FOURIER, FRANÇOIS-CHARLES. — French economist with socialist leanings, the kind of socialism that Marx characterized as “utopian.” Born in Besançon on 7 April 1772, died in Paris on 10 October 1837. In his youth he traveled extensively, taking an interest in the problems agitating his time. Like the Saint-Simonians, he deemed the principle of natural equality insufficient to resolve the conflicts between masters and workers, and, with an optimism that underpins the systems of Owen and Cabet and extends, through Smith, Malthus, and Bentham, back to Rousseau, he agreed with Saint-Simon in recognizing universal harmony as the new science. Later he distanced himself from Saint-Simon and Owen, whom he attacked vigorously in 1837.
He was convinced that all the evils of society stem from individualism, which nullifies the spontaneous tendency toward communal living; though opposed to libertarian formalism and in favor of joint-stock concentration and the *particular*, he opposed egalitarian leveling and was favorably disposed toward an agreement between capital and labor. On a religious plane he remained attached to eighteenth-century pantheism and theism, though not, given his love of organic society, decisively opposed to Catholicism.
As early as 1808, in his *Théorie des quatre mouvements*, he advocated the usefulness of cooperation and industrial unions; his doctrine, however, was fully presented in 1829, when he began publishing *Le nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire*. His plan called for the replacement of the state by numerous producer communities, called “phalanxes,” each consisting of about 1,600 people. Each phalanx was to have a “phalanstery,” that is, a communal house with a suitable plot of cultivated land. The principal work was to be agricultural, though provision was made for groups of workers to engage in other trades. Every family, with bizarre customs involving polygamy and polyandry, had its own dwelling within the phalanstery, and within the phalanstery itself personal property was recognized. The remuneration of social capital was also permitted, through the conferral of real and financial assets by individual members, represented by shares guaranteed by a mortgage on the general property of the society. These ideas, however, were founded on a naturalistic partnership that swept away the notions of God, creation, the soul, moral law, and the duty to observe II. The work was placed on the Index (decree of 29 January 1835).
Membership in the phalanstery did not require being a shareholder. In the newspaper *Le Phalanstère ou la réforme industrielle*, founded in 1832 and reappearing in 1836 under the name *Phalange*, which in 1843 became the daily *La dénonciation pacifique*, Fourier disseminated and refined his thought. Practical success did not confirm these ideas. The only phalanstery established in France was that created in 1832 by Baudet-Dulary near the forest of Rambouillet. A community settled there that soon fell into despair: the capital was inadequate, but above all, from the very beginning, that harmony which Fourier had placed at the foundation of his system and which for him was an instinct of nature was lacking. Albert Brisbane (1809–90) carried Fourierism (or phalansterianism) to America, and experiments similar to the Parisian one were undertaken between 1840 and 1850; about forty phalansteries arose, the most important being that of some intellectuals at Brook Farm, but these too disappeared rapidly.
The province extends over 87,600 sq. km. with a population of 100,000, of whom 95,000 are Catholic; it is divided into 5 parishes with 11 regular priests, 6 male and 6 female religious communities (1949).