Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/61



Fourier—a contemporary of the Great French Revolution, from which he derived his chief ideas—was no longer living when the International was founded. But his views had been popularised so well by his followers—especially by Considérant, who had given them a scientific unity—that, consciously or not, the most enlightened spirits of the Working Men's Association were very much under the influence of the ideas of Fourier.

Now, the leading idea of Fourier was not so much the union between Capital, Labour, and Talent for the production of commodities, to which such a prominent place is usually given in most historical works on Socialism. His chief aim was to get rid of individual commerce for private profit, with all the speculations it necessarily provokes, and to call into existence a free national organisation of exchange of all the Commodities.

To use Considérant's words, the remedy against all infamies of present exploitation Fourier saw in "bringing into direct relations the producer and the consumer, by organising intermediary, which would be the depositaries—not the owners—of all food produce, and would deliver this produce directly to the consumers, adding only to its price the real cost of transport, storage, and. administration, which always is almost insignificant."

This is how Considérant understood Fourier ("Le Socialisme devant le Vieux Monde," p. 38); and one sees that Fourier, who at the age of seven took his Hannibal oath against Commerce, and who had lived through the Great French Revolution and seen the speculations begun during the Revolution by the sale of