The Arcades Project - Operi

" Heine was well acquainted with socialism. He could still see Fourier in person. In
his articles entitled Franzosisclte Zustiinde , he writes at one
point (.June 15, 1843): 'Yes, Pierre Leroux is poor, just as Saint-Simon and
Fourier were poor, and by the providential poverty of these great socialists the
world was enriched . ... Fourier likewise had recourse to the charity of friends.
How often have I seen him scurrying past the columns of the Palais-Royal in his
shabby gray coat, both pockets laden so that out of one was peeping the neck of a
bottle and out of the other a long loaf of bread. The friend of mine who first
pointed him out to me drew my attention to the indigence of the man, who had to
fetch drink for himself at the wineshop and bread at the bakery."'4 Cited in ""Heine
an Marx," Die neue Zeit, 14, no. 1 (Stuttgart, 1896), p. 16; passage originally in
Siimtliche Werlw, ed. Bolsche (Leipzig), vol. 5, p. 34, ["I . Kommunismus,
Philosophie, und Klerisei," part 1]. [W4,1]
'''In his glosses to the memoirs of Annenkov, Marx writes: I. • • • Fourier was the first
to mock the idealization of the petty bourgeoisie. m Reported by P. Anski, "Zur
Charakteristik von Marx," Russkaia Mysl (August 1903), p. 63; in N. Rjasanoff,
"Marx und seine russischen Bekannten in den vierziger Jahren," Die neue Zeit,
31, no. 1 (Stuttgart, 1913), p. 764. [W4,2]
"Herr Grun finds it an easy matter to criticize Fourier's treatment of love; he
measures Fourier's criticism of existing amorous relationships against the fantasies
by which Fourier tried to get a mental image of free love. Herr Grun, the true
German philistine, takes these fantasies seriously. Indeed, they are the only thing
which he does take seriously. It is hard to see why, if he wanted to deal with this
side of the system at all, Grun did not also enlarge upon Fourier's remarks concerning
edueation; they are by far the best of their kind, and contain some masterly
observations . ... 'Fourier is the very worst expression of civilized egoism'
(p. 208). He supplies immediate proof of this hy relating that, in Fourier's world
order, the poorest memher eats from forty dishes every day, that five meals are
eaten daily, that people live to the age of 144, and so on. With a naive sense of
humor, Fourier opposes a Gargantuan view of man to the unassuming mediocrity
of the men [in Das Westphiilische Dampfboot, the following words ... inserted
after 'men': 'the infinitely small-Beranger'] of the Restoration period; hut Herr
Griin sees in this merely a chance of moralizing in his philistine way upon the most
innocent side of Fourier's fancy, which he abstracts from the rest.. Karl Marx
writing about Karl Grun as historian of soeialism (in an article originally published
in Das Westphiilische Dampfboot, August-Septemher 1847), reprinted in Die
neue Zeit, 18, no. 1 (Stuttgart, 1900), pp. 137-138." [W4,3]
The phalanstery can be characterized as human machinery. 1111s is no reproach,
nor is it meant to indicate anything mechanistic; rather, it refers to the great
complexity of its structure . The phalanstery is a machine made of
human beings. [W4,4]