The worker will draw his share of the profits not merely as a worker, but also as a capitalist who is a shareholder in the concern, and as a member of the directorate, in which every shareholder has a voice. The administration of the business will form a part of his responsibilities. It is just what we are accustomed to call co-partnership. He will, moreover, participate in the privileges and management of the Phalange as a member of a consumers’ association.
All this seems very complicated, but it was a part of Fourier’s policy to transmute the divergent interests of capitalists, workers, and consumers by giving to each individual a share in these conflicting interests.[538] Under existing conditions they are in conflict with one another simply because they are focused in different individuals. Were they to be united in the same person the conflict would cease, or at any rate the battle-ground would be shifted to the conscience of each individual, where reconciliation would not be quite such a difficult matter.
A programme which aims, not at the abolition of property, but at the extinction of the wage-earner by giving him the right of holding property on the joint-stock principle, which looks to succeed, not by advocating class war, but by fostering co-operation of capital with labour and managing ability, and attempts to reconcile the conflicting interests of capitalist and worker, of producer and consumer, debtor and creditor, by welding those interests together in one and the same person, is by no means commonplace. Such was the ideal of the French working classes until Marxian collectivism took its place, and it is quite possible that its deposition may be only temporary after all. The programme which the Radical Socialists swear allegiance to, and which they set against the purely socialistic programme, is the maintenance and extension of private property and the abolition of the wage-earner. By taking this attitude they are unconsciously following in the wake of Fourier.[539]
3. Back to the Land
The title at the head of this section is to-day adopted as a motto by several social schools. It also figured in Fourier’s programme long ago. Fourier, however, employed the phrase in a double sense.
In the first place, he thought that there must be a dispersion of the big cities and a spreading out of their inhabitants in Phalanstères, which would simply mean moderate-sized villages with a population of 1600 people, or 400 families. Great care was to be exercised in choosing a suitable site. Wherever possible the village was to be placed on the bank of a beautiful river, with hills surrounding it, the slopes of which would yield to cultivation, the whole area being flanked by a deep forest. It was not, as some one has remarked, intended as an Arcadia for better-class clerks.[540] It was simply an anticipation of the garden cities which disciples of Ruskin and Morris are building all over England. These are designed, as we know, not merely with a view to promoting health and an appreciation of beauty, but also to encouraging the amenities of life and to solving the question of housing by counteracting the high rental of urban land.
In the second place, industrial work of every description, factory and machine production of every kind, were to be reduced to the indispensable minimum—a condition that was absolutely necessary if the first reform was ever to become practicable. Contrary to what might have been expected, Fourier felt no antipathy towards capitalism, but entertained the greatest contempt for industrialism, which is hardly the same thing.[541] A return to the land, if it was to mean anything at all, was to mean more agriculture. But care must be taken not to interpret it in the old sense of tillage or the cultivation of cereals. It was in no measured terms that he spoke of the cultivation of corn and the production of bread, which has caused mankind to bend under the cruellest yoke and for the coarsest nourishment that history knows. The only attractive forms of cultivation, in his opinion, were horticulture and arboriculture, apple-growing, etc., joined, perhaps, with poultry-keeping and such occupations as generally fall to the lot of the small-holder.[542] The inhabitant of the Phalanstère would be employed almost exclusively in looking after his garden, just as Adam was before the Fall and Candide after his misfortunes.
4. Attractive Labour
The attractiveness of labour was made the pivot of Fourier’s system. Wherever we like to look, whether in the direction of so-called civilised societies or towards barbarian or servile communities, labour is everywhere regarded as a curse. There is no reason why it should be, and in the society of the future it certainly will not be, for men will then labour not because they are constrained to either by force or by the pressure of need or the allurement of self-interest. Fourier’s ideal was a social State in which men would no longer be forced to work, whether from the necessity of earning their daily bread or from a desire for gain or from a sense of social or religious duty. His ambition was to see men work for the mere love of work, hastening to their task as they do to a gala. Why should not labour become play, and why should not the same degree of enthusiasm be shown for work as is shown by youth in the pursuit of sport?[543]