Fourierism

Fourierism (/ˈfʊəriərɪzəm/) is the systematic set of economic, political, and social beliefs first espoused by French intellectual Charles Fourier (1772–1837). It is based on a belief in the inevitability of communal associations of people who work and live together as part of the human future. Fourier's supporters called his doctrines associationism. Political contemporaries and subsequent scholarship have identified Fourier's set of ideas as a form of utopian socialism.

Never tested in practice at any scale in Fourier's lifetime, Fourierism enjoyed a brief boom in the United States during the mid-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.^{[citation needed]} The system was briefly revived in the mid-1850s by Victor Considerant (1808–1893), a French disciple of Fourier's who unsuccessfully attempted to relaunch the model in Texas in the 1850s.

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. Fourier saw himself as a figure of world-historical importance akin to Isaac Newton for having identified the fundamental force driving social development, which he called "passional attraction" (attraction passionelle).

Fourier believed that the structure of the world—its economic, political, and social system—inhibited humanity from the pursuit of its God-given individual passions, thereby preventing it from achieving universal harmony. 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 manmade and not God-given.

Through conscious understanding of this process, which Fourier called "social science", new economic and social formations called "associations" could be created, structured so as to allow people to follow their passions and thereby advance toward universal harmony.

Fourier listed 12 basic passions of humanity grouped around three branches of a "passional tree": "luxurious passions" of the five senses; "affective passions" of love, friendship, and parenthood; and "distributive passions", such as the need for political intrigue, the need for variety, and the pure enthusiasm of spiritual pursuits. The sum of all these passions Fourier called "unityism", characterized as a universal feeling of benevolence and fraternity. Although fettered and mutated by Civilization, the free development of these passions would be allowed in the bright future world, Fourier believed.

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. 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. Of far greater concern to Fourier and his disciples was the current 5th form of society, Modern Society, as well as three emerging forms believed to be just around the corner: 6 (Guarantism), 7 (Simple Association), and 8 (Compound Association).

"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. With a sneer, Fourier called contemporary society "Civilization", deeming it the cause of fraud, waste, and human unhappiness. The "isolated family" he deemed inefficient, the wage system demoralizing and exploitative, and organized religion corrupt. 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 saw as wholly unacceptable.