Fourier background sources

William Alfred Hinds, American Communities. Second edition. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1908; pg. 250.

Marcuse, Herbert Eros and Civilization 1955, 1966.

Bey, Hakim. The Lemonade Ocean & Modern Times 1991.

Poster, Mark, ed. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier. Garden City: Doubleday. 1971.

Beecher, Jonathan and Richard Bienvenu, eds. The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.

Six instances of Fourier in Kapital. The distinction between scientific and utopian socialism.

Ceresco sources

The town of Ceresco was founded by Fourierites in 1844, four years before statehood. Ceresco was merged into what would become Ripon in 1853. Ripon was a more typical Wisconsin town. It was founded by a New England speculator and steamboat captain called David Mapes in 1849. Within two years Brockway (now Ripon) college was founded. The post-statehood development of Ripon is typical of places like Madison: a traditional way of life (Winnebago Menominee) was replaced by radical communitarians (Ceresco Fourierites) aided by technology and disease. The radical communitarians were replaced with the assistance of surveyors, capitalists and the legislature. Pre-statehood towns exist alongside native settlements after 1848. The re-education of communitarians and followed the eradication of the Black Hawk (1832) and alongside the treaty regime (1837-1856). Mapes represents a brand of New England land speculator known in the south as carpetbaggers. In the North they became known as University Chancellor, Assemblyman and Governor. [riponhistory.org]. "The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie." Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto. London: International Workingmen's Association, 1888. The Federal Writers' Project. "Kenosha," "Tour 5A." Guide to 1930's Wisconsin St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006. 198, 363-365. (first published: Wisconsin Library Association, 1941). The WPA writers described the people who settled this area in the 1840s as "largely Americans of the third and fourth generation, [who] had practical training in the Eastern tradition of free schools, community cooperation, and political action." The social experiments included Warren Chase's Wisconsin Phalanx "patterned after Fourier's socialism..." which was founded 1844. Ceresco was incorporated as by "nineteen men and one boy" a few days later. The writers visited Ripon on tour 5A: 56.8 miles between Fond du Lac and Highway 51 on Highway 23. This is a shorter trip for the WPA guide. It includes only five towns: Fond Du Lac, Rosendale, Ripon, Princeton and Montello. Ripon is the bulk of the text. The three highlights of Ripon's history are "socialistic community," "stronghold of abolitionism," and "birthplace of a major political party." This narrative traces the Phalanx ideology from Fourier in France to Horace Greeley in New York to Warren Chase in Kenosha (then Southport). The land purchase was funded through a stock sale--both in 1844. The settlement "prospered" then there were conflicts both internal and external (with a "settlement that recent newcomers had founded on a hill nearby.") Ripon "absorbed" Ceresco after it disbanded. The Fourierites lived in a "large Long House" that became the center of a "working-class district" settled by "laborers and factory workers of German stock" in Ripon. H. Russell Austin. The Wisconsin Story: The Building of a Vanguard State Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Journal, 1964. 109-119. (first published, 1948). Ceresco appears in the chapter "Badger Kings, Saints and Utopians" next to "immigrant utopias [like] St. Nazianz" and "fiascos [like] King Strang's Mormon colony and Eleazer Williams' Indian confederacy." Ceresco wasn't a fiasco. There was no reason for the town to be "abandoned by its members." It was founded by "Yankee settlers" from Kenosha who had "fallen under the spell" of French socialism just like Horace Greely and the New Englanders. Warren Chase is a "laborer" from Southport who sold shares to start the community. The "first 20 settlers moved there and built several small houses" in 1844. The Long House was built in 1845. The measurements: "32 by 208 feet, with quarters for 20 families and a community dining hall and kitchen." The town also had a "sawmill, gristmill, schoolhouse [and] large barn." 180 people lived there. Ceresco was "non-sectarian" and dry. There was property but it "was held in common." They had a tiered wage scale that preferred "highly skilled worker[s]." The Austin narrative blames the collapse of the community on an "individualism" which first manifested as cooking at home instead of eating at the community dining hall. This individualism became "restlessness" as "reports came in of large fortunes made in land speculation." The skilled workers began to resent the unskilled workers. The Phalanx was disbanded five years after it was formed and "the Cerescans went their separate and ruggedly individualistic ways"

Brockway College

Sincere Credulity gets ripped off. This is why Marx is suspicious of Utopian socialism.

Ripon after Ceresco

Under the right conditions Utopian socialists can create democratic socialism. Ripon has produced Republican party and sufferage leaders. This is the democratic legacy of the utopians.
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