[Economics against politics: debt, its retirement and financing according to young and old saint- simonians (1825-1880)][L’économique contre le politique : la dette, son amortissement et son financement chez de jeunes et vieux saint-simoniens (1825-1880)]

Historians of economic thought mainly examine the Saint-Simonian movement through its involvement in the initial utterings of French socialism or as an idiom for emergent industrialism. This article instead proposes a reading of the relation maintained by certain Saint-Simonians with regard to public debt and its financing. Somewhat in opposition to readings concerned with the dichotomy between a young Saint-Simonian, at once idealist and socialist, and an aged Saint-Simonian, more compliant with the dominant economic liberalism present in the second half of the 19th century, this article allows for a particular continuity in the debate surrounding public debt to be perceived. Turning toward debt rather than taxes and setting out to diminish the arrears of said debt, emerges as a means of taming idleness and subjecting it to the imperatives of the industrial order.