What do you think?
Rate this book
Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World
This is the first full-scale intellectual biography of the French utopian socialist thinker, Charles Fourier (1772-1837), one of the great social critics of the nineteenth century. It is certain to become an invaluable resource for all students of modern European intellectual history.
- GenresPhilosophyHistory
601 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
2 people are currently reading
139 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 5, 2020
However you look at it, Charles Fourier was a very interesting case. Fourier was what you could describe as a Utopian visionary, and is generally sandwiched in with Henri Saint-Simon and Robert Owen (his contemporaries) as one of the architects of Utopian Socialism.
But Fourier's vision was quite different from the other two. He wrote letters to both Owen and the followers of Saint-Simon (whom had passed away by that time, in 1825, and whose program was carried on by his disciples), urging them to adopt his own program as the one true path, so to speak. Of course he was ignored, to his own bitter conclusion; at least at first. Fourier's view did not involve the leveling of the social hierarchy, like the others, and instead posited a harmony between the classes (both literally and figuratively), which was realized through fulfillment of the passions (whose repression, and consequences, he seems to have anticipated by nearly a century over Freud).
Born in 1772, Fourier came of age in the French Revolution, in which he fought on both sides (for the royalists in the doomed defense of Lyon, and later for the revolutionaries in a doomed defense against the Austrians). Fourier's battlefield's-eye view of the revolution clearly colored his later views, and sharpened his opinion of the nature of revolutions overall. To one Romantic enquirer in 1832 he went so far as to explode, "So you're another one of those frightful Jacobins whom no violence can stop. . . All you dream of doing is turning society upside down and making blood flow . . .".
Fourier wasn't necessarily an anticapitalist, but held the merchant class in contempt, whom as middlemen he saw as unable to profit without lying and cheating their customers. One of his earliest attempts at realizing a more perfect society involved a "method of collecting guarantees," which would compel merchants to honesty by "devising a series of institutional schemes that would accomplish this task. Among these schemes was a proposal for the organization of the whole corps of merchants in a group of insurance companies that would be 'collectively responsible for the goods society confides to them for exchange and distribution.'" Needless to say, aside from any future impact, later on his utopia did not have any merchants.
He was also for the strict alleviation of poverty, which was "civilization's most obvious and scandalous flaw," and "one had only to open one's eyes, he wrote, to see that civilization was an 'absurd' order in which the majority of working people were hungry and ill housed and miserably clothed," which fit in well with his Utopian desire to end all human suffering. There were also some surprisingly 'modern' sides to Fourier's positions; he was an advocate for free love, for instance. He also was a staunch (proto) feminist, who was "convinced that 'social progress and changes of period are brought about by virtue of the progress of women toward liberty,'" which seems to have been said in many different ways throughout his writing.
And as one strange aside, it could be said Fourier 'predicted global warming,' stating "once most of the earth was brought under cultivation, climactic changes would take place and temperatures at the poles would rise so much as to cause the melting of the polar ice [beyond the fact the Fourier wrote these thoughts in 1821, note Beecher published this work in 1986, when what we know now was at best far less certain]. However, to Fourier this 'global warming' was beneficial; the whole year would have the atmosphere of summer, one could say, throughout the globe. You could even, for instance, "grow lemons" and "oranges" on the northern coasts of "Siberia".
So in other words, Fourier was, on top of being a true visionary, quite a crank. The new Siberian bounty was to be so abundant that the Arctic Sea would turn to "Lemonade." The repression of the passions led to the iniquities between rich and poor: "such was the iniquity of the civilized order that individuals with 'brilliant' appetites and strong stomachs lived on the brink of starvation and others with magnificent ears lacked the money to buy tickets to the opera." This is not to mention the heavenly bodies whom Fourier, believing he followed Newton, evidently thought were living creatures.
Overall, I must say, this is an interesting and intense study of a truly unique human being, written by someone who was fanatic enough to spend more than 20 years writing it. It is quite good, as in magical. Who could ever believe a person could push this line through a lifetime of failure unto his death, always enthusing that his truth alone could convince the world and bring on the evolution of humankind?
