Showing posts with label etienne cabet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label etienne cabet. Show all posts

Thursday, September 27, 2012

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Étienne Cabet 1853-The Situation in Iowa

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

Markin comment:

I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.

****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

**************
Étienne Cabet 1853-The Situation in Iowa

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Source: Etienne Cabet, Situation dans l'Iowa au 15 Octobre 1853. Paris, 1853;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.


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The three wagons sent last September 26, transporting to the Icarian commune of Iowa the fourth expedition, arrived at the establishment on October 10, left the 16th and returned to Nauvoo the 28th. The news they brought was in all regards satisfactory and increased the ardor of the community. Here are the reports received along with extracts from a few letters.

Report from the small colony in Iowa to the large colony of Nauvoo
Adams Country, October 15, 1853

Dear Citizens:

Since the departure of our brothers we are actively occupied with making hay. We will continue until September 1, the date until which we believe we have sufficient provisions.

Around that time we fell sick one after the other: Louviers suffered from a sun stroke that caused us to fear for his life; several among us have fevers, which paralyzes us in our labors.

Citizens Marchal and Gobel, and Citizens Connefray, Sauge, Gobel, Busque, Vidal, and Mirault were the only ones spared. Those in good shape are working at the building of a kitchen, of a cellar for our vegetables, a dairy, and a second cellar for our dairy products.

Marchal has baked a batch of bricks. He was going to make another, as well as some lime, when he was struck down by fever.

Vidal made us a bread oven, and chimneys for our houses, half with baked bricks and half with dry bricks.

Our heating is assured for the winter, which makes us quite happy.

Our animals are in very good shape: we have suffered no losses. We were forced to kill one of our calves, though this was a great sacrifice for us, but the health of our friends demanded this and we didn’t hesitate to do it. Know well that we consider our herd as a thing not to be touched except in case of absolute necessity, which, we hope, will not often arrive.

We have planted 10 acres of wheat and rye. We would have planted more but we weren’t able to find seeds. It has grown well and beautiful.

Our corn harvest was quite good. We hope to have between 3-4,000 bushels, and a hundred bushels of potatoes.

The bean production was good. We ate of it all summer and we still have several bushels after having taken the seeds neeeded for next year. We have a quantity of vegetables of all kinds.

We have begun to extract stone. Marchal’s opinion is that it will be good for lime. It is four miles from our habitations.

We know of a spot where it is easy to extract sand.

We have made cart furrows across a great extent of land in order to guarantee from fire a portion of our woods and to assure pasturage for our animals.

Roy has put up the saw and he is convinced it will go well. Several Americans have come to ask us to saw their wood: we will do this if it is to our advantage.

It remains to us to construct before winter a hen house to shelter a hundred of our hens, a stable for our milk cows, and a small log-house [in English in the original] to smoke ham.

We can only attribute the cause of our illnesses to the drought, the extreme heat, and the need to work under the baking sun.

Our illnesses have not in any way modified our opinion as to the salubriousness of the country. Nevertheless, there are a few sanitary labors easy to be done along the banks of the small river. We will do this as soon as possible.

The general health is beginning to be reestablished; there are still a few convalescents and some with fevers. These physical sufferings of our friends have not at all altered their resolution and perseverance.

The more we march the more we see that the spot we occupy can suffice to meet the needs of the community, and that it can grow here.

The most perfect harmony reigns among us.

This report is signed by:

The director: Krisniger, farmer
The interim secretary, Briere, cobbler.

Martinet, carpenter, left from Nauvoo July 3, writes:

... Finally, after 16 days of walking we arrived at our voyage’s goal. The next day we visited the area, and we were happy to see beautiful plains and especially, much lovely wood.

From the sketch I sent you, you know my opinion of our establishment. We are on a height, facing onto a river, more or less as we are at Nauvoo, with this difference that the river here is to our north.

We live soberly, as all colonists must do at the beginning. In the morning we eat cornmeal soup and fresh cheese; at noon potatoes and beans; the evening ham or something else, with this fresh cornbread.

The two female citizens who are here don’t have café au lait. They live like us, but all of this will progressively improve by our labors.

Busque, tailor and cook, writes to Couloy (the younger):

Like every countryside in America through which we've passed, the country is not in the least enchanting, but it breathes peace and promises us abundance. It seems to change the dispositions of men, for here everyone takes an equal or common part. One feels at home and that you are working for yourself. When something lacks one easily does without, and without complaining. There are countries where a terrific cornbread is made. Well here, with our barrels full of wheat meal we eat cornbread, and we would have liked to eat it till next year because wheat is too expensive. And all of this without any effort and of our own free will, without our leadership asking it of us. So you see that in this regard we are making progress.

