La Tour du Pin was a descendant from an old noble dauphinoise family, which instilled a strong Catholic and Royalist identity in the young René.

La Tour du Pin's father instilled a spirit of noblesse oblige in the young boy, along with a deep care for his local community and the people that lived in it, especially its poorer members.

After witnessing the unrest caused by the Paris Commune, La Tour du Pin and Mun were determined to respond to the dilemma of the working class.

The movement provided a theoretical framework for Catholic politics in France, and was influenced by thinkers such as Louis de Bonald, Thomas Aquinas, Frédéric Le Play, and Émile Keller.

This was accepted by many Legitimists, and was the default on legal grounds; the only surviving Bourbon line more senior was the Spanish branch, which had renounced its right to inherit the throne of France as a condition of the Treaty of Utrecht.

Thus these Legitimists settled on Juan, Count of Montizón, the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne (the Salic law having been suspended in Spain, the actual king, Alfonso XII, was not the senior descendant in the male line), as their claimant to the French crown.

In early 1885, while passing through Rome, La Tour du Pin was received by Pope Leo XIII to discuss Social Catholicism.

He therefore called for a return of the medieval trade guilds and embraced the philosophy of corporatism where employers and employees who belong to the same profession or industry would cooperate via their own unions (or "corporations").

[1] La Tour du Pin was likewise a committed Counter-Revolutionary and monarchist until his death, and refused Leo XIII's call to "rally to the republic.