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p Owenite communitarian experiments were undertaken in the United States at the initiative of Robert Owen himself and under his direct guidance. The British Utopian socialist followed closely the activities of religious sectarian communities in the United States. Their success, especially their economic success, made Owen optimistic. Another thing that encouraged him was his overall—and unoriginal—view of America. To him, "it was a new world, whose people had left behind them, when they crossed the Ocean, many of the worst features of the old. It was a world without kings and aristocrats, of civil and religious liberty, a world that, from a distance at least, and if one could shut one’s eyes to the evil of slavery, seemed to offer something like equality of opportunity to all comers. And its Revolution, less than fifty years old, had established the first and as yet 199 the only full political democracy in the world".  [199•1  In 1824 Owen left for the United States, beginning his long American odyssey.

p Virtually all researchers agree that New Harmony which Owen established himself was the most interesting as well as the most typical Owenite community in the United States (these communities totalled 10 to 15) and that it made a considerable impact on American culture.

p Owen wanted New Harmony to be a model community displaying social relations in which man would no longer be "a slave to a TRINITY of the most monstrous evils that could be combined to inflict mental and physical evil upon his whole race". Thus he wrote in his Declaration of Mental Independence, proclaimed in New Harmony on July 4, 1826: "I refer to PRIVATE, OR INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY-ABSURD AND IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION-AND MARRIAGE, FOUNDED ON INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY COMBINED WITH SOME ONE OF THESE IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION.”  [199•2  In other words, he wanted to realize the socialist ideal he had cherished for many years. But Owen (and that was later true of Cabet too) had no specific working plan for translating that ideal into reality. Enrollment into the community was spontaneous: Owen’s doctrine did not tolerate the creation of socialism for a selected few. On the other hand, this indiscriminate acceptance of members was the seed of the community’s failure. Not only those who sincerely shared Owen’s ideas and realized that then- implementation called for hard work came to New Harmony, but also opportunists and outright swindlers eager to sponge off the "old fool". And so, for all of Owen’s efforts and enthusiasm, New Harmony failed to develop the kind of unity of idea which played an important integrating part in religious sectarian communities.

p To many of those who came to Owen he was not so much a reformer as a philanthropist; therefore there were few who were willing to work—the rest relied on his pocketbook. Besides, some Americans who were inspired by the socialist ideal refused to connect the image of a free 200 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1985/AU236/20090711/236.tx" socialist community with the need for hard work; they saw the latter as the curse of the world outside New Harmony. There was the illusion that merely replacing private property with public ownership and a religious system of values with a secular one would mean that the old life would give way to the new of its own accord. For this reason the community was constantly short of manpower, although it numbered some 900 members soon after its establishment.

p Nor did Owen have any precise guidelines for managing the community’s economy as an effective means of social regulation. The community was shaken by continuous splits and reorganizations. Actually, not a single social mechanism created in New Harmony worked; it turned out that the idea alone was not enough to remold men’s minds and offset economic and organizational mismanagement.

p However, New Harmony’s cultural and academic achievements, upheld and promoted by William Maclure, Frances Wright and other outstanding figures of American culture in the first half of the 19th century, were so great that the community is still considered a mainstay of American science and culture. "From the very beginning," the Soviet historian M. N. Zakharova writes, "a school using Pestalozzi’s methods was set up. Children aged 2 to 12 were educated, clothed and fed at public expense. They lived in special quarters, apart from their parents. Besides general education, vocational training and children’s participation in productive work were also provided....

p “In the evenings, lectures and discussions were held in New Harmony. Frances Wright sponsored a women’s literary society, the first in American history. Josiah Warren presided over concerts of vocalists and instrumentalists. Weekly balls held in Harmony’s former church were very popular with young people.”  [200•1 

p Owen’s and his followers’ experiments paved the way for Fourierist communities which blossomed in the United States in the 1840s. At that time, Charles Fourier’s ideas spread among Americans, attracting them mostly by the 201 notion of “associations” interpreted in a distinctly American way. "Americans preferred not to wait for the conditions described by Fourier to mature; they lost no time in organizing phalanxes. Their precise numbers are difficult to calculate; John Noyes, their first chronicler, stressed that. He noted, however, that 34 communities were established in the United States in the 1840s. Albert Brisbane said in his letter to the Fourierists of Paris that by the autumn of 1844 there were 30 small associations 150 to 300 members each. Arthur Bestor, a serious researcher, updated the figure and wrote that 28 more or less big Fourierist phalanxes were set up in the United States between the 1840s and the 1860s. As to the membership, Noyes says that the figure 8,600 ’might probably be doubled to represent the census of the obscure unknown attempts’.”  [201•1 

p Just as New Harmony stood out among the communities created by Owen and his followers, Brook Farm rose above the other Fourierist communities. It offered a concentrated expression of major Fourierist principles—- associated labor (based on joint use of the means of production and on a graded system of remuneration), associated everyday life, and a new system of education and upbringing. But, like other associations, Brook Farm demonstrated the weak points of Fourierism and its incompatibility with the conditions of bourgeois America. By the end of the 1840s Fourierist communities virtually ceased to exist.

