History of American Socialisms

by John Humphrey Noyes

"It is not by skillful conjecture that knowledge grows, or it would have ripened thousands of years ago. It was not till men had learned to submit their cherished speculations to the merciless and consuming ordeal of verification, that the great truths of nature began to be revealed. Kepler tells us that he made and rejected nineteen hypotheses of the motion of Mars before he established the true doctrine that it moves in an ellipse.

"The ancient philosophers, disdaining nature, retired into the ideal world of pure meditation, and holding that the mind is the measure of the universe, they believed they could reason out all truths from the depths of the soul. They would not experiment: consequently they lacked the first conditions of science, observation, experiment and induction. Their mistake was perhaps natural, but it was an error that paralyzed the world. The first step of progress was impossible."

If Youmans points the right way, Fourier, instead of being the Kepler of Social Science, was evidently one of the "ancient philosophers."

We frankly avow that we are at issue with Mr. Brisbane on the main point that he makes for his master. We do not believe that cogitation without experiment is the right way to a true social theory. With us induction is first; deduction second; and verification by facts or the logic of events, always and everywhere the supreme check on both. For the sake of this principle we have been studying and bringing to light the lessons of American Socialisms. If Fourier and Brisbane are on the right track, we are on the wrong. Let science judge between us.

But Mr. Brisbane thinks that social science is exceptional in its nature, too "vast and complex" to get help from observation and experiment. All science is vast and complex, reaching out into the unfathomable; but social science seems to us exceptional, if at all, as the field that lies nearest home and most open to observation and experiment. It is not like astronomy, looking away into the inaccessible regions of the universe, but like navigation or war, commanding us at our peril to study it in the immediate presence of its facts.

Mr. Brisbane insists that Fourier's theory has not had a practical trial: and we have said the same thing before him. Yet we must now say that in another sense it has had its trial. It was brought before the world with all the advantages that the most brilliant school of modern genius could give it; and it did not win the confidence of scientific men or of capitalists, because they saw, what Mr. Brisbane now confesses for it, that it came from the closet, and not from the world of facts. This nineteenth century, which has had thrift and faith enough to lay the Atlantic cable, would have accepted and realized Fourierism, if it had been a genuine product of induction. So that the reason why it never reached the stage of practical trial was, that it failed on the previous question of its scientific legitimacy. Mr. Brisbane himself, as a capitalist, never had confidence enough in it to risk his fortune on it. And poor as the actual experiments were, human nature had a trial in them, which convinced all rational observers, that if the numbers and means had been as great as Fourier required, the failures would have been swifter and worse.

We insist that God's appointed way for man to seek the truth in all departments, and above all in Social Science, which is really the science of righteousness, is to combine and alternate thinking with experiment and practice, and constantly submit all theories, whether obtained by scientific investigation or by intuition and inspiration, to the consuming ordeal of practical verification. This is the law established by all the experience of modern science, and the law that every loyal disciple of inspiration will affirm and submit to. And according to this law, the Shakers and Rappites, whom Mr. Brisbane does not condescend to mention, are really the pioneers of modern Socialism, whose experiments deserve a great deal more study than all the speculations of the French schools. By way of offset to Mr. Brisbane's account of the development of sociology in the nineteenth century, we here repeat our historical theory. The great facts of modern Socialism are these: From 1776, the era of our national Revolution, the Shakers have been established in this country; first at two places in New York; then at four places in Massachusetts; at two in New Hampshire; two in Maine; one in Connecticut; and finally at two in Kentucky, and two in Ohio. In all these places prosperous religious Communism has been modestly and yet loudly preaching to the nation and to the world. New England and New York and the Great West have had actual Phalanxes before their eyes for nearly a century. And in all this time what has been acted on our American stage, has had England, France and Germany for its audience. The example of the Shakers has demonstrated, not merely that successful Communism is subjectively possible, but that this nation is free enough to let it grow. Who can doubt that this demonstration was known and watched in Germany from the beginning; and that it helped the successive experiments and emigrations of the Rappites, the Zoarites and the Ebenezers? These experiments, we have seen, were echoes of Shakerism, growing fainter and fainter, as the time-distance increased. Then the Shaker movement with its echoes was sounding also in England, when Robert Owen undertook to convert the world to Communism, and it is evident enough that he was really a far-off follower of the Rappites. France also had heard of Shakerism, before St. Simon or Fourier began to meditate and write Socialism. These men were nearly contemporaneous with Owen, and all three evidently obeyed a common impulse. That impulse was the sequel and certainly in part the effect of Shakerism. Thus it is no more than bare justice to say, that we are indebted to the Shakers more than to any or all other social architects of modern times. Their success has been the 'specie basis' that has upheld all the paper theories, and counteracted the failures, of the French and English schools. It is very doubtful whether Owenism or Fourierism would have ever existed, or if they had, whether they would have ever moved the practical American nation, if the facts of Shakerism had not existed before them and gone along with them. But to do complete justice we must go a step further. While we say that the Rappites, the Zoarites, the Ebenezers, the Owenites, and even the Fourierists are all echoes of the Shakers, we must also say that the Shakers are the far-off echoes of the Primitive Christian Church.

What then has been Fourier's function? Surely his vast labors and their results have not been useless.

His main achievement has been destruction. He was a merciless critic and scolder of the old civilization. His magnificent imaginations of good things to come have also served the purpose, in the general development of sociology, of what rhetoricians call excitation. But his theory of positive construction is, in our opinion, as worthless as the theories of St. Simon and Compte. And so many socialist thinkers have been fuddled by it, that it is at this moment the greatest obstruction to the healthy progress of Social Science. Practically it says to the world—"The experiments of the Shakers and other religious Communities, though successful, are unscientific and worthless; the experiments of the Fourierists that failed so miserably, were illegitimate and prove nothing; inductions from these or any other facts are useless; the only thing that can be done to realize true Association, is to put together eighteen hundred human beings on a domain three miles square, with a palace and outfit to match. Then you will see the equilibrium of the passions and spontaneous order and industry, insuring infinite success." As these conditions are well known to be impossible, because nobody believes in the promised equilibrium and success, the upshot of this teaching is despair. But the nineteenth century is not sitting at the feet of despair; and it will clear Fourierism out of its way.

The Inductive School of Socialism, instead of thus shutting the gates of mercy on mankind, says to all: The enormous economies and advantages of combination, which you see in ten thousand joint-stock companies around you, and in the wealth of the Shakers and other successful Associations, and even the blessings of magnificent and permanent HOMES, which you do not see in those combinations, are prizes offered to AGREEMENT. They require no special number. If two or three of you shall agree, you can take those prizes; for by agreement and consequent success, two or three will soon become many. They require no special amount of capital. If you are poor, by combination you can become rich. Agreement can make its own fortune, and need not wait to be endowed. The blessing of heaven is upon it, and it can work its way from the lowest poverty to all the wealth that Fourier taught his disciples to beg from capitalists.