Charles Marie Fourier | Biography

His reconstruction of society came to be known as Fourierism. Born François Charles Marie Fourier in Besancon, France, on April 7, 1772, Fourier was the ultimate prophet of a utopian society, so utopian that "sea water could be turned into lemonade" and human beings had remarkable powers to change their world. He departed almost entirely from established institutions and philosophies, rejecting the society in which he lived. Partly because of his lofty ideals and partly because he coupled them to a strange "theory of universal analogy," scholars have had a difficult time in accepting Fourier's theories.

As a child, Fourier was educated at a local Jesuit high school and was then apprenticed to various businesses. When the French Revolution began, Fourier, then living in Lyons, sided with the counter-revolutionaries. He was drafted into the army in 1794 but was discharged for ill health two years later. For years, Fourier lived in relative poverty in Lyons or Paris, working at odd jobs, extolling the virtues of his reconstruction of society, and waiting in vain for someone to finance his theories. In 1812, he inherited money from his mother's estate and was able to spend his time refining his views.

Fourier first aired his theories while working in Lyon. His article, "Universal Harmony," was published in the Bulletin de Lyon , 1803. His major work The Social Destiny of Man, Or the Theory of the Four Movements appeared in 1808. From then until his death in 1937, Fourier expounded on "Fourierism" in numerous pamphlets and books, among them Treatise on Domestic and Agricultural Association, 1822, and False Industry, Divided, Disgusting, and Lying, and its Antidote, 1835-36.

Fourier's reconstruction of society was based on associations of producers known as phalanges (or phalanxes). The phalange was a cooperative agricultural community with the responsibility for the welfare of each person in it. Individual members of the phalange would be rewarded according to the phalange's total productivity. Fourier believed that the phalange system would distribute wealth more equitably than capitalism, and in that he foreshadowed the theories of Karl Marx.

To Fourier, these concepts were not merely ideas he had constructed but actual laws that existed to govern society, much as Isaac Newton had discovered laws of physical motion. Fourier argued that a natural order existed, evolving in eight ascending periods. In the highest stage, called harmony, human emotions could be expressed freely. To reach that stage, society would best be divided into phalanges. The phalange was the ideal community for human society because, Fourier claimed, humans had twelve passions. These passions could be divided into 810 characters. The ideal phalange would contain 1,620 people, which meant endless combinations of characters. If the phalange were properly run, the passions of every individual would be fulfilled. Fourier added great detail to life in the phalange, including daily routines, designs of dwellings, nursery furniture, workers' uniforms, order in the community, and so on. A harmony on earth, Fourier reasoned, would extend to a kind of cosmic harmony.

To many, Fourier's ideas seemed bizarre, his writings often rambling and eccentric. In fact, some of his critics called him insane. Yet, over the years he captured a faithful group of supporters all over Europe and abroad. His followers learned to select those ideas that were deemed useful. This qualified acceptance led to the phalange concept being tried out in France, where Fourierism became a significant socialist sect in the 1840s but failed by the end of the decade. In the United States, Fourierism was introduced by Albert Brisbane, a wealthy New Yorker who discovered Fourier while traveling in France. Brisbane studied under him for two years and returned home to try out his mentor's ideas, which Brisbane then called Associationism. A number of communities were launched but were unsuccessful, such as Brook Farm in Massachusetts (1841-46) and the North American Phalanx, Red Bank, New Jersey.

Fourier died on October 10, 1837. Although his work has never been widely read, an interest in his psychological writings, most notably his analysis of love and repression, emerged after World War II. Today, these theories, according to some scholars, mark Fourier as a precursor of Freud.