Those who like to eat well can say: It’s not surprising that 14 people fell sick there, but we can judge better than those who are far away, and we don’t think that food had anything to do with it. It should be noted that when we fell sick we had no more cornmeal and we were eating wheat bread.

We attribute our fevers to several causes. In the first instance the new country had to be cleared; then there was an extreme drought, and finally a few swamps had to be purified.

I'm not a connaiseur of soil but after the season we had if it wasn’t good we would have had nothing. Nevertheless, though our harvest wasn’t abundant we are quite satisfied with our production.

As concerns me personally, I am a cook. I was even the best baker until the arrival of the accursed Blanch, who has come to take my job. I have nevertheless preserved some partisans and there is talk of returning me to my functions. I don’t know how this will turn out. If I get my bakery back I'll let you know by telegraph.

Conefray, blacksmith, writes to his wife:

I can give you my opinion of our situation. I have traversed all of our possessions and if we can preserve them our position is better than that which we had in Texas. (Conefray is a member of the first vanguard that went to Texas in 1848.) What is more, we have a small river that, despite the summer drought, has not ceased to flow at the same level since the day we arrived here (July 19).

We have an excellent spring, which will meet our needs even if we became more numerous. A basin was built there where the female citizens go to wash.

We have hazelnut trees from which I harvested a small bag of nuts that Louvier will give to Agathe. I won’t tell you more; the reports we approved give all the details.

Vidal, mason and plasterer, also writes to his wife:

I don’t need to tell you how much I want top see you. But though I know you are a resolute woman I must warn you that we will have much pain and privation to put up with, though we will already be in better shape next year. Don’t think that this is said as a complaint or to frighten you, rather it’s so you can say to those who want to pretty up the picture that you have to wait for the wheat to be ripe before cutting it!

You ask for many details of our colony. I can only repeat to you the report approved by all. Our harmony is spoken of there: this is a word often written and which usually exists only on paper, but I can assure you that here it is in action. We are all in agreement and all have the love of the common good. There are never quarrels or criticisms of the leadership or management. We don’t have meetings where we discuss at length the means of living well, rather they are filled with work projects and the distribution of products.

Since we are far from all centers we sometimes lack certain provisions. Everyone puts up with privations without complaining or grumbling.

In telling you that society can prosper in this place I am doing nothing but repeating what all the letters from here must be saying.

Mirault, joiner, writes to Bloudeau:

Since the day we arrived here I haven’t had a moment to spare. Nevertheless I have profited from my Sundays to see the woods and plains. The woods are more beautiful than I thought. Most is of red oak with a bit of white oak. The lime trees are beautiful and there are many of them, and it’s the same for black walnut.

The river runs alongside the woods, and since it is always at the same level we all think that we can set a mill up there.

I think that there’s nowhere the Society could place itself where the woods or the view would be more beautiful.

You speak to me about hazel nuts, my dear Blondeau. They are profuse here and I regret that I can’t send any to your children, but I dedicate my hours of rest to hunting for ducks for our sick ones.

Uttenweler, carter, writes to his wife:

You won’t regret coming here. I can assure you that the countryside is beautiful and that I'm very happy here. I went about for two days in order to see everything, but the fields are so vast that I haven’t yet seen anything.

I my opinion we'll have enough wood to establish ourselves here and make something beautiful.

As for agriculture, it’s as our friends said: good land and soil. We can plant here everything we want. Corn and potatoes will come in abundance. As for wheat, that which we harvested grew well and looks good.

As for the calves, we can have thousands of them.

I kiss you a thousand times and I ask you to tell père Cabet that I want you to come join me next summer.

Finally, the Director Krisinger ends his later by saying:

In summary, what I can tell you is that I see here a happy future and prosperity for our Society here where we are established.

These are the reports sent to us from Iowa. The letters written by those who are there, either to their wives or their friends in Nauvoo are in agreement in considering their position agreeable, and the soil as good. Those who went there with the wagons and returned speak in the same way. All of this gives us hope for complete success.

Cabet

Monday, September 24, 2012

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Etienne Cabet (1843)Icarian Communism, or the Community of Icaria

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

Markin comment:

I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.

****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

**********
Etienne Cabet (1843)Icarian Communism, or the Community of Icaria

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Source: L’Almanach Icarien, 1843;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.


