FOURIER
Considered as a purely literary and speculative product, the socialism of Fourier was prior to those both of Owen and Saint-Simon. Fourier’s first work, Théorie des Quatre Movements, was published as early as 1808. His system, however, scarcely attracted any attention and exercised no influence till the movements originated by Owen and Saint-Simon had begun to decline.
The socialism of Fourier is in many respects fundamentally different from that of Saint-Simon; in the two schools, in fact, we find the two opposing types of socialism which have continued to prevail ever since. Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of centralisation; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and individual freedom. With Saint-Simonism the State is the starting-point, the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a local body, corresponding to the commune, which he called the Phalange. In the system of Fourier the phalange holds the supreme and central place, other organisation in comparison with it being secondary and subordinate.
The deviser of the phalange, François Marie Charles Fourier[[1]] was a very remarkable man. He was born at Besançon in 1772, and received from his father, a prosperous draper, an excellent education at the academy of his native town. The boy excelled in the studies of the school, and regretfully abandoned them for a business career, which he followed in various towns of France. As a commercial traveller in Holland and Germany he enlarged his experience of men and things. From his father Fourier inherited a sum of about £3000, with which he started business at Lyons, but he lost all he had in the siege of that city by the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror, was thrown into prison, and narrowly escaped the guillotine. On his release he joined the army for two years, and then returned to his old way of life.
At a very early age Fourier had his attention called to the defects of the prevalent commercial system. When only five years old he had been punished for speaking the truth about certain goods in his father’s shop; and at the age of twenty-seven he had at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of an immense quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. The conviction grew within him that a system which involved such abuses and immoralities must be radically evil. Feeling that it was his mission to find a remedy for it, he spent his life in the discovery, elucidation, and propagation of a better order; and he brought to his task a self-denial and singleness of purpose which have seldom been surpassed. For the last ten years of his life he waited in his apartments at noon every day for the wealthy capitalist who should supply the means for the realisation of his schemes. The tangible success obtained by his system was very slight. His works found few readers and still fewer disciples.
It was chiefly after the decline of the Saint-Simon movement that he gained a hearing and a little, success. A small group of enthusiastic adherents gathered round him; a journal was started for the propagation of his views; and in 1832 an attempt was made on lands near Versailles to establish a phalange, which, however, proved a total failure. In 1837 Fourier passed away from a world that showed little inclination to listen to his teaching. A singular altruism was in his character blended with the most sanguine confidence in the possibilities of human progress. Perhaps the weakest point in his teaching was that he so greatly underestimated the strength of the unregenerate residuum in human nature. His own life was a model of simplicity, integrity, kindliness, and disinterested devotion to what he deemed the highest aims.
The social system of Fourier was, we need not say, the central point in his speculations. But as his social system was moulded and coloured by his peculiar views on theology, cosmogony, and psychology, we must give some account of those aspects of his teaching. In theology Fourier inclined, though not decidedly, to what is called pantheism; the pantheistic conception of the world which underlay the Saint-Simon theory of the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh’ may be said to form the basis also of the social ethics and arrangements of Fourier. Along with this he held a natural optimism of the most radical and comprehensive character. God has done all things well, only man has misunderstood and thwarted His benevolent purposes. God pervades everything as a universal attraction. Whereas Newton discovered that the law of attraction governs one movement of the world, Fourier shows that it is universal, ruling the world in all its movements, which are four—material, organic, intellectual, and social. It is the same law of attraction which pervades all things, from the cosmic harmony of the stars down to the puny life of the minutest insect, and which would reign also in the human soul and in human society, if the intentions of the Creator were understood. In the elucidation of his system Fourier’s aim simply is to interpret the intentions of the Creator. He regards his philosophy, not as ingenious guesses or speculations, but as discoveries plainly traceable from a few first principles; discoveries in no way doubtful, but the fruit of clear insight into the divine law.
The cosmogony of Fourier is the most fantastic part of a fantastic system. But as he did not consider his views in this department an essential part of his system, we need not dwell upon them. He believed that the world is to exist for eighty thousand years, forty thousand years of progress being followed by forty thousand years of decline. As yet it has not reached the adult stage, having lasted only seven thousand years. The present stage of the world is civilisation, which Fourier uses as a comprehensive term for everything artificial and corrupt, the result of perverted human institutions, themselves due to the fact that we have for five thousand years misunderstood the intentions of the Creator. The head and front of this misunderstanding consists in our pronouncing passions to be bad that are simply natural; and there is but one way of redressing it—to give a free and healthy and complete development to our passions.
