FINAL WARNING: The Communist Agenda
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