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Icaria is a great country, like France, and was originally organized like it; but when it regenerated itself, it transformed its former social organization into a Community. It isn’t a monastery, a convent, a small Community like that of the Essenes or the Moravian Brothers, but a great community: civilized, rich, agricultural, and industrial such as has never before existed. And in all its details this great Community is organized using all the progressive elements of current civilization, i.e., its organization is communitarian in all its aspects: territories, provinces, cities, villages and farms; roads and railroads, canals and rivers; agriculture, industry and labor; education, health, and medicine, food and clothing, and housing and furniture; marriage and family; the sciences and the arts, the pleasures of society, of spectacles and feasts; powers either sovereign or constituent , legislative and executive, administrative and judicial, etc. etc.

And this Community of Icaria, what is it? Is it, as the anti-communists claim, despotism and slavery, ignorance and brutishness, the abolition of the family and bestiality? No, no! It is a real association, a true society in which all its members are associated and act in solidarity for their common interest. And that communitarian association has as its basis the sovereignty of the people, freedom, equality, fraternity, and unity.

The Community of Icaria has as its basis the sovereignty of the people, for in no other system does democracy have more reality, more force and activity, since all citizens are voters and members of the popular assemblies; since these assemblies are extremely frequent and regular; since all precautions are taken so that everyone has the education necessary for the perfect knowledge of his duties and his rights, with all the independence and all the facilities needed to fulfill and exercise them without ever missing civic meetings; finally, since it is the entire people that prepares, discusses and adopts its constitution and its laws.

The Community of Icaria has liberty as its basis, for everything is ruled by the law, which is truly the expression of the general will. Every citizen cooperates in its making and only obeys the laws he has made. And these laws, discussed by a well-informed people, are always the work of the national intelligence and reason, and always made in the interests of the people themselves. No other system is capable of presenting a more real and perfect liberty.

The Icarian Community has equality as its basis, but not mathematical and absolute equality, but equality proportional to needs and means: equality of rights and duties, real equality. Equality in everything: in education, food, clothing, housing, in the ability to marry; in labor, eligibility for office, etc.

It has fraternity as its basis, the love preached by the gospels and by Christianity, fraternity that doesn’t allow rivalry with one’s brothers or the desire, for privileges or a better lot; fraternity in action; fraternity imbedded and living in all its laws, all its institutions, in all its customs, in all the acts of social life.

It is based on unity in everything, unity in territory or property, on unity in the nation or people; on unity in education common for all; on unity in industry (all industries forming but one great industry); on unity in agriculture (all the territory forming but one domain and one field).

The Community of Icaria is thus the realization of all that the human spirit has imagined under the names of society, or association, public or general interest, democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, and unity.

And that community also takes as its basis marriage and the family, purified and perfected, without celibacy, without domesticity. It develops human intelligence to its ultimate limits; it admits the fine arts and the joys of civilization without any limits but reason and equality; it admits an infinite number of machines and proposes as its goal the reducing of the labor of man to that of the labor of intelligence, to the labor of a creator and director of machines. It extirpates all vices and crimes either through education or by removing their reason or cause; it realizes order and concord. Finally, opening the way to progress it leads humanity to the destiny that a beneficent nature promised the intelligence of the most noble of its creatures.

This, in substance and summary, is Icarian Communism or the community of Icaria. All the reticence or the alterations of critics can neither change nor arrange things so that M. Bastard de l’Estang didn’t call it a SEDUCTIVE system.

This system is doubtless far from being perfect, and wouldn’t it be an unheard of feat if it were? But its perfecting will be the work of time and the future, of philosophical writings, of the people arranging their constitution, and of future generations improving and ceaselessly perfecting it through the progress of experience and reason. Let those who find defects in communism point them out and demonstrate them seriously, loyally, and philosophically, recognizing the good and frontally attacking the bad, without avoiding any true questions or real difficulties. It’s their right and their duty towards humanity; it’s a service that deserves the esteem and the recognition of the people. But it is slandered, falsified, twisted. What good are the ruses, the suppositions, the omissions, the alterations? Are not all these miserable methods just so much puerility unworthy of philosophy? And if the Community of Icaria is nothing but an ERROR, would not honesty, logic, and truth suffice to pulverize it? And if it is the TRUTH, could lies, slander, insults, sarcasm, affected disdain, sophistry, disputatiousness, persecution or anything in the world have the power to prevent its more or less imminent triumph through the irresistible force of public opinion?

Friday, September 21, 2012

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Étienne Cabet 1842-Refutation of the Revue des Deux Mondes

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

Markin comment:

I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.

****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

***********
Étienne Cabet 1842-Refutation of the Revue des Deux Mondes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Written: September 25, 1842;
Translated: from the original for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.


