Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844

The first volume of the work contains an account of the life and writings of St Simon, Fourier, and Owen. The second is very miscellaneous. We encounter, to our surprise, the name of Jeremy Bentham in the category of socialists, and are still more startled to learn that the Utilitarians derive their origin from Robert Owen! It is a jumble of all sects, religious and political, in which even our Quakers are included in the list of social reformers – our excellent Friends, who assuredly have no wish whatever to disturb the world, but seek merely to live in it as it is, with the additional advantage of being themselves particularly quiet and comfortable. But we are so accustomed to the haste of negligence of the majority of French writers whenever they leave their own soil, (unless the literature or concerns of a foreign country be their special subject,) that we are not disposed to pass any very severe censure on M. Reybaud; and still less should we do him the injustice to prejudge his qualifications as an historian of his own countrymen, by the measure of accuracy he may display in that part of his work which relates to England. It is a part of his work which we have but slightly perused; our attention has been confined to the socialists of France.

Amongst these founders of society, and constructors of Mahometan paradises, Fourier is, we believe, the least known in this country. Some brief account of him will, we think, be acceptable; more especially as some of his ideas, leaving the narrow circle of his disciples, have found partisans amongst men who, in other respects, have a reputation for sobriety of thought. Our readers need not fear that we shall overwhelm them with all the institutions, plans, projects, arrangements – the complete cosmogony, in short, of this most laborious of the tribe. A very little of such matter is quite enough. One may say with truth that it is such stuff,

"Whereof a little more than a little

Is by much too much."

Nothing is more charming to the imagination than the first general idea of some new community, where all men are to be happy, every body active, benevolent, reasonable. But the moment we leave this general idea, enter upon particulars, and set about the arrangements necessary for this universally comfortable state of things, there is nothing in the world more tedious and oppressive. Proposals for new political institutions are sufficiently wearisome; but proposals for earthly elysiums, which are to embrace the whole circle of human affairs, become insupportably dull. It is child's play, played with heavy granite boulders. No; if we were capable of being seduced for a moment into the belief of some golden age of equality, where a parental government, presiding over all, should secure the peace and prosperity of all, we should need no other argument to recover us from the delusion than simply to read on, and learn how this parental government intends to accomplish its purpose. When we find that, in order to be relieved from domestic cares, we are to have no home at all; that our parental government, in order to provide for our children, begins by taking them away from us; when we picture to ourselves the sort of wooden melancholy figures we must become, (something like the large painted dolls in a Dutch garden, stuck here and there without choice or locomotion of their own,) we speedily lose all inclination to enter upon this discipline of happiness. We quit with haste this enchanted garden, which turns out to be an enormous piece of clockwork, and embrace with renewed content the old state of personal freedom, albeit attended with many personal inconveniences. Whilst reading of Utopian schemes, the idea has very vividly occurred to us: suppose that some such society as this, where land and wives, money and children, are all in common, had been for a long time in existence, and that some clever Utopian had caught an inkling of the old system so familiar to us, and had made the discovery that it would be possible, without dissolving society, to have a wife of one's own, a house of one's own, land and children of one's own. Imagine, after an age of drowsy clockwork existence, one of these philosophers starting the idea of a free society, of a social organization based upon individual rights and individual effort – where property should not only be possessed, but really enjoyed– where men should for the first time stretch their limbs, and strain their faculties, and strive, and emulate, and endure, and encounter difficulties, and have friendships. What a commotion there would be! How would the younger sort, rebelling against the old rotten machine in which they had been incarcerated, form themselves into emigrating bands, and start forth to try upon some new soil their great experiment of a free life! How would they welcome toil in all its severity – how willingly practise abstinence, and suffer privation, for the sake of the bold rights which these would purchase! – how willingly take upon themselves the responsibility of their own fate to enjoy a fortune of their own shaping! Hope herself would start from the earth where she had been so long buried, and waving her rekindled torch, would lead on to the old race of life!

