Manuel, Frank E. 1971. Foreword. In: Fourier, Charles, Design for Utopia: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier. Translated by Julia Franklin, With an Introduction by Charles Gide, and New Foreword by Frank E. Manuel. New York: Schocken Books, 3-8. [Internet Archive]
From a constricted, monotonous existence that nearly suffocated him, Fourier the underpaid clerk, roomer in dreary boarding houses, escaped into a rich and variegated world of fantasy. Rancor against a repressive hypocritical society that crushed human nature, that condemned him and his fellow creatures of every social class to impoverishment, gave birth to vengeful images of the collapse of "Civilization" and to vision of extravagant plenitude that he wove into a doctrine of gratification, harmony, and joy. He called it a system of passionate attraction. (Manuel 1971: 3)
His imaginations are still pregnant, society is still repressive and hypocritical, perhaps more so than ever, the U.S. is as if on the verge of civil war yet again, and here I am trying to escape to a 200yo Frenchman's idea of what humanity could become.
In Fourier's history of sensate progression, the ascetics, moralists, and rationalists were the sinners, the libertines the new saints. A recently published manuscript of his, for the most part a reiteration of his printed writings, was called The New World of Love. (Manuel 1971: 4)
There might be more in common between Fourier and Nietsche than viewing Civilization as a domesticating humans (cf. here).
Inevitably wrath was building up against this condition. To forestall another holocaust it was urgent that Civilization abdicate in favor of the next stage of history, Harmony, a yea-saying world of "phalansteries," where all possible psychological types would be cherished, all longings given heed. Fourier envisaged the glorification of the senses in a society responsive to the particular desires, predilections, and capacities of its constituent members. With solemn scientificism he calculated that a unity of some 2000 persons would yield the diversity of temperaments, 810 in all (with male and female variants), required for carrying out the functions of society. (Manuel 1971: 4)
Harmony is not the next stage after Civilization, Guaranteeism is. "All longings given heed" another variant of "the complete release of the passions" (Bell 1968: 43), etc. These "desires, predilections, and capacities" seem to stand for "passions", just to avoid the word. "Scientificism" is scientific jargon, while "scientism" is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values. The author may have thought of the latter and used the former term.
Fourier's ideal calls to mind teh "synergic" society originated by Ruth Benedict and expounded by Abraham H. Maslow, who found it consonant with his own doctrine of self-actualization. In synergy, as Maslow defined it, the individual acting in his own behalf at the same time furthers social ends, fulfilling simultaneously [|] and harmoniously his obligations to himself and his responsibilities to society. (Manuel 1971: 4-5)
Never heard of this. This appears to be very contemporary - cf. Maslow (1970). Funnily enough, I've already had once or twice to resort to Maslow's pyramid to explain Fourier's passions to someone.
Fourier's dream was universalist. He inveighed against the reformers and moralists preoccupied only with their own continent or a mere corner of it. A reorganized society would be coterminous with the globe. His emancipation proclamation addressed itself to all races and classes of humankind - women as well as men, toddlers and the elders. The needs of one and the needs of all would be encompassed. (Manuel 1971: 5)
The whole world covered with phalansteries? Hopefully not by force.
The erotic was central to his new world. It was not merely an embellishment of life, a crown to man's happiness - it suffused all of existence. Unrepressed sexuality, pervading relationships of love and labor, would regenerate the human race, now decaying in fraud, deprivation, and odious, unremitting toil. (Manuel 1971: 5)
Well put. The keywords are familiar enough, e.g. Harmony would put an end to the "power which enables a privileged few to live in luxury and idle ease on the toil of their fellow-men" (Brisbane 1876: 197).
Fourier's merciless dissection of bourgeois morality - no less a knower than Balzac admired his analysis of fifty-odd types of cuckoldry - and his utopia of endless stimulation and fulsome plesaure, from which boredom would be forever banished, were too far-out to be accepted unblinkingly even by his own disciples. They tended to stress his organization of cooperative work relations and neglect his sexual doctrines. (Manuel 1971: 7)
Brisbane's collection makes barely a mention of any sexuality. The rest of the paragraph lists contemporary writers from the 1960s who go to the other extreme and hail him as "a great emancipator of the senses", including André Breton, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Norman O. Brown.
Gide, Charles 1971. Introduction. In: Fourier, Charles, Design for Utopia: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier. Translated by Julia Franklin, With an Introduction by Charles Gide, and New Foreword by Frank E. Manuel. New York: Schocken Books, 9-45. [Internet Archive]
Everybody knows Fourier by name; nobody has read his books: consequently, although almost a contemporary, he already belongs to a legendary world. Cham's albums of caricature, which represent him with a tail having an eye at its extremity, LOusi Reybaud's "Etudes sur les Réformateurs modernes," inspired by somewhat the same spirit, some words of his vocabulary, which by their oddity impressed themselves upon the mind - phalanstère, papillonne, cabaliste, l'attraction passionelle -: these are about the only records by which the public has been able to form an idea of Fourier, and this idea may be summed up in two words: he was a socialist of the worst type, that is, of a communist type, and a madman. (Gide 1971: 9)
The tail might make sense. I can't find it now but supposedly in his book on love, people are supposed to grow tails? Sounded like an inspiration to whatever happened to the city-dwellers' genitals in Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars.
And indeed the sight of those enormous [|] volumes, without table of contents, without consecutive pagination, that intentional absence of all plan (what he proudly termed "dispersed order" - "l'ordre dispersé" - and which it were more proper to term incoherent order), those headings of chapters or paragraphs which bear the titles of "pivot direct" or "pivot inverse," of cislégomène," "intermède," and, quite at the end, of "introduction"; those pages wherer ight in the midst of things the justification changes all of a sudden without our being able to discover why, and upon which it seems as though the printer had emptied all the letters of his case pell-mell; those X's and Y's which appear to dance a veritable saraband, now standing upright, now lying flat, now with heads drooped, - all this gives the impression of some conjuring book of a necromancer written in some very fabulous age. (Gide 1971: 9-10)
Sounds mythic. A "conjuring book" is pretty much what I'm going after. I've been thinking about writing up an exposition on Fourier in archaic Estonian scientific jargon from 1920s.
Broker or clerk by turns in the cloth houses of Marseilles, Rouen, oftenest at Lyons, and, the last ten years of his life, at Paris, he termed himself a "shop-sergeant" (sergent de boutique) and complains of not having had leisure for study. And, indeed, when we consider that Fourier obtained all his intellectual and scientific education in reading-rooms which he [|] visited in his spare moments, we cease to be astonished at the extravagance of his style or the fancifulness of his theories, and marvel rather at the abundance and, in general, the correctness of his classical citations, as well as at his intuition of the phenomena of Nature. (Gide 1971: 11-12)
That's the fate of a life-long student: reading on the busride to work, during a break, on the toilet, maybe even carry around small print-outs to read behind the machine, to catch some natural light from the only window in the work area.
It has been said that he adored children. That is altogether inaccurate. He declares, on the contrary, upon every occasion, that they are insupportable creatures: his fastidious nature revolts against their noise, their disorder, their chattering. It is true that he allots them av ery large place in his phalanstery, and that he even promises to nourish them on sweets, but then he really expects, by his system of education, to transform them into good children who will make no noise, be made to eat at a separate table, and be put to bed early. (Gide 1971: 12)
I've gathered that "he allots them a very large place in his plhalanstery" in one of the wings, away from the quiet mid-area for study (library).
There have even been lent to him - it is to the rich only that one lends - some that he never propounded, for instance the famous story of the tail with an eye at its extremity which the gravest economists continue to place upon his back, is a case in point, and a pure myth. (Gide 1971: 15)
In the footnote, Gide "explodes the myth" of the eyed tail. As to his richness that makes people lend him unearned credit, recall that "he has even (erroneously) been credited with inventing the word 'féminisme.'" (Beecher 1985: 128-129) in the same decade (1970s).
It is the form, then, that is more absurd than the substance. And this absurdity is heightnened by a peculiar language which Fourier concocted himself, a language picturesque at times, more often grotesque, and which does not even possess the advantage which big words often do, of imposing upon the public. (Gide 1971: 16)
That's a good point. Thus far my favorite example (cf. Katsaros 2012: 410-411): he predicted "celestial mirrors" orbiting the earth - hey, now, that's a prediction way ahead of his time! - ...and these satellites "spy out monogamous lovers" - oh.
