Social Values in Transition: 1789-1815, Alternate Visions :: American America History

Social Values in Transition 1789-1815, Alternate VisionsSaint-Simon wanted to see scientists at the top of the semipolitical structure. He proposed the idea of a scientific priesthood of the Religion of Newton. Later he added industrialists and artists to the religion believing that emotions must be satisfied as well as reason. Francois Marie Charles Fourier wanted to liberate human nature. His theory was What makes men happy? Their passions. What makes them miserable? The inhibition of their passions. Therefore the legislator must create a society in which men and women can indulge their passions to the full yet safely and harmoniously. Even destructive passions could be employed as butchers. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. In it he states, We check out these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Th at to secure these rights, Government is instituted among Men, ancestry their just powers from the consent of the government. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to abolish it, and to institute new Government . . . . . Robert Owen built a flummox industrial community with decent housing for the workers, schools, sanitation, and non-profit making stores. In the factories he owned the working conditions were measured against the prevailing standards. They were almost humane. He was trying to meliorate the workers lot, while making a nice profit in the meantime. Owen may be regarded as the founder of co-operative socialism. Thomas Malthus argued that any attempt to feed the sharp-set masses only increased the masses and their misery. He believed that mathematical laws presided over human affairs. However when he applied them to the procreative process, the results were glum. In his opinion the tornado between the s upply of feed and the number of people to be fed was bound to increase, for population increased at a geometrical ratio and food at a arithmetical ratio. There was a bright side however there would be wars, famines, epidemics and so on. But that would not be enough.