The Fourierian Imagination: Work and Play in Harmony

Charles Fourier, the French social theorist and reformer was a contemporary of the equally famous early 19th- century critics of the emerging industrial civilization Henri de Saint-Simon and Robert Owen whom history has dubbed, somewhat disparagingly, as Utopian Socialists. All contemplated in their systems the redemption of society and civilization itself through the establishment of communal or cooperative associations leading to the idealization of work, the elimination of inequality, and the abolition of private property. Fourier is certainly the most interesting of the three, not least for his startling ideas on sexual freedom within the Fourierian community or phalanx. The obsessive attention he gave to working out his plan is evident in the voluminous extent of his writings, much of which never appeared in print and some of which--his New Amorous World,for example-- could only be published in a more liberated age and over a century after his death.

His system of association consisted of a world of phalanxes (phalansteries), each of some 400 acres in extent and consisting of, ideally, 1620 persons--the exact number of varied passions, attributes, feelings, tastes (love, friendship, ambition, etc., etc. in endless permutation) that would be found, according to his minute calculations, in a collective of both males and females! Much of what he wrote is bizarre, even to modern sensibilites, some of it sheer nonsense, and much, also, possessed of amazing insight into human wants and needs. Indeed, in his depiction of sexual passion as well as in his condemnation of the repression of instinctual behavior occasioned by conforming to contemporary mores of 19th-century society, he is often seen as the precursor to Freudian notions of sexual liberation.

The following illustrates his ideas in relation to work, marriage and the indulging of the passions.

Work in Fourier’s System of Harmony: For Fourier work was the panacea for man’s ills, but it was not work as conceived and applied in civilization, with its inequalities, unemployment and exploitation, but rather as perfected in the phalanx where "varied work will become a source of varied pleasures." As he wrote:

. . . Until now politics and morality have failed in their attempts to make men love work. Wage-earners and the entire lower class are becoming more and more indolent. . . Men work without enthusiasm, slowly and with loathing.
Aside from slavery, the only means by which society can force men to work is to make them fear starvation and punishment. Yet if God has destined us to work, he should not have to use violent means. How can we believe that He is not able to employ a nobler device, an enticement capable of transforming work into pleasure. . . . If it is to attract the people so forcefully, societary[i.e., cooperative] work must have none of the loathsome aspects that make work in the present state so odious. For societary work to become attractive it must fulfill the seven following conditions

  1. Each worker must be an associate who is compensated by dividend and not by wages.
  2. Each person--man, woman, or child--must be paid in proportion to his contribution in capital, work, and talent.
  3. Work sessions must be varied about eight times a day because a man cannot remain enthusiastic about his Job for more than an hour and a half or two when he is performing an agricultural or manufacturing task.
  4. These tasks must be performed by groups of friends who have gathered together spontaneously and who are stimulated and intrigued by very active rivalries.
  5. Workshops, field, and gardens must offer the worker the enticements of elegance and cleanliness.
  6. The division of labor must be carried to the supreme degree in order to allot suitable tasks to people of each sex and of every age.
  7. The distribution of tasks must assure each man, woman, or child the right to work or the right to take part at any time in any kind of work for which he or she is qualified.
Finally, in this new order the common people must enjoy a guarantee of well- being, a minimum of income sufficient for present and future needs. This guarantee must free them from all anxiety either for their own welfare or for that of their dependants. . . . . .

[Next, Fourier describes the varied workday of a typical member of the phalanx. Lucas is the name of the putative, less-well-off novice Harmonian]

LUCAS'S DAY IN JUNE

Time
  3:30	Rising, preparations
  4:00	Session with a group assigned to the stables
  5:00	Session with a group of gardeners
  7:00	Breakfast
  7:30	Session with the reapers' group
  9:30	Session with the vegetable growers' group, under a tent
 11:00	Session with the barnyard series
  1:00	DINNER
  2:00	Session with the forestry series
  4:00	Session with a manufacturing group
  6:00 Session with the irrigation series
  8:00	Session at the Exchange
  8:30	Supper
  9:00	Entertainment
 10:00  Bed
[Here Fourier describes the workday of a rich Harmonian]

MONDOR'S DAY IN THE SUMMER

Time	Sleep from 10:30 at night to 3:00 in the morning
 3:30	Rising, preparations
 4:00	Morning court, review of the night's adventures
 4:30	Breakfast, followed by the industrial parade
 5:30	Session with the group of hunters
 7:00	Session with the group of fishermen
 8:00	Lunch, newspapers
 9:00	Session with a group of horticulturalists, under a tent
10:00	Mass
10:30	Session with the group of pheasant breeders
11:30	Session at the library
 1:00	DINNER
 2:30	Session with the greenhouse group
 4:00	Session with the group of exotic plant growers
 5:00	Session with the fish-tank group
 6:00	Snack, in the fields
 6:30	Session with the sheep-raising group
 8:00	Session at the Exchange [where tasks for the next day are planned and 	
                    allocated]
 9:00	Supper, fifth meal
 9:30	Art exhibition, concert, dance, theater, receptions
10:30	Bed
In order to plan each day’s activities and assign tasks, etc., Fourier provided for evening attendance of all Harmonians at the Phalanx’s ‘Exchange’ where such assignments of work and play would take place. As he wrote:

