Turning the Machine into a Horn of Plenty

Abstract

The communitarian and utopian movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have commanded considerable attention from American historians. Fourierism, Owenism, and Transcendentalism, for example, have received thoughtful book-length treatments, as have later movements, such as those sparked by Edward Bellamy and Eugene V. Debs. Cultural and intellectual historians have attempted to identify common themes, to place these crusades in broader historical context, and to relate them to more conventional reform movements. In two interesting but not entirely persuasive books, Edward K. Spann examines efforts to create an ideal society in America between 1820 and 1920. According to Spann, men such as Adin Ballou, the spiritual leader behind Hopedale, George Ripley, the driving force behind Brook Farm, and even Bellamy and Debs were generally pragmatic, flexible thinkers who sought workable solutions to the vexing problems of their worlds. More important than occasional experiments with extreme practices, such as Fourier's support for Free Love, were the practical efforts undertaken by these reformers to sustain a spirit of community and of cooperation, and to blunt-not to rejectthe competitive, individualistic spirit of urban, industrial society. For Spann, the supporters of cooperative communities at Brook Farm, Hopedale, and New Harmony, for example, struggled to harness modern technology and economic forces in order to perfect society. This argument links men like Ballou and Ripley (as well as their followers) to the rise of the middle class in nineteenth-century America and to more broadly based cultural responses to urbanization and industrialization. In Brotherly Tomorrows, Spann develops this argument in a series of brief