[10] Saint-Simon endorsed what critics have described as authoritarian or totalitarian means to achieve his goals, such as saying those who opposed his proposed reforms should be "treated like cattle.

"[12] Saint-Simon's conceptual recognition of the merits of broad socioeconomic contribution and Enlightenment-era valorization of scientific knowledge inspired and influenced utopian socialism,[11] utilitarian political theorist John Stuart Mill,[6] anarchism (through its founder, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon),[7] and Marxism—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels identified Saint-Simon as an inspiration for their ideas and classified him among the utopian socialists.

[19] Saint-Simon was captured and imprisoned by British forces during the end of his service, and upon his release, returned to France to study engineering and hydraulics at the Ecole de Mézières.

In the early years of the revolution, Saint-Simon devoted himself to organizing a large industrial structure in order to found a scientific school of improvement.

This was only possible in the first few years of the revolution because of the growing instability of the political situation in France, which prevented him from continuing his financial activities and indeed put his life at risk.

[17] After he recovered his freedom, Saint-Simon found himself immensely rich due to currency depreciation, but his fortune was subsequently stolen by his business partner.

After a few attempts to recover his money from his former partner, he received financial support from Diard, a former employee, and was able to publish in 1807 his second book, Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIX siècle.

Together with Auguste Comte, (then only a teenager), Saint-Simon projected a society bypassing the changes of the French Revolution, in which science and industry would take the moral and temporal power of medieval theocracy.

[24] On March 9, 1823, disappointed by the lack of results of his writing (he had hoped they would guide society towards social improvement), he attempted suicide in despair.

He built on Enlightenment ideas which challenged church doctrine and the older regime with the idea of progress from industry and science[20] Heavily influenced by the absence of social privilege he saw in the early United States, Saint-Simon renounced his aristocratic title and came to favor a form of meritocracy, becoming convinced that science was the key to progress and that it would be possible to develop a society based on objective scientific principles.

[28] Like Adam Smith, Saint-Simon's model of society emulated the scientific methods of astronomy, and said "The astronomers only accepted those facts which were verified by observation; they chose the system which linked them best, and since that time, they have never led science astray.".

"[30] Writing in Introduction aux œuvres scientifiques du XIXe siècle, Saint-Simon states that he does not believe negroes to be equal to the Europeans for physiological reasons.

Jan Eijking writes that "Saint-Simon's understanding of a neutral, technocratic international sphere took existing social, economic, and racial hierarchies for granted".

In Nouveau Christianisme, Saint-Simon presupposes a belief in God; his object in the treatise is to reduce Christianity to its simple and essential elements.

"[32] Saint-Simon's thought exerted significant influence upon French and European technocratic thought, the development of technocratic internationalism, as well as major industrial and financial projects including the Suez Canal, the Channel Tunnel, the Crédit Mobilier, and the Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée.

[34] In 1831 Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin and Amand Bazard purchased the newspaper Le Globe as the official organ for their revolutionary fraternity Friends of the Truth.

However, Bazard left the group as it became increasingly ritualistic and religiously minded with Enfantin founding a community at Ménilmontant where he decried marriage as tyranny, promoted free love, declared himself "chosen by God", and began predicting that a "female Messiah" would soon save humanity.

"[39] French feminist and socialist writer Flora Tristan (1803–1844) claimed that Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, anticipated Saint-Simon's ideas by a generation.

[11] Unlike Marx, Saint-Simon did not regard class relations, with respect to the means of production, to be an engine of socio-economic dynamics but rather the form of management.

[11] Economist Don Lavoie described Saint-Simon as part of an authoritarian current in socialist thought, by promoting a "deliberate reconstruction of society" which was "comprehensively planed" and which, which by necessity, required mass compulsion to achieve its goals.