p However, "among the most interesting pages in the history of American Communism are those relating to the Icarian experiments. The records of patient sufferings, heroic devotion, and acrimonious feuds of these colonies cover almost half a century; they are full of pathos and instruction".  [201•2  Instructive and dramatic their history is indeed.

p Icarian communities were established according to the plans and under the guidance of Etienne Cabet, another 19th century French Utopian, or his direct followers. Unlike Owen, who saw the communes as a way to transform existing society, and unlike Fourier, who regarded the 202 phalanxes as both sprouts of the new society and a way to its subsequent transformation, Cabet began by firmly rejecting the very idea of Utopian communities. He held that Icaria—the Utopian land he described in his Voyage to Icaria—should take shape not within a small enclave but throughout a whole nation and then spread to cover most, if not all of the world. Otherwise, Cabet maintained, the endeavor would be doomed.

p “No need even for attempts to set up individual communities whose success will not do much good but whose failure, which is almost certain, will do great harm! Persuasion and only persuasion, until the masses adopt the Principle of Community! "  [202•1 

p Setting out his position, Cabet wrote, in March 1841, in the advance prospectus of his periodical Le Populaire: \ "We want no revolution, we want reform. We want to destroy the old only to replace it with the new which will be free from imperfection.... And we are profoundly convinced that all these happy results are quite possible and can be attained by force of public opinion.

p “Proceeding from this, Le Populaire will be a democrat- , ic, reformist, socialist and, specifically, communist organ. It will demand community, but the sort of community established with the help of public opinion and after a transitional or preparatory regime. For this transitional regime it will demand democracy and reform, and the proclamation of the principle of community, growing equality, ’ elimination of poverty, regulation of wages, uniformity of education, etc. Its guiding philosophical ideas will be i justice, tolerance, morality and brotherhood.”

p Judging by his works, Cabet’s anticommunitarianism was not the product of a profound theoretical analysis. It is doubtful that he understood that the ideals he proclaimed in his Utopia were impossible to implement within a small community surrounded by a hostile world, that one could only start (sacrificing oneself for the sake of future generations and one’s ends for the sake of the means to attain them) upon the road of implementing the ideals which could be realized only on a much greater scale, this great scale being the only way to identify the vast positive potential of the new social relations. It is much 203 more probable that Cabet reached his conclusions by following the efforts of Owen, Fourier and other Utopians. Be that as it may, Cabet was adamant: no communitarian experiments.

p In a few years, however, Cabet changed his views concerning the ways of establishing Icaria. In 1843 he proposed the organization of an experimental communist community. In May 1847 Le Populaire published his appeal in which he called on the French to leave for America and create a new society there.

p Here is what Cabet was hoping to find in America, the principles and ideals he dreamed to realize in the Icarian community: "In Icaria we shall look for work and abundance ... well-being for our families as well as for ourselves ... a new World which will be the Kingdom of God and Justice.... Poverty and love of liberty is driving people everywhere to America. Let us go too, for we are children of France which is habitually considered the guiding star of the Human Race but for which we merely want to be servants and soldiers in the front ranks; let us go to found an Icaria for Liberty and Equality, let us realize the ideal of Philosophy, Religion and Brotherhood!

p “And there, in Icaria, with our Icarian principles, what wonders and marvels! Nothing by chance, all by reason -One for all and all for one.—From each according to his powers, to each according to his needs.... From the first step, the very best roads, the most perfect cities and villages, the most magnificent workshops; perfection in housing, the environment, clothing, food, hygiene, education.... Community will be realized completely.... Community will begin at once; and within 20 years the human population will be educated and completely Communistic, a generation of children will be brought up for Communism, and Community will be developed and achieved, complete and perfect.... For the education of men, complete freedom of association and of discussion, all the means, books and necessary periodicals.

p “Machines will multiply infinitely to give solace to man; purged of all danger and excessive fatigue, work will be easy, short and even attractive for all.

p “The fine arts will have the greatest degree of development and perfection.

p “In Icaria, no bankruptcies or worries, no court trials 204 or passports, no spies or gendarmes, no executioners or jailers.

