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The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Carl J. Guarneri
Carl J. Guarneri
Affiliation:
Mr. Guarneri is assistant professor of history in Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, California.
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Extract

In the early 1840s a wave of enthusiasm for the socialist theory of Charles Fourier swept through American reform circles. Excited utopians in New York, Boston, and elsewhere in the North divided their efforts between publicizing their version of Fourierism, called “Association,” and building model communities or “phalanxes” to illustrate it. While the history and sociology of their nearly three dozen short-lived communal experiments continue to attract scholarly attention, the Associationists' writings have been relatively neglected. Yet the expositions and arguments that won thousands of converts to Fourierism represent an innovation in American religious thought too important to be forgotten: the first extensive attempt to harness the powerful ideas and symbols of Christianity to the emerging worldview of secular socialism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 36 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1983

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References

1. There is no detailed account of the Associationist movement in all its phases. The best summary available is Bassett, T. D. Seymour, “The Secular Utopian Socialists,” in Socialism in American Life, ed. Egbert, Donald Drew and Persons, Stow, 2 vols.(Princeton, 1952), 1:155–211.Google Scholar Surveys of the phalanxes begin with Noyes, John Humphrey, History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia, 1870);Google Scholar the pioneering scholarly work is Bestor, Arthur Jr, “American Phalanxes: A Study of Fourierist Socialism in the United States (With Special Reference to the Movement in Western New York)” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1938).Google Scholar In brief, the Associationists, following Fourier, believed that humanity progressed in stages from “Savagery” through the competitive “Civilization” of the nineteenth century to “Harmony,” which would arrive through the peaceful reorganization of society into cooperative phalanxes uniting approximately 1600 persons of all types and classes. The complex arrangements of Association would liberate the 12 stifled “passions” of human personality yet also ensure the order and equity lacking in individualistic, unplanned Civilization. For an extended analysis of Associationist doctrine, see Guarneri, Carl J., “Utopian Socialism and American Ideas: The Origins and Doctrines of American Fourierism, 1832–1848” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1979), pp. 130–327.Google Scholar

2. See, for example, Bassett, “Secular Utopian Socialists”; and Bestor, Arthur, Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian Origins and the Owenite Phase of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663–1829, 2d ed. (Philadelphia, 1970), pp. 37–38.Google Scholar

3. The classic works are Hopkins, Charles Howard, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven, 1940);Google Scholar and Dombrowski, James, The Early Days of Christian Socialism in America (New York, 1936).Google Scholar

4. The evolution of Ripley's and Channing's social Transcendentalism is documented in Perry, Miller, ed., The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 186–188,213–220, 251–259, 294–299, 429–431.Google Scholar For Ripley's conversion to Fourierism, see Crowe, Charles, George Ripley, Transcendentalist and Utopian Socialist (Athens, Ga., 1967), pp.170–183.Google Scholar On Cooke, see “A Personal Experience,” The Harbinger 5 (10 07 1847): 65–67.Google Scholar On the Swedenborgians, see Block, Marguerite Beck, The New Church in the New World: A Study of Swedenborgianism in America (New York, 1932), pp. 153–154;Google Scholar and Noyes, pp. 262–264. For Smolnikar's religious views, see “Peace-Union Settlement,” The Phalanx 1(1 04 1844): 100;Google Scholar and for Amringe's, Van, see his Nature and Revelation (New York, 1843).Google Scholar

5. Bestor, , Backwoods Utopias, pp. 131, 222.Google Scholar Harrison, J. F. C., Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York, 1969), pp. 106–108,Google Scholar on the other hand, notes the use of millennial rhetoric by Owen and a few of his American followers.

