Censeur group  is of great importance in helping to give shape and content to the protean concept of liberalism. Moreover, through Henri de Saint-Simon and his followers and other channels, it had an impact on socialist thought as well. Comte and Dunoyer called their doctrine Industrialisme, Industrialism.

There were several major sources of Industrialism. One was Antoine Destutt de Tracy, the last and most famous of the Idéologue school of French liberals, whose friend, Thomas Jefferson, arranged for the translation and publication of his Treatise on Political Economy in the United States before it appeared in France. Destutt de Tracy’s definition of society was crucial:

Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. It is never anything else, in any epoch of its duration, from its commencement the most unformed to its greatest perfection. And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which the two contracting parties always both gain; consequently, society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members.

Destutt de Tracy’s position was that “commerce is society itself. . . . It is an attribute of man. . . . It is the source of all human good . . .” Commerce was a “panacea,” in the words of a student of his thought, “the world’s civilizing, rationalizing, and pacifying force.”

—Ralph Raico, “The Conflict of Classes: Liberal vs. Marxist Theories,” in Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012), 189-190.