Moscow, Nauka Publishing House. 1975. 358 p. The print run is 4,300. Price 1 rub. 53 kopecks.

The publication of a new scientific study on Saint-Simonism is a very welcome symptom of the fact that our historiography is returning to the traditions of an in-depth study of the history of socialist ideas in the closest connection with the development of social thought and social science of the corresponding time. The work of Doctor of Historical Sciences, Senior researcher at the Institute of General History of the USSR Academy of Sciences G. S. Kucherenko is characterized by a multi-faceted application of this most important methodological principle of scientific research of the history of utopian socialism. The author has combined various aspects of the chosen topic into a general problem formulated as "a study of the fate of sensimonism in public thought in the first half of the XIX century" (p. 60).

The monograph, of course, is far from having exhausted this most extensive task - many relevant issues have remained unclear or only indicated. Understanding the complexity of the proposed research, the author identified several major points on the ideological map of the first half of the XIX century, which concretized his idea. He traced the fate of the ideas of A. Saint-Simon in the works of representatives of the Saint-Simonian school, in the characterization of their contribution to these ideas and in finding out possible ways of influencing Saint-Simonian ideas on the views of other utapists-S. Fourier and R. Owen. In addition, the author aims to determine more precisely the degree of influence and the true relationship of Saint-Simonian ideas with the historical concept of Fr. Thierry, with the positivist sociology of Fr. Comte, with the ideas of social Catholicism of the first half of the XIX century by its founder F. Buchet.

Along with numerous published sources on various issues, including the still poorly studied Saint-Simonian press of the 20s-30s of the XIX century and memoir literature of that era, the work uses new materials about Saint - Simonism identified by the author in French archives. The greatest results were obtained by G. S. Kucherenko's first survey of Saint-Simonian collections in the department of manuscripts of the Arsenal Library in Paris, including viewing part of the huge " Enfantin foundation "and the most interesting"Echtal foundation". The study of the manuscripts of the Saint-Simonian collections in the National Library and in the Paris City Historical Library also proved fruitful. Let us also note as a positive fact the publication as an appendix to the book of three extremely rare sources: for the first time published in Russian translation, extremely important texts of Saint-Simon's reflections on the working class, which shed additional light on his position on this issue in the last period of his life.

The author added a critical essay on the study of Saint-Simonism for more than a century and a half with an acute polemic review of it.

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G. S. Kucherenko focused his attention on the criticism of those areas of modern bourgeois historiography that seek to present Saint-Simon not as a utopian socialist, but as the founder of positivist sociology and the initiator of its "de-ideologization", or as a pioneer of the ideas of "harmonious capitalist industrialism", or as an ideological mentor of social Catholicism. The author shows that all such false interpretations of Saint-Simonism reflect the ideological struggle of our time in the history of socialist ideas, which characterizes the desire of modern bourgeois historiography to emasculate the content of Saint-Simon's ideas, which is inseparable from critical utopian socialism.

In his research, G. S. Kucherenko repeatedly returns to this issue. He considers it necessary to substantiate the Marxist thesis about Saint-Simon as a utopian socialist, and shows the growth of socialist features in the worldview and work of this utopian. These pithy pages of the book are directed not only against the fashionable bourgeois misinterpretations of Saint-Simon, but also against the attempts of some Marxist researchers to re - cast doubt on the legitimacy of including Saint-Simon among the great utopian socialists. G. S. Kucherenko rightly notes that such reservations " impoverish one of the ideological sources of scientific research." socialism" (p. 316).

The paper traces and comments on numerous statements of Karl Marx, F. Engels and V. I. Lenin, which make it possible to present their conclusion about Saint-Simon as a great French Utopian socialist in a broad way and to motivate deep methodological grounds for such a conclusion. The book expresses a correct and very fruitful idea, which deserves attention, about the fallacy of mechanically transferring the criteria of utopian socialism from one historical epoch to another, and emphasizes that "the criteria suitable for early utopian socialism are insufficient for critical-utopian socialism of the XIX century" (p.37). Here one of the most important methodological principles of scientific research of the history of utopian socialism is put forward and formulated. We can only wish that this principle receives a detailed historical and sociological justification, which protects it from any misinterpretation.

Of interest is the part of the book that explores the fate of Saint-Simon's ideological legacy in the works of his students and followers who formed the Saint-Simonian school of the late 20s and early 30s of the XIX century, and which is most saturated with valuable concrete material and the author's conclusions. The reader is presented with a substantial historical sketch of the formation of the Saint-Simonian movement, an analysis of its stages, the composition of participants and the role of its prominent figures in the ideological equipment of the movement, in the development of religious, ethical, historical, sociological, economic and social constructions of the Saint-Simonian school of thought at various stages. and the creative efforts of the representatives of the Saint-Simonian school, the differences within it and the disputes that led to a growing ideological differentiation and to the ideological impasse of Saint-Siadonism in the early 30s of the XIX century. This picture, replete with interesting new data gleaned by the author from the Saint-Simonian archives, unfortunately lacks clarity in depicting the relationship between the main ideological components of sensi-monism: the ideological heritage of the teacher and the creativity of his students. The author repeatedly speaks about the development of the teacher's ideas by students and about the "major step forward" achieved by them in a number of cases, but even more often emphasizes that "the leaders of the Saint-Simonian school, each in his own way, developed and at the same time brought to absurdity a number of Saint - Simon's propositions" (p. 65) or, as noted elsewhere," his teaching was substantially developed and at the same time distorted " (p.75). These ill-fitting propositions somewhat obscure a crucial period in the theoretical development of Saint-Simonism.