6. See Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., The Teaching of Charles Fourier (Berkeley and Los Angeles,1969), pp. 100–105;Google Scholar and Bestor, Arthur Jr, “Albert Brisbane—Propagandist for Socialism in the 1840's,” New York History 28 (04 1947): 148.Google Scholar

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8. Parke Godwin to Charles A. Dana, 14 February[1845], Bryant-Godwin Collection, New York Public Library; George Ripley to ?, [1843], quoted in Frothingham, Octavius Brooks, George Ripley (Boston, 1883), pp. 148–149.Google Scholar

9. They were called spiritualists by James Kay, Jr., in a letter to John Sullivan Dwight, 2 March 1846, Dwight Papers, Boston Public Library.

10. Block, New Church.

11. [Emerson, Ralph Waldo and Brisbane, Albert], “Fourierism and the Socialists,” The Dial 3 (07 1842): 86;Google Scholar Channing, William H., The Present 1 (15 12 1843): 210.Google Scholar For a sampling of Associationist articles, see Noyes, pp. 541–550.

12. Channing, William H., “Fourier and Swedenborg,” The Present 1 (1 04 1844): 431;Google Scholar Godwin, Parke, A Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier (New York, 1844), p. 106.Google Scholar

13. James, Henry, Reply to New Jerusalem Magazine, The Harbinger 6 (18 12 1847): 54–55.Google Scholar For the official New Church response, see Block, pp. 154–158.

14. Noyes, p. 550.

15. [Hempel, Charles J.], The True Organization of the New Church (New York, 1848).Google Scholar

16. This interpretation, first suggested by Swift, Lindsay, Brook Farm (New York, 1900), p. 135,Google Scholar has been developed by Crowe, Charles R., “‘This Unnatural Union of Phalansteries and Transcendentalists,’” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (10-12 1959): 495–502;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Thomas, John L., “Romantic Reform in America, 1815–1865,” American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965): 656–681.Google Scholar

17. [Channing, William H.], “Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa Oration,” Boston Quarterly Review 1 (01 1838): 115;Google Scholar Greeley, Horace, Hints Toward Reforms (New York, 1850), pp. 386–387;Google Scholar Ripley to Emerson, 9 November 1840, quoted in Frothingham, Ripley, p. 310.

18. See Leroux, Pierre, De l'Humanité (Paris, 1840);Google Scholar and Brownson, , “Leroux on Humanity,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (07 1842): 257–322.Google Scholar For explicit acknowledgment of Leroux'sinfluence, see W. H. Channing to Theodore Parker, 9 June 1842, reprinted in Frothingham, Octavius Brooks, Memoir of William Henry Channing (Boston, 1886), p. 174;Google Scholar and Godwin, , Popular View, p. 27n.Google Scholar

19. Brownson, on the other hand, eventually came to envision the Catholic church as “the realm of true solidarity” through which all humans shared divine grace. See Caponigri, A. Robert, “European Influences on the Thought of Orestes Brownson: Pierre Leroux and Vincenzo Gioberti,” in No Divided Allegiance: Essays in Brownson's Thought, ed. Leonard, Gilhooley (New York, 1980), p. 108.Google Scholar Brownson's route through Leroux's philosophy toward Catholicism can be traced in his Boston Quarterly Review articles of 1842, his Democratic Review articles of 1842–1843, and in Joseph, Gower and Richard, Leliaert, eds., The Brownson-Hecker Correspondence (Notre Dame, 1979), pp. 76–78, 134–135.Google Scholar

20. Dwight, John, “The Idea of a Divine Social Order,” The Harbinger 6 (1 04 1848): 170.Google Scholar

21. Codman, J. T., Brook Farm, Historic and Personal Memoirs (Boston, 1894), p. 227.Google Scholar Ripley, was quoted in “Celebration of Fourier's Birthday at Brook Farm,” The Phalanx 1 (3 05 1845): 336.Google Scholar

22. Godwin, Parke, “A Letter to Joseph Mazzini on the Doctrines of Fourier,” The Harbinger 4 (15 05 1847): 364;Google Scholar “Letter from Mr. Brisbane …,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 (October 1841): 501.Google Scholar