Evidently many, it is said here; until the year 1848, when revolution was crushed across all of Europe (except in Hungary, which wasn't mentioned, where the revolution ended in the compromise that created the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as detailed in 1848: Year of Revolution), and the competing movements of the quasi-illuminated Utopian Socialists were no more.
But Fourier's vision was quite different from the other two. He wrote letters to both Owen and the followers of Saint-Simon (whom had passed away by that time, in 1825, and whose program was carried on by his disciples), urging them to adopt his own program as the one true path, so to speak. Of course he was ignored, to his own bitter conclusion; at least at first. Fourier's view did not involve the leveling of the social hierarchy, like the others, and instead posited a harmony between the classes (both literally and figuratively), which was realized through fulfillment of the passions (whose repression, and consequences, he seems to have anticipated by nearly a century over Freud).
Born in 1772, Fourier came of age in the French Revolution, in which he fought on both sides (for the royalists in the doomed defense of Lyon, and later for the revolutionaries in a doomed defense against the Austrians). Fourier's battlefield's-eye view of the revolution clearly colored his later views, and sharpened his opinion of the nature of revolutions overall. To one Romantic enquirer in 1832 he went so far as to explode, "So you're another one of those frightful Jacobins whom no violence can stop. . . All you dream of doing is turning society upside down and making blood flow . . .".
Fourier wasn't necessarily an anticapitalist, but held the merchant class in contempt, whom as middlemen he saw as unable to profit without lying and cheating their customers. One of his earliest attempts at realizing a more perfect society involved a "method of collecting guarantees," which would compel merchants to honesty by "devising a series of institutional schemes that would accomplish this task. Among these schemes was a proposal for the organization of the whole corps of merchants in a group of insurance companies that would be 'collectively responsible for the goods society confides to them for exchange and distribution.'" Needless to say, aside from any future impact, later on his utopia did not have any merchants.
He was also for the strict alleviation of poverty, which was "civilization's most obvious and scandalous flaw," and "one had only to open one's eyes, he wrote, to see that civilization was an 'absurd' order in which the majority of working people were hungry and ill housed and miserably clothed," which fit in well with his Utopian desire to end all human suffering. There were also some surprisingly 'modern' sides to Fourier's positions; he was an advocate for free love, for instance. He also was a staunch (proto) feminist, who was "convinced that 'social progress and changes of period are brought about by virtue of the progress of women toward liberty,'" which seems to have been said in many different ways throughout his writing.
And as one strange aside, it could be said Fourier 'predicted global warming,' stating "once most of the earth was brought under cultivation, climactic changes would take place and temperatures at the poles would rise so much as to cause the melting of the polar ice [beyond the fact the Fourier wrote these thoughts in 1821, note Beecher published this work in 1986, when what we know now was at best far less certain]. However, to Fourier this 'global warming' was beneficial; the whole year would have the atmosphere of summer, one could say, throughout the globe. You could even, for instance, "grow lemons" and "oranges" on the northern coasts of "Siberia".
So in other words, Fourier was, on top of being a true visionary, quite a crank. The new Siberian bounty was to be so abundant that the Arctic Sea would turn to "Lemonade." The repression of the passions led to the iniquities between rich and poor: "such was the iniquity of the civilized order that individuals with 'brilliant' appetites and strong stomachs lived on the brink of starvation and others with magnificent ears lacked the money to buy tickets to the opera." This is not to mention the heavenly bodies whom Fourier, believing he followed Newton, evidently thought were living creatures.
Overall, I must say, this is an interesting and intense study of a truly unique human being, written by someone who was fanatic enough to spend more than 20 years writing it. It is quite good, as in magical. Who could ever believe a person could push this line through a lifetime of failure unto his death, always enthusing that his truth alone could convince the world and bring on the evolution of humankind?
Evidently many, it is said here; until the year 1848, when revolution was crushed across all of Europe (except in Hungary, which wasn't mentioned, where the revolution ended in the compromise that created the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as detailed in 1848: Year of Revolution), and the competing movements of the quasi-illuminated Utopian Socialists were no more.
May 22, 2009
I want my archibras and I want it now!
