Fourierism

Based upon a belief in the inevitability of communal associations of people who worked and lived together as part of the human future, Fourier's committed supporters referred to his doctrines as associationism.

Political contemporaries and subsequent scholarship have identified Fourier's set of ideas as a form of utopian socialism—a phrase that retains mild pejorative overtones[according to whom?].

[citation needed] The system was briefly revived in the mid-1850s by Victor Considerant (1808–1893), a French disciple of Fourier's who unsuccessfully attempted to relaunch the model in Texas in the 1850s.

[6] Fourier believed himself the discoverer of the universal laws of societal evolution, theorizing the existence of 32 distinct periods beginning with Edenism and continuing through Savagery, Patriarchate, and Barbarism.

[11] An entire book was written detailing 36 types of bankruptcy and 76 sorts of "cuckoldry" to which humanity was subjected by its system of so-called Civilization, which Fourier saw as wholly unacceptable.

[11] The emerging socioeconomic structure of "Guarantism" would be based upon the fundamental principle of universal insurance, Fourier believed, which was to guarantee the security of capital and the right of labor to gainful employment.

[10] The next stage in the Fourierist schema, "Simple Association", was to be based upon the cooperative enterprise of like bodies of farmers or artisans or industrial workers as distinct groups.

Remaining in unpublished manuscript form until 1967 were Fourier's imaginative predictions about degrees of sexual promiscuity and the institutions and moral codes that would emerge to govern love and interpersonal relationships in the harmonious world of Compound Association.

Once founded, associations would demonstrate their practical merits and inspire emulation, with the first model communities replicating and spreading from localities to regions to nations and internationally.

Never in his writings does Fourier appeal to governmental legislation or coercive power of any sort, instead believing association to be a natural and wholly voluntary structure,[16] part of a Divine Social Code.

[12] The elimination of disease would follow, as such banes as cholera, typhus, and yellow fever would vanish with the unhealthful places whence they originated before society's restorative efforts.

[18] Fourier believed that in the new world people would live for 144 years, that new species of friendly and pacifistic animals such as "anti-lions" would emerge, and that over time human beings would develop long and useful tails.