Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Secular and purist origins of enlightened capitalism
- 3 Victorian England: From Coketown to Port Sunlight, Bournville and the Garden City Movement
- 4 ‘The American Way’: Factory system, mass production, welfare capitalism, and company towns in the US
- 5 Worker colonies and settlements , joy in work, and enlightened entrepreneurs in Germany
- 6 France: From the Mulhousian welfare work model to the Taylorist Turn
- 7 A comparison of welfare work between Great Britain, the US, Germany, and France
- 8 Learning from past experience
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Secular and purist origins of enlightened capitalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Secular and purist origins of enlightened capitalism
- 3 Victorian England: From Coketown to Port Sunlight, Bournville and the Garden City Movement
- 4 ‘The American Way’: Factory system, mass production, welfare capitalism, and company towns in the US
- 5 Worker colonies and settlements , joy in work, and enlightened entrepreneurs in Germany
- 6 France: From the Mulhousian welfare work model to the Taylorist Turn
- 7 A comparison of welfare work between Great Britain, the US, Germany, and France
- 8 Learning from past experience
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The first industrial revolution took off in Britain. This is one of the main reasons that, with some notable exceptions, enlightened capitalism on a larger scale first took shape on the British Isles before dispersing to the continent and to America. One such continental exception was the model saltworks manufacture La Saline Royale d’Arc-et-Senans in the French Jura, near the city of Besançon. Designed by Louis XV's famous court architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, La Saline Royale was constructed between 1775-1793. The Royal Saltworks started operating in 1778 and remained productive until 1895. Ledoux considered La Saline as an expression of his cité idéale, in which working, living, and hierarchical worker control were integrated equally. After a more ambitious first plan concerning the ideal city of Chaux, rejected by the king, Ledoux's definite design for La Saline consisted of an assembly of eleven independent, symmetrical buildings located on a semi-circle containing an inner square with four fountains. The most impressive building was the large director's house, which featured a front colonnade of six impressive columns overseeing and dominating the whole inner site as well as the equally monumental entrance of La Saline Royale. Ledoux's ideas about la cité idéale were strongly influenced by the Enlightenment. He was, for example, a contemporary of other influential French Enlightenment spirits, such as Diderot, Turgot, Malesherbes, Necker, and Condorcet. Like many others in this time period, he was also touched by a certain Anglomania related to the first English Industrial Revolution.
Though fully state sponsored, La Saline Royale can undoubtedly be considered as an early forerunner or illustrative example of later industrial capitalist workingman's paradises, including a number of enlightened company towns. According to Rabreau, it is both an allegory of the Enlightenment and an industrial monument.
Rabreau's statement refers to the fact that in addition to material aspects, spiritual aspects go hand in hand with the development of enlightened capitalism. Therefore, in the remaining part of this chapter, I will pay further attention to the secular origins of enlightened capitalism as well as to religious purist origins.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Capitalist Workingman's Paradises RevisitedCorporate Welfare Work in Great Britain, the USA, Germany and France in the Golden Age of Capitalism, 1880–1930, pp. 27 - 40Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016