September 8, 2019
I came across a copy of this book while visiting Rainy Retreat Books in Juneau, Alaska. I knew about Fourier only through Dostoevsky; Fourier was one of the writers discussed in the Petrashevsky Circle, and he is mentioned numerous times in Demons. I suppose I was curious to know: what was it about this guy that was so compelling that it was worth forming an illegal underground political discussion circle (and ultimately, getting sent to hard labor in Siberia) to read him?
"Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World" is strictly a biography of Fourier, and does not discuss Fourier's disciples or the attempts at practical application of his system except insofar as they occurred during his lifetime, and with his direct involvement. The book consists of three parts. The first part follows Fourier's life up to the completion of his major theoretical treatise, the Traité de l'association domestique-agricole. The second part provides an overview of all aspects of Fourier's system, from his theory of the passions to his febrile cosmogony. The third part covers the remainder of his life, when he moves to Paris and attempts to spread awareness of his doctrine and fund an experimental implementation of his system. This part of the book stops the very minute Fourier is found dead by his cleaning lady, and the brief epilogue just barely outlines the remainder of the history of Fourierism. (There is a kind of sequel biography of Fourier's most important disciple, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism, written by the same author.)
Fourier was clearly a crackpot, and he meets many of the standard criteria used to score, say, mathematical cranks: he stated that his ideas were of extraordinary financial value, he claimed that the entire philosophical establishment was conspiring to suppress his system, he made incredibly extensive use of neologisms, he had at best superficial engagement with the existing literature on any and all topics, he compared himself to Isaac Newton and saw his own work as a kind of continuation of Newton's, he wouldn't listen to objections, corrections, or even advice from anyone, and he nursed a lifelong paranoiac obsession with plagiarism, fearing his ideas would be stolen by others.
This is all textbook crankery (cf. "The PrimeNumbers' Crackpot index"), and Beecher has to walk a fine line as a result: he has to have enough sympathy and admiration for his subject to be able to sustain the project of exhaustively researching and documenting his life (which I believe took the better part of two decades), but he cannot interpret Fourier's work too charitably on pain of discrediting his own judgement. Overall, Beecher does an excellent job: while granting that his subject was most likely not entirely sane (p. 12), he plausibly observes that many of Fourier's crazier claims--the seas of lemonade, the antilions, the archibras, the Northern Crown, the sexual minimums--often contain elements of either satire or poetry, and that to take all of his claims literally is to miss the point. I don't find this perspective completely persuasive, but I do think he has a point.
Fourier was in many ways a standard-issue radical progressive, exhibiting what Thomas Sowell calls "the unconstrained vision of man." As Beecher himself admits, Fourier lacked any tragic dimension in his vision (p. 499). He thought that there was no limit to the potential satisfaction of human desires here on Earth, that there was no inherent human need for conflict, and that defective institutions are the root cause of earthly suffering. Although it is true that Fourier believed that human nature was fixed, and (as a result of witnessing the French Revolution) had a deep distrust of any attempt to tamper with human nature, he didn't see human nature as placing any fundamental limitations on what reform could accomplish. He simply assumed from the very beginning that properly designed institutions could bring all human passions into harmony with each other. His is clearly a Utopian project, one which ultimately views society in terms of "problems" and "solutions" rather than in terms of trade-offs and forced choices between unappealing alternatives.
Similarly, while Fourier's multi-decade project to implement a scaled-down prototype/test run of his phalanstery might seem like a reflection of I-could-be-wrong intellectual humility, I don't believe for a second that this was intended as anything other than a marketing technique: Fourier was sure that if he could scare up enough venture capital for a small-scale trial run, the immediate successes (quadrupling of the national output of France, conversion of most Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, and apostates to Christianity, and so forth) of this proof-of-concept would have investors beating down his door, begging them to take his money to launch full-scale phalansteries all over Europe. No one seriously concerned with the human tendency towards intellectual error and the need for laborious verification of ideas would have been willing to bet millions of francs implementing such an arbitrary yet elaborately excogitated theory of human nature.