It is also not clarified by the new definitions introduced by G. S. Kucherenko-the proposal to use the term "Saint-Simonism "only to denote the ideological heritage of Saint-Simon himself, and to characterize the views of his students as" the ideological heritage of the Saint-Simonist school "or" the Saint - Simonist movement " (p.88). Admittedly, we do not find these proposals convincing, which are aimed at building a higher wall separating the "teacher" from the "teacher".

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"students", and we strongly doubt whether they facilitate the understanding of the naturally contradictory process in which the further theoretical development of Saint-Simonism was achieved. In these definitions, the author retains the concept of "Saint-Simonian school", but are there any schools with only one student, without a teacher? If the "disciples", as G. S. Kucherenko claims, created something completely different from what the "teacher" preached, if his ideas were so distorted and brought to the point of absurdity by the "disciples", then what is the real reason for the author of these definitions to keep the name of the teacher for such creativity of the students, instead of destroying it from the "school" its illegal and false sign under the verdict of strict historical criticism?

Along with these doubts, the reader is sometimes annoyed by the fact that there are passages in the book that indicate an insufficiently critical attitude towards the ideological postulates of the"Saint-Simonist school". Here are some examples that relate to the analysis of the work of the most prominent students of Saint-Simon. So, if we critically approach the socio - historical scheme of A. Bazar, who proved that the Saint-Simonian social ideal of the "industrial system" as an "association of workers" is the highest goal of all human efforts and its "final state" as a "social system that can no longer be improved", it is difficult to see in this concept, the" most important merit "of the theoretical pillar of the" Saint-Simonian school " (pp. 154-155). This is tantamount to declaring that the most important achievement of Saint-Simonism and its "school" is the rejection of the social ideal of communism. It is not necessary to show how difficult such an assessment will be for the historical and critical characterization of the Saint-Simonian ideal of the "industrial system" in all the intertwining contradictions of its bourgeois-compromise socialism.

We also think it necessary to contradict some of the author's assessments of P. Enfantin, another head of the "Saint-Simonian school". G. S. Kucherenko disputes the traditional characteristics of Enfantin, the "prominence" of his primary role in the development of the dogmas of the Saint-Simonian religion and church, he is inclined to bring to the fore "Enfantin-an economist, the creator of political economy, written with the help of positions of Saint-Simonism" (p. 159). Therefore, the paper pays special attention to the analysis of Enfantin's economic views, whose creative legacy attaches the most important importance to his 1831 book "Political Economy and Politics", which completed the development of Enfantin's theoretical problems of capitalist economy. G. S. Kucherenko sees in this book an attempt to "build political economy on the principles of critical-utopian socialism", which makes it possible to build a political economy based on the principles of critical-utopian socialism. this, in his opinion, was Enfantin's "indisputable merit" (p.187). Paying tribute to the multi-sided and painstaking analysis of Anfantin's economic ideas, first undertaken by G. S. Kucherenko, we still cannot agree with Anfantin's assessments as the author of "deep economic ideas" (p.159). Moreover, the paper claims that Enfantin's book "Political Economy and Politics" "took a new step on the path of socialism's development from utopia to science" (p. 161).

Such a very significant assessment forces us to indicate more clearly the differences with G. S. Kucherenko in our views on "Enfantin the Economist". It seems to us that the necessary clarity in this rather complicated question should be brought first of all by a clear understanding that the most important provisions of Anfantin's "political economy" were by no means the fruit of original and deep economic thought. In essence, they were a rehash of the fashionable theories of the French vulgar bourgeois economists of that era, and above all of J.-B. Say. This is especially true of the most important point of Saint-Simonite "political economy," the explanation of the capitalist system of exploitation of wage labor. Enfantin considered the functions of the capitalist as a "distributor of the means of production", leasing them to needy proletarian workers and collecting tribute from them for this. As we can see, Enfantin was far from understanding the very foundations of the capitalist mode of production and therefore interpreted them in terms of feudal relations, feudal rent. Sometimes this is also noticed in the work of G. S. Kucherenko (see pages 174, 183). And yet nothing changes in his highest attestations "Enfantin-economist".

It is no accident that in all three volumes of the Theories of Surplus Value Marx never mentioned Enfantin and his colleagues-

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something about political economy that Marx knew well when he was still working on German Ideology. As is well known, in the most comprehensive study of the history of economic science, volume IV of Capital, Marx traced many thoughts, conjectures, and theoretical ideas of various economists on the problems of labor exploitation and the nature of capitalist profit. And if he completely ignores "Enfantin the economist", then does not the explanation of this fact lie in the latter's theoretical weakness in the field of political economy, since his uncreative composition on the system of capitalist exploitation of wage labor rejected the theory of value of the classics of bourgeois political economy and thereby closed the way for fruitful research of these problems and the possibility of approaching the foundations of economic science?

It would be possible to cite other controversial propositions and conclusions that are contained in the work, for example, an attempt to justify the possibility of grafting some Saint-Simonian ideas to the trunk of the utopian Fourier system, since G. S. Kucherenko's assumption about the influence of these ideas on Fourier remains unverified in the texts of the latter's works. We note the presence of such controversial propositions and assumptions in the reviewed work not because we see it as evidence of its weaknesses or flaws. On the contrary, in such disputes we see one of the sure signs of the creative nature of scientific research on such a large scale. The complexity and multi-dimensionality of the research problem to which the book is devoted makes it logical to argue on a number of issues raised in it. The inevitability of these disputes is also increased by the author's efforts to find new sources, materials, and new aspects of the issues under study.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the monograph under consideration by G. S. Kucherenko, having solved many complex issues of its topic, at the same time widely revealed a number of still unresolved issues. In both cases, one can see the merit of the author, who, on the whole, successfully advanced the Marxist-Leninist study of the most significant trend of critical utopian socialism of the nineteenth century, which had the most versatile influence on the social thought of its time and on the entire development of socialism from utopia to science.

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