When we read his pages, - some of which will be found in the present work, - upon teh adulteration of merchandise, upon speculation and monopolies, the new industrial feudalism, the increase of intermediaries in petty commerce, the mobilisation of the soil, the necessity of international weights and measures, and of an international commercial language (a sort of Volapük), "the very certain and very general use of magnetism" [|] in the coming century, the development of the taste for and the cultivation of flowers, the protection due to animals, the possibility of modifying climatic conditions by appropriate vegetation, the approaching piercing of the Isthmus of Suez and the Isthmus of Panama "by canals through which the largest vessels will be able to pass," the organising of immense bodies of workmen - "industrial armies" - to carry out great public works in Africa and America, - when we read all this, we cannot conceive that these pages were written as much as three-quarters of a century ago. We have here a veritable genius for divining, something resembling that gift of second-sight, which, indeed, if one put any faith in popular superstition, is the privilege of the simple-minded. (Gide 1971: 16-17)
This is the very first time I'm meeting Volapük in the wild, having stumbled upon it a few months ago with Alt+Shift+x on Wikipedia.
Fourier starts out with the à priori idea that there must be a plan of God, that is to say, a certain social order conformable to God's will, and such as may secure the perfect happiness of all mankind. The whole thing is to discover this plan: the entire social problem reduces itself to a sort of divining-rod task. Fourier feels sure that he had discovered the secret. (Gide 1971: 17)
All too familiar - my notes and quotes from Theory of Social Organization contains 92 tokens of "God".
In other words, up to the present day, the effort to change man so as to adapt him to his environment has been persistently pursued: we must follow the opposite scent and Change the environment so as to adapt it to man. In reality the environment may much more readily be modified than man, for the former is the work of man while the latter is the work of God. (Gide 1971: 18)
Built environment is the work of man. Fourier had in mind the alteration of natural environment, too. Deserts, swamps, marshes and morasses, jungles, wild and extensive forests - all turned into phalansteries.
"I have since then noticed that we can reckon four apples as celebrated two for the disasters which they caused, Adam's apple and that of Paris, and two for the services they rendered to science, Newton's apple and mine. DOes not this quadrille of apples deserve a page of history?" (Fourier; in Gide 1971: 18; fn)
I'll see if I can spare a page.
It does not seem that man is naturally drawn to labour. Yet labour is absolutely indispensable to the economic life of society. How emerge from this dilemma? If, in civilised society, replies Fourier, labour is repulsive, it is because it is so falsely organised that it does not respond to any of man's instincts; and Fourier enumerates, with very remarkable critical acumen by the way, all the causes which render labour repulsive in our "civilised" society (we must lay stress on the word civilised, because for the Indian the chase, for the nomad the raising of cattle, does not lack attraction); we shall not enumerate them here; the reader will find them in the extracts; besides, one may foretell what they are. (Gide 1971: 19)
Nearly all forms of work have some attraction, I would venture. The problem stems from having to do the same work day in day out, during night-shifts, when hungry and tired, in bad mood or illness, with aches, etc. ...because the alternative is ruin. This is life in a society without guaranteed minimums.
Let us group the labourers in such a manner as to unite those having the same tastes, and let us, at the same time, oppose these groups to each other, in order to develop esprit de corps and to keep them on the alert by a ceaseless rivalry; and when all the passional springs of action (resorts passionnels) shall thus have been brought into play by that mechanism, of which we have given but a very imperfect idea, but which is in reality extraordinarily complicated, we shall see men rush to their work, just as, on a field of battle, where, likewise, the "passionate springs" are brought into play, we see them rush to their death. (Gide 1971: 20)
Good analogy. I expect a large part of Fourier's vision consisting of the imagining what could be achieved if all nations turned their standing armies upon bettering the world rather than protecting their particular patch of it.
Fourier, analysing by turns what in civilised society are called "the vices," endeavours to demonstrate how, under the régime of association they would all become sources of harmony; for example, inconstancy in love (and upon this theme he indulges in variations which have proved somewhat embarrassing even to his disciples), the love of luxury, gluttony, the love of disorder and dirt in children. (Gide 1971: 21)
His method is really brilliant. The plans for achieving these reversals on the other hand come off as "parodies" (cf. Beecher 1985).
He explains that if children prefer sweetmeats to dry bread for their lunch, this proves that Providence, in giving them that instinct, knew very well what it was doing; it foresaw the day when agriculture would be superseded by arboriculture, and the production of insipid grain by that of savoury fruits, and with this in view it had instilled in advance these natural instincts into man; it is not the fault of Providence if we have totally failed to comprehend its intentions or intimations. (Gide 1971: 21)
Today, the widespread addiction to fast food is explained quite differently. Human taste has an evolutionary history like nearly everything else about us. When eating a hamburger, are we exercising the Divine will and design of God, or straying away from him/her/it?
Since the new social order is to be based solely upon attraction, it goes without saying that Fourier has no thought of employing force. Never, in fact, does he appeal to legislators, to government, to an authority, to a coercive power of any sort; I do not [|] even know whether the word State which to-day serves to characterise all more or less socialist schools, appears a single time in his books. In this he belongs wholly to the most uncompromising liberal school: - and since he does not even recognise the necessity of the police State, one might go so far as to say that he belongs to the anarchist school, if that term did not clash so strangely with his love of order and of symmetry. It is upon free individual initiative alone that he reckons to make a trial of his system, - an initiative which he solicits, begs for, addressing himself to the great capitalists and to disengaged princes with a touching pertinacity, - and it is solely upon the contagion of example that he relies to propagate his system throughout the world. As regards ways and means, he gives proof of an irreproachable orthodoxy: he has no thought of proceeding by any way but that of social experiment. (Gide 1971: 21-22)
An explanation as to Fourier's appeal for anarchists. The "clash" is appears minuscule: why can't there be order without rulers?
To speak the truth, monarchy, in his system, reduces itself to a pueryl decorative form: it is there ad pompam [|] ed ostentationem, as lawyers express it in Latin, - useless, in fact, since attraction will suffice to keep the world going. (Gide 1971: 22-23)
Pretty much what monarchies have become naturally during the course of history from Fourier's time.
It is noticeable, moreover, that Fourier nearly always addresses himself by prefernece to the wealthy class rather than to what is at the present day termed the working-class: he assures the rich that he desires to make them still richer, and it is by the allurement of enormous dividends, which rise to eighteen or thirty-six per cent., - precisely as in the prospectuses of an issue of stock, - it is even by the far more extraordinary prospect of numerous bequests to be received by them from their fellow-associates that he seeks to entice them. Regarded on this side, Fourier's system may be characterised as thoroughly "bourgeois." He shrugs his shoulders at the communistic theories of Owen or even at the mitigated communism of Saint-Simon. (Gide 1971: 23)
Fourier's wording given in the footnote - "to preach, in the nineteenth century, the abolition of property and heredity!" - leaves open the possibility of abolishing both somewhere down the line. Presently I'm not sure about private property, specifically. I'll see how I feel about it after I've read about the discussion of private and communal property in the Pythagorean schools, also a contested issue.
In the distribution of the total product of the enterprise, [|] he allots only five-twelfths to labour, four twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent: now this is a proportion in which it cannot be said that labour has the lion's share, for it is quite certain that even under the present order of things, the portion of this factor of production amounts to not less than five-twelfths, since, according to the calculation of the collectivists themselves, it is slightly more. (Gide 1971: 24-25)
The same proportion as with passions. The logic of it is given in the footnote: "the sum of the two extremes would equal double the mean", and an alternative to 5/4/3 (5+3=2*4) is given, 6/4/2 (2+6=2*4)
The object of this mechanism, which is childish enough, is that, contrary to the present order of things, small amounts of capital shall bring in much better returns than large ones, and that it shall be much easier for the poor to start a fortune than for the rich to augment theirs. (Gide 1971: 25)
I'm not that interested in shares and dividends but this is brilliant. Reminds me of a meme explanation of socialism: if you're ahead of the race in Mario Cart you should get less useful stuff to throw and hinder the other players. Our present system works more like that line in the New Testament, that those who have much will be given more and those who have little will lose all that they have (Matthew 13:11-12).
