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Victor Prosper Considerant (12 October 1808 – 27 December 1893) was a French utopian socialist philosopher and economist who was a disciple of
Charles Fourier François Marie Charles Fourier (; ; 7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837) was a French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker, and one of the founders of utopian socialism. Some of his views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have be ...
.


Biography

Considerant was born in Salins-les-Bains, Jura and studied at the
École Polytechnique (, ; also known as Polytechnique or l'X ) is a ''grande école'' located in Palaiseau, France. It specializes in science and engineering and is a founding member of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris. The school was founded in 1794 by mat ...
(1826 diploma). He entered the
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (, , ), is the principal Army, land warfare force of France, and the largest component of the French Armed Forces; it is responsible to the Government of France, alongside the French Navy, Fren ...
as an engineer, rising to the rank of captain. However, he resigned his commission in 1831, in order to devote himself to advancing the doctrines of Fourier. Subsequently, working as a musician, he collaborated with Fourier on newspapers. He edited the journals ''La Phalanstère'' and ''La Phalange''. On the death of Fourier in 1837, Considerant became the acknowledged head of the movement, and took charge of ''La Phalange''. His mother-in-law, Clarisse Vigoureux, introduced Considerant to the principles of Fourierism. Considerant wrote much in advocacy of his principles, of which the most important is ''La Destinée Sociale''. He authored ''Democracy Manifesto'', which preceded by five years the similar
Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'' (), originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The t ...
by
Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
and
Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''
1848 Revolutions. He is also known for having devised the
proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...
system. He also advocated such measures of "
direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the Election#Electorate, electorate directly decides on policy initiatives, without legislator, elected representatives as proxies, as opposed to the representative democracy m ...
" (a term he coined) as referendum and recall. The failure of an insurrection against Louis Napoléon obliged Considerant to go into exile in Belgium in June 1849. While exiled, Considerant visited the United States in 1853 on an invitation from Albert Brisbane; following his travels, he wrote a book titled ''Au Texas'' advocating for a socialist colony based in Texas. In collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Godin and others, Considerant was a founder and first director of the
La Réunion LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States of America. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note *"L.A.", a song by Elliott Smi ...
colony established in 1855 near
Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
,
Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
. After the failure of La Reunion, Considerant retreated to a farm in
San Antonio San Antonio ( ; Spanish for " Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the third-largest metropolitan area in Texas and the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the ...
where he advocated for a new colony in Uvalde Canyon. Considerant would live in Texas throughout the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, finally returning permanently to France with his wife Julie in 1869. He was a member of the
First International The International Workingmen's Association (IWA; 1864–1876), often called the First International, was a political international which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, social democratic, communist, and anarchist ...
, founded in 1864, and took part in the 1871
Paris Commune The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...
. He died in Paris in 1893. Contrary to a common error, his name is not written Considérant as he explained: "... there is no acute accent on my e. I have fought in vain for more than sixty years ever since my name was printed to defend it rom the accent"Louis Bertrand, ''Histoire de la démocratie et du socialisme en Belgique depuis 1830'', Brussels, éd. Dechenne, t. 1, p. 280, 1906


Citations


Further reading

* Jonathan Beecher, ''Victor Considérant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. * Carl J. Guarneri, ''The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America''. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.


External links

* *
Principles of Socialism: Manifesto of Nineteenth Century Democracy
' by Considerant in
PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
format {{DEFAULTSORT:Considerant, Victor Prosper 1808 births 1893 deaths Forty-Eighters Fourierists French socialists Members of the 1848 Constituent Assembly Members of the International Workingmen's Association Members of the National Legislative Assembly of the French Second Republic People from Jura (department) Politicians from Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Utopian socialists