April 7, 1772

Charles Fourier (April 7, 1772 to October 10, 1837), in one summary ,'was a French utopian socialist and philosopher who advocated a reconstruction of society based on idea that the natural passions of man would, if properly channeled, result in social harmony. He believed that he had discovered the laws of social interaction, comparable to Newton’s laws of physical interaction. Fourier identified twelve fundamental human passions: five of the senses (touch, taste, hearing, sight and smell); four of the soul (friendship, love, ambition and parenthood); and three that he called “distributive,” which ensured the balance of all the others.

'Fourier envisioned a society organized in units called “phalanxes” composed of male and female representatives of 810 personality types, in which natural interaction would automatically result in peace and harmony. In these communities the status of manual labor would be elevated by making work enjoyable and satisfying. Fourier also advocated the emancipation of women and coined the word féminisme in 1837.

'Fourier developed a following in France, and a short-lived model colony was established there in 1836. Approximately forty phalanxes were established in the United States between 1843 and 1858. Fourier’s perceptive criticism of existing society and his vision for the future made him an inspired prophet of nineteenth-century socialism. He can be considered an early exponent of the concept of alienation and a theorist of affluence, and his ideas have influenced such diverse fields as modern educational theory, personnel management and feminism.

'Fourier was born at Besançon .... the son of Charles Fourrier, a wealthy cloth merchant, and Marie Muguet. He received a solid classical education at the Jesuit College de Besancon (1781-1787), but was mostly self-taught. He moved from his native Besançon to Lyon, the second largest city in France. As the sole surviving son in his family, he was expected to succeed his father as head of the family business, and he began his apprenticeship in the cloth trade at the age of six. He found himself unsuited for commerce and deplored its chicanery as immoral. Nevertheless, upon the death of his father in 1781, according to the terms of his will, Fourier was compelled to enter a commercial career by age twenty or forfeit a substantial patrimony of 42,932 livres.

'Fourier lived through the events of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the revolution of 1830, but though they affected his personal fortunes, they did not seem to influence his ideas or his writing. During the early years of the revolution, Fourier lived at Lyons, where he fought on the counter-revolutionary side and lost his inheritance in a series of business failures. He barely escaped being executed by Jacobin forces when they purged that royalist stronghold in 1793. In 1794 he was drafted for service in the Army of the Rhine, [an army of the revolutionists] but was discharged two years later because of illness. He spent the remainder of his life in Lyons and Paris, earning his living by doing odd jobs, living in cheap rooming houses, preaching "universal harmony," and searching for a wealthy patron to finance a prototype of his utopian community.'

Recall from the above paragraphs, that a key was organizing the societies (there was no central government in Fourier's sketch) so that the different types of people worked together successfully based on Fourier's knowledge of what he considered the laws of social interaction. One way he developed the right interactions (or wrote about the right interactions) involved rules against the children in these societies seeing animals in heat; he specifically said that dogs and cats in heat should be hidden from the children.

The book I reference last, is Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World (Jonathan Beecher,  1990), which is available to read, in its entirety, at Google Books.