Charles Fourier was the son of a woollen-draper at Besançon. Two circumstances in his early history appear to have made a strong impression upon him. When he was a child, he contradicted, in his father's shop, some customary falsehood of the trade, and with great simplicity revealed the truth; for this he was severely reprimanded. Afterwards, when he was of the age of nineteen, and a clerk in a merchant's house at Marseilles, he was present at a voluntary submersion of grain, made in order to raise the price in the market. These circumstances, he used to say, opened his eyes to the nature of human relations. Falsehood and selfishness, systematic falsehood and selfishness without a shadow of scruple, were at the basis of all our commercial dealings. It was time, he thought, that a new order of things should arise, founded upon veracity and a harmony of interests.

For himself, his part was taken. He became the man of one idea. "We might rather say of him," writes M. Reybaud, "that he traversed the world, than that he lived in it." He refused to enter into any commercial dealings that might implicate him in the existing system, and warp his feelings in favour of it; and exercised to the last, for a bare subsistence, the mere mechanical employment of a copying clerk. He never understood the art of making for himself two separate existences: one in the domain of fiction or of thought; the other in the land of reality. He passed all that might be called his life in the ideal world of his own creating.

According to Fourier, there is but one deep and all-pervading cause of the miseries of man: it is, that he does not comprehend the ways of God, or, in other words, the laws of his own being. If humanity does not work well, and with the same harmony that the planetary system exhibits, it is because he is determined to impress upon it other movements than those the Creator designed. Between the creature and the Creator there has been, as he expresses it, a misunderstanding for these five thousand years past.

The great error, it seems, that has been committed, is the supposing that there are any passions of man which require to be restrained. God has made nothing ill – nothing useless. You have but to let these passions quite loose, and it will be found that they move in a beautiful harmony of their own. These attractions– such is his favourite word – are as admirably adjusted as those which rule over the course of the planets. Duty, he says, is human – it varies from epoch to epoch, from people to people. Attraction– that is to say, passion – is divine; and is the same amongst all people, civilized and savage, and in all ages, ancient and modern. At present the passions are compressed, and therefore act unhappily; in future, they shall be free, satisfied, and shall act according to the law they have received from God. To yield to their impulse is the only wisdom; to remove whatever obstacles society has placed in the way of their free exercise, is the great task of the reformer.

Fourier does not hesitate to place himself by the side of Newton, in virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison can be made, we think – inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets – that Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton. Unfortunately, there is this difference between the two, that Newton's law explains existing phenomena, while Fourier's explained phenomena that do not exist – that are, however, to exist some day.

Having established his fundamental law of the attraction of the passions, (which, he finds, amount to the number of twelve, and, in this respect, to bear some occult analogy to the sidereal system, the prismatic colours, and the gamut,) he has nothing to do but to set them fairly at work. This he does, and discovers that they form men into delightful communities, or phalanges, of about eighteen hundred men each. Here nothing shall be wanting. Whether it is love or labour, attraction supplies all. "Labour will be a charm, a taste, a preference – in short, a passion. Each man will devote himself to the occupation that he likes – to twenty occupations, if he likes twenty. A charming rivalry, an enthusiasm always new, will preside over human labour, when, under the law of attraction, men will be associated by groups, the last social fraction – by series, which are the association of groups – by phalanges, which are the association of series." – (P. 123.)

The dwelling-place of a phalange will be called a phalanstère– an edifice commodious and elegant, wherein, while the convenient distribution of the interior will be first considered, the claims of architecture will not be forgotten. It will be a vast structure of the most beautiful symmetry, testifying by its magnificence to the splendour of the new life of which it is to be the scene. Galleries, baths, a theatre, every thing conducive to a pleasurable existence, will be found in it. A strict equality of wealth is no part of the scheme of our socialist; but every one will have a sufficiency, and will obtain apartments and provisions in the phalanstère suitable to his fortune. M. Fourier further guarantees, that there shall be no vanity amongst the rich, and no mortification felt by the poorer brethren of the establishment.

