le doxaphobe

             Putting aside the recent « liberal » decisions of our dear pedal boat captain, the old socialist dream stays actual. Cohn-bendit’s french socialist « manifest destiny » isn’t fom yesterday. Neither is their stupidity, Crs (french anti-riot police) = SS they said, i shit you not ! Half a century ago they already had that despicable way of deciding what’s the common good.

            From the start of the XIX th century numerous socialist attempts, that we, probably, would call nowadays « living together responsability of citizenship supported by actionnality prerogatives » were conceived by clowns with big dreams (usually it’s their feet).

               Our mind will directy go to the 100 % pure juice version of it, wich it’s worst legacy  is probably the growth of moustachioed too prood not to feel the need to compensate‘s giant statues and other paintings of smiling fat, bold, chinese man that seems to say «if only you knew about the feasts we have at the imperial palace ! But we do that for your own good. Of course it’s a way to fight capitalism ! Oh look, the queue is moving, only eight hours and thirty-five minutes ‘till you get your piece of bread », propagandart, when you inspires us !

                However there are more confidential versions of these experiments, one of them in particular. I personnally feel uncomfortable at the simple view of these photos. Wow, Wow hold your horses, I feel like some of you are already thinking about illuminaty mad scientists. And no it’s not about patients that would have went under the scalpel of doctors who could make Mangele blush either. No, you know that by now, fear is a way more subtile emotion. Here it’s provocated by Godin’s familistère. From the beginning we know what we are dealing with as Larousse (french dictionnary) defines it as a  « worker’s cooperative of PRODUCTION ».

                 Godin, self-made man, craftsman’s son, made a fortune in the stove business (you can’t make up these things !). You have to give him the credit of a good businessman though. And even if the stove business seems quite easy to make fun of, Godin successed in building a strong and innovative company throughout the years. The man is simple, forged by his years of compagnonage (after their training some young craftsman make a trip around France to experiment their skills), he had the, almost obvious, idea to use cast-iron instead of tin, making the conductivity and the efficiency of the stoves better. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, the condition of this newly-born social class, the proletariat, is dramatic. This misery, he sees and experiences it everyday during his compagnonage. The housing condition is particularly traumatizing for him.

                At the age of 23, he gets interested by Charles Fourier’s theories, a socialist utopist with so much ridiculous theories and initiatives that it could not even fit in an encycloepedia. If, nowadays, USA uses Europe to test their social experiments, there was a time the roles were the other way around. So, in 1855, he financed a phalanstère (camrade Fourier’s brillant idea) in the middle of Texas, probably one of the least ridiculous idea that came out of these lands at that time. And already he faced a problem that we, the French, know well, a 100 billions problem. Indeed, he lost half of his fortune in the project. He decided then he would much rather prefer waste the other half in his own stupidities.

                  So Godin’s project consists, mainly, in the build of a social Palace in which worker’s family would have a flat and could benefit from a range of free services, assuring the morality of the project and the well-being of the workers. The anarchist encyclopedia ads that it’s about «substitute the harmony of cooperation to the chaos of concurrence». To summerize we can say that it’s about Godin creating his own utopy and choosing his subject’s conditions of living, an IRL sims to simplify.

                 And so Godin starts creating his own architectural plans. The palace will be divided in 3 units that would have, each, inside, an empty space covered by glass. They also would have diverse entities of service. You can clearly see, through the design of it, the will of making a social palace, a brick version of Versailles (french king’s castle under the monarchy). The familistère is implanted on a 6ha island connected to the Stove’s factory by a bridge. Among the different services, you’ll find the infamous économats, simple principle, it’s a general store that provides all the goods a worker could need, of course these were managed by Godin’s company. Womens, with notebooks, would go shopping all the needed items and the bill was reported on the notebook. Every two weeks, the workers would recieve their paycheck and the bills were substracted from it directly, you won’t find a better way to make sure everybody pays.  But there was also a nursery, schools, a swimming pool, a stage… When Godin died, the nearly 300 workers became owner of the capital.

                Don’t you think the familistère ressembles more and more a miniature scale of something we already know well ? A geographically isolated land, control over economy, over education, over culture, the distribution of the capital to the people, all of that around the central notion of work ? Really, you still don’t get it ? The dangerous aspect of the project doesn’t lay on it’s own nature. On a general view, Godin’s workers had a life with globally higher standards of living and the possibility to choose their own destiny. But Godin’s view wasn’t limited to a local scale, he wanted to seduce politicians et introduce his ideas to society in general, through reforms and laws. He wanted, no matter what, to apply his ideas without the loss in work force that would result of a revolution (yeah I know, I’m a bit harsch on the guy). The familistère wasn’t more than a small experiment that never concerned more than a few hundreds of people. No, the real danger is in his global vision of society and his ambitious set of mind. To me, all the conditions are present to lead to serious drifts, without Godin’s death …. Of course you can’t do anything but imagine what could have happened and it’s precisely the argument Godin’s supporter will use. The same communists use : «it went wrong yesterday because some people took advantage of the system but if we were to try again today everything would be perfectly fine ».

                How did this all ended ? No more money, no more familistère. Despite the few attempts of american Fouriérists, the end is always the same : no more money, the party is over. Prediction ? Don’t tell me ! But to be fair, I have to admit that the utopy lasted until 1967, when the company got sold because of bankruptcy. Today the brand Godin’s stoves still exists and a few rare families still live in the familistère, even though there are no more free services or anything. The building is protected as an historic monument, a part of it will transformed in an conference hotel and the rest will be used to teach tourists about it and host the last families.