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In 1841, George Ripley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Charles A. Dana, all advocates of
Transcendentalism, established a 192-acre settlement in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. In 1844,
they instituted a constitution, making it a co-op based on the scientific division of labor
advocated by Fourier. They published a journal, The Harbinger (1845-49), which was edited by
Ripley, and featured such writers as James Russell Lowell and John Greenleaf Whittier. Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and Henry David Thoreau, established another Fourier
commune at Red Bank, New Jersey in 1843, where members picked their jobs and were paid
according to the repulsiveness of their work. The dirtier the job, the more it paid. They had about
1200 members, and operated for about ten years. Fourier disciples, Elizabeth Peabody, Parke
Goodwin, and William Henry Channing, also began communes.
Louis Blanc, a Mason, developed a Workingman’s Association, but his was to be under State
control. He called for the establishment of labor organizations in the form of national workshops,
with the workers electing their management. He despised all religion, and eliminated the idea of
Christianity, criticizing Buchez for being too sentimental.
In France, during the 1840’s, Louis-Auguste Blanqui espoused a form of radical socialism
that was based on democratic populism. He said that capitalism was unstable and would be
replaced by cooperative institutions.
Etienne Cabet, the son of a barrelmaker, went to England in 1834, where he became a
convert of Robert Owen. When he returned to France in 1839, he laid out a plan for a
communistic settlement, which he established in the Red River region of Texas in 1847. His 69
followers were called “Icarians,” after his 1840 novel Voyage en Icaria, which portrayed a
society where all property was held in common, and products of the community were distributed
according to need. Later that year, he wrote a book on the French Revolution, and traced the
course of communistic theories starting with Plato, Pythagoras (a 6th century BC philosopher),
the Essenes of Judea, More, CampaneIla, Locke, Montesquieu, Mably, Rousseau, and other 18th
century philosophers. He claimed that the communists were the disciples, the imitators, and
continuers of the philosophy of Jesus.
In 1849, he took 280 of his followers to Nauvoo, Illinois, after the Texas commune failed
because of poor soil, crooked land agents, and an attack of malaria. This Hancock County area
had been a Mormon community of about 15,000 people, who after the death of Joseph Smith in
1844, went to Salt Lake City, Utah, with Brigham Young. By 1855, Nauvoo had farms, a
running mill, a distillery, a theater, a printing press, and a school. Soon there were over 500
people in the town.
They eventually grew restless because of Cabet’s autocratic leadership, since they didn’t
have a voice in their own affairs. They threw him out in 1856, and he took 200 of his followers
with him. As time went on, only a few diehards remained, until the commune finally broke up in
1888. Meanwhile, Cabet started a “true Icaria” in Cheltinham, Missouri (near St. Louis), but
soon after, died of apoplexy. The commune lasted until 1864. Some followers of Cabet also
started communes at Corning, Iowa (1860-84), and Cloverdale, California (1881-87).
THE RISE OF KARL MARX
Heinrich Karl Marx (Moses Mordecai Marx Levy, 1818-83) was born of wealthy parents (his
father was a lawyer), and much of his personal life has never been revealed. Professor M.
Mtchedlov, Vice-Director of the Marx Institute, said that there were 100 volumes in his