James Seth

4 July 2011

The Grass is Always Greener: Fourierism and Socialist Utopias in Texas

INTRODUCTION

Influenced by Thomas More’s Utopia and subsequent utopian novels, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia seems also to have been informed by the ideas of Charles Fourier, specifically in terms of communal living, returning to nature, aversion to monogamy and traditional marriage, sexual freedom, and passionate living, in general. Ecotopia portrays a Fourierian community that rejects conventional notions of work, sex, and gender and applies utopian concepts to a real place where they can be manifested, rather than a fictional, far-away island.  Callenbach envisions a passionate, cannabis-using community who work collaboratively and, despite their transparent emotions, very efficiently. Callenbach’s novel performs the same work as socialist utopian writers like Fourier, who viewed a politically liberal utopia as an actuality and not simply an idea. Having been educated during his various travels in France, Fourier was convinced that cooperation and involvement could lead to a successful society. In the mid-nineteenth century, followers of Fourier traveled to Texas and founded utopian settlements. This discussion post will attempt to answer the following questions: Who was Charles Fourier, and why was he influential? What was the mission or objective of socialist utopian communities founded in Texas? Did these utopian communities prosper?

CHARLES FOURIER

Charles Fourier, born in Besançon, France in 1772, was an influential writer and thinker whose works on eliminating poverty and creating a cooperative society have made him a prominent figure in literature, philosophy, and social activism (Denslow 169). Works such as Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générales (Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies) and Design for Utopia: Selected Writings inspired writers and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and Nathanial Hawthorne to respond to his utopian ideas. The following passage from Fourier’s Wikipedia entry explains his greatest societal concerns and his utopian mission:

Fourier was deeply disturbed by the disorder of his time and wanted to stabilize the course of events which surrounded him. Fourier saw his fellow human beings living in a world full of strife, chaos, and disorder.^[14] Fourier is best remembered for his writings on a new world order based on unity of action and harmonious collaboration.^[2] He is also known for certain Utopian pronouncements, such as that the seas would lose their salinity and turn to lemonade, and in a prescient view of climate change, that the North Pole would be milder than the Mediterranean in a future phase of Perfect Harmony.^[13]

Fourier was a proponent of socialism, community living, women’s rights, freedom of sexuality, and what was called by L Goldstein as “the liberation of human passion” (98). He envisioned utopia as a communal society modeled on a phalanx, a military formation used in Ancient Greece where soldiers would create a kind of mobile fortress by surrounding the squadron with their shields. Fourier’s phalanx-inspired communities resembled large-scale apartment complexes. The buildings in his phalanx structure were called phalanstères, or “grand hotels” in French, and were composed of “a center part and two lateral wings” (Wikipedia). Corresponding to his ideas that marriage inhibited possibilities for women, Fourier also felt that “the traditional house was a place of exile and oppression of women. He believed gender roles could progress by shaping them within community, more than by pursuits of sexual freedom or other Simonian concepts” (Wikipedia). Like other utopian writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Herland) and Ernest Callenback (Ecotopia), Fourier felt that women’s roles extended beyond the domestic sphere.

EARLY FOURIERISM IN TEXAS

Among those influenced by the writings of Fourier was Victor Considerant, a French socialist who formed the utopian community La Reunion in Texas in 1855. In France, Considerant was a musician, editor, and journalist, working with Fourier on several newspapers and editing the journals La Phalanstère and La Phalange. According to Jonathan Beecher, Considerant was one of several “visionaries who combined rose-colored pictures of the geography, climate, and natural resources of Texas with grandiose fantasies concerning the role that they themselves might play in turning these attributes and resources to good use” (15). Beecher argues that Considerant and other socialist contemporaries were idealistic about applying Fourier’s ideas to a Texas community, overlooking the intensity of work that was needed to create and sustain a Fourierian utopia. Before settling La Reunion, Considerant had been involved in “radical political activities” in France and immigrated in a time “immediately following the failed European revolutions of 1848” (15). In a similar position as the English Puritans who settled the first New England colonies, Considerant planned to create a model community—a city on a hill, if you will—that would fully realize Fourier’s phalanx structure and become a functioning, utopian society. A radical in his native land, Fourier traveled to Texas to create what he felt would be the prototypical Fourierian community. Beecher compares Considerant’s endeavor to that of Icarian communist Etienne Cabet, concluding that Considerant’s failure to make La Reunion the model utopian community “left the deeper mark on Texas history” (15).

