Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T12:24:21.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Fourierism in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The socialism of Charles Fourier (1772–1837) though primarily a French movement succeeded in exerting a not insignificant influence in early nineteenth century Britain. At first it did little more than modify the views of native pioneer socialists who imported a sprinkling of Fourierist ideas into their own writings – usually greatly modified and without acknowledgement of their origin. Gradually, however, Fourierism made more wholehearted converts and by the eighteen forties a group of enthusiastic disciples in London had succeeded in creating an embryonic movement, with mass meetings and a weekly journal. Though the movement died out after about a decade of active propaganda and even if it never achieved anything like the success it obtained in the United States (where no less than twenty-seven Fourierist communities were attempted), English Fourierism produced a fairly extensive literature and undoubtedly exerted an important influence on the general pattern of English socialist thought, having in this respect a probably more significant career than the more spectacular movement of the Saint Simonians.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1956

References

Page 398 note 1 Bestor, Arthur Eugene, Backwoods Utopias, (1950) pp. 238250.Google Scholar

Page 398 note 2 Quack, H. P. G., De Socialisten, (18991904) Vol. II, p. 250Google Scholar; Vol. III, p. 143; Muiron, Just, Transactions Sociales, p. 325.Google Scholar

Page 399 note 1 Bourgin, Hubert, Fourier, (1905) pp. 102, 393n.Google Scholar

Page 399 note 2 Ibid, p. 102n.

Page 399 note 3 Pankhurst, Richard K. P., Wheeler, Anna, A Pioneer Socialist, Feminist and Co-operator, Political Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 2, p. 140.Google Scholar

Page 399 note 4 Fourier, Charles, Political Economy made easy, 1828, p. 7.Google Scholar

Page 399 note 5 Hubert Bourgin, op. cit. p. 103.

Page 399 note 6 Fourier, Charles, Pieges and Charlatanisme des deux Sectes Saint Simon et Owen, (1831).Google Scholar

Page 399 note 7 Hubert Bourgin, op. cit. pp. 180–3.

Page 400 note 1 Terrence, , A Short introduction to the Works of Charles Fourier, (1848) p. 26.Google Scholar

Page 400 note 2 The New Moral World, 1839, Vol. VI, pp. 609612, 834835, 889890Google Scholar, et passim.

Page 400 note 3 The New Moral World, 1840, Vol. VIII, pp. 150151.Google Scholar

Page 401 note 1 The Shepherd, 1837, Vol. II, p. 118.Google Scholar

Page 401 note 2 The New Moral World, 1840, Vol. VII, pp. 1314Google Scholar et seq. The address bears the following signatures: F. Villegardelle, Ad. Radiguel, Jules Gay, C. Couturier, Muirson, A. Girand, Dogliani, Dufai, Christopher Frederic Guil, Charles de Ribeyrolle, J. Moussons, L. Reymoneng, Luise Vayron, Briges, C. de Lasteyrie, Henry Price, J. Borthwick Gilchrist, LL. D., R. H. Black, LL. D., Genilles, Flora Tristan, E. J. Kirwan, Lasservolle, J. Jeane, Ricourt.

Page 402 note 1 The New Moral World, 1840, Vol. VIII, p. 43.Google Scholar

Page 402 note 2 The New Moral World, 1840, Vol. VII, pp. 12591260.Google Scholar

Page 402 note 3 Hennell, Mary, An Outline of the Various Systems and Communities which have been Founded on the Principle of Cooperation, (1844) p. 187.Google Scholar

Page 403 note 1 The New Moral World, 1840, Vol. VIII, p. 69.Google Scholar

Page 403 note 2 Ibid. p. 341.

Page 403 note 3 Ibid. p. 148–9.

Page 403 note 4 Ibid. p. 342.

Page 404 note 1 Ibid. Vol. VIII, pp. 21, 61, 74–5, 77, 327–8, 355–6, 375.

Page 404 note 2 The Morning Star or Phalansterian Gazette, 21 October, 1840, p. 2.Google Scholar

Page 405 note 1 Prospectus of the London Phalanx, 1841.Google Scholar

Page 406 note 1 Smith, W. Anderson, Shepherd' Smith, the Universalist (1892), pp. 212213.Google Scholar

Page 406 note 2 The London Phalanx, p. 665.