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Yet another serious writing that combats communism by twisting it.

Already in September 1841 the Revue des Deux Mondes attacked communism and the National of September 2, 1841 repeated these attacks.

We answered the Revue and the Journal in the Populaire of September 5...Here is a new attack, more lively still on the part of the same Revue, but our previous refutations authorize us to respond briefly.

Revue des Deux Mondes – In the issue of July 1842 M. Louis Reybaud examines “Communist Ideas and Sects.” But this examination appears to have nothing serious about it, nothing truly philosophical; for the writer misrepresents true communism, avoids the real question, and does nothing that is necessary to understand and appreciate a doctrine, a system adopted by too many eminent men for it to be permitted to not seriously examine it. A few quotations will suffice to justify what I have just written:

As is common, after having treated communism as a dream the author adds:

“They don’t content themselves with feeding these illusions; they try to impose them by force. They want to make the universe an accomplice in their delirium. It is perhaps on this level that the history of these vertigos is not without interest.”

No. We Icarian communists, as the author calls us, want to impose nothing, and we have said this too often for a critic to be permitted to ignore it.

“It is true that Plato said two thousand years ago, when speaking of his imaginary republic: ‘wherever it is realized or is to be realized it is necessary that wealth be held in common among citizens, and that the greatest care must be taken in cutting the very word ‘property’ off from the business of life. But Plato created an ideal and cast it out beyond the confines of the possible. He abandoned the real world to enter the world of fables.”

But doesn’t the quotation from Plato prove exactly the contrary, since he says:

“Wherever it is realized or is to be realized?”

“Plato opposed to the vices of a civilization existing in time the fiction of the marvels of a chimerical society. He used a plan for a society in order to end in a lesson in morality.”

Well, then! Even if our communism were nothing but a lesson in morality against the unquestionable vices of current civilization, would it not then deserve even more consideration?

“It can’t be said that the Community has never been attempted. It was several times. The Therapeutics and the Essenes left traces in history and imitators over the course of the centuries.”

In all good conscience, is this an argument worthy of a serious writer? Have there not been things vainly attempted a thousand times that were then attempted with success? It would be necessary to renounce representative government, the republic, universal peace, etc., so often and fruitlessly attempted. Today’s community and the present circumstances, are they the same as the community and the circumstances of old? Can our industrial and productive might be ignored? Our machines? Our railroads, etc, etc.?

“It seems to us that the spectacle of aborted efforts should have sufficed to turn contemporary minds, even the sickest ones, away from a pursuit so often recognized as vain. But such is not the case: man willingly plays the role of the insect who eternally burns himself on the same flame.”

So Galileo and Christopher Columbus, and Fulton and so many thousand others were nothing but insects! They eternally burned their wings by persevering in ideas that the world rejected as madness and that the world ended by adopting as benefits!

“Until now this equality, source of all happiness, has hardly ever shown itself except by sacrifices. It disposed of the individual like an automaton, abolished family relations by taking away children, suppressed arts and letters in the interest of the common ignorance.”

But this is precisely the contrary of what is seen in Icaria!

“We remember the incident of a communist trial where the editor-in-chief of an accused paper (l'Humanitaire) declared with naiveté that he didn’t know how to either read or write.”

But this is completely false! The defendant in question was not the editor in chief. And this is how philosophical criticism is done!

After having said that one of the communist sects prohibits the discussion of the principle of Community he gratuitously generalizes this fact and reasons as if all communists prohibit this discussion!

And he reasons, according to this supposition, that the communists want neither labor nor the development of human activity, culture or intelligence. But things are precisely the contrary in Icaria! How can one discuss with a critic who misrepresents all facts and speaks contrary to the truth?

M. Louis Reybaud, forgetting the mass of sects, journals, revues and systems that divide each party, mocks Communism for the diversity of its ideas.

“It would be difficult to say in what consist the nuances that divide the communists. Perhaps one should see there naught but a difference in names. Nevertheless, the Egalitaires, the Fraternitaires, the Humanitaires, the Unitaires, the Communitaires or Icariens, the Communists, the Comunionnistes, the Communautistes, and the Rationalistes are all cited.

But almost all of this is erroneous, imaginary, invented by the critic in an effort to ridicule (which is hardly philosophical). M. Louis Reybaud knows communism less well than M. Bastard de l'Estang who, in his Quenisset Report, divides the communists into two categories, the Icarians who adopt the family, and the editors of l'Humanitaire, who reject the family.

