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Fourierism is the set of ideas first put forward by French utopian socialist François Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837).

Fourierism is the systematic set of economic, political, and social beliefs first espoused by French intellectual Charles Fourier (1772–1837). Based upon a belief in the inevitability of communal associations of people who worked and lived together as part of the human future, Fourier's committed supporters referred to his doctrines as Associationism. Political contemporaries and subsequent scholarship has identified Fourier's set of ideas as a form of utopian socialism – a phrase which retains mild pejorative overtones.

Never tested in practice at any scale in Fourier's lifetime, Fourierism enjoyed a brief boom in the United States of America during the middle of the 1840s – owing largely to the efforts of his American popularizer, Albert Brisbane (1809–1890) and the American Union of Associationists – but ultimately failed as a social and economic model. The system was briefly revived in the middle 1850s by Victor Considerant (1808–1893), a French disciple of Fourier's who unsuccessfully attempted to relaunch the model in the American state of Texas in the 1850s.[1]



Passional attractionEdit

In contrast to the thoroughly secular communitarianism of his contemporary Robert Owen (1771–1858), Charles Fourier's thinking starts from a presumption of the existence of God and a divine social order on Earth in accordance with the will of God.[2] Fourier saw himself as a figure of world-historical importance akin to Isaac Newton (1643–1727) for having identified the fundamental force driving social development, which he called "passional attraction" (attraction passionelle).[3]

Fourier believed that the structure of the world – that is the economic, political, and social system – inhibited humanity from the pursuit of their God-given individual passions, thereby preventing mankind from achieving a state of universal harmony.[4] Rather than seeking to mold individuals to fit the existing form of economic, political, and social life, as had been the traditional goal of the educational and what we today call the socialization process, Fourier believed that instead the form of economic, political, and social life should itself be altered to fit the inherent passions of the individual, since these economic and social structures were man-made and not God-given.[4]


Always one to list and to systematize, Fourier declared there existed twelve basic passions of humanity grouped around three branches of a "passional tree": "luxurious passions" of the senses; "affective passions" of love, friendship, and parenthood; and the oft-ignored "distributive passions" such as the need for political intrigue, the need for variety, and the pure enthusiasm of spiritual pursuits.[5] The sum of all these passions Fourier called "unityism," characterized as a universal feeling of benevolence and fraternity.[5] Although fettered and mutated by Civilization, the free development of these passions would be allowed in the bright future world, Fourier believed.[5]

Stages of societyEdit

Fourier believed himself the discoverer of the universal laws of societal evolution, theorizing the existence of 32 distinct periods beginning with Edenism and continuing through Savagery, Patriarchate, and Barbarism, respectively.[6] Each of these stages was held to have distinctive material and ideological features, with the treatment afforded to women a particular marker of one stage from the next.[7] Of far greater concern to Fourier and his disciples was the current 5th form of society, Modern Society, as well as three emerging forms which were believed to be just around the corner: 6 (Guarantism), 7 (Simple Association), and 8 (Compound Association).[8]

"Modern Society," from the Fourierist perspective, was based upon capital and labor and the buying and selling of goods through a network of useless middlemen.[9] With a sneer, Fourier referred to contemporary society as "Civilization," deeming it the cause of fraud, waste, and human unhappiness.[10] The "isolated family" he deemed inefficient, the wage system demoralizing and exploitative, and organized religion corrupt.[10] An entire book was written detailing 36 types of bankruptcy and 76 sorts of "cuckoldry" to which humanity was subjected by its system of so-called Civilization, which Fourier viewed not only as imperfect but as wholly unacceptable.[10]

Fourier believed that fortunately for humanity, the Civilization of modern society was a fleeting economic formation, soon to vanish from the Earth.[10] The emerging socio-economic structure of "Guarantism" would be based upon the fundamental principle of universal insurance, Fourier believed, which was to include guarantee of the security of capital and guarantee on the right of labor to gainful employment.[8] Petty traders and speculative profiteers would be eliminated from the economy in this new system of organized production and distribution, it was believed.[9]

The next stage in the Fourierist schema, that of "Simple Association," was to be based upon the cooperative enterprise of like bodies of farmers or artisans or industrial workers as distinct groups.[9] Farmers would associate with other farmers, artisans with other artisans, industrial producers with other industrial producers, producing and selling their goods collectively.[9] Simultaneously, these economic organizations were to for the first time include the association of family living and domestic labor,[9] thereby eliminating the economic waste and social isolation of individual living. Wage labor would be eliminated, as the members of each of these associations would be co-proprietors, producing in tandem and sharing alike in the proceeds of their efforts.[9]

Subsequently, the Fourierists believed, there would emerge "Compound Association" or "Harmonism." Under Compound Association all pursuits – industrial producers and artisans and farmers alike – would join in large associations which would shatter all economic lines.[11] One Fourierian enthusiast described the system of Compound Association in the following terms:




Fourier believed that economic output was the product of three factors: labor, capital, and talent.[12] Each of these, he argued, were important to production and each needed to be compensated as such for the general prosperity of the organized association to be preserved.[12] The communal associations which emerged based upon Fourier's ideas were generally formed as joint stock companies, and their investor-members were compensated separately on the basis both of amount of capital invested and amount of labor performed – with labor time given a range of values based both on the necessity and difficulty of the work and the degree of talent and skill with which it was performed.

