BY M.B.
IN THE hours outside his dreary day job, the utopian socialist Charles
Fourier (1772-1837) dreamt of a world where work meant play and where the seas
would transform into “a sort of lemonade”. He believed that the passions should
be set free: the ideal workforce would be intensely attracted both to their
jobs and to one another, converging in an orgy of productivity. Contemporary
work culture advocates something similar, but instead of “passionate
attraction” we call it teamwork. The cover letters of prospective employees are
as “passionate” as billets-doux.
500 years after Thomas More coined the term “utopia”, it’s worth
reassessing what is meant by an ideal community. For Fourier it took the form
of the phalanx, a group of well-matched individuals living together in a
phalanstery: a palatial residential complex complete with meeting halls, dining
rooms, libraries, ballrooms, beehives, observatories and coops for carrier
pigeons. Short-lived phalansteries were established across America, but the
most successful interpretation of Fourier’s ideas was the Familistère in Guise,
northern France, founded by Jean-Baptiste André Godin to accommodate the
employees of his iron stove factory.
Built between the years of 1859-1884, the
Familistère continued as a worker-run cooperative until 1968 and is now an
award-winning museum with an exhibition programme exploring utopian ideals
through art, design and performance. A recently installed sculpture
installation, “Utopian Benches” by the artist Francis Cape serves as a short
introduction to such communities worldwide, each represented by a faithfully
recreated wooden bench. The accompanying booklet is a sort of utopia
brochure—read about each community, sit on each bench, and see which suits you
best.
The bench representing the Familistère is no more extravagant than those
designed by the Shakers or the Amana Inspirationists. However, the Familistère
had a very different attitude to home comforts. Godin believed that collective
emancipation could only be achieved if the community was supplied with the
material and intellectual “equivalent of wealth”; by providing spacious
housing, free education, healthcare, leisure facilities and a system of shared
ownership, he sought to create a secular “temple for the religion of life and
work”.
Godin wanted his temple to have the ethos of communal unitary architecture
and the grandeur of the Palace of Versailles. The design prioritised the
necessities of light, space, airflow and water (similar principles informed the
Adidas LACES headquarters in Germany) but there was still scope for fanciful
additions: an Italianate theatre, a wrought iron bandstand, formal gardens and
an elegant indoor pool. Each of the residential blocks centred around a
courtyard covered by an impressive glass roof—a design feature bearing striking
similarities to the translucent canopy proposed for Google’s new California
campus by architects Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels.
The utopian socialists developed their ideas when Europe was in the first
stages of industrialisation. Today's start-up culture appropriates the communal
values of earlier utopias to serve the purposes of the free market—we are
taught to uphold teamwork as the highest ideal, while simultaneously being
encouraged to compete as individuals. Like Godin’s Familistère, the offices of
global corporations such as Google and Facebook aim to turn work into play, but
there is a key difference: the Familistère was built on a separate site to the
Godin ironworks, whereas the workspaces of today are gradually encroaching on
the domestic sphere. We live in pursuit of innovation through distraction;
whether it’s a wifi-supplied allotment, a canteen serving free haute-cuisine, a
cosy office sleeping pod, or the new trend for shared ‘live-work’ apartments,
our escape routes are leading us back to the laptop. The phrase ‘work-life balance’ is becoming an archaism.
That life force of innovation was eventually found lacking at the
Familistère. The new generations of workers failed to advance the inventions of
their predecessors, and in 1968 the Familistère passed into private
ownership—just as the barricades were being rebuilt on the streets of Paris.
Ultimately—and this is the primary critique of utopian socialism—Godin placed
too much faith in his workers to implement his vision. Lenin was well aware
that “the present ordinary run of people” would not be able to enter the
socialist paradise, and most utopias include an element of behaviour
modification. Robert Owen’s cotton mill village of New Lanark in Scotland had
its own Institute for the Formation of Character, and the community of Twin
Oaks in Virginia was originally inspired by the behaviourist principles of B.F.
Skinner's utopian novel, “Walden Two”.
A utopia is by definition imaginary, non-existent; they work best when the
inhabitants are designed, too. That is evident from architectural illustrations
for new super-offices, populated by the type of people who would thrive in an
uber-connected, super-creative environment. Digitally rendered employees chat,
stroll, cycle, eat, knit, read and meditate—anything, as long as it doesn’t
look like work. Like Fourier’s phalanx, they’re happy—buoyed up by a rising
tide of positive psychology. But does the emphasis on happiness in the
workplace serve to help the individual, or just oil the cogs of an ever-turning
capitalist wheel? Fourier called for the right to take pleasure in work.
Perhaps we need to reclaim our right to dislike it.
“Francis Cape: Utopian Benches” is showing at the
Familistère de Guise until September 17th 2016.
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