The third part of this book is unexpectedly dull. Fourier somehow manages to attract a number of followers (several of them quite talented) in the wake of the schism within the Saint-Simonean religion, and the nascent movement embarks on two major projects: a journal to serve as a propaganda organ of the movement, and a scaled-down phalanstery near Paris. These projects seem promising, but Fourier runs them into the ground with his incompetence. The story of the journal is particularly maddening: in an instance of "Rothbard's Law," Fourier tried to specialize in what he sucked at the most, which was popularizing his system and explaining it to a general audience. He thought he was a brilliant polemicist and journalist, but that was not at all the case, and his followers begged him to return to his theoretical work (which he never did). As for the phalanstery, it quickly went the way of all socialist experiments by running out of money. Fourier claimed that much of the money was incompetently squandered by the project's architect (the first "wrecker?"). Eventually, Fourier's followers wandered off, either to other movements or to pursue Fourierism independently. Fourier's direct involvement with his own movement did not last longer than two years.
There are a few annoyances in this book. It is not particularly kind to non-Francophones, as translations for French names (of books, periodicals, institutions, and so forth) are usually not given. There is also the economic naivete, virtually universal among historians, which consists of things like price fluctuations being airily blamed on "speculators," and the insinuation that adopting liberal theories of free trade caused a decline in the standard of living. A correct understanding of economics would have served to discredit a number of Fourier's supposed "insights" in this area.
This book is worth reading if you want to deeply explore a particular facet of oddball 19th century socialism, or you want some deep background on the influences of Dostoevsky and other 19th century Russian intellectuals. Those more generally interested in the intellectual history of socialism and communism might be better served by Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown.
"Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World" is strictly a biography of Fourier, and does not discuss Fourier's disciples or the attempts at practical application of his system except insofar as they occurred during his lifetime, and with his direct involvement. The book consists of three parts. The first part follows Fourier's life up to the completion of his major theoretical treatise, the Traité de l'association domestique-agricole. The second part provides an overview of all aspects of Fourier's system, from his theory of the passions to his febrile cosmogony. The third part covers the remainder of his life, when he moves to Paris and attempts to spread awareness of his doctrine and fund an experimental implementation of his system. This part of the book stops the very minute Fourier is found dead by his cleaning lady, and the brief epilogue just barely outlines the remainder of the history of Fourierism. (There is a kind of sequel biography of Fourier's most important disciple, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism, written by the same author.)
Fourier was clearly a crackpot, and he meets many of the standard criteria used to score, say, mathematical cranks: he stated that his ideas were of extraordinary financial value, he claimed that the entire philosophical establishment was conspiring to suppress his system, he made incredibly extensive use of neologisms, he had at best superficial engagement with the existing literature on any and all topics, he compared himself to Isaac Newton and saw his own work as a kind of continuation of Newton's, he wouldn't listen to objections, corrections, or even advice from anyone, and he nursed a lifelong paranoiac obsession with plagiarism, fearing his ideas would be stolen by others.
This is all textbook crankery (cf. "The PrimeNumbers' Crackpot index"), and Beecher has to walk a fine line as a result: he has to have enough sympathy and admiration for his subject to be able to sustain the project of exhaustively researching and documenting his life (which I believe took the better part of two decades), but he cannot interpret Fourier's work too charitably on pain of discrediting his own judgement. Overall, Beecher does an excellent job: while granting that his subject was most likely not entirely sane (p. 12), he plausibly observes that many of Fourier's crazier claims--the seas of lemonade, the antilions, the archibras, the Northern Crown, the sexual minimums--often contain elements of either satire or poetry, and that to take all of his claims literally is to miss the point. I don't find this perspective completely persuasive, but I do think he has a point.
Fourier was in many ways a standard-issue radical progressive, exhibiting what Thomas Sowell calls "the unconstrained vision of man." As Beecher himself admits, Fourier lacked any tragic dimension in his vision (p. 499). He thought that there was no limit to the potential satisfaction of human desires here on Earth, that there was no inherent human need for conflict, and that defective institutions are the root cause of earthly suffering. Although it is true that Fourier believed that human nature was fixed, and (as a result of witnessing the French Revolution) had a deep distrust of any attempt to tamper with human nature, he didn't see human nature as placing any fundamental limitations on what reform could accomplish. He simply assumed from the very beginning that properly designed institutions could bring all human passions into harmony with each other. His is clearly a Utopian project, one which ultimately views society in terms of "problems" and "solutions" rather than in terms of trade-offs and forced choices between unappealing alternatives.
