Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue with His Century

18. Gold for Goldwater

5. François Marie Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was one of the leading socialist theorists contemporary with Saint-Simon, though not, apparently, much influenced by Saint-Simon. In Kent Bromley’s preface to Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, Fourier was designated the founder of the libertarian branch of Socialist thought. Fourier worked out the ideal infrastructure of what are now called “utopian” communities (his “phalanxes”) based on notions of “passional attraction.” That is, society could be self-organizing because different people are attracted to different professional and social functions. Fourier was influential enough in European politics to be condemned by Frederick Engels in the Anti-Dühring (1878).

Fourier’s first book, The Theory of the Four Movements, was published in 1808 and became the basis for wave after wave of socialist experimental communities in America through the nineteenth century. He also wrote up a fictional utopia called “Harmony” which might well be a source for Heinlein’s Howard Families, since they remained sexually active into advanced old age. Fourier also coined the term “feminism.”