23. Among a large and growing number of studies, see especially the anthology edited by Gaustad, Edwin, The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America(New York, 1974);Google Scholar and the early survey by Smith, David E., “Millenarian Scholarship in America,” American Quarterly 17 (Summer 1965): 163–186.Google Scholar

24. Dana, Charles, A Lecture on Association, in its Connection with Religion (Boston, 1844), especially pp. 30, 33.Google Scholar

25. Dwight, John, “Association the Body of Christianity,” The Harbinger 2 (21 02 1846): 175–176.Google Scholar

26. The Phalanx 1 (20 04 1844): 104, 113.Google Scholar

27. Crowe, Charles, “Christian Socialism and the First Church of Humanity,” Church History 35 (03 1966): 95–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Dwight, Marianne, Letters from Brook Farm, 1844–1847, ed. Reed, Amy L. (Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 1928), p. 112;Google Scholar and “Celebration of Fourier's Birthday at Brook Farm,” pp. 336–337.

28. Crowe, , “Christian Socialism,” pp. 98–103.Google Scholar

29. An earlier version of the section that follows appeared in Guarneri, Carl J., “Importing Fourierism to America,” Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (10–12 1982): 586–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Address before the Philadelphia Sunday School Union, quoted in Griffin, Clifford S., “Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 1815–1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (1957): 439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also M'Laren, Donald, Boa Constrictor, Or Fourier Association Self-Exposed as to its Principles and Aims (Rochester, N.Y., 1844), p. 24.Google Scholar For a liberal Protestant critique, see Clarke, James Freeman, “Fourierism,” Christian Examiner [Unitarian] 37 (07 1844): 76–78.Google Scholar

31. M., R. H., “The Influence of Evil,” The Harbinger 6 (18 03 1848): 154.Google Scholar See also [Brownson, Orestes], “Church Unity and Social Amelioration,” Brownson's Quarterly Review 1 (07 1844): 314–316.Google Scholar

32. Brisbane, Albert, Social Destiny of Man; or, Association and Reorganization of Industry (Philadelphia, 1840), p. 243;Google Scholar idem, “The Religious Movement in Germany,” The Harbinger 2 (28 February 1846): 191.

33. Godwin, , Popular View, p. 17.Google Scholar

34. Godwin, Parke, “The Christian Examiner on the Doctrine of Fourier,” The Phalanx 1 (24 08 1844): 251–252;Google Scholar Dwight, John, “The American Review's Account of the Religious Union of Associationists,” The Harbinger 5 (19 06 1847): 30;Google Scholar idem, Reply to The Congregationalist, Daily Chronotype [Boston], 28 December 1849, p. 1.

35. Amringe, Van, Nature and Revelation, p. 7;Google Scholar Dana, Charles, Reply to Universalist Quarterly, The Phalanx 1 (3 05 1845): 328–329.Google Scholar

36. On religion in the phalanxes,' see Noyes, pp. 260, 280–281, 291, 331, 363, 368, 393, 414–416, 439, 473. Dana, , Lecture, pp. 40–41,Google Scholar gives a typical Associationist view of future religious institutions.

37. Godwin, , “Letter to Mazzini,” p. 366;Google Scholar “Social Reform,” The Harbinger 2 (28 03 1846): 250–255;Google Scholar Godwin, Parke, “The Univercoelum,” The Harbinger 6 (26 02 1848): 133.Google Scholar

38. Godwin, Parke, “The Influence of Evil,” The Harbinger 6 (18 03 1848): 155.Google Scholar

39. Wilkinson to Henry James Sr., August 1846, quoted in Wilkinson, Clement John, James John Garth Wilkinson; A Memoir of His Life, With a Selection from his Letters (London, 1911), p. 55.Google Scholar

40. For Ripley's warning, see note 8 above. Noyes, pp. 646–654, gloomily reviews the causes of the phalanx failures.