Phalansterians?

[*BuntuBob]

As I read through 'The Conquest of Bread', I see 'Phalansterians', mentioned. What are they? I read through the wikipedia page "Phalanstère", and I understand that it is a 'utopian community'. How was it supposed to work? How were different Phalanstères to interact with one another? Would there be different Phalanstères in different environments?

[Blake's Baby]

No-one has cared since about 1880, so it's unlikely that anyone will be around to answer your questions. No modern socialist current has any sort of conception of phalansteres. The closest idea you might find is a 'commune'. But no prescibes the activity and architecture of the commune in the way Fourier did for the phalanstere.

There's a reason that Marx called his predecessors 'utopian' socialists, and insisted that commun ism was the movement to abolish the existing order of things (based on the working class's drive to impose its own order on society) rather than a scheme cooked up by a dreamer. There are no blueprints, just pointers.

[ComradeOm]

Like everything else under the sun (that hasn't been copyrighted) the MIA has some content on Fourierism (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/fourier/index.htm). This should be of interest in terms of the Phalanstery (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/fourier/works/ch27.htm).

But while I'm all for encouraging people to read, these utopian cults (see also Saint-Simonianism and Owenism) are of very limited relevance today. They survive almost solely through their influence on Marx and the polemics of early 19th C socialism.

[*BuntuBob]

I see. I was interested in this, after reading a bit about some of Fourier's other ideas. Mainly the completely insane ones. I wanted to know if this idea was linked in any way to the other ones. Thanks!

[Blake's Baby]

Well, there's a certain amount of speculation that one could indulge in about how communities or communes will manage their affairs in a post-revolutionary society but it's all just guesswork based on the few models we have - the Commune, Russia in 1917, the collectives in Spain and any other such experiments in proletarian power. As to what happens in a truly communist society, we have no basis for speculation except imagination. So unless we want to present a dream of a possible tomorrow (which could conceivably be motivational to some people) we can't reasonably say much about the future communist society.