The emergence of the concept of competence: The nature and function of “capacity” in Saint-Simonian industrialism

Abstract

From strategic management to human resource management, the notion of competence is pervasive in most sectors of organizational science today; we also note that many authors associate it with the hegemony of neoliberalism, often linking it to the concept of “human capital” theorized by Gary Becker. The present study in the history of ideas aims to highlight the incompleteness of such a genealogical and analytical thesis by demonstrating that competence is the successor to the concept of “capacity” at the heart of Saint-Simon’s industrialist doctrine. More precisely, the social and political project of industrialism, based on the concept of capacity, opposed the latter to private property and statutory inequalities. From that point of view, capacity, which encompasses all productive attitudes and communicational behaviors, proves to be the pivot of a new social construction, a new political order, summarized in the following phrase, tirelessly repeated by Saint-Simonian authors: “From each according to his capacity, to each according to his need.” Finally, we draw the consequences of this historical and philosophical work for a better understanding of the anthropological and geopolitical stakes of the management of competences: this set of practices and devices, which at first glance appears to be technically neutral from an ideological point of view, seems to us in the last instance to support the project of American civilization.