. . . . . . . every individual is obliged to use the Exchange to arrange his work and pleasure sessions for the following days. It is there that he makes plans concerning his gastronomic and amorous meetings and, especially, for his work sessions in the shops and fields. Everyone has at least twenty sessions to arrange, since he makes definite plans for the following day and tentative ones for the day after.

Nor were the dirty jobs omitted in his calculations. These-- garbage collection, cleaning latrines and animal pens, and so on--were to be assigned to the most rambunctious of the children aged between nine and fifteen years. And as they left for work in the morning, the Little Hordes . . .
. . . . would rush forth with great cries, passing before the patriarchs [elders], who sprinkle them with Holy Water. They gallop frenetically to labor, which is executed as a work of piety, an act of charity toward the Phalanx, the service of God and of unity. . . . .

Utopian socialists were also attracted to devising a new morality to replace the flawed and repressive relationships they saw as characteristic of the civilization of their time. Fourier, for example, placed considerable emphasis on the role of women in society and, just as he anticipated Freud in his call for the liberation of the passions, so he is a precursor of the movement for the emancipation of women in society.

"As a general proposition," he wrote, "Social progress and changes . . are brought about by virtue of the progress of women towards liberty, and social retrogression occurs as a result of a dimunition in the liberty of women. . . . In summary, the extension of the privileges of women is the fundamental cause of all social progress."

In elaborating on the relationships between men and women, he reserved his fiercest criticism for the hypocrisies and prejudice that kept women, and men for that matter, in the bondage of a failed marriage. As he said, in his usual direct manner, "What a mistake in social conduct to make one’s whole future depend on a very bad bet!" And then he indulges in what we would call ‘sexual fantasies’ in detailing in the most explicit terms the New Amorous World of Harmony, where everyone was entitled to his or her ‘sexual minimum’ and sexual liberation became manifest in nightly Courts of Love, after the children were safely in bed! The wilder reaches of Fourier’s imagination (perhaps an indication of his own repressed desires)are evident in the following extracts. Little wonder that the work of which these form a part--the New Amorous World--did not appear in print, in the original French, until 1967.

Physical love, which is called brutish, animal, etc. is degraded by civilized legislation and morality as an obstacle to the conjugal system . . . There are still many parents who allow their unmarried daughters to suffer and die for want of sexual satisfaction. Certainly some provision should be made for a young woman who is languishing and suffering for want of a pleasure which nature dictates .. . But on this point fathers start citing the 200,000 volumes of theology and the 400,000 volumes of philosophy. The fact remains that they are assassinating their daughters . . . This rebellion of parents, philosophers and theologians against nature is particularly reprehensible in view of the fact that nature has provided a number of men who would be quite willing to satisfy the needs of languishing women and even those whose charms have withered with age.

. . . We are going to discuss a new amorous order in which sentiment, which is the noble side of love, will enjoy an unparalleled prestige . . . the physical impulses, far from being fettered, will be fully satisfied . . .

In Harmony, where no one is poor and everyone can make love until extreme old age, a fixed portion of each day is devoted to love. . . . In Harmony sheer physical attractiveness will not have the colossal influence that it has in civilization where everyone is transfixed by the sight of a beautiful woman . . . For their desire for sensual gratification will be satisfied in several different ways. . . (Suitors) will never fail to ask for an exhibition of simple nature, a sesion in which the amorous notabilities of the area . . will show off their most remarkable attributes . . . In addition to this exhibition of simple nature, the visitors will be able to organize orgies to be held the following day . . . As a result of these measures, no one will suffer from a lack of physical gratification.

. . . I cannot repeat too often, however, that customs so alien to ours cannot be established during the first years of Harmony. It will first be necessary to purge the globe of syphilis and other skin diseases. Until this is accomplished, Harmony will be more circumspect about love than civilization now is. [One wonders whether this final caveat would have avoided him landing in jail had his Le Nouveau monde amoureuxbeen published in his lifetime?]

[Refs.: Richard Beecher et al., The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier.Copyright(1971)Beacon Press. Quoted with permission;
Jonathan Beecher, Charles Fourier.Copyright(1986)Univ. of California Press. Quoted with permission.]

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