"Utopias" We Have Studied

While reading Mrs. Quinet’s packets about utopian like societies and reforms I kept comparing these ideas to the reforms we learned about in APUSH, especially the Shakers’. I kept thinking about how these reforms such as communal property and polygamy didn’t work for these groups and how Dostoevsky knew they wouldn’t work for Fourier. I went back and found my notes to compare the utopias and thought you all would be interested in the other utopia experiments also.

1.     Many “utopian” communities were based on the reform impulses of cooperation and collectivism.

a.     The Shakers – Ann Lee.

                                               i.     First established in New York in 1787

                                              ii.     Religious imperative- refuge from sin of society

                                            iii.     Sexes spiritually equal

                                            iv.     Abandoned traditional family life (sister for each man)

                                              v.     No indiv. Property

                                            vi.     Marketed vegetables, made furniture, breed cattle for profit

b.     The Mormons – Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. (Dictactorship)

                                               i.     Utah (1820’s)

                                              ii.     Book of Mormon

                                            iii.     Ancient Hebrews à Indians

                                            iv.     Absolute authority

                                              v.     Church and state together

                                            vi.     Polygamy

                                           vii.     Had private property and accumulate wealth/ not collective

c.      Oneida – John Humphrey Noyes; “eugenics.” (Collectivismà communism)

                                               i.     No traditional gender role- holy family of equals

                                              ii.     No private property

                                            iii.     “Book dating”

                                            iv.     can achieve moral perfection

1.     followers=sinless

                                              v.     community in Vermont

                                            vi.      eugenics

d.     The New England transcendentalists at Brook Farm – Charles Fourier Nathaniel Hawthorne.

                                               i.     Manual and intellectual labor and intellectual labor exist harmoniously

                                              ii.     Communal living and working arrangements

                                            iii.     They have private property

                                            iv.     Daily timed schedules

e.     The “Owenites” –

                                               i.     Robert Owen- british factory owner

                                              ii.     New Lanark: factory workers

                                            iii.     Provided housing and free public education

                                            iv.     “communitarianism”: workers receive full fruits of their labor

                                              v.      New Harmony

                                            vi.     The Crisis: people squabbled over constitution and property

f.      The Josiah Warren “communitarians” – extreme individualism.

                                               i.     Anarchist