A minimum as regards food, lodging, clothing, and even amusements, - a minimum, modest but "very decent," - will be guaranteed to all the members of the association, that is to say, - supposing Fourier's system to be made universal, as it is meant to be, - to all men. This is one of the most important features of Fourier's programme. It does not at first sight seem that there is anything more in it than a system of compulsory legal assistance on a greater scale. But what is weighty about it is that Fourier allows this minimum without conditions, that is to say, without demanding that he who profits by it shall furnish a certain amount of work or give proof of his inability to work. The objection which strikes one at first blush, namely, that under these conditions nobody would take the trouble to work, does not concern Fourier. He recognises that in the state of civilisation the objection is an insurmountable one, because there man works only to gain his bread, - but under the associative régime, in which man works for pleasure and from "passion," the knowledge that his place at the dinner-table is assured will not stop him: quite the contrary. And Fourier adds, and his remark is a very just one, that the guarantee of this minimum is the condition sine quâ non of the existence of his phalanstery, that is to say, of the life in common between persons belonging to all classes of society: it alone can allow the poor to live in harmony with the rich, and without envy; - it alone, too, can allow the rich to find pleasure in the society of the poor, by rendering them men "of good company," and maintaining them at a certain moral and intellectual level. (Gide 1971: 26)
I'm reading this a few weeks after Spain pronounced that it will make its UBI-like system of financial support permanent. I qualify it with a "-like" because it's still only for a few million people in a nation of 47 million, only for those who have assets under a certain amount of euros and "will include incentives for finding "a formal job," though it’s not clear exactly what those incentives are". That is, Spain's current plan is not for all and not without conditions.
And by agricultural production we do not mean what has been almost exclusively designated by that name since Triptolemus, that is to say, the cultivation of wheat. This voracious grain requires for its cultivation relatively enormous areas; it hardly produces enough, upon a given area, to nourish a small number of people; it imposes, for its cultivation, as well as for its transformation into bread, the severest labour under which mankind has ever been made to groan, - that of the plough, the millstone, the kneading-trough; and, finally, it furnishes but an insipid aliment, good at most only "for the civilised." It is from the cultavitaion of fruits and vegetables, the raising of fowls and bees, from fish-culture, that we must henceforth demand the nourishment of mankind. It is these products alone that will permit us to obtain from a relatively small area of food supply at once abundant, varied, savoury, and constantly renewed; they alone bringhten the earth by making its surface a garden, the garden of Eden; they alone, above all, answer the natural tastes of man and turn labour into a pleasure. (Gide 1971: 28)
One day people are going to look at old pictures of agricultural landscapes, those plains of wheat and other grains, and mutter "ugh, civilization". It makes perfect sense that Fourier would oppose monoculture.
With the Christian school it has in common its faith in the existence of a foreordained providential plan from which man wandered and which it is now our concern to recover, if we design the reign of peace: but it differs from it radically by its belief in the innate goodness of man, by its theory that all the passions of man lead him naturally towards good and that he could not do better than to yield to them, finally by its negation of moral law, of duty, of sin. (Gide 1971: 31)
In other words, keep the Christian God and throw out Christian mores.
His method is, to begin with, à priori to a degree that passes all bounds. I know very well that Fourier denies it, and declares that we must "observe the things we wish to know and not imagine them"; but when he proceeds to explain in minute [|] detail what God's plan was in regard to us, and not only in regard to our poor little earth, but all the other planets, just as if he had been present and taken part in the celestial councils - it is hard to think that he has remained faithful to his maxim. (Gide 1971: 31-32)
Yup: "Must not God have foreseen this shameful result of human legislation? He must have observed its effects in the myriads of globes created anterior to our own; he must have known, before creating man and giving him Passions, that his reason would be incapable of harmonizing them, and that Humanity would require a legislator more enlightened than itself." (Fourier 1876: 62)
To take as a starting-point that God "who is a skilful mechanician" must have employed the same force in the material as in the moral world, that is, attraction, - to infer, like Pythagoras or like Bastian, from the harmony which reigns in the movements of the planets a like harmony in the relations of human beings, - all this is philosophy of a childish enough sort. We do not at all know whether the sidereal world is perfect, or even whether there is a single planet besides our own where life may find the conditions necessary for its development, and even admitting that it did, that would offer but small ground upon which to base conclusions regarding social relations. (Gide 1971: 32)
Cue "occult Pythagoreanism" (Bell 1968: 46). I've previously noted somewhere that both Nietzsche and Marju Lepajõe have remarked upon the fact that intellectual antipathies are extremely stimulating. You'll crack your brains to no end in an online "flame war", for example. Kant used it productively - first explain how everyone else is wrong, and only then put forth your own, slightly less wrong, interpretation.
To reckon in man twelve fundamental passions belongs to an evidently fantastic or rather mystic psychology, - the number 12 having been evidently chosen only because it made a better working number than 11 or 13. (Gide 1971: 32)
Probably no more arbitrary than the 16 personality types (Myers-Briggs).
Attractive labour is itself a purely à priori conception. It is with reason that Fourier regarded this as the pivot of his system, - for it is quite certain that if labour were a pleasure instead of a pain, all economic phenomena without exception would be different from what they are, - but observation does not offer to our view attractive labour anywhere. (Gide 1971: 33)
Lõbu ja kannatus. Today, we could list numerous forms of attractive labour, primarily in non-physical, collaborative undertakings like open source software development and the like.
Fourier, Charles 1971. Design for Utopia: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier. Translated by Julia Franklin, With an Introduction by Charles Gide, and New Foreword by Frank E. Manuel. New York: Schocken Books. [Internet Archive]
According to the fourth, Universality of providence, this order of things must extend and be applicable to all nations, for the providence of God would be imperfect if he had devised a social system which should not satisfy the needs and secure the happiness of every people, age, and sex. (Fourier 1971: 48)
God is perfect, and if he created man, a social creature, then the society of man should also be perfect.
According to the fifth, Unity of action, collective and individual interest must harmonise, so that the individual will be following the right plan in yielding blindly to his passions; otherwise he will be at strife with himself, in accordance with civilised morals. (Fourier 1971: 48)
The variations on this theme were not far off the mark. "Yielding blindly" is pretty much "complete release", with the added linguistic aspect of being close to "blind instinct". It looks like in some points "passion" and "instinct" are interchangeable.
Either he was unable to give us a social code of attraction, justice, truth, and unity; in that case he is unjust in creating this need within us without possessing the means to satisfy us, as he does the animals for whom he institutes social codes which are attractive and regulate the industrial system. (Fourier 1971: 48)
The Black Tailed Antechinus has sex until it dies. Is that a way to regulate the industrial system?
Ladder of the First Age of the Social World.(Fourier 1971: 50)
Periods anterior to industry K. Bastard, without man. 1. Primitive, termed Eden. 2. Savage state or inertia. Industry divided up, repulsive. 3. Patriarchism, small industry. 4. Barbarism, medium industry. 5. Civilisation, large industry. Industry associative, attractive. 6. Guaranteeism, semi-association. 7. Sociantism, simple association. 8. Harmonism, composite association.
"Sociantism" I was not aware of.
We shall not follow the right path until we establish guaranteeism. It is a stratagem which ought to be employed to oppose liberalism, a stationary spirit which is incapable of advancing, and which is enamoured of a characteristic of the second phase, the representative system, a little scheme good in a small republic such as Sparta or Athens, but altogether illusory in a vast and opulent empire like France. (Fourier 1971: 52)
Exactly how many people feel about neoliberalism.
Nevertheless philosophers maintain "that civilisation has been raised by the adoption of religious toleration, industrial and administrative unity." That is expressing one's self very poorly; they should have said that the social Order has been raised and Civilisation lowered; in reality, if all the sixteen characteristics of the sixth period were successively adopted it would result in the total annihilation of Civilisation, - it would be destroyed under the belief that it was being perfected. The social Order would be better organised, but the fifth would have been replaced by the sixth period. These distinctions of characteristics lead to an amusing conclusion: it is that the little good to be found in the Civilised Order is due only to features that are contrary to Civilisation. (Fourier 1971: 53)
That's a great "reversal", in a sense I would have some years descibed as "Foucaultian". With "Civilization" having such a negative meaning in Fourier's usage (i.e. having different kinds of measurements, money, laws, codes, etc. "is favourable to the mechanism of civilization, which seeks, as its aim, to raise knavery to the highest point", ibid, 53), advances towards greater unity and orderliness is in effect the destruction of civilization.
