II: CHARLES FOURIER
Owen’s practical influence has been much greater than Fourier’s, for most of the important socialistic movements of the last century can easily be traced back to Owen. But Fourier’s intellectual work, when taken as a whole, though more Utopian and less restrained in character than Owen’s, has a considerably wider outlook, and combines the keenest appreciation of the evils of civilisation with an almost uncanny power of divining the future.[527]
To some writers Fourier is simply a madman, and it is difficult not to acquiesce in the description when we recall the many extravagances that disfigure his work, which even his most faithful disciples can only explain by giving them some symbolic meaning of which we may be certain Fourier would never have thought.[528] The term “bourgeois socialist” seems to us to describe him fairly accurately, but its employment lays us open to the charge of using a term that he himself would never have recognised. But what are we to make of one who speaks of Owen’s communistic scheme as being so pitiable as to be hardly worth refuting; who “shudders to think of the Saint-Simonians and of all their monstrosities, especially their declamations against property and hereditary rights[529]—and all this in the nineteenth century”; who in his scheme of distribution scarcely drew any distinction between labour, capital, and business ability, five-twelfths of the product being given to labour, four-twelfths to capital (which is probably more than it gets to-day), and three-twelfths to management; who outbid the most brazen-faced company promoter by offering a dividend of 30 to 36 per cent., or for those who preferred it a fixed interest of 8 per cent.;[530] who held up the right of inheritance as one of the chief attractions that would be secured by the Phalanstère; and who finally declared that inequality of wealth and “even poverty are of divine ordination, and consequently must for ever remain, since everything that God has ordained is just as it ought to be”?[531]
To the men of his time, and to every one who has not read him, which means practically everybody, Fourier appears as an ultra-socialist or communist. That opinion is founded not so much upon the extravagance of his view or the hyperbolical character of his writing as upon the popular conception of the Phalanstère, which was the name bestowed upon the new association he was going to create. Visions of a strange, bewildering city where the honour of women as well as the ownership of goods would be held as common property are conjured up at the mention of that word. Our exposition of his system must obviously begin with an examination of the Phalanstère, upon the understanding of which everything turns.
1. The Phalanstère
As a matter of fact nothing could be more peaceful than the prospect which the Phalanstère presents to our view. Anything more closely resembling Owen’s New Harmony or Cabet’s Icaria or Campanella’s Civitas Solis or More’s Utopia would be difficult to imagine. Externally it looks for all the world like a grand hotel—a Palace Hotel on a gigantic scale with 1500 persons en pension. One is instinctively reminded of those familiar structures which have lately become such a feature of all summer and winter resorts, containing all manner of rooms and apartments, concert halls and lecture rooms, etc. All of this is described by Fourier with the minutest detail. No restrictions would be placed upon individual liberty. Anyone so choosing could have a suite of rooms for himself, and enjoy his meals in the privacy of his own room—that is, if he preferred it to the table d’hôte. Hotel life is generally open only to the few. The Phalanstère would have rooms and tables at all prices to suit all five classes of society, with a free table in addition.
A number of people living under the same roof and eating at the same table, and adopting this as their normal everyday method of living, sums up the element of communism which the scheme contained. And the question is naturally asked, Why should Fourier attach such supreme importance to this mode of existence as to make it the sine qua non of his whole system and the key to any solution of the problem? The answer lies in the conviction, which he fully shared with Owen, that no solution is possible until the environment is changed, and so changed that an entirely new type of man will result from it.
Economically, of course, life under the same roof can offer to the consumer the maximum of comfort at a minimum of cost. Cooking, heating, lighting, etc., would under such conditions be cheaper and more efficient, and all the worries and anxieties of individual housekeeping would be swept aside.
Socially a common life of this kind would gradually teach different persons to appreciate one another. Sympathy would take the place of mutual antipathy, which under the present régime, as Fourier eloquently remarks, shows an “ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt.” Besides, the multiplicity of relations and interests, and even of intrigues, which would occasionally enliven this little world would at any rate make life more interesting.