Social lifeEdit


Fourier's prescription was the establishment of communities called Phalanxes or Associations in the countryside. Housed inside gigantic serpentine edifices called "phalanstries" would be 1620 people, coming from various occupations and social classes.[13] These residents were to be arranged in occupational "series," according to Fourier's model – major divisions such as between agrarians and industrial producers and artisans – which would be further divided into smaller "groups" to cooperatively conduct specific aspects of the work.[14] Mobility of the individual between various groups and even sections according to personal desires was to be allowed.[14]

Fundamental to the Fourierian ideal was the notion of collective living and the rational performance of domestic duties. Individual households were seen as both wasteful in terms of duplicated effort performed and isolating of individuals – standing in the way of true cooperation and social harmony.


Role of forceEdit


Moreover, the achievement on an international scale would eliminate war from the face of the earth.[11] Instead, industrial armies would be formed to engage in gigantic reclamation projects, irrigating deserts and restoring vegetation and draining marshes and putting the land to cultivation.[11] The elimination of disease would follow, as such banes as cholera, typhus, and yellow fever would vanish with the unhealthful places from whence they originated before society's restorative efforts.[11] Through the planting of vast swaths of timber, cropland would be protected and the earth's climate itself would be slowly transformed, Fourier and his followers believed.[16]

Fantastic theoriesEdit

Fourier's theoretical system, described by one scholar as "vast and eccentric,"[14] was only a part of the output of what another called "a most riotous and unpruned imagination."[17] Fourier believed that in the new world people would live for 144 years, that new species of friendly and pacifistic animals such as "anti-lions" would emerge, and that over time human beings would develop long and useful tails.[14] Fourier also professed a belief in the ability of human souls to migrate between physical and "aromal" worlds.[14] Such thinking was set aside during the last 15 years of Fourier's life, when he instead began to concentrate on testing in practice his economic and social ideas.[18]


Influence on new religious movementsEdit

The Fourierist doctrine of attractions, correspondences, and analogies was identified with esoteric doctrines like Martinism by Fourierist like Just Muiron from an early point on.[20] It is no wonder, then, that contemporary observers like Louis Reybaud, the author of the first study of the socialists, perceived Fourierism and other early socialist schools in the context of mysticism, magic, kabbalah, or the occult sciences.[21] Indeed, it has been shown that Fourierism exerted a decisive influence on new religious movements like Spiritualism or Occultism after 1848.[22] Prior to this date, Fourierism had already coined the ideas of US-American spiritualist thinkers such as Andrew Jackson Davis.[23] Eliphas Lévi, who is regarded as the founder of modern occultism, was a pronounced adherent of Fourierism in the 1840s.[24] Until the early twentieth century, there was a strong Fourierist presence in French socialist-spiritualist circles.

See alsoEdit


  1. ^ Beecher, Victor Considerant.
  6. ^ Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, pp. 17-18.
  7. ^ Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, pg. 18.
  10. ^ a b c d Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, pg. 17.
  13. ^ Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, pp. 18-19.
  16. ^ Sears, The North American Phalanx, pp. 2-3.
  18. ^ Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, pg. 20.
  20. ^ Strube, Sozialismus, pp. 122-127; Beecher, Charles Fourier, pp. 160-167.
  21. ^ Strube, Sozialismus, pp. 105-115.
  22. ^ Strube, "Socialist Religion"; cf. Strube, Sozialismus and Monroe, Laboratories.
  23. ^ Albanese, Republic, pp. 171-176, 208-218.
  24. ^ Strube, Sozialismus, pp. 316-351.


In FrenchEdit


Individual works in EnglishEdit




Further readingEdit

  • Catherine L. Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2007.
  • Jonathan Beecher, Charles Fourier: The Visionary and his World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
  • Jonathan Beecher, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
  • John Warne Monroe, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.
  • Julian Strube, "Socialist Religion and the Emergence of Occultism: A Genealogical Approach to Socialism and Secularization in 19th-Century France." In: Religion, 2016.
  • Julian Strube, Sozialismus, Katholizisimus und Okkultismus im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.