Do you see her refractory to the efforts of physicists as she is to yours? No, for they study her laws instead of dictating laws to her; and you only study to stifle the voice of Nature, to stifle the Attraction which is the interpreter of her designs, since it leads on every hand to domestic-agricultural Association. (Fourier 1971: 54)
It looks like God and Nature are interchangeable.
All those philosophical whims called duties have no relation whatever to Nature; duty proceeds from men, Attraction proceeds from God; now, if we desire to know the designs of God, we must study Attraction, Nature only, without any regard to duty, which varies with every age, while the nature of the passions has been and will remain invariable among all nations of men. (Fourier 1971: 55)
Good point. Goes to explain why so much of the discussion of "duties" in older philosophers is almost incomprehensible.
The learned world is wholly imbued with a doctrine termed Morality, which is a mortal enemy of passional attraction. Morality teaches man to be at war with himself, to resist his passions, to repress them, to believe that God was incapable of organising our souls, our passions wisely; that he needed the teachings of Plato and Seneca in order to know how to distribute characteristics and instincts. Imbued with these prejudices regarding the impotence of God, the learned world was not qualified to estimate the natural impulses or passional attractions, which morality proscribes and relegates to the rank of vices. (Fourier 1971: 55)
Self-consistent. Duties are invented while passions are discovered. Really puts all discussion of "self-control" (e.g. Peirce) into a different light: did God/Nature fuck up that we have to constantly go against our natures?
We are quite familiar with the five sensitive passions tending to Luxury, the four affective ones tending to Groups; it only remains for us to learn about the three distributive ones whose combined impulse produces Series, a social method of which the secret has been lost since the age of primitive mankind, who were unable to maintain the Series more than about 300 years. (Fourier 1971: 56)
Very indicative. If my hunch is correct, he employs the same logic throughout his writings, so that when he speaks, e.g. about "series of groups", it might check out in his system of passions. But, here's a confusing point: why is "Luxury" singular?
The four affective passions tending to form the four groups of friendship, love, ambition, paternity or consanguinity are familiar enough; but no analysis, or parallels, or scales have been made of them. (Fourier 1971: 56)
The more I gleam about his system of passions the more excited I am to read those two volumes about them. I hope that they will not disappoint. Friendship and love are a given - easily remembered. Ambition! Oh how much meaning in a single word! Going by the Roman ambitus, this essentially amounts to the formation of group loyalties. "Paternity or consanguity", understandably, are ambiguous, because his whole idea is to move on from families towards the greatest social unit (I just now realize the parallel with Lotman's semiosphere), but blood-relations themselves will remain.
The Cabalist is the passion that, like love, has the property of confounding ranks, drawing superiors and inferiors closer to each other. Everyone must recall occasions when he has been strongly drawn into some path followed with complete success. (Fourier 1971: 57)
Define:cabal - a secret political clique or faction; a secret intrigue. Indeed, superiors and inferiors can form a cabal.
For instance: electoral cabal to elect a certain candidate; cabal on 'Change in the stock-jobbing game; cabal of two pairs of lovers, planning a partie carrée without the father's knowledge; a family cabal to secure a desirable match. If these intrigues are crowned with success, the participants become friends; in spite of some anxiety, they have passed happy moments together while conducting the intrigue; the emotions it arouses are necessities of the soul. (Fourier 1971: 57)
The cabal of lovers is especially poignant, what with forbidden love being the sweetest; "without the father's knowledge" indicates Fourier's contemporary patriarchal age, when fathers dictated the (love-)lives of their daughters.
Far removed from the insipid calm whose charms are extolled by morality, the cabalistic spirit is the true destiny of man. Plotting doubles his resources, enlarges his faculties. Compare the tone of a formal social gathering, its moral, stilted, languishing jargon, with the tone of these same people united in a cabal: they will appear transformed to you; you will admire their terseness, their animation, the quick play of ideas, the alertness of action, of decision; in a word, the rapidity of the spiritual or material motion. This fine development of the human faculties is the fruit of the cabalist or tenth passion, which constantly prevails in the labours and the reunions of a passionate series. (Fourier 1971: 57)
From the standpoint of phatic communion, this is epic. Phatic communion is exactly that "formal social gathering" we find so tedious. Taking a cue from Malinowski, one he surely did not intend, the formal social gathering is so detestable because it is "aimless" - a pure formality; whereas entering into a "cabal" has the connotation of purposefulness - doing something in secret.
As it always results in some measure of success, and as its groups are all precious to each other, the attraction of the cabals becomes a potent bond of friendship between all the sectaries (sectaires), even the most unequal. (Fourier 1971: 58)
A stronger and more lasting bond surely than that borne of merely constant association. Curiously enough, there are numerous examples of phatic communion in the form of "secret societies" in secondary literature.
But why these innumerable intrigues, some philosopher will ask; why not make all men brothers, all united in opinion, all enemies of perfidious wealth? Why? It is because man must be provided with springs of action suitable to the social state for which God has destined us. If he had created us for the family and dissociated state, he would have endowed us with soft and apathetic passions, such as philosophy desires. In studying the serial mechanism, it will be seen that the spirit of cabal is its most active principle. God, in order to fit us for the play of the social Series, had to endow us with a strong inclination for cabal. (Fourier 1971: 58)
This argument has an opposite pole: the family and dissociated state can make us soft and apathetic. Consider the resigned "family man" or "salary man". A husk of a human being, that!
Accordingly, men, in all deliberative assemblies became pronounced cabalists. The Deity mocks at them when they address a stupid prayer to him to make them all brothers, all united in opinion, according to the wish of Plato and Seneca. God answers them: "Thousands of millions of years ago I created the passions such as the unity of the universe demanded; I shall not change them to please the philosophers of an imperceptible globule, which must continue, like all the others, subject [|] to the twelve passions, and particularly to the tenth, the cabalist." (Fourier 1971: 58-59)
Damn that's so good. Not six thousand years, 13.7 billion years which, yes, is 13,700 million. "An imperceptible globule" is pretty much the equivalent of Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot".
The Composite - This passion requires in every action a composite allurement or pleasure of the senses and of the soul, and consequently the blind enthusiasm which is born only of the mingling of the two kinds of pleasure. These conditions are but little compatible with civilised labour, which, far from offering any allurement either to the senses or the soul, is only a double torment even in the most vaunted of work-shops, such as the spinning factories of England where the people, even the children, work fifteen hours a day, under the lash, in premises devoid of air. (Fourier 1971: 59)
Unifying mental and physical labour. Work that satisfies both the body and the mind.
The composite is the most beautiful of the twelve passions, the one which enhances the value of all the others. A love is not beautiful unless it is a composite love, combining the charm of the senses and of the soul. It becomes trifling or deception if it limits itself to one of these springs. An ambition is not vehement unless it brings into play the two springs, glory and interest. It is then that it becomes capable of brilliant efforts. (Fourier 1971: 59)
Kurat, Maili on nagu parim asi mis minu elus üldse juhtunud on. Maitea, räägivad küll, et auk on auk, aga no maitea kurat, lisaks sellele, et me kogu aeg keppi teeme me nagu mõtleme ka, samamoodi. I expect "glory" and "interest" to have deeper meanings that will be revealed upon reading those two volumes on the passions.
The composite commands so great a respect, that all are agreed in despising people inclined to simple pleasure. Let a man provide himself with fine viands, fine wines, with the intention of enjoying them alone, of giving himself up to gormandising by himself, and he exposes himself to well-merited gibes. But if this man gathers a select company in his house, where one may enjoy at the same time the pleasure of the senses by good cheer, and the pleasure of the soul by companionship, he will be lauded, because these banquets will be a composite and not a simple pleasure. (Fourier 1971: 59)
Drinking alone provides "simple pleasure", i.e. physical intoxication. But add to this good company, and you'll derive mental pleasure from the companionship.
If general opinion despises simple material pleasure, the same is true as well of simple spiritual pleasure, of gatherings where there is neither refreshment, nor dancing, nor love, nor anything for the senses, where one enjoys oneself only in imagination. Such a gathering, devoid of the composite or pleasure of the senses and the soul, becomes insipid to its participants, and it is not long before it "grows bored and dissolves." (Fourier 1971: 59)
Goodie two-shoes gatherings not as fun.