p “No one will be happier than others, no one will see anyone happier than himself.”  [204•1 

p People responded differently to Cabet’s appeal. Some welcomed his plan enthusiastically. Others, particularly the Communists grouped around La Fratemite, a journal founded by Charon and Lahautiere, rejected it. Cabet appealed for support to the leaders of the German Workers’ Educational Society (which played an important role in the organization of the Communist League), but they refused it. Their arguments, which they marshalled in the trial issue of Kommunistische Zeitschrift (September 1847), were prophetic:

p “We are convinced that Cabet’s plan to found an Icaria, that is, a colony based on principles of community, in America cannot yet be realized, and for the following reasons:

p “(a) because all who emigrate with Cabet, while they may be ardent Communists, will be too steeped, through their upbringing, in the flaws and prejudices of modern society and will not be able to shake them off immediately upon their arrival in Icaria;

p “(b) because through this, friction and discord will arise inevitably in the colony from the very beginning, and they will be kept up and fanned by the hostile and mighty outside society, as well as by spies of European governments, until they lead to a complete disintegration of the Communist society;

p “(c) because most of the settlers will be handicraftsmen while those most in demand will be strong farmhands to open up and cultivate land; and for a worker to turn into a peasant will be not so easy as some appear to believe;

p “(d) because the privations and disease which a change of climate brings will dishearten many and prompt them to leave the commune.—Today many people are for the plan, they see only its bright side and welcome it enthusiastically, but when harsh reality sets in, when all sorts of privations begin, when all the little creature comforts of civilization sometimes open even to the poorest worker in Europe disappear, then enthusiasm will give way to dejection among many;

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p “(e) because for the Communists who recognize the principle of personal freedom—and the Icarians clearly recognize it too—community of property without a transitional period, a democratic transitional period in which personal property only gradually transforms into public property, is as impossible as for a farmer a harvest is impossible without sowing.”  [205•1 

p Still, despite all warnings and arguments to the contrary, Cabet decided to act. A fund-raising campaign was launched, and in December 1847 the future colonists held a constituent assembly. Shortly before the inauguration of the society Cabet came to London to visit Robert Owen, who had by then returned from the United States after the collapse of his New Harmony. On Owen’s advice, Cabet signed a contract with an American company which had purchased 10 million acres in Texas from the U.S. government; Cabet acquired over 1 million acres on the Red River. The company charged nothing for the land, but provided it on condition that the Icarian society take possession of it not later than July 1, 1848. On February 3, 1848 the first group of Icarians, 69 people, left for the United States to be followed, over the rest of the year, by several hundred others who traveled to their future paradise in groups.

p Why did Cabet change his views of communitarian experiments? What drove him, a man with extensive political experience although sometimes without sufficient caution, to undertake such a risky venture, especially when Owenite communes were already a thing of the past and Fourierist phalanxes in America were falling apart one after another?

p Perhaps the success of his novel played its part, creating, in the author’s mind, the illusion that his idea was highly popular. Pressure from friends, ardent Icarians, must have made an impact too. But the chief reason was, in all probability, different. Cabet realized that for all the enthusiasm of his admirers, he had no chance of establishing Icaria in prerevolutionary France. And so, if he wanted to make mankind happy—and he did want it—he had no other choice but to go to America and start with a small Icarian community.

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p However, the venture ran into all sorts of obstacles from the very beginning. Failure in settling in Texas, shortage of funds, discord and health problems scared many people off, and by the spring of 1849, of all groups of settlers only less than 300 remained loyal to Cabet. They settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, where they managed to rent, on easy terms, some 800 acres of land, several houses and a few small businesses. "In February, 1850, the Icarians adopted a constitution which provided for the administration of their affairs by a board of six directors. Of these directors, the first was the president of the community.... The acts of the board of directors were, however, subject to the approval of the General Assembly, consisting of all male members over twenty years old.”  [206•1  Within a few months the community was recognized by the Illinois House of Representatives and later, by the Senate. Things seemed to be moving along well, and Cabet (like Owen soon after the founding of New Harmony) thought it possible to leave the commune for a while and visit France.

p However, the administration system devised by the Icarians proved to be imperfect, and the consequences were not long in coming. The brief absence of Cabet, whose prestige was virtually the sole force holding the commune together, almost destroyed Icaria. At the same time, his personal authority increasingly hampered the commune’s progress. Cabet, who wanted to be the Icarus of the community (in his book, Icarus was the leader and liberator of the oppressed), gradually developed dictatorial traits and a tendency to take all power in his own hands. This would have been natural in a religious sectarian community where an authoritarian system was interpreted from a religious standpoint and ideologically justified. But in a secular commune which proclaimed complete social and economic equality, established a General Assembly and advocated respect for popular sovereignty, dictatorial ways were out of place. Cabet could no longer effectively impose his will on the commune, while the commune could not keep Cabet in check. In August 1856 the community split into dissenting groups and in October, Cabet was expelled from Icaria. Together with his partisans (about 180 people) he moved to St. Louis and soon died there.