“Among the writings of our day that have presented themselves as the interpreters of Communist principles there are few that merit the honors of a refutation...Among the avowed Communists there figures the author of ‘A Voyage in Icaria'”

M. Louis Reybaud only speaks of this work, without citing any other, while M. Thore only uses others without speaking of it! Thus, M. Louis Reybaud, like M. Bastard de l'Estang consider “The Voyage in Icaria” as the principal interpreter of Communism!

But when M. Reybaud wants to give an idea of Icaria, he twists almost all the facts in order to have a pretext for mockery (as if it meant something that a writer obtained the facile merit of mocking something by twisting it!)

Nevertheless, despite the haughty tone he affects, if M. Louis Reybaud wants to seriously, honestly, and philosophically discuss the Icarian system, we would dare to push our temerity so far as to respond to all his arguments, and we are presumptuous enough to believe that we would answer in such a way as to convince him that he is ignorant of many things, and that in this case he is entirely wrong.

“In absolutely no Communist charter is there room for intellectual labor. Brute production and its physical needs despotically reign. Delicate creations, refined satisfactions only figure there in a subaltern position: they are not formally recognized. At the very best they are tolerated. Is this a situation which writers can recognize without failing their very dignity? Communism excludes letters, yet it finds in letters defenders and apologists.”

But this, too, is an error, a materially false affirmation! There is no system, NONE, which so cultivates and develops intelligence and thought as the Icarian system! And what kind of portrait has the author just drawn of WRITERS, of MEN OF LETTERS? Doesn’t he fear painting them as the very type of egoists and materialists?

He reasons as if the Community constitutes the despotism and enslavement of the individual. But it is precisely the contrary in Icaria, for we there see the sovereignty of the people, the most perfect democracy, universal suffrage for citizens who are completely free and whose existence is assured by their labor, and finally the participation of all in the making of laws, i.e., the most real of freedoms. To suppose the contrary about the community is to create at will a phantom in order to have the pleasure of more easily combating it!

The author says that M. Pierre Leroux is a Communist. All the better! We would be happy to see him at the head of the Communists!

He reproaches him for his denial, and addresses these remarkable words to him:

“In truth, it is difficult to understand why M. Pierre Leroux thus retreats before his own ideas. The theoretical discussion of the Community offers no dangers. The principle can be openly confessed, and every day this is freely done. The conscience is not enchained by this point, and it doesn’t seem that persecution has attached itself to purely speculative doctrines. If this right, maintained in almost all times, were to be seriously threatened, there is not a single independent pen that wouldn’t be ready to defend it.”

We make note of this important avowal on the part of a governmental writer.

September 25, 1842
Cabet

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Étienne Cabet 1842-Voyage en Icarie-[excerpt]

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

Markin comment:

I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.

****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

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Étienne Cabet 1842-Voyage en Icarie-[excerpt]

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Source: Voyage en Icarie (Paris, 1842): 39-55. Translation by John W. Reps (1946) from Cabet’s 5th ed., 1848: 20-22, and from E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel (eds.), French Utopias: An Anthology of Ideal Societies (New York: Schocken Books, 1971): 332-338.

Cabet (1788-1856) was a French lawyer from Dijon who, because of his part in the Revolution of 1830, was in effect exiled to Corsica where he became Procureur General. He continued his opposition to government policies, was forced to resign, returned to France, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Finally exiled for five years for critical articles in his journal, Le Populaire, Cabet went to England where he became acquainted with the theories of Robert Owen. In 1840 he took advantage of a general amnesty and returned to France where he wrote his socialist utopia from which these passages are taken. This work attracted considerable support, and in 1848 a group of 1500 set off for America to establish a colony on the model of Icarie. Swindled out of land in Texas, the group moved to Illinois where they occupied Nauvoo, the Illinois town abandoned by the Mormons. The group split, and Cabet himself died in St. Louis shortly thereafter.


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In an early part of the book a citizen of Icara, the capital of Cabet’s model commonwealth, describes the Paris-like plan of the city to two visitors:

“See! The city, nearly circular, is divided into two almost equal parts by the Tair [River], whose course has been straightened and confined between two walls in an almost straight line, and whose bed has been deepened to accommodate vessels arriving by sea....

“You see that in the center of the city the river divides into two arms which flow together again so as to form a circular island....

“This island is the central place, planted with trees, in the middle of which rises a palace enclosing a vast and superb terraced garden from the center of which springs an immense column topped by a colossal statue which towers over all the buildings. On each side of the river you will notice a large wharf bordered by public monuments.”

