French utopian Socialist (1808?1893)
Victor Prosper Considerant
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Born
| (
1808-10-12
)
12 October 1808
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Died
| 27 December 1893
(1893-12-27)
(aged 85)
Paris, France
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Era
| 19th century philosophy
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Region
| French philosophy
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School
| Humanism
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Notable ideas
| Feminism, socialism
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Victor Prosper Considerant
(12 October 1808 ? 27 December 1893) was a French
utopian socialist
philosopher and economist who was a disciple of
Charles Fourier
.
Biography
[
edit
]
Considerant was born in
Salins-les-Bains
, Jura and studied at the
Ecole Polytechnique
(1826 diploma). He entered the French army as an engineer, rising to the rank of captain. However, he resigned his commission in 1831, in order to devote himself to advancing the doctrines of Fourier.
[1]
Subsequently, working as a musician, he collaborated with Fourier on newspapers. He edited the journals
La Phalanstere
and
La Phalange
.
[
citation needed
]
On the death of Fourier in 1837, Considerant became the acknowledged head of the movement, and took charge of
La Phalange
.
[1]
Considerant wrote much in advocacy of his principles, of which the most important is
La Destinee Sociale
. He authored
Democracy Manifesto
, which preceded by five years the similar
Communist Manifesto
by
Marx
and
Engels
. Considerant defined the notion of a "right to (have) work", which would be one of the main ideas of French socialists in the
1848 Revolutions
. He is also known for having devised the
proportional representation
system. He also advocated such measures of "
direct democracy
" (a term he coined) as referendum and recall.
The failure of an insurrection against
Louis Napoleon
obliged Considerant to go into exile in Belgium in June 1849. On an invitation by
Albert Brisbane
and helped by
Jean-Baptiste Godin
, between 1855 and 1857, with his wife, Julie, and his mother-in-law,
Clarisse Vigoureux
, he founded the colony
La Reunion
in Texas on Fourier's principles.
[2]
He was a member of the
First International
, founded in 1864, and took part in the 1871
Paris Commune
.
He died in Paris in 1893.
Contrary to a common error, his name is not written Considerant as he explained: "... there is no acute accent on my e. I have fought in vain for more than sixty years ever since my name was printed to defend it [from the accent]!"
[3]
Citations
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain
:
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911). "
Considerant, Victor Prosper
".
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 978.
- ^
Fairchild, S. L. (2003-01-01).
"Fourierism's Feminine Defender and Colonial Pioneer: Clarisse Vigoureux"
.
Romance Quarterly
.
50
(3): 186?194.
doi
:
10.1080/08831150309601976
.
ISSN
0883-1157
.
S2CID
162389451
.
- ^
Louis Bertrand,
Histoire de la democratie et du socialisme en Belgique depuis 1830
, Brussels, ed. Dechenne, t. 1, p. 280, 1906
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Jonathan Beecher,
Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism
. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.
- Carl J. Guarneri,
The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
External links
[
edit
]
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