Keywords
Icarian communism
utopian socialism
readers of journals
France
1848
How to Cite
Abstract
In 1842, readers of Populaire, a journal founded a year earlier by Etienne Cabet, named themselves the Icarian communists. But what was this entity? Was it a party, a communist one, a school of socialism, a network, a movement, a sect? All these words could be used to describe the nature of their bonds which had been developed between 1841 and 1848. Nevertheless, we propose an additional name – a community of readers - for the new, exclusive form of existing together that was invented. These readers not only read but produced texts addressed to other members of the community with whom they also shared money, egalitarian convictions, faith in fraternity, their gratitude and even devotion to Cabet. Belonging to this community engaged the entirety of its members’ lives and developed and affirmed itself in diverse forms. It also involved often painful lessons about a community’s limits, both internal and with respect to the rest of French society, which could barely tolerate its existence.References
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