Charles Fourier

Fourier also won a prominent place in the Marxian genealogy of socialism. In Germany in 1845, the young Engels translated excerpts on trade from The Theory of the Four Movements while excusing Fourier's 'cosmological fantasies' as the product of 'a brilliant world outlook'.8 Marx's assessment in the Communist Manifesto was more guarded: 'critical-utopian socialism', of which Fourier together with Owen and Saint-Simon were representative, was treated as the product of 'the early undeveloped period ... of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie'. It was commended for its attack on 'every principle of existing society', but faulted for its failure to understand the active and revolutionary part to be played by the proletariat in its own emancipation.9 This judgement was repeated, but in much warmer terms, thirty years later in Engels' pamphlet, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. So, however incongruous, Fourier's name was assigned a place of honour on the Kremlin wall when the Bolsheviks triumphed in Russia in 1917.
FeminismWhat is not disputed is that no theorist before him had conceived a more resolutely anti-patriarchal vision of social and sexual order. Fourier went much further than Montesquieu in arguing that the extension of the privileges of women provided the basis of all social progress. His was a systematic attempt to breach the law of the father at every conceivable point. In Harmony, women were ensured full sexual freedom at the age of eighteen. No longer constrained by monogamy, they were free to form simultaneous erotic or companionate relationships with several men. Women would control reproduction, just as children would be free to choose
Category:Feminists
Category:Men