Marx, Engels, Fourier and News from Nowhere
Fourier's Utopianism
Charles Fourier made up, with Henri Saint Simon and Robert Own, the three main utopian socialists, whose works were addressed and criticised by Marx and Engels's in ANTI-DUHRING (1877), and later in Engels's pamphlet, SOCIALISM: UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC (1880).
The three major utopian socialists differed in a number of ways, but all believed that their ideal societies could be established in the immediate future, and promoted their ideas with an almost religious fervour.
Of the three utopians, the most eccentric and difficult to understand was Charles Fourier (1772 -1837). A flavour of his utopianism can be found in THE UTOPIAN VISION OF CHRLES FOURIER edited by J. Beecher and R. Bienvenu (1970).
In their sympathetic and perceptive assessments of Fourier's utopian ideas, Marx and Engels frequently paid tribute to Fourier's talents as a social satirist and the way in which he "Lay bare remorsely the material and moral misery of the bourgeois word" (pp 63-64)
Engels also praised Fourier for his criticism of "the bourgeois form" of the relations between the sexes and "of the position of women in bourgeois society" (p.64).
Engels wrote:
"He was the first to declare that in any given society the degree of women's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation" (SOCIALISM: UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC, Kerr edition 1905 pp 64-65).
Engels also drew attention to the way Fourier divided human history into four stages of development: savagery, the patriarchy, barbarism, and civilisation. He wrote:
"This last is identical with the so-called civil, or bourgeois, society of today - i.e., with the social order that came in with the sixteenth century" (p.65).
And, rather than seeing the four stages of human history as a progressive series towards "human perfectibility" - a fiction still found today in the writings of Steven Pinker (THE ANGELS OF OUR BETTER NATURE, WHY VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED, 2011), and Thomas Piketty (CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 2020), bourgeois civilisation contained all the vices and iniquity of previous social systems but at a higher level. Rather than moving towards perfection, "civilisation" or capitalism moved towards "the destruction of the human race" (p.66).
Given today's pandemics, wars and global warming, Fourier was quite perceptive. And he may have been the influence on Marx and Engels's comment in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, that the class struggle might see: "the common ruin of the contending classes" (THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO AND THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS, Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1848, p. 60) .
Capitalism continues to produce immense wealth for the few, alongside grinding poverty for the majority; it continues to go into periods of economic crises, trade depressions and high levels of unemployment. The reality of capitalism is that it cannot meet the needs of all society, forcing the working class to fight back economically in trade unions and politically as socialists.
The Flaw in Fourier's Utopianism
According to Marx and Engels, Fourier's utopianism was flawed in two interrelated ways. He completely misunderstood the significance of the industrial revolution - the potential contained within the forces of production - and his notion of how his utopia might be brought into existence was hopelessly naive.
The forces of production include materials, machinery, techniques and the co-operative and social work performed by human beings in the production of wealth. What Fourier failed to understand, in the view of Marx and Engels, was the fact that the growth of the factory system was itself creating the material conditions of abundance, necessary for both the working class revolution and the social advancement of workers through active political and democratic co-operation as socialists. The potential contained within the forces of production required socialism to set them free.
Fourier's conception of the working class only exists from the point of view those who suffer most in society. Workers have no historical role other than to be alleviated from their misery by others: a more superior person like Fourier gifted with philanthropy like the founders of alms houses. Fourier, unlike Marx and Engels, did not see the working class as a revolutionary force capable of making history. He was in a long line of moral sentimentalists, found in newspapers like the GUARDIAN, who want to "help" the working class through reforms but refuse to acknowledge the revolutionary potential of the working class in establishing socialism through their own efforts. The working class is the salt of the Earth but not the kind of salt to be found at the dinner table.
Marx and Engels wrote against this utopian socialism in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. They said:
"The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class" (p. 89)
What are the conditions for overcoming capitalism and establishing socialism? Marx and Engels's answer is along two broad lines. First, for socialism to be possible there has to be a high level of development of the productive forces to eradicate poverty and generate abundance. And second, socialism has to be made by the working class and not by some other group acting on its behalf. Both these interrelated processes can come about through socialist revolution and the transformation of material circumstances and people.
The "poetry" which Marx and Engels detected in Fourier's utopia was his vision of men and women's potential - his awareness of what we might become in a humane, co-operative and rational socialist society. Free from competition, life in socialism would be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from the profit system which pits capitalist against capitalist, capitalists against workers and workers against workers.