This leads us to the psychology of Fourier. He recognised twelve radical passions connected with three points of attraction. Five are sensitive (tending to enjoyment)—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Four are affective (tending to groups)—love, friendship, ambition, and familism or paternity. The meaning and function of these are obvious enough. The remaining three, the alternating, emulative, and composite (which he calls passions rectrices, and which tend to series or to unity), are more special to Fourier. Of the three the first is connected with the need of variety; the second leads to intrigue and jealousy; the third, full of intoxication and abandonment, is born of the combination of several pleasures of the senses and of the soul enjoyed simultaneously. The passions of the first two classes are so far controlled by the passions rectrices, and especially by the composite passion; but even the passions rectrices obviously contain elements of discord and war. All, however, are ultimately harmonised by a great social passion, which Fourier calls Unitéisme. Out of the free play of all the passions harmony is evolved, like white out of the combination of the colours.
The speedy passage from social chaos to universal harmony contemplated by Fourier can, as we have seen, be accomplished only by one method, by giving to the human passions their natural development. For this end, a complete break with civilisation must be made. We must have new social arrangements suitable to human nature and in harmony with the intentions of the Creator. These Fourier provides in the phalange. In its normal form the phalange was to consist of four hundred families or eighteen hundred persons, living on a square league of land, self-contained and self-sufficing for the most part, and combining within itself the means for the free development of the most varied likings and capacities. It was an institution in which agriculture, industry, the appliances and opportunities of enjoyment, and generally of the widest and freest human development, are combined, the interests of individual freedom and of common union being reconciled in a way hitherto unknown and unimagined.
While the phalange is the social unit, the individuals composing it will arrange themselves in groups of seven or nine persons; from twenty-four to thirty-two groups form a series, and these unite to form a phalange—all according to principles of attraction, of free elective affinity. The dwelling of the phalange was the phalanstère, a vast, beautiful, and commodious structure, where life could be arranged to suit every one, common or solitary, according to preference; but under such conditions there would be neither excuse nor motive for the selfish seclusion, isolation, and suspicion so prevalent in civilisation.
In such an institution it is obvious that government under the form of compulsion and restraint would be reduced to a minimum. The officials of the phalange would be elected. The phalange, itself was an experiment on a local scale, which could easily be made, and once successfully made would lead to world-wide imitation. They would freely group themselves into wider combinations with elected chiefs, and the phalanges of the whole world would form a great federation with a single elected chief, resident at Constantinople, which would be the universal capital.
In all the arrangements of the phalange the principle of free attraction would be observed. Love would be free. Free unions should be formed, which could be dissolved, or which might grow into permanent marriage.
The labour of the phalange would be conducted on scientific methods; but it would, above all things, be made attractive, by consulting the likings and capacities of the members, by frequent change of occupation, by recourse to the principle of emulation in individuals, groups, and series. On the principle that men and women are eager for the greatest exertion, if only they like it, Fourier bases his theory that all labour can be made attractive by appealing to appropriate motives in human nature. Obviously, also, what is now the most disgusting labour could be more effectually performed by machinery.
The product of labour was to be distributed in the following manner:—Out of the common gain of the phalange a very comfortable minimum was assured to every member. Of the remainder, five-twelfths went to labour, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent. In the phalange, individual capital existed, and inequality of talent was not only admitted, but insisted upon and utilised. In the actual distribution the phalange treated with individuals. With regard to the remuneration of individuals under the head of capital no difficulty could be felt, as a normal rate of interest would be given on the advances made. Individual talent would be rewarded in accordance with the services rendered in the management of the phalange, the place of each being determined by election. Labour would be remunerated on a principle entirely different from the present. Hard and common or necessary work should be best paid; useful work should come next, and pleasant work last of all. In any case the reward of labour would be so great that every one would have the opportunity of becoming a capitalist.
One of the most notable results of the phalange treating with each member individually is, that the economic independence of women would be assured. Even the child of five would have its own share in the produce.