Page 406 note 3 W. Anderson Smith, op. cit. p. 215.

Page 407 note 1 The London Phalanx, September 11, 1841; February 12, 1842; February 19, 1842; August, 1842.

Page 407 note 2 Hugo, Minor, Hints and Reflections for Railway Travellers, (1843), Vol. I, pp. 9697.Google Scholar

Page 407 note 3 The New Age, Concordium Gazette, and Temperance Advocate, September 1, 1843, p. 93.

Page 408 note 1 In 1850 we find Luke Hansard running a Committee of Christian Regenerators which held regular meetings in the Theatre of the Western Institution, Leicester Square, which were attended by Owen, Preston and other famous personalities. The motto of Hansard's society was “Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you; love your neighbour as yourself.” The Family Herald, Vol. VIII, No. 365, p. 13.

Page 408 note 2 The New Age, Concordium Gazette and Temperance Advocate, September 1, 1843, p. 93.

Page 408 note 3 The New Moral World, (1840) p. 77.Google Scholar

Page 409 note 1 Brisbane, Redelia, Albert Brisbane, a mental Biography, (1893) pp. 171172.Google Scholar

Page 409 note 2 Ibid. pp. 171–2.

Page 409 note 3 Ibid. pp. 173, 187, 195.

Page 410 note 1 Ibid. p. 177.

Page 410 note 2 Brisbane, Albert, Social Destiny of Man, (1840) pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar

Page 410 note 3 Ibid. p. 103.

Page 410 note 4 Ibid. p. 104.

Page 410 note 5 Ibid. p. 105.

Page 410 note 6 Ibid. p. 105.

Page 410 note 7 Ibid. p. vii.

Page 411 note 1 Ibid. p. 63.

Page 411 note 2 Redelia Brisbane, op. cit. pp. 178–9.

Page 412 note 1 Ibid. p. 181.

Page 412 note 2 Ibid. p. 182.

Page 412 note 3 Ibid. p. 183.

Page 412 note 4 Gray, Alexander, The Socialist Tradition, (1946).Google Scholar

Page 412 note 5 Redelia Brisbane, op. cit., p. 194; The Spectator, October 2, 1841.

Page 413 note 1 The Times, October 28, 1841.

Page 413 note 2 Wellwood, Samuel, A letter to Feargus O'Connor, 1842.Google Scholar

Page 413 note 3 Poof Man's Guardian, 1843 No. 8, pp. 6061.Google Scholar

Page 414 note 1 Pope-Hennessy, J., Monckton Milnes, (19491951)Google Scholar passim.

Page 414 note 2 Hole, James, Lectures on Social Science and the Organisation of Labour, (1851), p. vii.Google Scholar

Page 414 note 3 Ibid. p. viii.

Page 415 note 1 The People's Journal, 1846, p. 341.Google Scholar

Page 415 note 2 Terrence, op. cit., p. 26.

Page 415 note 3 W. Anderson Smith, op. cit., pp. 223, 413.

Page 415 note 4 In later life Doherty emigrated to America, and, as Smith had urged, abandoned the advocacy of doctrinaire Fourierism, and though still deeply influenced by the master's teachings, devoted himself to wider studies in the social science, as a result of which he wrote a Philosophy of History and Social Evolution (1874), and five volumes of Organic Philosophy (1864–78).

Page 416 note 1 Like Doherty, Young in due course ceased to be a mere disciple of Fourier and published such unorthodox analyses of society and human behaviour, as The Fractional Family (1864), Axial-Polarity or Man's Word-Embodied-Ideas (1887) and Sociology Diagrammatically Systematized (1890), The Westminster Review, which like most readers found them rather bizarre, commented that they were “set forth in a series of strange diagrams accompanied by ‘readings’, in equally strange terminology.”

Page 416 note 2 Morgan, John Minter, Letters to a Clergyman, (1846), pp. 13, 57, 101.Google Scholar

Page 416 note 3 Herald of Co-operation, 1848, p. 152.

Page 416 note 4 The People's Journal, 1846, Vol. I, pp. 26, 150, 167, 195, 213; 1847, Vol. II, pp. 262, 345.