Mental and Physical Liberation from Capitalism
And it was this insight that made Fourier's utopianism of such interest to Marx and Engels. The "great germ" which they observed beneath the "fantastic covering" of Fourier's system was his insistence on the primacy of self-development and self-expression within the world of work and society.
This is expressed in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO:
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (p. 81).
The basic factor in Fourier's utopian vision was his theory of "attractive labour". However, Marx and Engels and socialists who have come after them, except for William Morris, have not seen "attractive labour" as the basis for socialism.
As Marx wrote in the GRUNDRISSE: "Labour cannot become play, as Fourier would like." (1973 p 712).
This was not always the case. In their early writings Marx and Engels believed that labour under socialism might indeed resemble Fourier's Phalansterian ideal. 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 labour would be elevated by making work enjoyable and satisfying. Fourier also advocated the emancipation of women and coined the word feminisme in 1837.
In the context of his phalanstery, Fourier used the concept "Butterfly" as one of the three distributive passions which gives the need for variety and periodic change. He believed that it was possible to make all work into play, to make it pleasurable and desirable and deeply satisfying, both physically and mentally, by creating a "phalanx" in which all the members could freely express their passions.
Fourier identified twelve fundamental 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. The first distributive passion was la Papillone (butterfly), the love of variety.
In THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY Marx and Engels entertained the idea of the "butterfly" when they wrote that within socialism it would be "possible for me to do one thing today, another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, engage in criticism after dinner, just as I please...".
This was Marx and Engel's conception of the Phalanx - the all round individual who could turn their hand and mind to a wide range of activities. They even gave a more basic set of activities in the margin of the manuscript: "cobbler in the morning, gardener in the afternoon, and actor in the evening". Whose shoes? Whose Garden and whose play?
However what if we set out play the cello in the morning, carry out a neuro-surgical operation in the evening and produce poetry in the evening. Where does the all round individual begin and end. A mathematician would just like to solve Hodge's conjecture in the morning, Riemann's hypothesis in the afternoon and Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture in the evening. Given the finite amount of time in the day why do anything else?
This view of work as play was left, with the rest of the GERMAN IDEOLOGY, to the "criticism of the mice". Marx and Engels took a far more realistic view to what was and what was not possible in a future socialist society. They were not going to provide "blue prints" or "recipe cook books" for the future socialist society and they were not going to say that work was going to be all play. They did concede that work was a social need denied by capitalism but that not all work could escape necessity.
Necessity and Freedom
Marx, in particular, rejected the idea of "attractive labour" by making the important distinction between "necessity and freedom".
Human beings were forced, Marx insisted, to live part of their lives within the "realm of necessity". I will have to change my child's nappy, clean off the excrement and put a new nappy on. In a socialist society we will not be able to escape shitty jobs. We might be able to minimise unpleasant work but not get rid of it altogether. This has led to the common question posed to socialists by curious workers and anti-socialists alike: "who will do the dirty work in socialism?"
Marx was once asked who will clean all the boots in a socialist society. Marx replied "you will. This was not just a quick put-down, but highlighted the important fact that for socialism to function certain unpleasant work will still have to be carried out. The question is by whom, for how long and at what expense. Frank Zappa in his album FREAK OUT (1965) sang about the janitor who spent his days cleaning out the toilet. However, as Zappa ironically pointed out, if the janitor's uncle owned the store then he could sing songs about being poor. Otherwise such work just amounted to "watching the rats run along the floor" (TROUBLE EVERY DAY).
In a society of free men and women, cleaning toilets will still have to be done but it will be voluntarily undertaken and valued by society as a whole. There will not be a Pritti Patel writing-off such work as "low grade", and "unskilled". There will be no racism associated with "The Hostile Environment" policy currently used by the Government against immigrants, most of whom carried out vital health work during the recent pandemic.
Since men and women will always have to work to survive, a certain amount of our labour would be unfree; imposed on us from without. In socialism, the sewers would still have to be maintained, the farm buildings will still need to be cleaned out and nursing the sick, the pregnant and the elderly will still be required; work which is often intense and demanding. Even if machines were used to minimise necessary work, it might still not be possible to get rid of all unpleasant and boring work altogether. Nevertheless, hard, repetitive and boring work can still lead to creative and aesthetically pleasing consequences as anyone who has thatched a roof or built a stone wall can attest.
Marx did offer the hope that necessary work or the kind of "labour which is determined by need and external purposes" would one day be made less unpleasant and arduous. In CAPITAL, VOLUME III, he wrote:
"the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite".