Of the street system, the Icaran has this to say:

“All of them [are] wide and straight! There are 50 principal streets which cross the city parallel to the river and 50 which cross perpendicularly.... Those which you see marked in black and which connect the squares are planted with trees like the boulevards of Paris.” He continued with these further observations: “Notice these areas distinguished by the light multi-coloured tints with which the entire city is marked.... They are...[the]...sixty quarters or communities, all very nearly equal and each one representing the extent of population in an ordinary town.

“Each quarter bears the name of one of the sixty principal cities of the ancient and modern world, and exhibits in its monuments and dwellings and architecture of one of the sixty principal nations....

“Here is the plan of one of these quarters. All coloured spots represent public buildings. Here is the school, the hospital, the temple. Red indicates the great factories, yellow the large retail shops, blue the places for public gatherings, violet the monuments.

“Notice that all these public buildings are so located that they are in all the streets and that every street contains the same number of houses....

“Now here is a plan of a street. See! sixteen houses on each side, with a public building in the middle and two other houses at the ends. These sixteen houses are treated alike on the exterior or combined to form a single building, but no street exactly matches any of the others.

What follows is the text of a letter Eugene, a visitor, is supposed to have written to his brother, Camille, describing some of the features of the great city of Icara.

Tear up your city plans, my poor Camille, and yet rejoice, for I am sending, to replace them, the plan of a model city which you have long wanted. I feel the keenest regret that you are not here to share my wonderment and delight.

First of all, imagine in Paris or London the most magnificent reward offered for the plan of a model city, a great open competition, and a big committee of painters, sculptors, scholars, travellers, who gather the plans or descriptions of all known cities, sift the opinions and ideas of the whole population including foreigners, discuss all the advantages and disadvantages of existing cities and proposals submitted, and choose among thousands the most perfect blueprint. Envision a city more beautiful than any which have preceded it; you will then begin to have a notion of Icara, especially if you bear in mind that all its citizens are equal, that it is the republic which is in command and that the rule invariably and constantly followed in all matters is: first, the necessary, then the useful, and last the pleasing.

Now, where shall I start? That’s a problem for me! All right, I will follow the rule that I have just mentioned and begin with the necessary and the useful.

I will pass over the measures taken to promote good health, to assure the free circulation of pure air, to decontaminate it if required. Within the city there are no cemeteries, no noxious products manufactured, no hospitals: all these establishments are on the outskirts, in open places, near swift-flowing streams or in the country.

I could never tell you how resourceful they are in devising methods to keep the streets clean. That the side-walks are swept and washed every morning and are always perfectly clean goes without saying: but in addition, the streets are so paved or constructed that the water constantly drains out of them into subterranean canals.

If mud forms, it is collected in one place by ingenious and handy equipment and washed down into the same canals by water from the fountains; but every conceivable means is employed to minimise the accumulation of mud and dust in the first place.

Examine the construction of the streets! Each has eight tracks of iron or stone to accommodate four coaches, two going in one direction and two in the other. The wheels never jump the tracks and the horses do not stray from the middle ground. These four areas are paved with stone or pebbles, all the other strips with brick. The wheels stir up neither mud nor dust, the horses practically none, the engines on railroad-streets none at all.

Note too that the big workshops and warehouses are situated along the canal streets and railroad streets; that the wagons, which incidentally are never overloaded, move only on these streets; that streets with tracks are reserved for omnibuses; and that half the streets do not even admit omnibuses or wagons but only carts pulled by big dogs for making daily deliveries to families residing there.

Then, no sort of trash is ever thrown from the houses or shops into the street; never are straw, hay, or manure dumped there because all the stables and their provisioners are on the outskirts; all the wagons and conveyances shut so tightly that none of their contents can spill out of them, and all unloading is done with machines so that nothing dirties the sidewalk and the gutter.

In each street, fountains supply the water for cleaning, laying the dust, and refreshing the air.

Thus everything is arranged, as you see, so that the streets are naturally clean, not misused, and easy to tidy up.

The law — you will be inclined to laugh but this will give way to admiration — the law has decreed that the pedestrian must be safe, that there are never to be any accidents caused by vehicles, horses or other animals, or anything else. Reflect, and you will soon realise nothing is impossible for a government that wants the good of its citizens.

First, frisky saddle horses are not allowed inside the city; riding is permitted only outside it, and the stables are located at the city limits.

As for stage coach-, bus- and draft-horses, apart from all sorts of precautions to keep them from running away, they can never leave their tracks or mount the sidewalks, and their drivers are obliged to lead them on foot as they near pedestrian cross-walks; these intersections furthermore are surrounded by every sort of necessary precaution: they are usually indicated by columns extending across the street and forming a sort of gateway for vehicles, and by a kind of intermediary platform where the pedestrian can halt until he ascertains that it is safe to proceed. Needless to say, these cross-walks are almost as clean as the sidewalks. In some streets, the passage is even underground like the tunnel in London, while in some others it is a bridge beneath which vehicles move.

