Jules André Louis Lechevalier (21 April 1806 – 10 June 1862) was a French utopian socialist, economist and anthropologist. He was at first a Saint-Simonian, then a Fourierist and a collaborator of Proudhon. After 1855 he was also known as Jules Lechevalier Saint-André. His years of birth and death are sometimes given as 1800 and 1850, respectively, but this is incorrect.
Early life
Jules André Louis Lechevalier was born on 21 April 1806, in Saint-Pierre-le-Mouillage, Martinique, in the French Antilles. His father was a wealthy merchant originally from Bordeaux; his mother was Creole. In the 1820s he came to Paris to study at the École Polytechnique in Paris. He studied philosophy under Victor Cousin and was influenced by the philosophy of Hegel. The Polytechnique was then a hotbed of utopian socialism. Auguste Comte, Prosper Enfantin, Olinde Rodrigues, Michel Chevalier and other disciples of Henri de Saint-Simon were all Polytechniciens, as was Victor Considerant, the Fourierist. Lechevalier joined the Saint-Simonians in 1826 and was a very effective propagandist on their behalf. Reportedly it was Lechevalier's relationship with an actress, frowned upon by some of the Saint-Simonians but endorsed by Enfantin, which prompted Enfantin to proclaim the doctrine of free love. In 1830 he welcomed the July Revolution, although it was not yet in his opinion a real social revolution; he hoped that the new constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe might be more receptive to social reform than the Restoration absolutism of Charles X. However, in 1832, the Saint-Simonian school split, due to a conflict between the Saint-Simonian leaders Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Armand Bazard. Lechevalier left the Saint-Simonians and shortly afterward joined the disciples of Charles Fourier. Together with Victor Considerant, he founded the journal Le Phalanstère. Later, he founded his own journal, La revue du progrès social.
Anthropological work and Revolution
In 1838–1839 he returned to the Antilles on behalf of the French Ministry of the Marine and the Colonies and carried out a study on the status of slavery in the French colonies. He became an advocate of the abolition of slavery, advancing plans for slave emancipation that invoked the Fourierist idea of association, although some historians have seen his activities as overly conciliatory to the colonial planters' interests. Lechevalier also explored the prospects of setting up model Fourierist settlements, or phalansteries, in the French colonies (such as French Guiana) and in the United States. Back in France, he was active in the co-operative movement and the early trade union movement. In 1848, he supported the February Revolution and the creation of the Second French Republic and was very active in the republican club led by Armand Barbès. He collaborated with the republican socialists, or "social democrats" as they were beginning to call themselves, such as Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux. He also contributed to various journals, including La Tribune des Peuples edited by the Polish poet and nationalist Adam Mickiewicz.
In 1848–1849 he collaborated with the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in setting up a "People's Bank" based on mutualist principles. He also contributed to Proudhon's Le Représentant du Peuple. Around this time he began to distance himself somewhat from orthodox Fourierism. The Fourierists had always insisted that they did not want to abolish private property, but merely to organise it. Under Proudhon's influence, Lechevalier seems to have contemplated replacing the absolute right of property with a conditional right of usufructure. Going even further than Proudhon, who opposed communism (i.e., collectivisation of property), Lechevalier declared: "Socialism is communism in transition; communism is its logical and necessary end." For this he was given a citation by the police.