The system of Fourier may fairly be described as one of the most ingenious and elaborate Utopias ever devised by the human brain. But in many cardinal points it has been constructed in complete contradiction to all that experience and science have taught us of human nature and the laws of social evolution. He particularly underestimates the force of human egotism. From the beginning progress has consisted essentially in the hard and strenuous repression of the beast within the man, whereas Fourier would give it free rein. This applies to his system as a whole, and especially to his theories on marriage. Instead of supplying a sudden passage from social chaos to universal harmony, his system would, after entirely subverting such order as we have, only bring us back to social chaos.
Yet his works are full of suggestion and instruction, and will long repay the study of the social economist. His criticisms of the existing system, of its waste, anarchy, and immorality, are ingenious, searching, and often most convincing. In his positive proposals, too, are to be found some of the most sagacious and far-reaching forecasts of the future landmarks of human progress. Most noteworthy are the guarantees he devised for individual and local freedom. The phalange was on the one hand large enough to secure all the benefits of a scientific industry and of a varied common life; on the other it provides against the evils of centralisation, of State despotism, of false patriotism and national jealousy. Fourier has forecast the part to be played in the social and political development of the future by the local body, whether we call it commune, parish, or municipality. The fact that he has given it a fantastic name, and surrounded it with many fantastic conditions, should not hinder us from recognising his great sagacity and originality.
The freedom of the individual and of the minority is, moreover, protected against the possible tyranny of the phalange by the existence, under reasonable limits and under social control, of individual capital. This individual capital, further, is perfectly mobile; that is, the possessor of it, if he thinks fit to migrate or go on travel, may remove his capital, and find a welcome for his labour, talent, and investments in any part of the world. Such arrangements of Fourier may suggest a much-needed lesson to many of the contemporary adherents of ‘scientific socialism.’
While, therefore, we believe that Fourier’s system was as a whole entirely utopian, he has with great sagacity drawn the outlines of much of our political and social progress; and while we believe that the full development of human passions as recommended by him would soon reduce us to social chaos, a time may come in our ethical and rational growth when a widening freedom may be permitted and exercised, not by casting off moral law, but by the perfect assimilation of it.
| [1] | Fourier’s complete works (6 vols., Paris, 1840-46; new ed. 1870). The most eminent expounder of Fourierism was Victor Considérant, Destinée sociale; Gatti de Gammont’s Fourier et son système is an excellent summary. |
CHAPTER III
FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848
The year 1830 was an important era in the history of socialism. During the fermentation of that time the activity of the Saint-Simon school came to a crisis, and the theories of Fourier had an opportunity of taking practical shape. But by far the greatest result for socialism of the revolutionary period of 1830 was the definite establishment of the contrast between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in France and England, the two countries that held the foremost place in the modern industrial, social, and political movement. Hitherto the men who were afterwards destined consciously to constitute those two classes had fought side by side against feudalism and the reaction. Through the restricted franchise introduced at this period in the two countries just mentioned the middle class had become the ruling power.
Excluded from political privileges and pressed by the weight of adverse economic, conditions, the proletariat now appeared as the revolutionary party. The first symptom in France of the altered state of things was the outbreak at Lyons in 1831, when the starving workmen rose to arms with the device, ‘Live working, or die fighting.’ Chartism was a larger phase of the same movement in England. The theories of Saint-Simon and Fourier had met with acceptance chiefly or entirely among the educated classes. Socialism now directly appealed to the working men.
In this chapter our concern is with the development of the new form of socialism in France. Paris, which had so long been the centre of revolutionary activity, was now, and particularly during the latter half of the reign of the bourgeois King, Louis Philippe, the seat of socialistic fermentation. In 1839 Louis Blanc published his Organisation du travail, and Cabet his Voyage en Icarie. In 1840 Proudhon brought out his book on property. Paris was the school to which youthful innovators went to learn the lesson of revolution. At this period she counted among her visitors Lassalle, the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany; Karl Marx, the chief of scientific international socialism; and Bakunin, the apostle of anarchism.
The socialistic speculation associated with the three men last mentioned was to have a far-reaching influence; but it did not attain to full development till a later period. The socialistic activity of Louis Blanc and Proudhon culminated during the revolution of 1848, and exercised considerable influence on the course of events in Paris at that time.