Charles Fourier: If ever war was deplorable, it is at this moment

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

French writers on war and peace

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Charles Fourier
From Universal Harmony
Translated by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu

If ever war was deplorable, it is at this moment. Soon the victors will be on the same level as the vanquished. What point is there in conquests when the entire globe will comprise but a single nation, will be run by a single administration? In spite of this unity, there will be no equality in harmony.

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Some readers will cry out: “dream,” “visionary.” Patience! In a short time we will wake them from their own frightful dream, the dream of civilization. Blind savants, just look at your cities paved with beggars, your citizens struggling against hunger, your battlefields and all your social infamies. Do you still believe that civilization is the destiny of the human race? Or was J.-J. Rousseau right in saying of the civilized: “These are not men; there is a disorder in things, the cause of which we have not yet fathomed.”

Joan Roelofs’ book on Fourier