"Cinq heures de travail pour produire - par homme - tout ce qui est nécessaire à l'homme"

"In the end, 5 hours of work for example to produce - per man - all that is necessary to man."

Complete unpublished autograph manuscript in French by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. 9 pages on 8 leaves in black ink. Traces of horizontal and vertical folds. A small piece of paper missing in the center of two leaves.

Exceptional unpublished manuscript by Saint-Exupéry, to be compared with his political and economic reflections in Carnets (1989, p. 43). Personally affected by the 1929 crisis, Saint-Exupéry “the self-taught writer” writes passionately about the economy and puts forward reform strategies. The manuscript features a lot of mathematical formulas and equations, along with remarks “To make the ideas clear about what is happening today” (p. 1), on the national economic system and the labor market.
These unpublished pages testify to Saint-Exupéry's great intellectual curiosity, his insatiable need for innovation in all fields of knowledge: mechanics, technology, politics, economics... Saint-Exupéry writes on capitalist reform, as he was an outspoken critic of the system which he later personified in The Little Prince “businessman” character. He develops theories where the State becomes the only employer, banker, and overall production manager: “If the State pays all the salaries including those of the administrations and considers itself as owner of all the products (nothing to be changed within the capitalist system in the sense that it can pay to the administrations special bonuses returning in their salaries and according to the quality as well as the quantity. He pays an amount X. He sells (having taxed his stocks so that they express Y)”.
His reflection is directly related to the stock market crash that bankrupted the Aéropostale, the pioneering airline company where Saint-Exupéry had displayed his talents as an aviator-writer. One also remembers the splendid lines from Terre des Hommes on the value of work: “The greatness of a profession is perhaps, above all, to unite men: there is only one true luxury, and that is human relations”.
Concerned about a better distribution of wealth, he develops throughout the pages several labor market and pension system theories, halfway between Keynes and Marx. The writer was well aware of the value of labor having himself spent long hours on his aircrafts' mechanics. He details his views on the duration of a working day “In the end, 5 hours of work for example to produce – per man – all that is necessary to man. With little work and it is possible to supply men with everything that is – and can with the increase of luxury – become necessary to them”, and makes calculations on savings, pensions, purchasing power. His novels and personal writings contain numerous references to labor and hopes for a more equal human community:

“Saint-Exupéry was also a man of his time, passionate about modernity, especially technical innovation, who constantly tried to reflect on all the problems that arose from it. Hence the countless notebooks, notes, and scattered sheets of paper that he constantly filled in and carried in his pockets and trunks, with which he might one day have written a book.” (Jean-Claude Perrier)

Rare manuscript from a true Humanist, a talented artist, aviator, novelist, political and economic thinker. Saint-Exupéry tries to build a harmonious social order and lay the theoretical groundwork for an ideal society.