Danielle Risner
3rd
AP Euro Hist
.Appearing as they did in the first quarter of the 19th century, it is necessary to identify the Utopian Socialists according to how perceptively they understood and dealt with the massive challenge of industrial society. In this regard, it was Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Own who seemed to have the most impact .
It was Charles Fourier, who seems to have been the most utopian of the Utopian Socialists. What I mean by this is that although Fourier was aware of what was happening in England as a result of the Industrial Revolution, he rejected industrialism wholesale. He despised laissez-faire liberalism and the factory system not because of what effects they might have on human society, but because he believed that industrial society was a passing phase. He saw no need to rectify the dangers inherent in industrialism. He simply went beyond industrialism by ignoring it.
Fourier's ideas seem quite fantastical and without ground in reality. Indeed, there is much in Fourier's writing that is pure nonsense. Yes, like some of the representatives of the early French communist movement, Fourier exhibits that almost characteristic pretension of the visionary: contradictory, confused, repetitive, chaotic and, of course, long-winded. Fourier wanted to elevate the status of manual labor, to rescue it from a long-standing tradition of degradation and denigration.
He believed, on the other hand, that it was possible to make all work into play, to make it pleasurable and desirable and deeply satisfying, both physically and mentally. This was perhaps the one vision of Fourier's thought that most captivated other socialist thinkers of the 19th century, including Marx and Engel's
When we turn from Fourier to the ideas and work of Robert Owen , we move into a significantly different historical context. Although Owen was engaged in the textile industry, he was not repelled by his work, nor did he live out his life in ...
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He believed, on the other hand, that it was possible to make all work into play, to make it pleasurable and desirable and deeply satisfying, both physically and mentally. This was perhaps the one vision of Fourier's thought that most captivated other socialist thinkers of the 19th century, including Marx and Engel's
When we turn from Fourier to the ideas and work of Robert Owen , we move into a significantly different historical context. Although Owen was engaged in the textile industry, he was not repelled by his work, nor did he live out his life in abstract drug-induced pondering. Instead, Owen became a highly successful cotton manufacturer and entrepreneur who managed to climb the social ladder into the ranks of the wealthy and socially respectable. Owen understood the implications of industrialization better than Fourier and accepted them in a much more positive way. He was more open to new machinery, new techniques and new discipline because he saw these improvements as steps on the road to increasing human happiness.
Owen had introduced such improvements as shorter working hours, healthier and safer working conditions, after-hours recreation, schools for children and adults, moral education, renovated housing, an end to child labor and insurance plans financed by payroll deduction. What was remarkable about New Lanark was that Owen not only improved the lot of his employees, he also managed to make profits. Before long, New Lanark became a tourist attraction where visitors came to gawk at Owen's social experiment in efficient production.
Owen rejected Christianity and custom and looked to the unique guidance of Reason and Nature. Owen argued that human nature could be changed: since we are all products of our environment, one need only change the environment to change man. This environmentalism of Owen's became a cornerstone of all socialist theories and programs of the 19th century.
Owen's first plans for the establishment of a utopian community resembled the phalanx of Fourier but without the dynamics of the Theory of Passional Attractions. Owen called these settlements, Villages of Cooperation. These villages were self-contained agricultural communities where the unemployed could find productive employment. Owen was confident that his Villages would spread rapidly because first, they were based on cooperative labor and second, they could produce more than private enterprise. However, the Villages did not take Britain by storm. He could not obtain enough capital from the government nor could he find much help from the private sector.
By any careful definition, Saint-Simon cannot be termed a socialist. The term socialist is associated with his name because his followers, known collectively as the Saint-Simonians, became socialists at a later stage.
Compared to the experience of either Fourier or Owen, Saint-Simon's position in society never really put him in touch with the realities of industrialism. His experience under the Directory is worth noting in this respect: as a friend and associate of the financiers and speculators who flourished during the Thermidorean Reaction, he was just the kind of person who was detested by men like Fourier or Babeuf. Where Fourier and Babeuf saw corruption and an almost immoral lack of concern for the common person, Saint-Simon saw expertise and enterprise. Where they had looked to capitalist growth with a suspicious eye, Saint-Simon welcomed it. Where they detested England and its social system, he was an ardent anglophile. And where they were repelled by the falseness and unnaturalness of Parisian society, Saint-Simon enjoyed the company of brilliant artists, scientists and men of affairs whom he encountered at the fashionable salons.
For some time, Saint-Simon appeared to be a typical liberal aristocrat, a man who spoke a language favorable to the emerging liberal and progressive bourgeoisie. Yet Saint-Simon was something consistently more than a liberal, more than a simple-minded defender of laissez-faire capitalism. As his thought became more refined he became more and more concerned with the dangers inherent in uncontrolled individualism. More than either Owen or Fourier, Saint-Simon perceived the ramifications of the new industrialism of his own time and he attempted to place his perceptions into a broad theoretical framework. He idealized productivity, organization, efficiency, innovation and technological discovery, however, this does not mean that these ends could be achieved in a free market economy.
Saint-Simon condemned kings, nobles and the clergy as useless and parasitical. That was a familiar enough theme for the period. He believed that in a previous stage of historical development, kings, nobles and priests served a necessary role. It was only now, under new conditions, that they had become socially useless. The aristocracy was now an anachronism, and served as an obstacle to the new social order which Saint-Simon saw emerging around him. Even these obstacles, Saint-Simon thought, were to be expected.
All of these men were great thinkers in past times. Although, their ideas went beyond reality, they did have merit and bits of each are used right here , even in America today. These three men went beyond conventional thinking of their time and their ideas will always live in the mind of the ambitious economy.