The Papillonne (Butterfly) or Alternating. Although eleventh according to rank, it should be examined after the twelfth, because it serves as a link between the other two, the tenth and the twelfth. If the sessions of the series were meant to be prolonged twelve or fifteen hours like those of civilised workmen, who, from morning till night, stupefy themselves by being engaged in insipid duties without any diversion, God wuld have given us a taste for monotony, an abhorrence of variety. But as the sessions of the series are to be very short, and the enthusiasm inspired by the composite is incapable of being prolonged beyond an hour and a half, God, in conformity to this industrial order, had to endow us with the passion of papillonnage, the craving for periodic variety in the phases of life, and for frequent variety in our occupations. Instead of working twelve hours with a scant intermission for a poor, dull dinner, the associative state will never extend its sessions of labour beyond an hour and a half or at most two; besides, it will diffuse a host of pleasures, reunions of the two sexes terminating in a repast, from which one will proceed to new diversions, with different company and cabals. (Fourier 1971: 60)
My note on this from the previous book: "a hour and a half is also about the time when a cigarette smoker feels the itch to go poison himself" (see here). I'm not sure why this is exactly but looks like a pattern. For example, in the physiology of marathons (Wikipedia), it is said that " With this high of an intensity endured for over 2 hours, a marathon runner's performance requires more energy production than that solely supplied by mitochondrial activity." - Meaning that two hours is pretty much the limit for any high-energy activity. More examples like this, to reinforce the pattern, can probably be found in all types of extended activities.
Unityism is the inclination of the individual to reconcile his own happiness with that of all surrounding him, and of all human kind, to-day so odious. It is an unbounded philanthropy, a universal good-will, which can only be developed when the entire human race shall be rich, free, and just. (Fourier 1971: 61)
On the face of it it sounds like if your own wants are satisfied you can look to those of people around you. E.g. the rich would have nothing to fear from the poor if the minimal requirements of the latter were fulfilled. Instead of worrying how to get to your yacht without coming into contact with the have-nots, you'd have nothing against inviting them onboard.
God has given children a liking for substances which will be the least costly in the associative state. When the entire globe shall be populated and cultivated, enjoying free-trade, exempt from all duties, the sweet viands mentioned above will be much less expensive than bread; the abundant edibles will be fruit, milk-foods, and sugar, but not bread, whose prices will be greatly raised, because the labour incident to the growing of grain and the daily making of bread is wearisome and little attractive; these kinds of labour would have to be paid much higher than that in orchards or confectionaries. (Fourier 1971: 62)
The future will be gluten-free. This little tid-bit also puts "breadtube" and other bread-related memes of the left, stemming from Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, into a different light.
Of what service would the great perfection of culture in every variety of production be to the Harmonians if they had to deal with a public moral and uniform in its tastes, eating only to moderate their passions, and forbidding themselves all sensual refinement, for the benefit of repressive morality. (Fourier 1971: 64)
Part of his critique of morality. Made me think of an online argument I had with a right-winger whose ideal society is on where the native people (white European people, in this case) have the sole right to define the morals of their community, to produce a uniformity of tastes according to some inchoate conception of tradition.
Starting from this principle, we must conclude that the greater the number of pleasures and the more often they are varied, the less shall we be able to abuse them, for pleasures, like labour, become a pledge of health when practised in moderation. A dinner of an hour, diversified by animated conversation which precludes haste and gluttony, will necessarily be moderate, and serve to restore and augment our energies, which would be exhausted by a long repast, liable to be immoderate, such as our great dinner in civilisation. (Fourier 1971: 65)
Sounds like a return to the Ancient Greek eranos (cf. Mahaffy 1892: 53), or "communion of food".
My theory confines itself to utilising the passions now condemned, just as Nature has given them to us and without in any way changing them. That is the whole mystery, the whole secret of the calculus of passionate Attraction. There is no arguing there whether God was right or wrong in giving mankind these or other passions; the associative order avails itself of them without changing them, and as God has given them to us. (Fourier 1971: 66)
The underlying logic, which has already shone through in several places. Also the reason why Beecher (mis?)interprets it as "parody".
It makes use of men as they are, utilising the discords arising from antipathies, and other motives accounted vicious, and vindicating the Creator from the reproach of a lacuna in providence, in the matter of general unity and individual foresight. (Fourier 1971: 66)
The thing that struck me about his cabalistic passion from the first (cf. Butler 2003: 93-94).
Man is a being made for Harmony and for all kinds of association: God has furnished him at every period of life with inclinations adapted to the resources and methods offered by the associative state. With us these resources are lacking for the child as well as the grown man; and as a child deprived of speech is unable to explain itself, it is of all ages the one which suffers most by the absence of the associative régime. Infancy, being less provided with reason than teh more advanced ages, is so much the more dependent upon the instincts, which, under existing conditions, are allowed no scope. It avenges itself by cries, for its subjection to an education opposed to Nature, cries wearing to the parent and hurtful to the child. Here, then, are two discontented beings instead of two happy ones such as would be produced by associative education. Thus even in the tender age of infancy we meet with this grievous property of civilisation: the engendering of a double evil instead of the double good which was destined for us by Nature. (Fourier 1971: 67)
The primary emphasis I would place on instincts, which in the associated state should be "allowed scope" (not sure what to do with this idiom).
These disagreeable features disappear completely in Harmony, where the child, frequenting thirty groups and series, meets a throng of friends and sectaries, rigid censors of his incompetence: their frankness quite absolves the parent from remonstrance. (Fourier 1971: 68)
The underlying keyword here is socialization. Instead of a few parents, guardians, caretakers and teachers with a few coevals (coetaneus? children), the child in the associated state would be involved with many social groups of various sizes, learning from the whole society.
It will be observed that in Harmony the only paternal function of the father is to yield to his natural impulse, to spoil the child, to humour all his whims. (Fourier 1971: 68)
I've already remarked upon this (cf. Leopold 2011: 630). The direct quote from Argonauts of the Western Pacific: "The father's relation to his children is remarkable. Physiological fatherhood is unknown, and no tie of kinship or relationship is supposed to exist between father and child, except that between a mother's husband and the wife's child. Nevertheless, the father is by far the nearest and most affectionate friend of his children." (Malinowski 1932: 71)
There is no question, therefore, more obscure among us than that of vocation or the instinct of social functions. This problem will be fully cleared up by the mechanism of harmonic education. It never develops a single vocation in the child, but thirty graduated vocations, with varying degree of dominance. (Fourier 1971: 69)
This here is the "social function" of a person - a vocation. The ideal is, of course, something like hierarchical functionalism (dominant and subordinated vocations).
Of the five senses there is one, that of touch, whose influence is almost null before the age of puberty. A child does not know love, the chief branch of the sense of touch; for the rest, he is quite indifferent regarding the other pleasures pertaining to touch, being satisfied with a wooden seat, a bed of rushes, coarse cloth; he disdains a stuffed arm-chair, a soft bed, costly furs. The niceties of touch have no value whatever in his eyes, but he is strongly inclined to the enjoyments of the other four senses which he should exercise. (Fourier 1971: 74)
Well, this answers at least one of my questions. I thought about connecting the senses with arts. For hearing there is music, for sight there is visual art, for hearing there is music, and for taste there is cookery, for smell there is perfumery. For touch, evidently, there is sexual intercourse and massage and the like.
If a barbarous people adopted exclusive marriage, they would in a short time become civilised through this innovation alone; if we adopted the seclusion and sale of women, we should in a short time become barbarous through this single innovation; and if we adopted the amorous guarantees, we should find in this single measure an exit from civilisation and an entrance into the sixth period. (Fourier 1971: 76)
Reminiscent of Orwell, "The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion." (Orwell 1966: 59) - Though it focuses on a greater, societal scale. Here it is unpacked by what Fourier meant in his first monograph, quoted by Beecher: "the extension of the privileges of women is the fundamental cause of all social progress" (in 1985: 128-129). Another pertinent quote: "For Fourier, only a revolution in gender norms and sexual mores could achieve the state of economic and existential bliss he promised the future citizens of his utopian phalansteries." (Katsaros 2012: 406)
Now God recognises as freedom only that which is extended to both sexes and not to one alone; he desired, likewise, that all the seeds of social abominations such as savagery, barbarism, civilisation, should have as their sole pivot the subjection of women, and that all the seeds of social well-being such as the sixth, seventh, eighth [|] periods shuld have no pivot but the progressive enfranchisement of the weak sex. (Fourier 1971: 76-77)
This is in stark contrast with right-wing ideologies which put the subjugation of women and female sexuality at the forefront of their policies. Perhaps that is the point? To hold back social progress, which they intuitively know to be connected with sexual emancipation?
As a general proposition: Social advances and changes of periods are brought about by virtue of the progress of women towards liberty, and the decadences of the social order are brought about by virtue of the decrease of liberty of women. (Fourier 1971: 77)
Good rule. But there might be a semantic conflict with "decadence", which is moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury. Wikipedia is more helpful, indicating that Fourier might have intended the original meaning of the word: "The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of the elite of a very large social structure, such as an empire or nation state."
In pointing to those women who have succeeded in spreading their wings, from viragos like Maria Theresa to those of a milder shade, like the Ninons and the Sévignés, I am justified in saying that woman in a state of liberty will excel man in all functions of the mind or the body which are not the attributes of physical force. (Fourier 1971: 79)
This we're already experiencing, with universities increasingly becoming little more than girl-clubs.
If Civilisation has founded in America feeble colonies, already threatened with decadence by the revolt of the negroes, has it lost at the gateway of Europe the vastest empires - Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, Carthage, Chaldea, and a part of Western Asia? (Fourier 1971: 82)
The fuck did this honky just say?
However, social order, in spite of the impotence of such guides, yet makes some progress, such as the suppression of slavery; but what slowness in conceiving and executing the right! Twenty centuries of science elapsed beforet hel east alleviation of the lot of the slave was proposed; thousands of years, then, are needed to open our eyes to a truth, to suggest an act of justice! (Fourier 1971: 83)
Isn't that so. I read just today somewhere about how the American Civil War was actually largely about world markets, with France and Russia supporting the South, and England and Germany the North. The point being that the Union wanted to liberate the southern slaves to get them to replace the miners up north who were revolting. And then Lincoln couldn't stand to sit down to eat at the same table with black men, and thought nothing wrong of making prisoners do slave labor, which is why slavery still exists in the USA, in the guise of prison labor.
The armies of the land and sea, which divert from industry the sturdiest youth and the largest amount of taxes, dispose that youth to depravity, by constraining it to sacrifice to a parasitic function the years which it ought to employ in disposing itself to labour, for which it loses the taste in the military state. (Fourier 1971: 90)
Today, we'd say that they are diverted from study and personal growth, given that the human being is actively developing up to its 25th year of age.
Deep-rooted discords; local hatred and leavens of dissension, improperly stifled by systems of simple action which suppress the evil instead of absorbing it; [...] (Fourier 1971: 95)
We're currently experiencing a boiling point of one in the U.S. No doubt even Estonia is once again going to convulse with its minority population.
Nature is never deceptive in the general impulses which it bestows upon mankind. If the great majority of nations disdain a calling such as commerce, if this disdain is dictated to them by [|] natural instinct, be sure that the object of their contempt contains some odious and hidden property. (Fourier 1971: 98-99)
Who in their right mind does not disdain marketing?
It will be expedient then to promote the consumption or sugar, considering the facility of preserving that commodity, and the economy attaching to sugared products, some of which, such as fine confections, may be prepared a year in advance; while the labour of making bread is renewed every day, or every two or three days, according to its quality. There is no kind of good bread that can last as long as four days. That of our peasants sometimes lasts a fortnight; but the Harmonians will not eat such wretched stuff, good enough for the civilised. (Fourier 1971: 114)
Here's where Fourier's iron logic leads him astray. Children should not eat sugar just because they enjoy sugar. Childhood obesity was not an issue in Fourier's time, it is in ours. Likewise with bread - the type I currently enjoy doesn't easily stale in a week.
The variety and delicacy of the potato, combined with the low price of wines, will cause this vegetable, the preparing of which is so simple, to be quite generally preferred. (Fourier 1971: 114)
I'm on board. Potatoe is my staple.
During the first century it will employ its surplus population of the various localities in peopling the colonies. After two centuries there will be no surplus, for the human species multiplies very little as soon as Harmony attains its plenitude and the race its full vigour. In the beginning, France will be obliged, on account of lack of territory, to your four millions of its superfluous inhabitants beyond its borders. (Fourier 1971: 115)
Did Fourier imagine Europe as the Lebensraum of the French? There are currently 67 million French, roughly twice the amount in Fourier's time.
Chicken-raising is evidently the branch which all the world will practise. It is in order to render this industry general that God has made the chicken the most valuable, the most wholesome of edibles, and the most generally preferred, whether for its flesh, or its eggs and the numerous uses to which these are put. (Fourier 1971: 116)
This has sadly held true. I say sadly because of the foul conditions in which these fowl are raised.
How great would the abundance of fish be if there were an agreement as to an intermission in fishing, and the quantity of fish to be left in every river! such an agreement is one of the properties of the associative régime. (Fourier 1971: 116)
No, let's keep overfishing until there are no more fish! Fry must have his can of anchovies.
The associative order looks upon manufactures only as the complement of agriculture, a means of diversion in the passional calms which will intervene during the long winter vacation and the equatorial rains. Accordingly, all the phalanxes of the globe will have factories, but they will strive to bring the products manufactured to the highest degere of perfection, in order that their durability may reduce the labour of manufacture to a short space of time. (Fourier 1971: 118)
Hiina sitanikerdis! No more single-use plastics, then.
God distributed only such an allowance of attraction for the work of manufacture as corresponds to a quarter of the time that the associative man can devote to labour. The other three quarters are to be employed in the care of animals, plans, the kitchen, industrial armies, in short, in all kinds of labour except manufacturing, in which term I do not include the daily preparation of food, for that is domestic service. (Fourier 1971: 118)
Variety in work. Help manufacture something in the morning, take care of some plants and animals by mid-day and do all kinds of other things inbetween and after.
Death: it causes the cessation of a man's most useful interprise, under circumstances in which no one about him has either the intention to continue them or the necessary talents and capital to do so. (Fourier 1971: 121)
Makes me think of the disjointed natures of science and philosophy where individual enterprises are prized. The consequence being that every generation must re-discover the works of the past, and produce yet another set of household names, soon forgotten for the next iteration. There are mainstays, for sure, but this is the field where individualism and disordanization stands out to me.
All the sophists agree in declaring that man is made for society: according to this principle ought man to aim for the smallest or the largest society possible? It is beyond doubt that it is in the largest that all the mechanical and economical advantages will be found: and since we have only attained the infinitely small, "family-labour" ("travail familial"), in any other indication required to verify the fact that civilisation is the antipodes of destiny as well as of truth? (Fourier 1971: 123)
Is this globalization?
Equality. This is a political poison in association; the English are ignorant of the fact, and constitute their commuities [sic] of families of about equal fortune. The associative régime is as incompatible with equality of fortune as with uniformity of character; it desires a progressive scale in every direction, the greatest variety in employments, and, above all, the union of extreme contrasts, such as that of the man of opulence with one of no means, a fiery character with an apathetic one, youth with age, etc. (Fourier 1971: 128)
As some previous pages showed, Fourier would have people with nothing to their name live alongside some with hundreds of millions. He does not appear to consider the fact that the few with much have gained their opulence on the backs of many with nothing.
Genuine association will pursue the three opposite courses: 1° It will be religious through inclination, through conviction of the exalted wisdom of God, whose benefits it will enjoy every moment. [|] Public worship will be a necessity for it: the most insignificant vicar will be as well placed as the bishops of to-day, and it will be necessary to create at least thirty thousand priests in France by hasty ordination, in order that each phalanx may contain a sufficient number to allow them to discharge their duties in relays, not subjecting them to a daily exercise of their functions; [...] (Fourier 1971: 128-129)
Nah, fuck that noise. An ideal society would have no need for superstitions and parasites to extoll morality, which Fourier himself elsewhere deprecates.
His dogma of communism is a rehash of Sparta and Rome; that of free love is likewise a plagiarism from various peoples, among others the Nepaulians, the Otaheitans, etc. (Fourier 1971: 129)
...Writes the man who elsewhere prescribes systematic orgies.
Peasants form an exchange every Sunday; at the church entrance, before or after high mass; they form an exchange in the markets and taverns, where they exhaust themselves with inquiries and prattle, about the state of affairs, about the rise and decline in commodities: they would, at the counting-house, have a genuine exchange, and be eager, in order to figure there, to become shareholders, or consigners, or both. (Fourier 1971: 134)
In time, Churches will go the way of the market-cross. On these pages Fourier has a surprisingly dim and chauvinistic view of the poor. Take the sentence, "Nothing pleases a countryman, and particularly a peasant, more than assemblies of commercial intrigue." Sure, back when they had nothing better to do. Those with nothing better to do today have an endless array of activities that are infinitely more attractive than commercial intrigue.
