The new _régime_ implies first of all the abolition of all class distinction. There will be no need for either nobles, _bourgeois_, or clergy. There will be only two categories, workers and idlers—or the bees and the drones, as Saint-Simon puts it. Sometimes he refers to them as the national and anti-national party. In the new society the second class[445] is bound to disappear, for there is only room for the first. This class includes, besides manual workers,[446] agriculturists, artisans, manufacturers, bankers, savants, and artists.[447] Between these persons there ought to be no difference except that which results from their different capacities, or what Saint-Simon calls their varying stakes in the national interest. “Industrial equality,” he writes, “consists in each drawing from society benefits exactly proportionate to his share in the State—that is, in proportion to his potential capacity and the use which he makes of the means at his disposal—including, of course, his capital.”[448] Saint-Simon evidently has no desire to rob the capitalists of their revenues; his hostility is reserved for the landed proprietors. Not only must every social distinction other than that founded upon labour and ability disappear, but government in the ordinary sense of the term will largely become unnecessary. “National association” for Saint-Simon merely meant “industrial enterprise.” “France was to be turned into a factory and the nation organised on the model of a vast workshop”; but “the task of preventing thefts and of checking other disorders in a factory is a matter of quite secondary importance and can be discharged by subordinates.”[449] In a similar fashion, the function of government in industrial society must be limited to “defending workers from the unproductive sluggard and maintaining security and freedom for the producer.”[450] So far Saint-Simon’s “industrialism” is scarcely distinguishable from the “Liberalism” of Smith and his followers, especially J. B. Say’s. Charles Comte and Dunoyer, writing in their review, _Le Censeur_, were advancing exactly similar doctrines,[451] sometimes even using identical terms. “Plenty of scope for talent” and _laissez-faire_ were some of the favourite maxims of the Liberal _bourgeois_. Such also were the aspirations of Saint-Simon. But it is just here that the tone changes.[452]