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Fourierism in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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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

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.