There is another simple precaution which eliminates many accidents, but which is not taken seriously in our cities because nothing is done to teach it to people and encourage them to observe it: everywhere vehicles and pedestrians keep to the right of the road.

You understand also that drivers of vehicles, all of them workers for the Republic and not in anyone’s private employ, have no interest in exposing themselves to accidents and are on the contrary eager to avoid them.

You realise further that since the whole population is in the workshops or at home until three o'clock, and the transport vehicles circulate only when the omnibuses do not run and when pedestrians are few, and the wheels never jump the tracks, accidents and collisions are pretty much eliminated

As to other animals, one never sees droves of oxen and flocks of sheep like those which encumber and disgrace the streets of London, causing a thousand accidents, creating anxiety and often spreading terror and death, while people become habituated to the idea of slaughter. For here the slaughterhouses and the butcher shops are outside the city; the beasts never come into it, one never sees blood or animal carcasses; and great numbers of butchers do not become callused to human butchery through constantly steeping their knives and hands in the blood of other kinds of victims.

I shall not abandon the subject of the animals without speaking of the dogs. The Republic feeds, shelters, and employs a great number of dogs remarkable for their size and strength to convey many goods with still less danger than if horses were used. These dogs, well fed, always bridled and muzzled or led on a leash, can never go mad, or bite, or frighten anyone, or create the kind of scene which, in our cities, destroys in a moment all the worth of years of training.

Everything is so well figured out that no chimney, flower-pot, nor any object whatsoever can be flung down by a storm or thrown from a casement.

Pedestrians are protected even against the caprices of the weather; for all the streets are equipped with side-walks, and all these side-walks are covered with glass panes to keep out the rain without excluding the light, and with awnings to combat the heat. One even finds some streets entirely covered, especially those connecting the great warehouses, and all the cross-walks are likewise covered.

They have pushed these measures to the extent of constructing, at different points on each side of the street, covered platforms where the omnibuses stop, so that one can board or alight without fear of rain or mud.

You see, dear friend, that one can go all over the city of Icara, in a carriage when one is in a hurry, through the gardens when the weather is fine, and under the porticoes when it is bad, without ever requiring a parasol or an umbrella and with perfect confidence; while thousands of accidents and disasters, which each year overwhelm the people of Paris and London, point a finger at the shameful impotence or barbarous indifference of their governments.

You are right if you think that the city is perfectly illuminated, as well as Paris and London, even much better, because the source of light is not absorbed by the shops, since there are none, or by the factories, since nobody works at night. Illumination is then concentrated on the streets and public monuments; and not only is the gas odourless because means have been found to purify it, but the illumination combines to the highest degree the pleasing and the useful, through the elegant and varied forms of the street lamps and the thousand shapes and colours which they give the light. I have seen fine illumination in London in some streets on certain holidays; but in Icara the illumination is always magnificent, and sometimes it creates a veritable fairy-land.

You would see here neither cabarets, nor roadhouses, nor cafes, nor smoking joints, nor the stock-exchange, nor gaming or lottery houses, nor establishments for shameful or culpable pleasures, nor barracks and guard-rooms, nor gendarmes and stool- pigeons, just as there are no prostitutes or pickpockets, no drunkards or mendicants; but instead you would find everywhere privies, as elegant as they are clean and convenient, some for women, others for men, where modesty may enter for a moment without fear for itself or for public decency.

You would never again be offended by the sight of all those cartoons, drawings, scrawls which defile the walls of our cities even as they make one avert one’s eyes with shame; for the children are trained not to spoil or dirty anything, and to blush at whatever might be indecent or knavish.

You would not even have the pleasure or annoyance of seeing so many signs and posters above the doors of the houses, nor so many notices and advertisements which usually disfigure buildings: instead you would see beautiful inscriptions on the monuments, workshops, and public depots, just as you would see all the useful hand-bills, attractively printed on papers of many colours, and posted by the Republic’s placarders on special bulletin boards, in such a way that the notices themselves are ornamental.

You would see no more those rich and pretty shops of every sort that one finds in Paris and London in all the houses on commercial streets. But what are the finest of these shops, the richest of these stores and bazaars, the most extensive of these markets or fairs, compared with the factories, shops, stores of Icara! Imagine that all the goldsmith and jewellery workshops and stores of Paris or London, for example, were merged into one or two of each; imagine the same for all branches of industry and commerce; and tell me if the stores for jewellery, watches, flowers, feathers, piece goods, fashions, instruments, fruits, and so on, would not inevitably cast into the shade all the shops in the rest of the world; tell me whether you would not feel as much and perhaps more pleasure in visiting them than in touring our museums and artistic monuments. Ah well, such are the shops and stores of Icara!

