Thesis advisor: Julian E Bourg / This dissertation explores the paradigm of “industrial society” in French and sociology in the middle decades of the twentieth century. It argues that the term “industrial society” was not a concept, but a series of hypotheses and debates connected to the rise of sociology as a form of public intellectualism and the remaking of European social-democratic thought in the shadow of American hegemony and the Cold War. It shows that while sociologists attributed the concept of “industrial society” to nineteenth-century precursors like Saint-Simon, Comte, and Marx, it was in fact a thoroughly twentieth-century reworking of the sociological tradition and social-democratic social theory. “Industrial society” was the way that sociologists transposed their radical commitments into social science, embracing a supposedly “realist,” anti-ideological analysis of the social world as the best intellectual path for a modernized reformism that could either embrace the Cold War status quo or push it toward new forms of radicalism. As a conceptual history, the dissertation explores the industrial-society paradigm in four component parts. These included, first, the “logic of industrialization”: debates about nature and future of social development across capitalist and Communist societies, where sociologists often saw family resemblances rather ideologically opposed systems, and replaced a Marxist teleology of class struggle with more ambiguous evolutionary schemas centered on culture, institutions, and technology. Second, the “managerial revolution,” or the expansion since the early twentieth century, of white-collar social strata and the growing importance of bureaucracy and scientific expertise in most domains of society, especially industry and public administration. Third, the “integration of social conflict,” or the idea that the so-called “industrial society” emerging after World War II would or should be able to manage its conflicts—especially labor conflict—by containing them within a set of rules, institutions, and social contracts that advanced social justice but prevented them from threatening the social order itself. Fourth and finally, the “end of ideology,” which suggested that the result of these other social developments would be a society in which passions cooled, grand ideological visions faded, and politics shifted toward expert management. Stated this way the industrial-society paradigm can appear as merely the sociological expression of a centrist and technocratic postwar consensus. The sociological story told here suggests, however, that it was a major modulation of left-wing social thought in Western Europe and the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. This dissertation follows a cast of characters as they transposed the radical commitments of the 1930s into social science in the 1940s and 1950s, gradually embracing modernist ideals of value-neutral science and pragmatic social reform. In particular, it shows how the sociology they built remade the political left, providing an alternative public sphere and social vision that helped unite the fractious anti- and post-Communist left in countries like France. Beginning in the 1950s, sociology gradually crept into the public consciousness, filling newspapers and popular magazines, left intellectual journals, think-tanks for technocrats, and state-funded research institutes. The overlapping positions of sociologists in the university, the media, and politics enabled them to evangelize a vision of industrial society to people of influence and even in popular culture. By hovering in an ambiguous space between a moderate reformism and radical social thought, between technocrats and militants, industrial-society sociologists created a distinctive form of twentieth-century social-democratic thought that optimistically saw an automated, socialized, and at least partially planned society emerging, almost of its own accord, from the structural forces driving modern social evolution themselves. Temporally, this vision originated in the 1930s in left critiques of the Soviet Union and Stalinism, crystallized in the mid-1950s, and began to fracture amid the social upheaval of the late 1960s. It would be severely shaken by the social conflict and crisis of the 1970s, but in highly ambivalent ways that often led to industrial-society ideas being transmuted into new forms and mobilized by new social actors. The 1968 generation appeared to mount a critique of the industrial-society paradigm and of its sociological advocates, but they often did so by radicalizing its core notions and, and recovering the romantic and utopian impulses that had gradually disappeared from older sociologists’ thinking. While on balance this dissertation tells a story of the acclimation of French and European social science to American norms, the 1970s fracture of the industrial-society paradigm had effects in France that contrasted with the Anglo-American world, most notably the success of new sociological ideas in politics. Unlike in the United States and United Kingdom, which entered the 1980s under aggressive neoliberal leaders, the French Parti Socialiste won the presidency in 1981 with a brand of modernized socialism that borrowed heavily—at least in the party’s rhetoric—from the radicalized industrial-society vision of the 1970s, precisely the sort of ideological rebranding for the left that sociologists had envisioned decades earlier. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