As to the expense of this phalanstère, M. Fourier undertakes to construct it for what the building of four hundred miserable cottages would cost, which would not accommodate a much greater number of individuals, and which would fall to pieces after a few years. And as to housekeeping, would not one enormous kitchen replace to advantage four hundred small and ill-appointed kitchens? one vast cellar four hundred little cellars? one gigantic washhouse four hundred damp, wretched outhouses, not worthy of the name? Add to which, that much may be done in these gigantic kitchens and washhouses by the judicious introduction of a steam-engine, which might also be employed in supplying all the apartments with water.

Labour, proceeding with such facility, such ardour, such enthusiasm, as it will do in the phalanstère, must bring in enormous profits – quadruple, as M. Fourier thinks, of what our present ineffective means produce. It is in the division of these profits that our socialist has been thought particularly happy; here it is that he introduces his famous formula, "to associate men in capital, labour, and talent," (associer les hommes en capital, travail, et talent.) The whole profits of the community are first to be divided into three portions; one for capital, one for labour, and one for talent – say four-twelfths for capital, five-twelfths for labour, and three-twelfths for talent. The portion allotted to the capitalists can create no difficulty – it will be divided amongst them in proportion to the amount of capital they severally supply. But a difficulty presents itself in the distribution of the other two portions. Are all species of labour, and all descriptions of talent, to be equally remunerated, or by what rule shall their several rewards be determined? M. Fourier declares that the labours necessary to the community shall be most highly recompensed; then those that are useful; and last of all, those which administer, as the fine arts, only to pleasure and amusement. For this determination he gives a sound reason, but one which we ought not to have heard from the centre of a phalanstère; it is, that necessary labours are nearly all of a repugnant nature, and should therefore be most amply rewarded.

To determine the degree of talent the individual has displayed, the principle of election is called in. There is, however, a high order of talent which is considered quite apart. Great artists, great mechanicians, great writers – these belong to no phalange, but to humanity. The world will charge itself with their remuneration. They will be relieved from the usual condition of labour; and when, after a long repose, they have produced a work, (how it comes to be known what bird will lay the golden egg till the egg is laid, we are not told,) then will a jury, assembled at the metropolis of the world, which will be built on the site of Constantinople, vote them a recompense. "Imagine, for example, Jacquart or Watt, Newton or Corneille, presenting themselves before this august tribunal – Jacquart with his loom, Watt with his steam-engine, Newton with his theory of attractions, Corneille with his most beautiful tragedy. At the instant, to the exclusion of all delays and hazards of fame, there would be voted to these great men a remuneration, to be levied on all the phalanges. Suppose only five francs on each phalange, and that there were five hundred thousand phalanges on the globe, the jury would have accorded a sum of 2,500,000 francs; Jacquart would not have been compelled to die in a state bordering on indigence, after having enriched the universe."

Fournier was in person short, thin, and pale, but his melancholy and pensive physiognomy bore traces of his long, unquiet, and ungrateful labours. A simple clerk, he did not venture, when he published his writings, to sign them with any other name than that of Charles, declaring himself ready, under that name, to answer any objections that might be addressed to him. Alas! there were few objections addressed to him; Charles got no readers; men pitied or ridiculed him as a visionary. Repulsed by the surrounding world, there remained nothing for him but to live in that creation of his own, in which, at all events, he reigned supreme. In his reveries he found his only happiness. He walked glorious in the midst of joyful enthusiastic multitudes, who saluted him as their benefactor, and proclaimed him as their sovereign; he spoke to these beings, the children of his dreams, in a language which he alone comprehended; he built his phalanstère, peopled, organized it; conducted himself the labours of his harmonic groups, founded his towns, his capitals, nay, his capital of the world, which he erected on the Bosphorus, uniting the east and west, the north and south. There he placed with his own hand the laurel, decreed by his million of phalanges, on the brow of the greatest philosopher of his age. "These festivals of the imagination," says M. Reybaud, "were the only pleasures that relived the long, and gloomy, and proud poverty of Fourier."

