Fourier, FRANÇOIS MARIE CHARLES, a French socialist, was born at Besançon, 9th April 1772. His father, a prosperous draper, had him educated in the academy of his native town. The boy excelled in the studies of the school, especially geography, and was passionately fond of flowers and music. He regretfully abandoned his studies for a business career, which he followed with zeal and integrity in various towns of France. As a commercial traveller he also visited Holland and Germany, where with remarkable insight and accuracy he took note of everything interesting in climate, productions, and manners. From his father Fourier inherited a fortune of about £3000, but, having started business for himself at Lyons, he lost nearly all he had at the siege of that city by the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror (1793). He was even thrown into prison, and narrowly escaped the guillotine. After his release and two years' experience as a soldier he returned to a commercial career.
At a very early age Fourier had his attention called to the abuses of commerce. When only five he was punished for speaking the truth about certain goods in his father's shop; and in 1799, while employed in a house at Marseilles, he had to superintend the destruction of an immense quantity of rice held for higher prices, in the midst of a scarcity of food, till it had become unfit for use. Believing that a system which involved such abuses and immoralities must be radically evil, Fourier set himself to discover an entirely new social theory, which he elaborated chiefly in three considerable works. In 1808 he published his Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées Générales; in 1822 his Traité d'Association Domestique Agricole; in 1829 Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire. Written under the most discouraging circumstances, these works for many years found few readers and scarcely any disciples; only the most ardent faith in his own principles could have carried him through so many difficulties. For the last ten years of his life he waited at noon every day in his apartments for the coming of the wealthy capitalist who should furnish means towards the realisation of his schemes. It was chiefly after the decline of the Saint-Simon movement that he gained a hearing and a little success. A small group of enthusiasts gathered round him; a journal was started for the advocacy of his views; an attempt to establish a society on his principles was made in 1832 near Versailles, but without success. At Paris, October 8, 1837, Fourier died, poor, but warmly appreciated by a circle of devoted disciples. In his private life he seems to have been a model of kindness, simplicity, and integrity.
The great aim of Fourier is to reconstruct society on principles which are entirely new. But his social system is more or less moulded and coloured by his peculiar views on cosmogony and psychology. His views of God incline, though not decidedly, to pantheism. The will of God pervades the world as a universal attraction. Whereas Newton proved that this universal attraction governs one movement of the world, Fourier shows that it rules the world in all its movements, which are four—material, organic, animal, and social. From this law of universal attraction there follows a universal analogy, according to which everything in one department of the world has its parallel elsewhere.
Fourier believed that the world has scarcely yet reached the adult stage, having existed only seven thousand years, whereas it is destined to last for eighty thousand years, a long period of progress being followed by a corresponding period of decline. At present mankind is oppressed by an endless variety of evils, which he sums up in one obnoxious word, civilisation, and which are due to the fact that we have run counter to the Creator in pronouncing passions to be bad that are simply natural. To effect the passage from social chaos to universal harmony there is but one way—to give a free and healthy development to the human passions.
This brings us to the psychology of Fourier, who recognised twelve radical passions, with three points of attraction; five sensitive (tending to enjoyment), sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch; four affective (tending to groups), friendship, love, ambition, and familism or paternity; three distributive (tending to series), the emulative, alternating, and composite. The meaning of the first nine is obvious enough. The emulative passion leads to intrigue, the alternating involves love of change; and the operation of the two might cause jealousy, disharmony, and war, were they not controlled by the composite passion and by a higher unity. Out of the free play of all the passions harmony is educed, like white from the combination of the colours.
But for the realisation of this ideal new social arrangements are necessary. These are provided in the phalange, an institution in which the interests of social union and individual liking are to be thoroughly reconciled. Each phalange was to consist of 1800 persons, a number sufficient to include the whole circle of human capacities, adequately various, and yet not too large for a convenient common life. The individuals constituting the phalange were to be arranged in groups of seven or more persons; from twenty-four to thirty-two groups were to form a series, and a number of series united to form a phalange of the requisite size. The pervading idea of the whole organisation was a harmonious social life combined out of the free play of the most varied likings and capacities. The dwelling of the phalange was the phalanstère, a vast, beautiful, and commodious structure in the centre of a highly cultivated domain, a square league in extent, where life would be arranged to suit every one, common or solitary, according to preference. As regards the institution of marriage Fourier would permit a freedom which would be subversive of such social order as now exists.
It is an obvious deduction from Fourier's principle of universal attraction that human life generally, and labour in particular, should be attractive. In the phalange labour is accordingly made attractive by constant regard to the likings and capacities of every one, and by continual change of occupation. The results of labour were to be distributed in the following manner. Out of the common gain of the phalange a very comfortable minimum was apportioned to each member, and the remainder was divided into twelve shares, of which five went to labour, four to capital, and three to talent. In distributing the reward to labour, the reverse of the present method was to be followed—i.e. necessary labour would be best paid, useful labour would come next, and pleasant labour would be worst paid.
So convinced was Fourier of the beauty and practicability of his social system that he believed it only required to be understood in order to be universally appreciated, and that in a very few years his phalanges would cover the whole world. The phalanges would arrange themselves in convenient groups with a common chief, and all would finally be united in a great federation, with Constantinople as capital. There never has been the least symptom of the realisation of such a dream. The system of Fourier has so little touch with fact and reality that it is hardly worthy of serious discussion. His road to the social millennium is far too easy. Yet his works are full of ingenious suggestion; and his criticism of the existing social order is often most searching and pungent. His theories may still be very profitably studied by the social economist.
Fourier's complete works were published at Paris (6 vols. 1840–46; new ed. 1870). The most eminent expounder of Fourierism was Victor Considérant, Destinée Sociale (1835); Gatti de Gamond's Fourier et son Système is an excellent summary. See also SOCIALISM; Pellarin, Fourier (5th ed. 1871); L. Reybaud, Réformateurs Modernes; Sargant, Social Innovators (1859); and several works by Alhaiza (1890–95).