La généralisation du salariat, une rationalisation accrue des procédés de fabrication et le décollage d’une économie puisant en elle-même les principaux leviers de sa croissance figurent parmi les phénomènes générés par l’industrialisation au 19e siècle. Embrassant des pans toujours plus nombreux de l’activité économique, cette grande transformation qui colora de manière indélébile plusieurs aspects de la vie en société mena au développement d'importantes organisations capitalistes assujetissant un nombre grandissant de ressources matérielles et humaines à leur mode de fonctionnement. Ces organisations connurent une ascension fulgurante au 20e siècle, préparant le chemin à une transformation en profondeur de la société. La pierre d’assise au déploiement de ces organisations capitalistes fut d’abord une institution, la société par actions (compagnie), dont la présente thèse retrace la genèse. L’institutionnalisation des compagnies s’est étendue sur plusieurs siècles. Les coutours de cette institution furent, à travers le temps, façonnés par cette large trame d’échanges culturels et commerciaux liant entre elles plusieurs parties du globe et dans laquelle les compagnies se sont inscrites. À chaque modification significative de l’institution voit-on en effet que l’insertion des compagnies dans cet univers presque mondial joua un rôle clef, qui mérite d'être davantage souligné, ce à quoi vise la présente thèse. Sans que soient pour autant gommés ces jalons essentiels posés par le monde occidental dans cette aventure, la présente thèse fait ainsi une large place à ces points de vue de « l’histoire globale » qui focalisent leur attention sur les relations entre les civilisations sur le temps long. Ces perpectives ajoutent à l’image qui se dégage d’une institution séculaire, s’étant construite en plusieurs étapes, avant de servir de creuset à la fabrication industrielle des marchandises. De cette genèse de l’institution de la compagnie (des cités-États italiennes du Moyen Âge à l’industrialisation), trois moments ont été distingués, structurant en trois parties la thèse qui débute avec l’époque charnière de l’an mil. Partie 1. Après des siècles d’invasions, l’Europe de l’Ouest offre une image morcelée. Ses foyers de peuplement se sont pour la plupart recroquevillés économiquement et politiquement dans des seigneuries. Tandis que tardent à surgir des pouvoirs tutélaires instituant les cadres propices au commerce de longue distance, les quelques marchands qui s’aventurent à travers les territoires se regroupent en caravanes. Ce sont ces pionniers qui, allant à la rencontre de civilisations riches en trésors (matériels et intellectuels), introduisent en Occident des marchandises exotiques, mais aussi les techniques comptables et financières soutenant l’essor commercial subséquent de l’Europe de l’Ouest. L’institution de la compagnie en tire à première vue son origine. Partie 2. La montée des États absolutistes du régime westphalien conduit à l’encastrement des compagnies dans les politiques mercantilistes des monarchies au moment où l’Occident joue un rôle de plus en plus déterminant au sein des réseaux commerciaux de l’économie mondiale. Les compagnies responsables du transit des marchandises se voient alors assujetties aux visées d’intérêt national (politiques économiques, diplomatiques et militaires, notamment) des États absolutistes avec lesquelles l’objectif de rentabilité aura à composer. Partie 3. Au 19e siècle, la Grande-Bretagne, qui fait l’expérience de l’industrialisation, cherche à se délier des charges de la colonisation et adopte des politiques commerciales de facture plus libérale. Pour les économies subalternes, la nouvelle conjoncture commande un repositionnement. L’économie québécoise incarne alors l’archétype de ces transformations. On y cherche alors de nouveaux moteurs économiques tandis que ses liens commerciaux et impériaux avec la Grande-Bretagne se dénouent. Délier les sociétés par actions de leurs obligations en regard des objectifs concrets visant l’intérêt public apparaîssait comme une avenue prometteuse, qui fut d’ailleurs empruntée. Cette nouvelle formule institutionnelle fournit le terreau dans lequel prit forme une configuration sociale inédite, dominée par de grandes organisations et les principes de gestion qui les animent. L’organisation, en tant que forme sociale, devint ainsi le noeud liant entre eux un nombre croissant de choses et d’acteurs. En resituant l’évolution de l’institution de la compagnie dans la trame générale du commerce mondial, en plus de s’intéresser au procès d’engendrement de la société postmoderne, la présente thèse jette aussi un éclairage sur 1) les origines du capitalisme et sur 2) la montée en puissance de l’Occident dans l’économie mondiale. L’institution de la compagnie constitua en effet autant une manifestation de ces changements qu’un des principaux instruments les ayant rendu possible. / The generalization of wage labour, an increased rationalization of manufacturing processes, and the taking-off of an economy that draws from within itself the main propellants of its growth are among the phenomena generated in the 19th century by industrialization. Embracing a growing number of economic activities, this great transformation not only colored indelibly many aspects of life in society, but it also implicated the deployment of important capitalist organizations, which integrated in large numbers material and human resources, subjecting them to their modus operandi. This corporate body, the organization, experienced a meteoric rise in the 20th century, paving the path to a society less structured by the modern state. The building block of the organization was an institution, the company, and it is the genesis of this entity that the present thesis aims to trace. The institutionalization of the organizations of industrial capitalism spanned several centuries. The customs of these institutions were, through time, shaped by the broad framework of cultural and commercial exchanges that linked several parts of the globe and in which the companies were implicated. In each significant shift in the development of the institution, we see that the insertion of companies in this almost global universe played a key role. Without minimizing the importance of the milestones achieved by the Western world in this saga, this thesis attributes a large place to “global history” perspectives, which focus on the relations between civilizations over time. These perspectives add to the