One trait we cannot pass over, as it seems, so to speak, to have a psychological value. Such was his habit of ordering and arranging all things, that Charles not only undertook to regulate the affairs of men, and redress the inequalities of their several destinies, but he took into his consideration the inequalities of the several climates of the earth, and very seriously occupied himself with redressing their anomalies. To him, as he walked the streets of Paris, the severe cold of the North Pole was disquieting, and a subject of uneasiness; it was part of his mission to temper and subdue it, and tame it for the habitation of men. Perhaps the heat from those gigantic kitchens in his phalanstères might help him in his task. At all events, this and other gross atmospheric irregularities were not be endured in the world which he was planning.

There are two things, M. Reybaud remarks, especially reprehensible in the theory of Fourier and of kindred socialists – First, the confounding happiness with enjoyment, and the legitimating of all our passions; and Secondly, the egregious expectation of moulding mankind by an external or social organization, without calling in aid the virtues of the individual. The one necessarily follows on the other. The chain of error is manifest, and leads, as a chain of error may be expected to do, to inextricable confusion. If mere enjoyment, if the gratification of our senses and passions, be the highest aim and condition of the human being, it follows that all moral discipline, all self-denial, must be regarded as so much defect, so much imperfection, so much manifest failure in the world-scheme. That lofty gratification which men have been accustomed to attribute to self-control, to abstinence practised under a sense of duty, or in the cause of justice, this is to be measured off as so much simple misery, or so much negation of enjoyment. Let all restraint be discarded: let man be free; but yet, as the good of the whole is to be consulted in all societies, and in the new society is consulted in an eminent degree, the individual thus released from all self-control must be ruled despotically, or, if you will, moulded, fashioned, mechanized by the laws of the community; for we suppose it will be admitted, whatever M. Fourier tells us of his discovered law of attraction, that a very stringent legislation must bind together that harmonic society, which begins by giving loose rein to all the passions of mankind. How the two are to be practically reconciled – how the utmost license of the individual is to be combined with the utmost and most minute supervision of the laws, we leave the socialist to determine. Such is the miserable tissue of error and confusion which these projects present to view.

These socialists are fond of inventing new Christianities, and in some salons in Paris it is, or was till very lately, the fashion to have a new Christianity propounded every full moon. New enough! They present at least a sufficient contrast with the old Christianity, and in no other point more than in this – the complete dependence for the formation of the character of individuals on the art of grouping and regimenting them. Christianity has supported for ages monastic institutions, institutions the most counter to the passions of men, solely by its strong appeal to the individual conscience. St Simonian institutions, or delightful phalanstères, will in vain flatter every passion and indulge every sense; if they leave the conscience inert, if nothing is built on the sense of duty, they will no sooner rise but they will crumble back again into dust.

But we do not touch upon these fundamental errors of the socialists, with the superfluous view of showing the impossibility of realizing their schemes; we note them because their recognition demonstrates at once the ill influence which must attend on the teaching and constant agitation of such schemes. On the one hand, all our desires authorized, and self-control put out of countenance as a mere marplot; on the other hand, perpetual representations that a government or social organization could effect every thing, or almost every thing that can be desired for the happiness of man. What must follow but that men learn to indulge themselves in a very lax morality, and to make most extravagant demands on the government, or the legislative force of society? Their notions of right and wrong, and their ideas of the duty and office of government, become equally unsettled and erroneous.

