History of American SocialismsNoyes, John Humphrey
History
History of American Socialisms
Noyes, John Humphrey
Communism -- United States; Socialism -- United States
We get but a very imperfect idea of the Owen and Fourier movements
from the short-lived experiments whose remains are before us in
Macdonald's collections. In the first place Macdonald, faithful as he
was, did not discover all the experiments that were made during those
movements. We remember some that are not named in his manuscripts. And
in the next place the numbers engaged in the practical attempts were
very small, in comparison with the masses that entered into the
enthusiasm of the general movements and abandoned themselves to the
idea of an impending social revolution. The eight thousand and six
hundred that we found by averaging Macdonald's list, might probably be
doubled to represent the census of the obscure unknown attempts, and
then multiplied by ten to cover the outside multitudes that were
converted to Socialism in the course of the Owen and Fourier revivals.
Owen in 1824 stirred the very life of the nation with his appeals to
Kings and Congresses, and his vast experiments at New Harmony. Think
of his family of nine hundred members on a farm of thirty thousand
acres! A magnificent beginning, that thrilled the world! The general
movement was proportionate to this beginning; and though this great
Community and all the little ones that followed it failed and
disappeared in a few years, the movement did not cease. Owen and his
followers--especially his son Robert Dale Owen and Frances
Wright--continued to agitate the country with newspapers, public
lectures, and "Fanny Wright societies," till their ideas actually got
foot-hold and influence in the great Democratic party. The special
enthusiasm for practical attempts at Association culminated in 1826,
and afterwards subsided; but the excitement about Owen's ideas, which
was really the Owen movement, reached its height after 1830; and the
embers of it are in the heart of the nation to this day.
On the other hand, Fourier (by proxy) started another national
excitement in 1842. With young Brisbane for its cosmopolitan apostle,
and a national newspaper, such as the _New York Tribune_ was, for its
organ, this movement, like Owen's, could not be otherwise than
national in its dimensions. We shall have occasion hereafter to show
how vast and deep it was, and how poorly it is represented by the
Phalanxes that figure in Macdonald's memoirs. Meanwhile let the reader
consider that several of the men who were leaders in this excitement,
were also leaders then and afterwards in the old Whig party; and he
will have reason to conclude that Socialism, in its duplex form of
Owenism and Fourierism, has touched and modified both of the
party-sections and all departments of the national life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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