image that emerges of a secular institution, built in several stages and then used as a crucible for the industrial manufacture of goods. In this genesis of the institution of the company (from the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages through to industrialization), three key moments were identified, which served to structure this thesis into three parts, beginning with the turning point of the year 1000. Part 1. After centuries of invasions, Western Europe portrays a fragmented image. Its population centers are for the most part economically and politically divided into seigneuries. In the period preceding the emergence of tutelary powers, which established a framework that was conducive to long-distance trade, the few merchants who ventured across the territories formed caravans. It was these pioneers who, while venturing to meet treasure-rich (both material and intellectual) civilizations, introduced not only exotic goods into the West, but also accounting and financial techniques that supported the subsequent commercial development of Western Europe. At first glance, the company’s institution derives its origin from this. Part 2. The rise of the absolutists states of the Westphalian regime led to the intertwining of companies in the mercantilist policies of the monarchies at a time when the West played an increasingly decisive role in the commercial networks of the world economy. This subjected the companies responsible for the transit of goods, as well as their objectives for profitability, to the national interests (economic, diplomatic and military policies, in particular) of the absolutists states. Part 3. In the 19th century, parts of Great Britain were undergoing industrialization, and in seeking to free itself from the burdens of administrating colonies, it adopted more liberal trade policies. For subordinate economies, the new commercial climate forced them to shift their strategies. Quebec’s economy during this period embodied the archetype of this transformation. It was forced to seek new economic engines, as its trade ties with the empire unraveled. The empowerment of corporations, through a disembedding from public policy, appeared to be a promising avenue. This new institutional formula provided the breeding ground for an unprecedented social configuration, dominated by large organizations and the management principles that drive them. The organization, as a social form, would thereafter become the knot that binds together a growing number of entities and actors. By resituating the evolution of the institution of the company in the general framework of world trade, in addition to taking an interest in the generation of postmodern society, this thesis also sheds light on 1) the origins of capitalism and 2) the rise of the West in the world economy. The establishment of the company was as much a manifestation of these changes as one of the main instruments that made them possible.

Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 7 août 2023) / Cette thèse propose d'explorer un courant d'idée informel et marginal du XXᵉ siècle qui, selon son hypothèse de départ, aurait assuré la transition entre les premières contestations contre la révolution industrielle et certains mouvements environnementalistes contemporains. Ce courant peut ainsi se caractériser comme une écologie politique révolutionnaire, se fondant sur une critique radicale de la civilisation industrielle et de son facteur principal, la technique moderne. Le but de cette étude est d'en évaluer la cohérence et la pertinence : a-t-on affaire à un ensemble dispersé d'idées et d'auteurs, ou bien à un diagnostic commun ? Est-ce que ces idées ont toujours un intérêt face à la crise écologique actuelle ? Un certain nombre d'intellectuels peuvent être rattachés à cette perspective technocritique ; néanmoins, cette étude se concentre sur les œuvres de quatre d'entre eux : l'urbaniste américain Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), le philosophe allemand Günther Anders (1902-1992), le sociologue français Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) et l'historien nomade Ivan Illich (1926-2002). Dans un premier temps, ce travail présente la méthode qui a guidé l'étude de ces textes : une socio-histoire des idées qui emprunte tout autant à la discipline historique qu'à la discipline sociologique. Les enjeux de l'étude des pensées environnementalistes et écologistes sont également exposés, afin de souligner les spécificités de cet objet de recherche. Ce qui amène à la formulation de la problématique de cette thèse : ce courant d'idées écologiste peut-il être défini comme un langage, au sens que l'histoire des idées politiques donne à ce concept ? La principale assertion de cette étude est qu'il doit plutôt être compris comme une matrice intellectuelle, un ensemble cohérent de leitmotivs visant la connaissance social-historique, et pouvant servir de base à des langages davantage tournés vers l'action politique. Ce qui contraste avec les polémiques romantiques contre le machinisme au XIXᵉ siècle, qui exprimaient une sensibilité anti-industrielle plus diffuse. Par la suite, les cinq principaux chapitres de cette étude fournissent un contre-récit du XXᵉ siècle, à travers la lecture profonde des textes des auteurs retenus. Ce récit débute avec l'examen des ouvrages pionniers de Lewis Mumford durant l'entre-deux-guerres. À la suite à la Grande Guerre, celui-ci chercha à édifier une perspective alternative à la fois au libéralisme, au conservatisme et au marxisme. En parallèle, il se lança dans une étude historique de fond de ce qu'il nommait « l'Âge de la Machine », et en tira une critique de la civilisation de la puissance. Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale et les bombardements nucléaires d'Hiroshima et de Nagasaki, Günther Anders et Jacques Ellul élaborèrent, de manière convergente, un diagnostic critique de la société technicienne et conformiste de l'après-guerre. Ils décrivirent le type d'individu qu'elle produit, un homme médial ayant perdu le contrôle sur les techniques qu'il a lâché dans son monde - qui ne serait alors justement plus le sien. De plus, ils s'interrogèrent sur la possibilité d'une extinction de l'humanité, avant tout par un ultime conflit atomique. Mumford, Anders et Ellul réitérèrent leurs analyses dans les années 1960 et 1970, alors que l'Occident était marqué par une vague multiforme de contestations et de révoltes. Prenant leurs distances face à ces mouvements, ces trois intellectuels estimaient qu'en réalité un système mégatechnique venait de triompher. Celui-ci se déploierait de manière purement causale, dans le seul but d'accroître sa taille et sa puissance. Par conséquent, la Révolution et l'Histoire semblaient être devenues obsolètes. Ivan Illich fit sienne cette critique de la démesure et de la déraison technologiques, en l'étendant au secteur des services. Il étudia également les sources profondes de cette civilisation industrielle, qu'il situa dans le passé chrétien de l'Occident. Finalement, en s'appuyant sur les travaux de ses homologues, Illich traça les grandes lignes de ce que pourrait être une société conviviale. Cependant, le mouvement écologiste contemporain échoua à intégrer ces idées, et manqua sa propre révolution. Se pose alors la question de savoir quelle attitude il est possible d'adopter face au « Temps de la Fin ». La matrice intellectuelle de cette écologie politique révolutionnaire reste active de nos jours, à travers les langages du néo-luddisme, de l'écosocialisme et de la décroissance. Des recherches futures sont nécessaires pour bien saisir cette filiation, et pour rattacher d'autres auteurs à cette matrice d'idées. / This thesis proposes to explore an informal and marginal current of thought of the 20ᵗʰ century which, according to its initial hypothesis, would have ensured the transition between the first protests against the industrial revolution and certain contemporary environmentalist movements. This current can thus be characterized as a revolutionary political ecology, based on a radical critique of industrial civilization and its main factor, modern technics. The purpose of this study is to assess its coherence and pertinency: are we dealing with a dispersed set of ideas and authors, or a common diagnosis? Do these ideas still have relevance in the face of the current ecological crisis? A number of intellectuals can relate to this technocritical perspective; nevertheless, this study focuses on the works of four of them: the American urban planner Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), the German philosopher Günther Anders (1902-1992), the French sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) and the nomadic historian Ivan Illich (1926-2002). First, this work presents the method that guided the study of these texts: a socio-history of ideas that borrows as much from the historical discipline as from the sociological discipline. The stakes of the study of environmentalist and ecological ideas are also exposed, in order to underline the specificity of this research object. Which leads to the formulation of the problematic of this thesis: can this current of ecological ideas be defined as a language, in the sense that the history of political ideas gives to this concept? The main assertion of this study is that it should rather be understood as an intellectual matrix, a coherent set of leitmotifs aimed at social-historical knowledge, and which can serve as a basis for languages more oriented towards political action. This contrasts with the romantic polemics against mechanization in the 19ᵗʰ century, which expressed a more diffuse anti-industrial sensibility. Subsequently, the five main chapters of this study provide a counter-narrative of the 20ᵗʰ century, through a deep reading of the texts of the selected authors. This account begins with an examination of the pioneering works of Lewis Mumford during the interwar period. Following the Great War, he sought to build an alternative perspective to both liberalism, conservatism and Marxism. At the same time, he embarked on an in-depth historical study of what he called the "Machine Age", and drew from it a critique of the power civilization. After the Second World War and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Günther Anders and Jacques Ellul elaborated, in a convergent way, a critical diagnosis of the technical and conformist society of the post-war period. They described the type of individual it produces, a medial man who has lost control over the technics he has unleashed on his world - which would then no longer be his own. Moreover, they wondered about the possibility of an extinction of humanity, above all by an ultimate atomic conflict. Mumford, Anders and Ellul reiterated their analyzes in the 1960s and 1970s, when the West was marked by a multifaceted wave of protests and revolts. Taking their distance from these movements, these three intellectuals believed that in reality a megatechnical system had just triumphed. This system would deploy in a purely causal way, with the sole purpose of increasing its size and power. Consequently, Revolution and History seemed to have become obsolete. Ivan Illich made this criticism of technological excess and unreason his own, extending it to the service sector. He also studied the deep sources of this industrial civilization, which he located in the Christian past of the West. Eventually, building on the work of his counterparts, Illich outlined what a society of conviviality might be. However, the contemporary environmental movement didn't integrate these ideas, and failed its own revolution. The question then arises as to what attitude one should adopt in the face of the "Time of the End". The intellectual matrix of this revolutionary political ecology remains active today, through the languages of neo-Luddism, ecosocialism and degrowth. Future research is needed to fully understand this filiation, and to link other authors to this matrix of ideas.