And all of them are purposely spread through the city to enhance its beauty and serve the maximum convenience of the inhabitants, and to make them even more decorative, they are built to resemble on the outside monuments where simplicity and the marks of industry are the dominant notes.

I have just mentioned utilitarian monuments: I need hardly say that all the monuments and useful institutions that exist elsewhere are, with all the more reason, found here — the schools, hostels, temples, courts, places of popular assembly, even arenas, circuses, theatres, museums of all sorts, and all the establishments whose agreeableness makes them more or less essential.

No aristocratic mansions, likewise no private carriages; but no prisons or almshouses! No royal or ministerial palaces; but the schools, hostels, popular assemblies are as impressive as palaces, or, if you like, all the palaces are dedicated to public purposes!

I would never finish, my dear brother, if I were to enumerate all the useful things contained in Icara: but I have said enough, perhaps too much, although I am sure that in your love for me you will relish all these details....

Let us look then at the externals of the houses, the streets, and the monuments.

I have already told you that all the houses on a street are similar, but that all the streets are different, and all the attractive houses of foreign lands are represented.

Your eye would never be offended here by the sight of those hovels, dumps, and street-corner hang-outs that elsewhere crowd the most magnificent palaces, nor by the view of those rags and tatters that are the neighbours of aristocratic luxury.

Your gaze would no longer alight on those dismal railings that surround the moats of London houses, and combine with the sooty bricks to give them the appearance of a vast prison.

The chimneys, so hideous in many other countries, are here an ornament or are at least inconspicuous, while iron balustrades give a charming aspect to the tops of the houses.

The sidewalks or gracefully-columned porticoes which border every street, already magnificent, will be something enchanting when, as is planned, all the colonnades are bedecked with foliage and flowers.

Shall I undertake to describe to you the fountains, the squares, the promenades, the columns, the public monuments the colossal gates of the city, and its magnificent avenues? No, my friend: my vocabulary would be inadequate to depict my admiration, and besides I would have to write you volumes. I will bring you all the plans, and will limit myself here to giving you only a general idea.

Ah, how sorry I am that I cannot visit them again with my brother! You would see that each fountain, square, monument, is unique, and that all the varieties of architectural style are here exemplified. You would think yourself in Rome, Greece, Egypt, India, everywhere; and never would you be infuriated, as we have been in London at St. Paul’s, by the shops which deprive you of a birdseye view of the whole magnificent monument.

Nowhere would you see more paintings, sculpture, statues than here in the monuments, on the squares, along the promenades, and in the public gardens; for, while elsewhere these works of art are hidden in the palaces of kings and rich men, while in London the museums, shut on Sundays, are never open to the People, who cannot leave their work to visit them during the week, here all the curios exist only for the People and are displayed only in the spots frequented by them.

And since it is the Republic under whose auspices the painters and sculptors work, since the artists, fed, clad, lodged, and equipped by the Community, have no other motive but love of art and glory, and no other guide but the inspirations of genius, you can imagine the results.

Nothing useless and especially nothing harmful, but everything directed toward the goal of utility! Nothing favouring despotism and Aristocracy, fanaticism and superstition, but everything favouring the People and their benefactors, liberty and its martyrs, or opposing the old tyrants and their minions.

Never those paintings of nudes or voluptuous scenes which are publicly shown to cater to the tastes of influential libertines, all the while that hypocrites pay endless lip service to decency and chastity. Such pictures no husband would want his wife and the mother of his children to behold.

Never more those works which betray only ignorance or lack of skill, works that elsewhere poverty sells for a pittance to buy bread, and that corrupt public taste while they dishonour the arts; for here nothing is passed by the Republic without examination; and as in Sparta weak or deformed children were destroyed at birth, here they mercilessly thrust into oblivion whatever productions are unworthy of the radiance of the God of the arts.

I am stopping, dear Camille, although I had much to tell you about the garden-streets, the river and canals, the quays and bridges, and the monuments which have just been started or planned.

But what will you say when I add that all the cities of Icaria, though much smaller, are built on the same plan, except for the omission of the large national institutions.

And so I hear you exclaim with me: “Lucky Icarians! Unlucky Frenchmen!”

The more I moved about the city after that, the more accurate did Eugene’s description appear to me.