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p In 1858, after a series of failures, his partisans established a new Icarian commune in Chaltenham, near St. Louis. The colony did get started, but dissent finished it too.

p A similar thing happened to the Icarians who remained in Nauvoo after Cabet’s departure and then moved to Corning, Iowa. Here the split occurred between the older and the younger generations. Many young people, brought up in Icaria, were openly critical of the old guard who, they charged, abandoned the ideals they themselves proclaimed and operated inefficiently. "Many of them were new members who were deeply moved by the theories of Karl Marx and his International. Several had actually belonged to this organization, and others had fought at the Parisian barricades in 1871. These earnest young men were scandalized by the apostasy of the older "generation. They demanded that all private possessions, valuable or worthless, should be given up to the community. The existence of private gardens and vineyards was a disgrace, encouraging vanity, enviousness (as was self-evident), and greed. Why were women not given equal political rights? Why was there no propaganda for communism outside the community? And why were new young members not admitted—as many as possible?”  [207•1 

p It all ended up in a rift between the young and the old. In 1883 a group of young Icarians left Iowa and moved to California, where a new commune, Icaria Speranza, had been established as early as 1881 and existed until 1886. The old guard organized what they called the New Icarian Community. This was a failure: in 1898 the community ceased to exist, thus ending the Icarian communitary movement in America.

p Owenite, Fourierist and Icarian communities differed from their religious sectarian counterparts in their ethnic and social composition, in their attitude toward religion (as mostly secular organizations), in their lifestyles and level of prosperity. And—one should stress this again—they were Utopias of reconstruction, not of escape. Michael Fellman writes that they were not conceived by their architects "as escape mechanisms from general society; they were intended to bring on the total reform of America by 208 offering the perfect community where no alternative community existed in anything but embryonic form. Neither opposed to the current of American society nor alienated from it, Utopian communitarianism was rather one expression, if an extreme one, of the possibilities for social reconstruction at that time”.  [208•1 

p Indeed, throughout the first half of the 19th century, and even despite the crisis of the 1830s, American capitalism did not yet create conditions for a mass alienation from society which could mold Utopian communities into the shape they were to assume over a hundred years later. Still, while emphasizing the precedence of the model function, one cannot lose sight of the psychologically important fact that the end goal of the members of Utopian communities was to restructure American society on a socialist (communist) basis. In this they differed substantially from religious sectarian communities which wanted to establish a heaven on earth.

p It appears, however, that none of the founders or members of Owenite, Fourierist and Icarian communities realized that America was not yet ready for socialism, that, at any rate, it was impossible to reform America in a socialist spirit—either through the establishment of communes or with the help of any other organizations, and that it took revolutionary means and appropriate historical conditions (absent in 19th-century America) to restructure any society. Nevertheless, their enthusiasm was all the greater and their faith in success all the firmer—until their ventures failed.

p Despite all differences between religious sectarian and secular communities, both were "on the other side" of American society. In everyday life, members of these communities were to observe principles and goals which, reflecting their notions of genuine community and genuine relations, ran counter to the norms, principles and objective development trends of the society of their time.

p Here are the principles and ideals American Utopian communities tried to translate into reality.

p First and foremost, it was the new type of property— 209 public property—which, to be sure, was not completely alien to the American tradition. Some Americans (for example, Thomas Jefferson) recognized the need for private property on a nationwide scale while admitting the possibility of public property within small communities. Yet, it fundamentally contradicted capitalist civilization and at the same time was the root of the entire tree trunk of Utopian values, institutions and relations of social equality and freedom from exploitation. In most communities, distribution of goods and benefits was organized not according to one’s contribution or requirements but on the basis of “fairness”, often interpreted as crude egalitarianism.

p A new type of social institutions was taking shape in the communities. Although many were ruled in an authoritarian manner, attempts were nevertheless made to create administrative mechanisms based on the principle of popular self-government. Special attention was paid to the development of new family relations, and many different versions were devised—from a complete abolition of the traditional family to the so-called composite marriage which was practiced in Oneida and gave rise to severe criticism on the part of the community’s neighbors, in any case, relations between the sexes were based in many communities on principles which were inadmissible for American society both for purely economic and for moral reasons.

Finally, Utopian communities promoted a new type of personality whose goals and values differed substantially from those dominant in American society—a society which produced selfish owners of property, individualists who competed ruthlessly with others for a place in the sun.