Owenism in England and Fourierism in France grew out of the distaste of businessmen for business as it was conducted during the transition period between the dominance of the Mercantile System and the achievement of control of society by the new capitalistic groups. Both Owen and Fourier deserted what promised to be a fruitful and very successful business life in order to project their fantasia of reform. The origin of these doctrines of Utopian socialism in such an environment perhaps explains the non-violent principles insisted upon by both Owen and Fourier.
Fourierism may be better understood when it is realized that Lyon, the home of Fourier, was the most highly industrialized city in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There was constant strife between the owners and guild workers, oftentimes developing into open warfare. Poverty and fear of insecurity were general. Thus Fourier was able to observe and to compare capitalism with the co-operative nature of peasant efforts in the rich agricultural area surrounding the city.[1]
François Fourier was born in Besançon, France, in 1772, and while yet a child he mastered Latin and Greek, as was the custom in the educational system of those days. His father was a middle-class merchant who was frugal, if not too honest, and who was able to gather a small fortune of two hundred thousand francs of which François inherited one-half at his father’s death. In 1793 he lost his inheritance in an insurrection of the village against the French Convention then in power in France. In the same year he was forced into the army by a decree of the National Assembly, which provided that every man between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five should be conscripted for service. In 1797 he quit the army and returned to Lyon to enter business as a clerk. While making a living clerking in the store, he amused himself by writing. He published an article in a magazine in Lyon in 1803, another article in 1804; finally in 1808 his first important work, Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies, came from the press.
This work was met by indifference and disdain everywhere; even Fourier’s mother tried to persuade him to discontinue his work and make amends for that already published. However, he persisted. During the winter of 1815 and 1816 he left Lyon and retired to Talissier, where he prepared his second great work, Le traité de L’association domestique agricole ou attraction industrielle. It was after the production of these works that Just Muiron, one of his most faithful disciples, came to him. During these years and immediately thereafter, Fourier thought out and planned an elaborate system of socialism, or economic policy, which the world today has rejected as a fantastic Utopia incapable of realization.[2]
Fourier’s idea was one of mass production and systematic co-operation which was to be accomplished by minute organization, the unit of which was to be a phalange or phalanx. People were to be impelled into this system, rather than compelled, as is the method of many Utopian schemes. No force or compulsion was to be used. The whole process of evolving such a society was to be so natural and logical that people would accept the scheme without any persuasion. Happiness and prosperity would be obtained by a minute co-ordination of the various duties of the members of the phalanx, and that without any community of property. The phalanx would, in order to be successful, contain approximately two thousand members, all living in the same huge buildings known as phalansteries, which would contain the workshops as well as living quarters. This settlement was to be surrounded with a few leagues of land which the members worked when desire prompted them to do so.[3]
Under Fourier’s plan, however, work was to be nothing more than organized sport, and thus by competitive effort all necessary work was to be pleasantly done. Each community was to be self-sustaining and each member was to draw from a common storehouse all the necessities of life, provided, of course, that he had agreed to the unity of goods and property. Food and clothing were not to be held in equal share, but to be distributed according to the merits of each member of the phalansteries.
Each person was to gain initiative by the emotional passions which mutual attraction naturally developed. Misery, poverty, and unhappiness, according to Fourier, came from suppression of natural desires and passions. All that was required for perfect harmony in social life was the harmonious development and satisfaction of natural desires. People were misled only because civilization, by its unnatural laws of suppression, prevented men and women from full acquisition and use of their natural talents. Each person and each phalanx was to be brought into competition with others in the arts of commerce, labor, learning, and various activities of life. Then, too, desire for company, for association and union would be fulfilled by the bringing together of several hundred men and women into one phalanx or more. Whenever one form of labor or association became monotonous for the individual, he could easily transfer to another type of work and a new group of associates. Women were to be relieved of the monotony and drudgery of housework and the rearing of children. These duties, which had previously been forced upon the women, would be abolished by the switching from one type of labor to another, and by the organizing of children into special phalanges of their own.
Fourier was neither a clear thinker nor a logical writer.[4] In fact, all his writings are disorderly and his system has no logical outline nor organization. He was never able to impart to his disciples an impulse of victory and desire such as great men are frequently able to do.[5] However, what Fourier lacked, his most prominent follower, Victor Prosper Considerant, possessed.
Considerant was born in Salins, France, in 1808 at the foot of the Jura mountains, of a family belonging to the bourgeoisie. His father was a distinguished humanist, translator of English treatises, librarian for the city, and headmaster of a small school. The family was poor and the parents often had boarders in order to make financial ends meet. Considerant finished school at Salins and then entered the Lycée de Besançon in order to prepare himself for L’Ecole Polytechnique. While attending school in Besançon he met Just Muiron in the home of Mme. Vigoureaux who, with several others, was giving considerable time to the study of the works of Fourier. Mme. Vigoureaux had lived in Salins and had sent her son to Considerant’s father for instruction; it was thus natural for Considerant to spend a portion of his time in her home. Besides the boy, she had two daughters, one of whom later became the wife of Considerant and accompanied him to Texas.
In 1826, at the age of eighteen, Considerant entered L’Ecole Polytechnique and was in due time graduated, whereupon he immediately entered the army and soon attained the rank of captain. After a short service with the army, he felt that he should give all of his time to the spreading of the teachings of Fourier and, finally, after some hesitation, resigned his commission in the army. Marshall Soult, to whom he applied for release, told him that his resignation would not be accepted for the army needed officers of his type, but that he would be granted indefinite leave of absence, and that he might return to the army at any time with the same rank as he then held.[6]