By building upon this foundation there could already be erected an edifice of semi-happiness, or Guaranteeism, a period between the civilised state and the associated state. Semi-association is collective without being individual; without joining hands or households in a combined management. It admits the isolated labour of families; but it establishes a solidarity or comparative assurance among them extending over the entire mass, so that no individual may be excepted from the benefits of the guarantees. (Fourier 1971: 135)
The bits where Fourier is trying to be realistic are the worst. Private property, marriages and churches must persist for the period of transition from civilization to harmony. Ugh.
I have already replied to an argument which it is well to reproduce (for repetition will frequently be necessary here); I have observed that as economy can spring only from large combinations, God hsa to create a social theory applicable to large masses and not to three or four families. (Fourier 1971: 137)
Immediately following the "reconciling three mistresses" quip. God's theory of social organization (association).
The trial would, therefore, be much more conveniently made in a temperate region, like Florence, Naples, Valencia, Lisbon, [|] where they would have eight to nine months of full cultivation and a far better opportunity to consolidate the bonds of union, since there would be but two or three months ofpassional calm remaining to tide over till the advent of the second spring, a time when the Phalanx, resuming agricultural labour, would form its ties and cabals anew with much greater zeal, imbuing them with a degree of intensity far above that of the first yar; it would thenceforth be in a state of complete consolidation, and strong enough to weather the passional calm of the second winter. (Fourier 1971: 140-141)
Still weird seeing "Malinowskianisms" like "the bonds of union" in Fourier. But not as weird as Fourier's apparent view of human passions, which die down during the winter months?
The central part of the Palace or Phalanstery ought to be appropriated to peaceful uses, and contain the dining-halls, halls for finance, libraries, study, etc. In this central portion are located the place of worship, the tour d'ordre, the telegraph, the post-office boxes, the chimes for ceremonials, the observatory, the winter court adorned with resinous plants, and situated in the rear of the parade-court. (Fourier 1971: 144)
The central portion being the quiet place, once again. The telegraph of course is central.
Besides, services of this sort will be consigned to individuals whose temperament can accommodate itself to it, and who will look upon it as play, considering the large profits obtained. (Fourier 1971: 146)
Some glimmer (of theory) among the muck (of architectural plans).
But the Circles or Casinos are subject to equality, which impedes the developments of ambition, while the progressive household, being subdivided into rival and unequal groups, opens a vast field to the three ambitious intrigues of protector, protégé, and independent. (Fourier 1971: 148)
Ambition evidently so important that equality must be sacrificed at its altar.
There will not be a handful of caterpillars in the regions cultivated associatively; that is one of the insects that will disappear after the lapse of three years of combined exploitation. (Fourier 1971: 149)
Three years of picking catepillars, huh? Can you think of any reason why Fourier's experimental phalanstery didn't get sponsored?
No other bonds can be discovered in the social man. [...] No other bonds can be discovered in the social man. If he does not form any of these four bonds, he becomes, like the wild man of the Aveyron, a brute beast in human shape. He progresses in sociableness (sociabilité) only in so far as he succeeds in forming one, or two, or three, or four groups. It is, therefore, by the analysis of groups that the study of the social [|] man should have been initiated, - a thing entirely neglected, in spite of all that is said. (Fourier 1971: 155-156)
Major of Friendship, unisexual of Ambition, corporative Minor of Love, bisexual of Family, consanguineous Pivotal, of Unityism or fusion of bonds
This "sociableness" evidently corresponds to "sociability", which might indeed be a direct translation from French. Note that this table is not unproblematic. Friendship can only be unisexual? (Men and women cannot be friends?) Love can only be bisexual? (No same-sex love?)
The senses by themselves are not springs of sociableness, for the most influential of them, that of taste, necessity of nourishment, urges to anthropophagy. Sociableness, then, depends upon the formation of groups, or passionate leagues. (Fourier 1971: 156)
I believe this to be thoroughly misguided. I hope to be proved wrong on this account, and find something in Fourier's books on passion that addresses how the senses can be springs of sociableness. The anthropophagy example is complete bull - the sense of taste can only bring humans together to eat each other? What of the communion of food? Not to mention the most obvious connections between the senses and sociability, that people take a liking to attractive persons, and will give their fullest attention to persons with beautiful or commanding voices.
The succession of influences enumerated corresponds to that of bud, flower, fruit, seed, - to the four ages of vegetation. (Fourier 1971: 156)
In anterior phase, or childhood, 1 to 15 years, friendship. In citerior phase, or adolescence, 16 to 35 years, love. In focal phase, or virility, 36 to 45 years, love and ambition. In ulterior phase, or maturity, 46 to 65 years, ambition. In posterior phase, or old age, 66 to 80 years, family feeling.
Interesting table but not in conformity with any classical division of ages. The dominance of given social passions odd.
This table has no need of a commentary. It cannot be disputed that friendship predominates in childhood, as love does in youth; that ambition prevails in mature life, and that old age, isolated from the world, concentrates itself upon amily affection, being incapable of the other three feelings; for civilised old age is generally too mistrustful to surrender itself to a real friendship; it is justly reproached with abandoning itself completely to egoism, which is the opposite of friendship (Fourier 1971: 156)
This table must be so restrictive because it describes his vision of civilization.
If a group is harmonious, the dominant or real passion is consonant to the tonic or apparent passion (passion d'étalage). The group is subversive, when the dominant and the tonic are different. For instance, nothing is more common than gatherings of pretended friends, each a mass of egoism, with nothing of friendship but its mask, no real motive but interest. Such are fashionable assemblies, where not a shadow of the devotion affected is felt. each one comes there with designs of personal ambition, gallantry, gluttony, pretending meanwhile to be actuated solely by pure and ardent friendship. These groups have a dominant contradictory to the tonic. In fact, their tonic or apparent passion is friendship; their dominant or real motive is personal interest. (Fourier 1971: 157)
What is pseudo-phatic communion? (cf. Haverkate 1988) "Tonic" must come from music theory. I wonder if it could be read simply as the "tone" of an assembly, i.e. approaching the concept of "atmosphere".
Our legislators wish to subordinate the social system to the last of the four groups, that of the Family, which God has almost entirely excluded from influence in social Harmony, because it is a group with a material or forced bond of union, not one of free association, passional, dissoluble at pleasure. It was befitting people who, in all their calculations, are in contradiction with nature, to take as the pivot of the social mechanism that one of the four groups which ought to have the least influence, since it lacks freedom; in Harmony, accordingly, it has no active function except when it is absorbed by the other three and acts in their spirit. (Fourier 1971: 158; fn)
"By reason of its indissoluble bond, it is incongruous with the spirit of God, who wishes to govern solely by attraction, or liberty of ties and motives." (ibid, 158; fn) - We cannot choose our family, whereas we make friendships, fall in love and join groups due to attraction.
Another condition is that the groups be in irreconcilable rivalry; that they criticise without mercy the minutest details of each other's work; that their pretensions be incompatible and in every way distinct, without the slightest fraternity; that, on the contrary, they organise scissions, jealousies, and intrigues of every description. Such a régime will be as far removed from fraternity as it is from equality; and nevertheless it is this mechanism which will give birth to super-composite liberty, which is in total opposition to philosophic doctrines: they enjoy a contempt for perfidious riches and encouragement of arbitrary traffic or free falsehood. (Fourier 1971: 159)
This might he Fourier's real genius: heterogenity as a basis for stability. Very well elaborated in the footnote:
We must not persuade ourselves that in Harmony mankind are brothers and friends. It would be robbing life of its salt to cause the shades of opinion, contradictions, antipathies, to disappear from it. But it must be observed that in the play of the series these disagreements operate only as regards the contact of group with group, and not of individual with individual. It is of little consequence that the groups be irreconcilable, provided there exist bonds of connection between their respective individuals. [...] The more a series is subject to internal discord, the greater the prodigies it performs for external concord. (Fourier 1971: 159; fn)
Differences are what makes life worth living; if we were all the same there'd be very little point in existing - someone just like you already exists. The crucial point here is that groups will be rivals, while individuals forming those groups can very well be friends.
