History of American Socialisms

by John Humphrey Noyes

"Personal difficulties occurred as a matter of course, but these were commonly overruled by a healthy sentiment of self-respect. Parties also began to form, but they were not fully developed until the first annual settlement and distribution of profits was attempted. Then, however, they took a variety of forms according to the interest or ambition of the partisans; though two principal views characterized the more permanent and clearly defined party divisions; one party contending for authority, enforced with stringent rules and final appeal to the dictation of the chief officer; the other party standing out for organization and distribution of authority. The former would centralize power and make administration despotic, claiming that thus only could order be maintained; the latter claimed that to do this, would be merely to repeat the institutions of civilization; that Association thus controlled would be devoid of corporate life, would be dependent upon individuals, and quite artificial; whereas what we wanted was a wholly different order, viz., the enfranchisement of the individual; order through the natural method of the series; institutions that would be instinct with the life that is organic, from the sum of the series, down to the last subdivision of the group. The strife to maintain these several views was long and vigorous; and it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that our days were spent in labor and our nights in legislation, for the first five years of our associative life. The question at issue was vital. It was whether the infant Association should or should not have new institutions; whether it should be Civilizee or Phalansterian; whether it should be a mere joint-stock corporation such as had been before, or whether the new form of industrial organization indicated by Fourier should be initiated. In the contest between the two principles of civilized joint-stock Association, and of the Phalansterian or Serial organization, the latter ultimately prevailed; and in this triumph of the idea of the natural organic forms of society through the method of the series, we see distinctly the development of the germ of the Phalanx. For when we have a true principle evolved, however insignificant the development may be, the results, although limited by the smallness of the development, will nevertheless be right in kind. It is perhaps important, to the end that the results of our experience be rightly comprehended, to indicate the essential features of the order of society that is to succeed present disorder, and wherein it differs from other social forms.

"A fundamental feature is, that we deny the bald atheism that asserts human nature to be a melancholy failure and unworthy of respect or trust, and therefore to be treated as an alien and convict. On the contrary, we hold that, instead of chains, man requires freedom; instead of checks, he requires development; instead of artificial order through coercion, he requires the Divine harmony that comes through counterpoise. Hence society is bound by its own highest interests, by the obligation it owes to its every member, to make organic provision for the entire circle of human wants, for the entire range of human activity; so that the individual shall be emancipated from the servitude of nature, from personal domination, from social tyrannies; and that thus fully enfranchised and guaranteed by the whole force of society, into all freedoms and the endowment of all rights pertaining to manhood, he may fulfill his own destiny, in accordance with the laws written in his own organization.

"In the Phalanx, then, we have, in the sphere of production, the relation of employer and employed stricken out of the category of relations, not merely as in the simple joint-stock corporations, by substituting for the individual employer the still more despotic and irresistible corporate employer; but by every one becoming his own employer, doing that which he is best qualified by endowment to do, receiving for his labor precisely his share of the product, as nearly as it can be determined while there is no scientific unit of value.

"In the sphere of circulation or currency, we have a representative of all the wealth produced, so that every one shall have issued to him for all his production, the abstract or protean form of value, which is convertible into every other form of value; in commerce or exchanges, reducing this from a speculation as now, to a function; employing only the necessary force to make distributions; and exchanging products or values on the basis of cost.

"In the sphere of social relations, we have freedom to form ties according to affinities of character.

"In the sphere of education, we establish the natural method, not through the exaltation into professorships of this, that or other notable persons, but through a body of institutions reposing upon industry, and having organic vitality. Commencing with the nursery, we make, through the living corporation, through adequately endowed institutions that fail not, provision for the entire life of the child, from the cradle upward; initiating him step by step, not into nominal, ostensible education apart from his life, but into the real business of life, the actual production and distribution of wealth, the science of accounts and the administration of affairs; and providing that, through uses, the science that lies back of uses shall be acquired; so theory and practice, the application of science to the pursuits of life shall, through daily use, become as familiar as the mother tongue; and thus place our children at maturity in the ranks of manhood and womanhood, competent to all the duties and activities of life, that they may be qualified by endowment to perform.

"In the sphere of administration, we have a graduated hierarchy of orders, from the simple chief of a group, or supervisor of a single function, up to the unitary administration of the globe.

"In the sphere of religion, we have religious life as contrasted with the profession of a religious faith. The intellect requires to be satisfied as well as the affections, and is so with the scientific and therefore universal formula, that the religious element in man is the passion of unity; that is, that all the powers of the soul shall attain to true equilibrium, and act normally in accordance with Divine law, so that human life in all its powers and activities shall be in harmonious relations with nature, with itself, and with the supreme center of life.

"Of course we speak of the success of an idea, and only expect realization through gradual development. It is obvious also that such realization can be attained only through organization; because, unaided, the individual makes but scanty conquests over nature, and but feeble opposition to social usurpations.

"The principle, then, of the Serial Organization being established, the whole future course of the Association, in respect to its merely industrial institutions, was plain, viz.: to develop and mature the serial form.