Disorganized Labor cannot subdue the earth, hampered as it is by waste, by loss, by repulsive and dangerous tasks, by fruitless toil, by class hostilities, by warring communities, by the monopoly of gains, and by the thousand penalties incurred by disorderly opposition to Law.
The Organization of Labor will evolve Attractive Industries; Harmonious Communities, and will ensure the Equitable Distribution of Gains and the protection afforded by Mutual Guarantees.
These communities will illustrate Fourier’s second axiom. Attractions are Proportioned to Destinies. Every being born into this world has a place in the work of subduing the earth, suited to his abilities and to his tastes. In the Organized Community this place will be open to him. He will be attracted to those industries in which he is destined to do his best work.
The Series Distribute the Harmonies, and, under the Law communities will be drawn together by natural attraction. The Law ensures harmonious relation and there will be no competitions, no grasping monopolies, no clashing of opposing forces. The welfare of each individual will be identified with the welfare of all. The community of Organized Laborers, living together and working together in Attractive Industries, will be a solid Phalanx of united interests. The Phalanx will assume responsibility for the welfare of each member from birth to death. The provision of Mutual Guarantees will insure to each a good home, good living, good education for the young, good care for the aged and good opportunities for work and for recreation while life lasts. Each one will be perfectly free to follow those congenial pursuits the attractions of which are proportioned to his destiny. The final consummation as announced by Fourier in his third axiom, will be the Unity of Man with God, with Man, and with Nature.
The apostle of Fourierism in America was Albert Brisbane. By nature a humanitarian and by earnest study a profound scholar, he recognized a germ of truth in the theory of the Transcendentalists that humanity is suffering from evils which if not remedied must result in disaster. The remedy he found in Socialism. While sojourning in France he came under the personal influence of Charles Fourier and, was a member of the circle of converts drawn around the founder of Socialism—not the political Socialism of to-day, be it again said, but the Socialism of 1840, devoted to the reorganization of civilized society, on a scientific basis; the re-formation of human institutions under the universal Serial Order.