InvestigationFrom the industrial communities of the 19th century to the giants of the CAC 40, the question of the quest for harmony between business activity and the needs of society has arisen for two centuries.
On Wednesday May 26, the general meeting of shareholders of ExxonMobil imposed on the board of directors of the oil giant three directors representing an activist fund, Engine No. 1, committed to the fight against global warming and the use of … oil . And this despite fierce opposition from management, but thanks to the support of equally gigantic pension funds and asset managers, such as Calpers, BlackRock, Vanguard, etc.
For the most optimistic, this event would be, among others, the proof of the emergence of a “responsible” capitalism, which would finally engage in the path of the “common good” the world of finance and large companies, if often accused of increasing their profits for the benefit of shareholders and at the expense of natural and social balances. In any case, it is a sign that at the highest summit of Western capitalism, the question of whether or not companies can accord their development strategy with the limits of a model of permanent expansion is clearly posed.
In the XIXe century, utopian socialism
In fact, the quest for harmony between business activity and the needs of society is not new, as Frédéric Panni, heritage curator at the Familistère de Guise (Aisne), observes. In the first half of the XIXe century, the fathers of utopian socialism, Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, Etienne Cabet, proposed a world where the technique and the work allow to produce the abundance of goods which will make the humanity happy, but where the collective of work would let express the creativity and the talents of each individual.
Saint-Simon (1760-1825) is not an entrepreneur, but his followers, the Pereire brothers or Ferdinand de Lesseps, will lead their investments in railways and canals under the Second Empire, in the name of the sincere vision of a world in which to connect people and circulate goods would ensure the peace and happiness of humanity. Robert Owen (1771-1858) is an entrepreneur: in 1800 he took over the New Lanark spinning mill in Scotland and transformed it into a workers’ cooperative. Then he founded, in the United States, in 1825, the community of New Harmony (Indiana), where there is no salary or private property, but “perfect” equality … under the authority of its charismatic leader, who published in 1847 The Book of the New Moral World, where he sets out his vision for the future society.
It is also in the United States that the disciples of Fourier, Owen and Cabet will found agricultural or industrial communities which will apply with more or less ardor the principles of the phalanstery imagined by Fourier (1772-1837).
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