(Karl Marx, Selected Writings in SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, T.B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel, pp 259-260).
Human beings are subject to constraints that are generated by their having to labour to satisfy material needs. We have to work because we have to not because we want to. Marx does not believe the realm of necessity can ever be done away with, even in socialism, where labour will be voluntary. Freedom to live lives and explore and find fulfilment in our creative abilities will always rest on the realm of necessity. Child care, health care, dangerous, repetitive and dirty work, and cleaning work are all within the realm of necessity and will need to be undertaken in a socialist society.
However, despite all of the improvements that robotics and mechanisation would bring to socialism, work within the realm of necessity, would still remain painful, dangerous and unpleasant, it would still bear Adam's curse: "the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it" (Genesis). Think of fishing off the Cornish coast. It is hard, dangerous and unpredictable. Fishermen can be away for days. They wrestle with the elements and they might not catch much fish while they are away. How can they fully take part in the affairs of a socialist society? How can their working week be shortened?
And then there are the volunteers of the RNLI. They put their lives at risk saving others. If workers in a socialist society are going to voluntarily go out to fish at sea in all weathers then there will need to be volunteers willing to go out and save them if they get into difficulty.
Shortening of the working day would have its benefits to a socialist society, including workers found in such activities such as fishing out at sea. It would enable people to become involved in the democratic affairs of society. Rather than being passive consumers of democratic processes they would become actively involved in making these democratic decisions.
How socialism will democratically organise itself to reduce the working day will be for future socialists to decide. So will the question of enabling people to take the fullest part in the democratic affairs of society. And so will be ensuring there are the necessary volunteers to undertake dangerous, dirty and unpleasant work on the basis that it needs to be done for the good of society as a whole. Within Socialism everyone will take part in all the necessary social work and no one will worry about changing nappies or cleaning sewers.
News from Nowhere
This brings us on to Morris and creative work illustrated in his novel NEWS FROM NOWHERE. NEWS FROM NOWHERE first appeared in COMMONWEAL, the official newspaper of the Socialist League, between January and October 1890.
The novel describes the encounter between a visitor from the nineteenth century, William Guest, and a decentralized and humane socialist future. In Morris's vision of a future socialist society, there is no wages system, wage slavery and class exploitation.
In the novel, Morris tackles one of the most common criticisms of socialism; the supposed lack of incentive to work in a communistic society. Morris' response is that all work should be creative and pleasurable.
Unlike Marx and Engels, Morris is far too dismissive of science and technology since he sees science and mathematics, like fine art, as gentlemanly pastimes - though in his utopia of course anyone can participate in them. For Morris, human need is met in the unification of mind and hand producing beautiful things, preferably directly in weaving, and similar crafts.
In Morris's utopia, the sexual division of labour remains intact. Morris presents us with a society in which women are relatively free from the oppression of men; while domestic work, respected albeit gender-specific in Morris's work here as elsewhere, is portrayed as a source of potential pleasure and intellectual improvement.
It is doubtful this restriction of female labour to the realm of domestic labour would receive much support by socialists today anymore than it would in socialism. To believe certain creative work is only for the "male" and other form of creative work is only for the "female" is demeaningly sexist.
In his lecture, How We Live and How We Might Live (1884), Morris gave his opinion about an ideal existence. This opinion is the basis for the novel. Morris wrote:
"Before I leave this matter of the surroundings of life, I wish to meet a possible objection. I have spoken of machinery being used freely for releasing people from the more mechanical and repulsive part of necessary labour; it is the allowing of machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays. And, again, that leads me to my last claim, which is that the material surroundings of my life should be pleasant, generous, and beautiful; that I know is a large claim, but this I will say about it, that if it cannot be satisfied, if every civilised community cannot provide such surroundings for all its members, I do not want the world to go on".
The key to this passage is Morris's view that we should not allow machines to be our masters but instead our servants. He went on to say:
"In a true society these miracles of ingenuity would be for the first time used for minimising the amount of time spent in unattractive labour, which by their means might be so reduced as to be but a very light burden on each individual".
Socialists want the surroundings of socialism to be pleasant, generous and beautiful. In socialism machines would be our "servants" although, with the development of robotics and Artificial Intelligence, human beings might have a different relation to cyber-based robots capable of thinking and acting indistinguishable from ourselves. They would be used where necessary to maintain production at levels of abundance and ensure people's needs are directly met. Men and Women would work with machines to make beautiful things. An idea that was to be later found in the Bauhaus.