We have the authority of M. Reybaud – and we could bring other authorities if it were necessary – for saying that, in France, the habit of attributing the vices of individuals, not to their own weakness or ungoverned propensities, but to the malorganization of society, has shown itself in a strange and ominous indulgence to crime. It was the old fashion, he says, upon hearing of any enormity, to level our indignation against the perpetrator; it is now the mode, to direct it against that culpable abstraction, society. Society is, indeed, the sole culprit. When the novelist has detailed some horrible assassination, or gross adultery, he exclaims, Behold what society has done! The criminal himself passes scathless; if, indeed, he may not put in a claim to our especial sympathy, as having been peculiarly ill-used by that society, whose duty it manifestly was to make him wise, and humane, and happy. Man, in his individual capacity, is not to be severely criticised; the censure falls only upon man in his aggregate and corporate capacity. Polite, at all events. No one can possibly take offence at reproofs leveled at that invisible entity, the social body; or suppose for a moment that he is included in the censure. It used to be thought that the aggregate was made up of individuals, and that, in order to constitute a well-ordered community, there must be virtuous and well-ordered men. The reverse is now discovered to be the truth. First, have a well-ordered and divinely happy community, and then the individual may do as he likes; as our comedian says, "his duties will be pleasures."

It is a perilous habit to fall into at the best – that of regarding the present condition of society as something doomed to destruction. But the evil is unmistakeable and most pernicious, when it is proclaimed, that in the new and expected order of things, the old morality will be entirely superfluous, a mere folly, an infliction on ourselves and others. Why take care of the old furniture, that will be worse than an incumbrance in the new premises? Why not begin at once the work of battery and destruction?

The influence which these speculations exert in unsettling men's notions upon the duties of government, on the first principles of political or social economy, is less glaring, but not, on this account, the less prejudicial. Men, who are far from embracing entirely any one of the schemes of these socialists, fall into the habit of looking for the relief and amelioration of society to some legislative invention, some violent interference with the free and spontaneous course of human industry. The organization of industry is the phrase now in high repute; repeated, it is true, with every variety of meaning, but always with the understanding, that government is to interfere more or less in the distribution of wealth, in the employment of capital, and the exercise of labour. The first principles on which modern civilization is based, are taxed as the origin of all the evils that afflict society. All our soundest maxims of political economy are discarded and disgraced. That each man shall be free in the choice and practice of his trade or calling – that the field of competition shall be open to all – that each individual shall be permitted to make the best bargain he can, whether for the wages of his labour or the price of his commodities – all these trite but invaluable maxims are incessantly decried, and nothing is heard of but the evils of competition, and the unequal recompense of labour. In their fits of impotent benevolence, these speculative physicians assail, as the cause of the existing distress, those principles which, in fact, are the conditions of all the prosperity we have attained, or can preserve, or can hope in future to attain.

This title of the individual, whether workman or capitalist, to the control and conduct of his own affairs – this "fair field and no favour" system – is not to be described as if it were a mere theory of political economy, and disputable like some other branches of a science not yet matured. It is the great conquest of modern civilization; it is the indispensable condition to the full development of the activity and enterprise of man. The liberation of the artisan and the labourer, is the signal triumph of modern over ancient times whether we regard classic or Gothic antiquity. Viewing things on a large scale, it may be considered as a late triumph; and, without depreciating its value, we may easily admit that there remains much to be done in the cultivation of the free artisan, to enable him to govern himself, and make the best of his position. But any scheme, which, under the pretext of ameliorating his position, would place him again under tutelage, is a scheme of degradation and a retrograde movement. He is now a freeman, an enrolled member of a civilized state, where each individual has, to a great extent, the responsibility thrown upon himself for his own well-being; he must have prospective cares, and grow acquainted with the thoughtful virtue of prudence. That release from reflection, and anxiety for the future, which is the compensating privilege of the slave or the barbarian, he cannot hope any longer to enjoy. Whatever its value, he must renounce it. He must become one of us, knowing good and evil, looking before and behind. In this direction – in the gradual improvement of the labourer – lies our future progress, progress slow and toilsome, little suited to the socialist who calculates on changing, as with the touch of a wand, the whole aspect of society.