French and German Socialism in Modern TimesEly, Richard T. (Richard Theodore)
History
French and German Socialism in Modern Times
Ely, Richard T. (Richard Theodore)
Socialism -- France; Socialism -- Germany
A social organization must be formed which will allow free play to
our passions, so that they may combine harmoniously. Our present
society, called civilization,[74] does not, and cannot, do this. It is
a system of oppression and repression, and is necessarily a frightful
discord. Harmony can only be found in combinations of suitable numbers
in communities known as phalanxes, and occupying buildings called
phalansteries. Each phalanx is a unit, a great family, and dwells in a
single building, a phalanstery. What is it that determines the proper
number for a single phalanx? It is again the twelve passions of man.
These can be combined in eight hundred and twenty different ways in as
many individuals, and no possible combination ought to be unrepresented
in the workers of any phalanx, or there will be a lack of perfect
harmony. But in every community there will be found old men, infants, and
those disabled on account of illness or accident. Provision must also
be made for absences. There ought not, then, to be less than fifteen or
sixteen hundred members in a phalanx, though four hundred is mentioned
as a possible but undesirable minimum. Eighteen hundred to two thousand
members are recommended. A larger number would produce discord, and is,
therefore, inadmissible. But a further arrangement is necessary. These
different characters thrown together helter-skelter would no more produce
harmony than it would for one blindfolded to draw from a bag two thousand
combinations of notes for the piano and play them in the order in which
they were drawn. On the contrary, they must be ordered intelligently in
series, the series combined into groups, and the groups united into the
phalanx. Those having similar tastes form a series, which must consist
of some seven, eight, or nine members. Several series having related
tastes and desires unite in a group. A group undertakes some one kind of
labor, as the care of fruit-trees, and a series concerns itself with one
particular branch of the labor of a group, as the care of apple-trees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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