It is by such means alone that those sublime harmonies can be called forth, described under the name of unions (ralliements), and whose characteristic is to absorb egoism and individual discords [|] in the accords of the masses; a characteristic whose special uses in the associative régime I have frequently explained. (Fourier 1971: 160-161)
A reversal of the above, in a somewhat poetic phrasing.
Every innocent mania is admitted to the rank of laudable and harmonious impulses, provided that its devotees can gather together the nucleus of a series, consisting of at least nine persons, and arranged in a regular group as above. No matter how comical a fancy may be, it is breveted a useful and respectable passion, if it can offer this feature of corporative union. It has a right to a standard in its reunions, a right to outward insignia for its members, and a place in the ceremonials [|] of a certain degree, province, of region, if it may not figure in those of the Phalanx. (Fourier 1971: 161-162)
If you can find eight other men who enjoy ejaculating on figurines, you're good.
We find in the table but a brief place allowed for sleep: the Harmonions will sleep very little; perfected hygiene, coupled with variety of employments, will accustom them not to get fatigued in their labour; their bodies will not be exhausted in the course of the day, will need but a small amount of sleep, and will accustom themselves to it from childhood by an abundance of pleasures for which the day cannot be sufficiently long. (Fourier 1971: 168)
Written at a time when the function of sleep must have seemed mystical. The Harmonians will not have need to consolidate the previous day's experiences in REM sleep?
Upon beholding this associative fairyland, these harmonies, these prodigies, this sea of delights, created simply by attraction or divine impulse, we shall see aroused a frenzy of enthusiasm for God, author of so beautiful an order; and prefectible, infamous civilisation, will be loaded with universal malediction. Its political and moral libraries will be spat upon, torn up in the first moment of anger, and delivered over to the meanest uses, until they are reprinted with a critical commentary, facing the text, to make it the enduring laughing-stock of the human race. (Fourier 1971: 168; fn)
Projection?
In conformity with the thesis of counter-swing of movement, association should have the property of assembling productive armies, as civilisation assembles destructive ones. (Fourier 1971: 179)
Supporting Beecher's "parody" interpretation.
Eart series, being a Partner and not a Tenant of the Phalanx, receives a share not of the proceeds of its own labour, but of that of all the Series, and its compensation is proportioned to the rank it occupies in the table divided into three classes, necessity, utility, pleasure. (Fourier 1971: 183)
"Capital, labour, and talent" are repeated so often, whereas this trinity I'm meeting for the first time.
Mixed title; Repugnant obstacles, such as the work of miners, or attendants upon the sick nad wet-nurses. An obstacle purely industrial is often a source of amusement; it is a matter of sport for athletes; but one cannot make a sport of repugnance which fatigues the senses, such as the cleaning of a sewer, descending into a mine: you can overcome it by a point of honour, as is done by the Little Hordes and sick-nurses; it is none the less an offence to the senses; while simple fatigue without disgust, like that of a man who climbs pear-trees and cherry-trees, may become mere child's-play and a real pleasure. Hence it is that the associative order regards only repugnant fatigue as meritorious. (Fourier 1971: 185)
How idealists all around think it should be, difficult jobs paying more.
A poor man, in Harmony, if he own but part of a share, but one-twentieth, is proprietor of the entire district, in participation: he can say, "our lands, our place, our mansions, our forests, our works, our factories." All is his property; he is interested in the whole of the personal and landed possessions. If, under existing conditions, a forest is deteriorated, a hundred peasants will look upon it with indifference. The forest is simple property; it belongs exclusively to the lord; they rejoice at what may be prejudicial to him, and will secretly exert themselves to increase the damage. If a torrent sweeps the land away, three-fourths of the inhabitants own none along the banks, and laugh at the havoc. Frequently, they rejoice to see the water ravage the patrimony of a rich neighbour, whose property is simple, devoid of bonds of union with the body of the inhabitants, and inspiring them with no interest whatever. (Fourier 1971: 189)
Similar reasoning we saw from the protesters. The people in power are apt to ask, "Why are you destroying your community?" - paying no attention to the fact that the protestors have no stake in the community, they own none of it, it's all Walmarts, McDonalds, and so on.
Jesus by these words consecrates the right of taking, when one is hungry, what is necessary, where it may be found; and this right imposes the duty upon the social body of securing to the people a minimum for maintenance; - since civilisation deprives it of the first natural right, that of the chase, fishing, gathering, pasturage, it owes it an indemnity. As long as this duty is not recognised, there exists no social compact reciprocally agreed to; thereis nothing but a league of oppression, a league of the minority which possesses, against the majority which does not possess the necessities of life, and which, for that reason, tends to resume the fifth right, to form clubs or internal leagues to despoil the possessors. (Fourier 1971: 190)
Likewise, the modern protestors insist that the social contract has been broken.
A decent suit, and clothes for work and for occasions, as well as all the implements for husbandry and manufacture; Individual lodgings, consisting of a room and a closet, and admission to the public halls, the fêtes of the third class, and to plays in third class loges. (Fourier 1971: 192)
This rampant classism is not all that inspiring.
If political science knew the secret of bringing this lever into play, the minimum could really be secured by the absolute cessation of idleness. The only ones remaining to be provided for would be the infirm; a very light burden, and one not felt by the social body, if it became opulent and, through attraction, were relieved of slothfulness, and of indifferent labour, which is almost as sterile as slothfulness. (Fourier 1971: 192)
Likewise with constant labour, from 3 in the morning 'til 10 in the evening. How would the inhabitants live to be 140 if they work all day every day, eat five meals each day, etc. without burning themselves out?
Every corporate body is proud. Our customs have made pride a capital vice. The passionate Series will make a capital virtue of it, a civic virtue, from which they will derive, among other advantages, that of stimulating the rivalry of the workers, and the perfection of products. (Fourier 1971: 193)
Another reversal.
In order to house Lucullus, Rome has to construct a huge palace: he will be contented in Harmony with three or four rooms because, in this new order, intercourse through the Series is too active to allow one time to stay in one's dwelling. (Fourier 1971: 195)
Then why would he need two or three rooms to stay empty? Also, there will be very little private time? All work and play, no meditation and reflection.
We shall find among the Harmonians a policy totally contrary to our ideas of commerce, which promote waste and the changes of fashion, under the pretext of maintaining the workman. But in Harmony, the workman, the agriculturist, and the consumer, are one and the same person; he has interest in practising extortion upon himself, as in civilisation, where everyone strives to promote industrial disturbance occasioned by changes of fashion, and to manufacture poor goods or poor furniture, in order to double consumption, to enrich the merchants at the expense of the people and of real wealth. (Fourier 1971: 196)
Clever. More explicitly down the page: "Everything is but political madness, as long as the interest of the individual is not bound up with the interest of the mass." (ibid, 196)
[...] - whether in love, where intimate intercourse between men of the higher classes and women of the people constitutes only germs of confusion, through the birth of bastards, or through unequal marriages, which are the cause of dissensions in families; [...] (Fourier 1971: 199)
I didn't know wealth was genetic, and intermixing so troublesome.
We have, then, even under existing conditions, germs of fusion [|] of the unequal classes; we find them even in ambition: it accustoms a superior to mingle familiarly with his inferior, in party concerns, in electoral intrigues. The Scipios and the Catos have been known to meet a boor and press his hand in order to gain his vote; to what mean acts do the English lords resort, to capture a "rotten borough," paying dearly for it at the same time! (Fourier 1971: 199-200)
Shaking hands indeed part of the Ancient Roman ambitus. Kissing babies probably not.
Intimacies among those who are unequal will, therefore, be very readily formed in Harmony: the reunions will allure people by the gaiety, the well-being, the civility, and the integrity of the lower classes, by the elegance of the industrial arrangements, and the harmony of the members. (Fourier 1971: 201)
"Civility" without Civilization.
It is, then, a creation subversive of the laws of harmony; allied to those laws only by slender ties, forming exceptions, or the transition between the present evil and the future good. These useful animals are an illustration of the system which will fully prevail in the approaching creations, where at least seven-eights of the quadrupeds and birds will be found to be the allies of man, - such as the bee, the cochineal, the kermes, the silk-worm are to-day. (Fourier 1971: 204)
Is it really harmony if nearly all the other species are subservient to humans? It would be "human harmony", but not true harmony.
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