Page 417 note 1 The Morning Chronicle, 31 May, 1848.Google Scholar

Page 418 note 1 The People's Journal, 1846, pp. 345347Google Scholar; Richard, K. P. Pankhurst, The Saint-Simonians, Mill and Carlyle (1956).Google Scholar

Page 418 note 2 von Hayek, F. A., John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, (1951) pp. 136, 149.Google Scholar

Page 418 note 3 Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy, 1883 edition, p. 125.Google Scholar

Page 418 note 4 Ibid. pp. 131–2.

Page 418 note 5 Ibid. pp. 131–2

Page 419 note 1 Ibid. pp. 131–2.

Page 419 note 2 Ibid. p. 132.

Page 419 note 3 The Phalanstery or Attractive Industry and Moral Harmony translated from the French of Madame Gatti de Gamond, (1841) p. 144.Google Scholar

Page 420 note 1 Ibid. p. 279.

Page 420 note 2 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 221.

Page 420 note 3 Hugh Doherty, op. cit., p. 29.

Page 420 note 4 Ibid., p. 75.

Page 420 note 5 The Phalanstery, p. 4.

Page 420 note 6 Redelia Brisbane, op. cit., pp. 252–4.

Page 421 note 1 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., pp. 278–9.

Page 421 note 2 Redelia Brisbane, op. cit., pp. 252–4.

Page 421 note 3 The Phalanstery, p. viii.

Page 422 note 1 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 274.

Page 422 note 2 Ibid. p. 279.

Page 422 note 3 The Phalanstery, p. 152.

Page 422 note 4 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 90.

Page 422 note 5 Ibid. p. 89.

Page 422 note 6 Ibid. p. 125.

Page 422 note 7 Hugo, Minor, Hints and Reflections for Railway Travellers, (1843), Vol. III, p. 243.Google Scholar

Page 422 note 8 Ibid. Vol. III, p. 133.

Page 423 note 1 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 159–162.

Page 423 note 2 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 5.

Page 423 note 3 Ibid. p. 377.

Page 423 note 4 Minor Hugo, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 153.

Page 423 note 5 Ibid. pp. 163–164.

Page 423 note 6 Ibid. p. 160.

Page 424 note 1 Ibid. Vol. II, p. 166.

Page 424 note 2 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 5.

Page 424 note 3 Ibid. pp. 80–81.

Page 424 note 4 Ibid. p. 299.

Page 424 note 5 Ibid. p. 112.

Page 425 note 1 Ibid. p. 109.

Page 425 note 2 The London Phalanx.

Page 425 note 3 The Phalanstery, p. 86.

Page 425 note 4 Ibid. p. 12.

Page 425 note 5 Ibid. p. 87.

Page 426 note 1 Minor Hugo, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 14–15.

Page 426 note 2 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 69.

Page 426 note 3 The Phalanstery, p. 135.

Page 426 note 4 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., p. 90.

Page 426 note 5 The Phalanstery, pp. 45–6.

Page 427 note 1 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., pp. 536–7.

Page 427 note 2 Ibid. p. 287.

Page 427 note 3 The Phalanstery, pp. 136–7.

Page 428 note 1 The London Phalanx, p. 109.

Page 428 note 2 The Phalanstery, p. 133.

Page 429 note 1 Brisbane, Albert, The Social Destiny of Man, (1846) p. 197n.Google Scholar

Page 429 note 2 The People's Journal, 1846, Vol. I, p. 150.Google Scholar

Page 429 note 3 The Phalanstery, p. 19.

Page 429 note 4 Prospectus of the London Phalanx, p. 12.

Page 429 note 5 Hugh Doherty, op. cit. p. 81.

Page 430 note 1 Godwin, Parke, A Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier, (1844) p. 15.Google Scholar

Page 430 note 2 The Phalanstery.

Page 430 note 3 Hugh Doherty, op. cit., pp. 76–7.

Page 431 note 1 Ibid. p. 97.

Page 431 note 2 Ibid. p. 118.

Page 432 note 1 Ibid. p. 122.

Page 432 note 2 Albert Brisbane, op. cit., pp. 275–6.

Page 432 note 3 Ibid. p. 293.

Page 432 note 4 Ibid. p. 191.

Page 432 note 5 Ibid. p. 130.

Page 432 note 6 The Phalanstery, pp. 110, 112–4.