LA REUNION

La Reunion, founded by Considerant in 1855, was comprised of French, Belgian, and Swiss Fourierists. Just one of 29 recorded Fourierist colonies, La Reunion was a socialist utopian community that allowed everyone to vote and own private property. The original community was comprised of nearly 200 colonists, who settled near the Trinity River. The community worked building homes and performing a variety of laborious tasks. In 1891, the Dallas Morning News produced a lengthy article about the community, writing about their history, occupations, ideological origins, and culture. The following passage from the article depicts various social and cultural aspects of the community as seen by visitors:

In the center of an elevated plateau, this traveler would have seen a numerous company of laborers busily engaged preparing to erect houses. He would have heard the ring of the ax as it ate into the tree, the crash of the saw, the whir of the plane, the sound of the hammer and the clink of the trowel as a stone was shaped. [. . .] He would have heard these laborers talking as they worked, but talking in unknown tongue. [. . .] He had seen a colony of Europeans engaged in the beginning of an attempt to exploit the peculiar social theories of Francois Charles Marie Fourier. He had seen a company of communists, sans culottes, if you will, with their heads full of formulas engaged in an attempt to found a Utopia on the prairies of Texas.

Regarding entertainment, the article reports that the community had vocal classes, weddings, and holiday celebrations, including those in honor of July 4^th. Many residents of Dallas came to the Fourier community’s celebrations. A Fourier society in Lyons even gave the colony a silk flag to use at their celebrations; however, the flag was subsequently destroyed by fire.

Despite their celebratory activities, La Reunion suffered a great deal of hardships. This was largely on account of Texas’s unpredictable weather, including a blizzard in 1856—just one year after settlement—which froze the Trinity River and destroyed the community’s crops. While over 350 people lived in La Reunion at one time, many residents began to leave the settlement over the next ten years. By the turn of the century, La Reunion’s population had sharply declined as members moved to other Texas areas or, in some cases, to their European countries of origin.  In 1860, according to the La Reunion Wikipedia entry, “the nearby emerging town of Dallas incorporated La Réunion into its land area; the remaining skilled colonists were absorbed into its specialized workers.” Many colonists of La Reunion were assimilated in the workforce in surrounding areas, and many of the colonists had specialized skills uncommon in Texas, such as weaving, keeping shop, and, most notably, brewing. Though many colonists were unsuited for agricultural labor, some of the remaining residents of La Reunion in Texas formed the first brewery and butcher shops in Dallas.   

OTHER SOCIALIST ACTIVITY IN TEXAS

According to the website Labor History from Texas, the Meitzen family of Halletsville was very active in the Texas Socialist movement. The website states that the “Otto Meitzen and Jennie Caroline Alpine Holmgren emigrated from Germany after the repression following the failed revolution of 1848” and settled in Texas in 1850. The family was against slavery, but they chose to stay in Texas during the Civil War, rather than moving to Mexico, which was a common decision for many Texas progressives. Their son, Edward Otto, was particularly active in social and political affairs; the website claims that “Edward Otto, who eventually worked as a blacksmith, teacher, lawyer, publisher, and political leader [. . .] was active in the entire succession of progressive organizations in Texas from the Greenback Party in the 1880s, through the Farmer’s Alliance and the Texas Populist movement, to the Socialist Party.” Edward—called E.O. in the article—published progressive newspapers in Halletsville, the most famous being The Rebel. Though the paper stopped production after pressure from the United States government, E.O. served as County Judge in La Vaca County and was “the most successful Socialist candidate in Texas history when he gathered 11.7% of the vote in the governor’s race in 1914.” Even after the Socialist Party disbanded in Texas, E.O.’s children and grandchildren continued his progressive mission, though the article does not give much detail on specific political activities. The website states that “In 1914, E.O. Meitzen was shot by a sheriff he had accused of “losing” important records concerning county monies. He survived the shooting and other physical assaults and died in Houston in 1934 at the ripe age of 79.”

WORKS CITED

Beecher, Jonathan. “Building Utopia in the Promised Land: Icarians and Fourierists in Texas.” The French in Texas: History, Migration, Culture by François Lagarde. University of Texas Press, 2003. Pg. 15.

“Charles Fourier.” Wikipedia. 30 June 2011. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_fourier# cite_note-13

Dallas Morning News, January 25, 1891, Pt. 3, p.1 http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com /~jwheat/reunionart.html

Denslow, Van Buren. Modern Thinkers Principally Upon Social Science: What They Think, and Why, Chicago, 1880.

Goldstein, L (1982). "Early Feminist Themes in French Utopian Socialism: The St.-Simonians and Fourier", Journal of the History of Ideas, vol.43, No. 1.

“Phalanstère.” Wikipedia. 1 July 2011. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanst%C3%A8re#cite_note-0

Roberts, Richard H. 1995. Religion and the Transformations of Capitalism: Comparative Approaches. Routledge. pp 90

Serenyi, P (1967). "Le Corbusier, Fourier, and the Monastery of Ema", The Art Bulletin, vol.49, No. 4.

“Socialism Settled in Texas.” Labor History from Texas. Retrieved 1 July 2011. Web. http://www. labordallas.org/hist/reds.htm