SOURCE: "Early Feminist Themes in French Utopian Socialism: The St.-Simonians and Fourier," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XLIII, No. 1, January-March, 1982, pp. 91-108.

In the following excerpt, Goldstein examines the feminist aspects of Fourier's work while noting the limitations in his theories regarding the role of women in Fourierist communities.

Daniel Bell on the Appeal of Fourier:

In his writings one can see Fourier's deep and permanent longing for the eternal childhood of man which so many poets and Arcadians have celebrated. He resists relentlessly the expulsion from Eden and childhood's end. In Corinthians, Paul had put away childish things and seen through a glass darkly, but this "anti-Paul," with tinkling cymbals and a sounding brass, preached a new orgiastic chiliasm, the release of all restraints, the recurrent pleasures of childhood on earth. And this is the recurrent and permanent appeal of Charles Fourier.

Daniel...