Tuesday, 10th February 2015

Hello everybody!!

Firstly, I want to apologize for my delay in writting the journal. My Wi-Fi doesn't work and I'm writting this from Paqui's computer.

In yesterday's class, we continued with the point 4 of The Industrial Revolution, which is about the Labour Movement, and we corrected an scheme that Paqui gave us to do on Monday. The scheme was about the Political Ideologies, that were the Scientific Socialism, Utopian Socialism, and Anarchism, but we didn't have time to correct all the scheme. We spent the majority of the class speaking about some topics:

-We spoke about how cold the High School is. The teachers don't allow us to stay inside the school during the break time. We told Paqui that we are not agree with this, because when we are outside the majority of teachers stay inside the school in the Teachers' Room with heating as the same time we are becoming freezing outside. The only place we can go with heating is the canteen, but it's too small and there is not enough space for us. Paqui sugested us to present a complaint to the School Council, because we are sick of this situation.

-After that, we spoke about that some people don't obey the rule of the mobile phones in the high school. From this year, bringing cell phones to the school was suposed to be forbidden, but some teachers don't confiscate the mobile phones if they see, and even some teachers take out their mobile phones in the middle of the class. If we can't bring the cell phones, they mustn't bring them, because we are all in the same conditions here.

After talking about these topics, we started with Utopian Socialism and we started talking if the people was good from nature.
We also copied some new words in the glossary such us cell phone or "To go on turkey".

I liked this class so much.

I hoped you liked my journal.
Bye!!

Source: http://explainbitcoin.com/category/cold-storage/

Charles Fourier´s phalanstère

Source: http://www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/hmod/imatges8.html

Charles Fourier was a French utopian socialist who rejected industrialization and free market economy and was very critical with capitalism, because he considered that they contributed to workers´ exploitation. He promoted the return to the land and agriculture and he proposed the creation of an ideal community called phalanstère. This word comes from the Greek “phalanx” and it referred to a community located in the countryside formed by around 1,600-1,800 people (400 families of around 4 members). He considered that this was the ideal size to freely develop desires and passions. It should be 400 hectares long and concentrate agricultural and industrial activities. A phalanstère would have the structure of a public limited society, whose members would receive shares in relation with the capital they provided to the community, and it would be ruled in a democratic way. Three parts of the activity would be devoted to agriculture and one part to manufacturing. The members could choose the work they wanted to do. In order to avoid monotony, Fourier proposed that workers changed activity 8 times a day. The profits would be distributed according to the following scheme: profits would be divided into 12 parts and 4/12 would be distributed according to the capital invested, 5/12 according to the work done and 3/12 would be for the technical and scientific experts.

Fourier also thought about the distribution of space in the phalanstères:


- the central part, destined to quiet activities, with meeting rooms, dining rooms and libraries.

- one of the lateral wings for work and the noisy activities. Children would also be hosted in this side,    because they were noisy 

- the other lateral wing would be destined to the external visits. The visitors would pay a fee, which would be used to finance the community. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phalanst%C3%A8re.jpg

In 1832 Fourier put his ideas into practice at Condé-sur-Vesgre, 75 kilometres West Paris, but the project failed in 1834 due to the lack of capital and inexperience of the members. He didn´t create any more phalanstères in Europe, because he didn´t find financing to do it, but there were experiences based on his ideas in the U.S.A (around 40-50 phalanstères) and other places. These projects failed for the difficulties of reaching agreements and the lack of commitment of some of their members.

There is not much information about phalanstères in English (apart from the one provided by Wikipedia). But if you want to learn something more, you can go to the following links in French:

- The first phalanstère:

http://www.universutopia.net/note.asp?L=EN&note_id=36

- More information about phalanstères:

http://www.creslr.org/fr/imgdyn/Charles_Fourier.pdf

   

Robert Owen, New Lanark and New Harmony

Robert Owen

Source: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen 

Robert Owen was the owner of a cotton factory that worked with water power in New Lanark, Scotland. He was strongly influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment and he decided to improve the lives of his workers and show that it was possible to get profits without exploiting workers. In New Lanark Owen created a community where the rights of workers were respected, they had access to cooperative shops, decent housing, free medical care and children could go to school (New Lanark´s school was the first infants´ school created in Great Britain). Children under 10 years were not allowed to work, there were also evening lessons for adults and all type of activities for the workers´ leisure time (concerts, dancing, music).

New Lanark at present

 Source: http://www.newlanark.org/trust-press.shtml

In 1825 he left New Lanark and tried to extend his ideas of improving the life of workers through common property and cooperation to the U.S.A. He founded a new community called New Harmony in Indiana. Private property and money were abolished and they created a system similar to time banks. Workers received banknotes equivalent to the time they had worked and they could exchange them for different goods. Owen worked hard to make New Harmony a model society, but this experience failed due to different factors: the most important one was the lack of commitment of many of the individuals who joined the community. 

New Harmony, painted by F. Bate

Source: http://utopies.skynetblogs.be/archive/2008/11/17/robert-owen-1771-1858-et-new-harmony.html

In 1828 Robert Owen left the project and came back to Great Britain. He dedicated his efforts to workers´ organization and his role was fundamental in the creation of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union, a group that included all the British unions. After this, Owen continued to promote co-operative movement, although some of his projects failed. That´s why Owen has been included among utopian socialists. These thinkers had the idea that human beings are willing to co-operate and work for the community wellbeing. The fact is that these experiences failed due to individualism.

If you want to learn more about Robert Owen´s experiences, here you have some links: 

- Robert Owen and New Lanark:

http://www.robert-owen.com/

- New Harmony:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/cities/newharmony.html

- Robert Owen Museum:

http://robert-owen-museum.org.uk/

If you go to Scotland, you can visit New Lanark: 

http://www.newlanark.org/index2.shtml