Under Fourier's plan, however, work was to be nothing more than organized sport, and thus by competitive effort all necessary work was to be pleasantly done. Each community was to be self-sustaining and each member was to draw from a common storehouse all the necessities of life, provided, of course, that he had agreed to the unity of goods and property. Food and clothing were not to be held in equal share, but to be distributed according to the merits of each member of the phalansteries.
Each person was to gain initiative by the emotional passions which mutual attraction naturally developed. Misery, poverty, and unhappiness, according to Fourier, came from suppression of natural desires and passions. All that was required for perfect harmony in social life was the harmonious development and satisfaction of natural desires. People were misled only because civilization, by its unnatural laws of suppression, prevented men and women from full acquisition and use of their natural talents. Each person and each phalanx was to be brought into competition with others in the arts of commerce, labor, learning, and various activities of life. Then, too, desire for company, for association and union would be fulfilled by the bringing together of several hundred men and women into one phalanx or more. Whenever one form of labor or association became monotonous for the individual, he could easily transfer to another type of work and a new group of associates. Women were to be relieved of the monotony and drudgery of housework and the rearing of children. These duties, which had previously been forced upon the women, would be abolished by the switching from one type of labor to another, and by the organizing of children into special phalanges of their own.
Fourier was neither a clear thinker nor a logical writer.[4] In fact, all his writings are disorderly and his system has no logical outline nor organization. He was never able to impart to his disciples an impulse of victory and desire such as great men are frequently able to do.[5] However, what Fourier lacked, his most prominent follower, Victor Prosper Considerant, possessed.
Considerant was born in Salins, France, in 1808 at the foot of the Jura mountains, of a family belonging to the bourgeoisie. His father was a distinguished humanist, translator of English treatises, librarian for the city, and headmaster of a small school. The family was poor and the parents often had boarders in order to make financial ends meet. Considerant finished school at Salins and then entered the Lycée de Besançon in order to prepare himself for L'Ecole Polytechnique. While attending school in Besançon he met Just Muiron in the home of Mme. Vigoureaux who, with several others, was giving considerable time to the study of the works of Fourier. Mme. Vigoureaux had lived in Salins and had sent her son to Considerant's father for instruction; it was thus natural for Considerant to spend a portion of his time in her home. Besides the boy, she had two daughters, one of whom later became the wife of Considerant and accompanied him to Texas.