Similarly, while Fourier's multi-decade project to implement a scaled-down prototype/test run of his phalanstery might seem like a reflection of I-could-be-wrong intellectual humility, I don't believe for a second that this was intended as anything other than a marketing technique: Fourier was sure that if he could scare up enough venture capital for a small-scale trial run, the immediate successes (quadrupling of the national output of France, conversion of most Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, and apostates to Christianity, and so forth) of this proof-of-concept would have investors beating down his door, begging them to take his money to launch full-scale phalansteries all over Europe. No one seriously concerned with the human tendency towards intellectual error and the need for laborious verification of ideas would have been willing to bet millions of francs implementing such an arbitrary yet elaborately excogitated theory of human nature.
The third part of this book is unexpectedly dull. Fourier somehow manages to attract a number of followers (several of them quite talented) in the wake of the schism within the Saint-Simonean religion, and the nascent movement embarks on two major projects: a journal to serve as a propaganda organ of the movement, and a scaled-down phalanstery near Paris. These projects seem promising, but Fourier runs them into the ground with his incompetence. The story of the journal is particularly maddening: in an instance of "Rothbard's Law," Fourier tried to specialize in what he sucked at the most, which was popularizing his system and explaining it to a general audience. He thought he was a brilliant polemicist and journalist, but that was not at all the case, and his followers begged him to return to his theoretical work (which he never did). As for the phalanstery, it quickly went the way of all socialist experiments by running out of money. Fourier claimed that much of the money was incompetently squandered by the project's architect (the first "wrecker?"). Eventually, Fourier's followers wandered off, either to other movements or to pursue Fourierism independently. Fourier's direct involvement with his own movement did not last longer than two years.
There are a few annoyances in this book. It is not particularly kind to non-Francophones, as translations for French names (of books, periodicals, institutions, and so forth) are usually not given. There is also the economic naivete, virtually universal among historians, which consists of things like price fluctuations being airily blamed on "speculators," and the insinuation that adopting liberal theories of free trade caused a decline in the standard of living. A correct understanding of economics would have served to discredit a number of Fourier's supposed "insights" in this area.
This book is worth reading if you want to deeply explore a particular facet of oddball 19th century socialism, or you want some deep background on the influences of Dostoevsky and other 19th century Russian intellectuals. Those more generally interested in the intellectual history of socialism and communism might be better served by Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown.
February 9, 2022
One of the best biographies I’ve read in the last while: balanced, thoughtful, and the successful product of an extended effort to build a much fuller picture of Fourier’s life from the extremely uneven evidence available. Manages to be neither a hagiography nor a comedy-of-errors about an absurd crackpot, and to convey a sense of Fourier’s distinctiveness & humanity. Views his work as a whole, rather than splitting it into practical recommendations for utopian settlements on the one hand and irrelevant fantasies of planets having sex, humans with tails, & seas of lemonade on the other. I would have liked Beecher to look into his theory of the “third sex,” and his views of colonialism, which seem to have been at times negative but mostly positive and simply confused. This is not explicitly a marxist view of Fourier, but has much to offer marxists and is a sight better than boilerplate repetitions of the views of utopian socialism put forward by Engels and Lenin.
December 22, 2015
What an excellent study of Charles Fourier. The trouble with other studies of Fourier is that they often adopt a rather patronising and condescending tone towards him. Beecher instead gives him due respect without becoming hagiographic, and adds a detailed context to Fourier's intervention that is a pleasure to read in its own right. Full of interesting and relevant facts, but also strong on the presentation of the social theory, Beecher's book is a must read for anyone seeking to really make sense of this unique philosopher, satirist, feminist and experimentalist.
Want to read
May 25, 2008Tina bought me this book because of my interest in Charles Fourier from Charles Simic's poem "Cabbage". I only made it to page 54, although I still think about how the floorboards of young Charles' 2nd-floor room collapsed after he'd filled it with soil and was growing a garden there.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews