François Marie Charles Fourier, a name that whispers of an era when ideas were as potent as gunpowder, was a French philosopher and an early, rather eccentric, proponent of socialism. He’s the architect of utopian socialism, a dreamer who dared to sketch a world vastly different from the one he inhabited. Some of his notions, considered outlandish in his day, have a peculiar way of echoing in modern discourse. He's even credited with coining the term feminism in 1837. A thought-provoking legacy, wouldn't you say?
Fourier’s social theories were not mere academic musings; they sparked a tangible movement, fostering a desire for intentional communities. Across the Atlantic, in the United States, this manifested in experiments like the community of Utopia, Ohio, La Reunion near the burgeoning city of Dallas, Texas, and Lake Zurich, Illinois. The North American Phalanx in Red Bank, New Jersey, and the well-known Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts were also part of this ambitious endeavor. New York State saw its share with Community Place and the Sodus Bay Phalanx, while Silkville, Kansas also joined the ranks. Even in France, his influence was felt in the creation of the Familistery of Guise. It's fascinating how one man's vision could ripple outwards, inspiring thinkers and writers across a spectrum of revolutionary thought.
Life
Born François Marie Charles Fourier in Besançon, France, on April 7, 1772, he was the son of a merchant. Young Charles, however, found the world of commerce rather tedious, preferring the elegance of architecture. His ambition was to be an engineer, but the rigid social structures of the time barred him from the local military engineering school due to his non-noble birth. Looking back, he saw this exclusion as a strange sort of fortune, freeing him to dedicate his life to the betterment of humanity.
Upon his father’s death in 1781, Fourier inherited a considerable sum, a fortune that afforded him the luxury of extensive travel across Europe. By 1791, he had settled in Lyon, working for a merchant named M. Bousquet. His travels eventually led him to Paris, where he briefly held the position of head of the Office of Statistics. From 1791 to 1816, Fourier moved between Paris, Rouen, Lyon, Marseille, and Bordeaux, working as a traveling salesman and clerk. This life, he felt, was a constant compromise, a tedious service to "the knavery of merchants" and the soul-crushing monotony of "deceitful and degrading duties."
It was during these years, amidst the mundane, that his ideas began to coalesce. His first book, published in 1808, garnered little attention. It took six years for the work to find its way to Monsieur Just Muiron, who would become Fourier’s patron and supporter. The years between 1816 and 1821 were a period of intense creative output for Fourier, during which he produced the bulk of his writings. His attempts to reintroduce his work to the public in 1822 met with similar indifference. He died in Paris in 1837, leaving behind a legacy of ideas that would take time to be understood, let alone appreciated.
Ideas
Fourier’s core philosophy revolved around the idea that cooperation and mutual concern were the cornerstones of a successful society. He envisioned a world where collective effort would lead to unprecedented levels of productivity. In his ideal society, workers would be rewarded based on their contributions, a concept he explored through the structure of "phalanxes," communal living arrangements centered around buildings known as Phalanstères, or "grand hotels." These weren't just living spaces; they were intricate social designs. The wealthiest would occupy the uppermost apartments, while those with the least would reside on the ground floor, a physical manifestation of his tiered reward system. Job assignments, he proposed, should align with individual interests and desires, with incentives offered for less desirable tasks to ensure they were still undertaken.
Interestingly, Fourier harbored a deep distrust of trade, which he explicitly linked to Jewish people, viewing it as a source of societal ills. He even suggested that Jews should be compelled to engage in agricultural labor within the phalansteries. By the end of his life, his views on this matter evolved, advocating for the repatriation of Jews to Palestine with the financial backing of the Rothschilds. Scholars like John K. Roth and Richard L. Rubenstein interpret this not as outright hatred, but as a reflection of the economic and religious prejudices prevalent at the time, rather than the racial antisemitism that would later emerge.
Attack on Civilization
Fourier’s critique was particularly sharp when directed at what he termed "civilization." He viewed poverty, not mere inequality, as the root cause of societal chaos. His proposed solution involved ensuring sufficiently high wages and a "decent minimum" for those unable to work. His disdain for the prevailing ideologies of his era was profound; he wielded the terms "philosopher" and "civilization" with a distinctively pejorative edge. For Fourier, civilization was synonymous with corruption, deception, and a suffocating constraint. His attack on this established order possessed a unique intensity, setting him apart from other social critics of his time.
Work and Liberated Passions
Herbert Marcuse noted the radical nature of Fourier's ideas, particularly his concept of "libidinal work relations" in a developed industrial society. "The transformation of labor into pleasure," Marcuse observed, "is the central idea in Fourier's giant socialist utopia." This transformation, Fourier insisted, necessitated a fundamental overhaul of social institutions. He proposed distributing social products according to need, assigning tasks based on individual abilities and desires, and encouraging constant shifts in roles. Most importantly, he believed that "attractive labor" (travail attrayant) was achievable through the release of what he called "libidinal forces." He posited an "attraction industrielle," a natural drive that fostered pleasurable cooperation, stemming from "attraction passionnée" – the inherent human desire for "luxury, or the pleasure of the five senses," the formation of intimate groups, and the harmonious organization of these groups for work, all in service of developing individual "passions."
Fourier theorized that there were 12 fundamental passions, leading to 810 distinct character types. His ideal phalanx would comprise 1,620 individuals, and he envisioned a future with millions of these communities, loosely governed by a global "omniarch" or a World Congress of Phalanxes. He also showed a surprising consideration for the emotionally wounded; jilted lovers, he suggested, would be tended to by a corps of fairies to cure their lovesickness. He even proposed consulting personality indexes to find suitable partners for casual encounters and openly defended homosexuality as a valid personal preference. As Hakim Bey describes it, Fourier's "system of Harmony" envisioned all creative activities as arising from "liberated passion"—the celebrated "attractive labor." Work itself was sexualized; life within the Phalanstery was a continuous "orgy of intense feeling, intellection, & activity, a society of lovers & wild enthusiasts."
Women's Rights
Fourier was a staunch advocate for women's rights. He believed that all professions should be accessible to women based on their skills and aptitudes, not limited by their gender. He saw women as individuals, not merely as halves of a couple, and he deliberately never married, recognizing that traditional marriage could potentially impede a woman's autonomy. Fourier also recognized the diverse spectrum of human sexuality, even before the term "homosexuality" was in common usage. He believed that both men and women possessed a wide range of sexual needs and preferences, which could evolve over a lifetime, including same-sex attraction and androgyny. His stance was that all sexual expressions should be embraced as long as they were consensual and that "affirming one's difference" could actually foster greater social integration. His ultimate aim was to liberate every human being, not only through education but also by unleashing the power of human passion.
Children and Education
Fourier observed that "civilized" adults often perceived children as inherently lazy. He, however, saw them as remarkably industrious, even from the tender age of two or three. He identified several key inclinations in children: a desire to rummage and explore everything, a propensity for noisy and energetic activities, a strong imitative instinct, a fascination with miniature workshops, and a natural attraction of the weaker towards the stronger.
Utopian Aspirations
Deeply troubled by the pervasive disorder of his time, Fourier yearned for a more stable and harmonious world order. He saw society fractured by strife, chaos, and disarray. He is remembered most for his vision of a new world order built on unity and collaboration. His more whimsical pronouncements included the idea that the seas would eventually lose their salinity and transform into lemonade, and that the North Pole would become as temperate as the Mediterranean in a future era of Perfect Harmony. These imaginative predictions, while perhaps fanciful, underscore the radical nature of his thinking and his profound desire for a world remade.
Antisemitism
It is crucial to address Fourier's documented antisemitism. He made statements such as, "Jews are the leprosy and the ruin of the body politic." He was critical of governmental weakness in the face of what he perceived as a "secret and indissoluble league" of Jews. Echoing prevalent antisemitic tropes of the era, he argued that Jews were inherently disloyal and incapable of full assimilation into a unified national culture. He specifically focused on religious dietary laws, suggesting they demonstrated a system of "defiance and aversion for other sects." This sentiment was expressed in his writing: "he confined himself to sitting down at table and drinking; he refused to eat any of the dishes, because they were prepared by Christians. Christians have to be very patient to tolerate such impertinence. In the Jewish religion it denotes a system of defiance and aversion for other sects. Now, does a sect which wishes to carry its hatred as far as the table of its protectors, deserve to be protected?"
Influence
Fourier's ideas resonated through the tumultuous political landscape of France, influencing the 1848 Revolution and the Paris Commune through his followers, notably Victor Considerant.
His writings found their way into Dostoevsky's critique of radicalism, Demons, published in 1872, where numerous references to Fourierism appear. The allure of Fourier's vision extended to America, where his followers established phalanxes, including the notable Utopia, Ohio. Friedrich Engels, in his seminal work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, critically examined Fourier alongside other major utopian socialists and pre-Marxists.
Peter Kropotkin, in the preface to The Conquest of Bread, hailed Fourier as the progenitor of the libertarian strand of socialist thought, contrasting it with the more authoritarian leanings of figures like Babeuf and Buonarroti. In the mid-20th century, Fourier experienced a resurgence in interest among those exploring socialist ideas outside the mainstream Marxist tradition. Following their break with the French Communist Party, the Surrealists, led by André Breton, turned back to Fourier, dedicating his 1947 work Ode à Charles Fourier to him.
Walter Benjamin considered Fourier so significant that he dedicated a substantial section of his unfinished magnum opus, the Passagenwerk, to Fourier's thought and its impact. Benjamin lauded Fourier for "institut[ing] play as the canon of a labor no longer rooted in exploitation," noting that Fourier's "fantasy materialized" could only be conceived "under the sun" of the mid-19th century. Herbert Marcuse, in his influential Eros and Civilization, stated that Fourier "comes closer than any other utopian socialist to elucidating the dependence of freedom on non-repressive sublimation." In 1969, Raoul Vaneigem drew inspiration from Fourier's Avis aux civilisés relativement à la prochaine métamorphose sociale, incorporating its themes into his own text, Avis aux civilisés relativement à l'autogestion généralisée.
The North American Phalanx building in New Jersey stands as a testament to Fourier's practical influence. His work also left an imprint on Gustav Wyneken, Guy Davenport (particularly in his fiction), Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Paul Goodman. In the film Metropolitan, the character Tom Townsend identifies as a Fourierist, leading to a discussion about the experimental community Brook Farm. Sally Fowler's parting remark, "Good luck with your furrierism," offers a wry, if perhaps unintentional, nod to his legacy.
David Harvey, in his book Spaces of Hope, weaves Fourier's ideas into his own utopian vision for future cities. Murray Bookchin, a prominent libertarian socialist and environmental thinker, acknowledged Fourier's contribution, writing that "The Greek ideal of the rounded citizen in a rounded environment—one that reappeared in Charles Fourier's utopian works—was long cherished by the anarchists and socialists of the last century..." He highlighted Fourier's concept of engaging in diverse tasks as crucial for overcoming the division between manual and intellectual labor and fostering personal enrichment.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel The Blithedale Romance, offered a more whimsical, perhaps slightly mocking, portrayal of Fourier's more eccentric ideas. In Chapter 7, he humorously recounts the notion that the ocean would eventually turn into lemonade, specifically the kind fashionable in Fourier's time: "limonade à la cedre." He vividly imagines "the city docks filled, every day, with a flood tide of this delectable beverage!"
Writers associated with the post-left anarchy movement have also found value in Fourier's work. Bob Black, in The Abolition of Work, champions Fourier's concept of "attractive work" as a solution to the inherent problems of contemporary labor conditions. Hakim Bey places Fourier in esteemed company, alongside figures like De Sade and William Blake, suggesting Fourier deserves recognition as their equal or superior. Bey notes that while Sade and Blake had no direct political disciples, Fourier's principles led to the establishment of hundreds of communes, or phalansteries, in the mid-19th century.
Fourier's Works
- Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générales (Theory of the four movements and the general destinies), published anonymously in Lyon in 1808. This was his foundational work, laying out his complex system.
- Le Nouveau Monde amoureux (The New World of Love), written between 1816 and 1818, but not widely published until 1967. This work delves into his more radical ideas about love, sexuality, and social organization.
- Œuvres complètes de Ch. Fourier (Complete Works of Ch. Fourier), a monumental 6-volume collection published in Paris between 1841 and 1848.
- La fausse industrie morcelée, répugnante, mensongère, et l'antidote, l'industrie naturelle, combinée, attrayante, véridique, donnant quadruple produit (False Industry, Fragmented, Repugnant, Lying and the Antidote, Natural Industry, Combined, Attractive, True, giving four times the product), published in Paris in 1835. This work further elaborates on his ideas of attractive work.
- Oeuvres complètes de Charles Fourier (Complete Works of Charles Fourier), a more comprehensive 12-volume edition published in Paris between 1966 and 1968.
- Fourier: The Theory of the Four Movements (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, 1996), edited by Gareth Stedman Jones and Ian Patterson. This is a key English translation and scholarly edition.
- Design for Utopia: Selected Writings (Studies in the Libertarian and Utopian Tradition, 1971), offering a curated selection of his writings.
- Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier (1971), edited by Mark Poster, providing another accessible entry point to his ideas.
- The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction (1971), edited by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu, a crucial collection for understanding his core concepts.
- Escape from the Nineteenth Century and Other Essays (1998), by Peter Lamborn Wilson, which includes discussions and analyses of Fourier.