Charles Fourier Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Carl J. Guarneri

Critical Essay by Carl J. Guarneri

SOURCE: "The Fourierist Legacy," in The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America, Cornell, 1991, pp. 384-405.

In the following excerpt, Guarneri examines the revival of Fourierism that took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century, arguing that by the end of the century, Fourier's "legacy" of communitarian ideals had completely faded.

Stephen Pearl Andrews bravely announced in 1871 that Fourierism was "not dead, merely sleeping." As the era of the Civil War closed, however, Fourierist phalanxes had ceased to be a vital option for American society. It was not just that such communities had failed or that northerners had rallied with confidence around their free-labor capitalist society, though these were immediate causes of Fourierism's demise. In the longer run the communitarian idea lost its salience when the fact became clear that urban-industrialism in its competitive capitalist form was here to stay. By the 1860s the institutions of individualism...
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