VIII
How Étienne Cabet dreamed of a new Napoleon called Icar, and a new France called Icaria; and how his utopia, with that which Edward Bellamy shows us in Looking Backward, gives us a hint of what machinery might bring us to if the industrial organization were nationalized.
I
Étienne Cabet opened his eyes upon the year that preceded the meeting of the National Assembly in 1788, and closed them upon the Empire of Napoleon III.
It would be foolish to give an account of Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie without noting these facts; for the reason that Cabet’s most impressionable years were drenched with the flamboyant light of the Napoleonic conquests and the Napoleonic tradition which remained as an afterglow when the conquests themselves had fallen below the horizon. The spectacle of a nationalized church and a nationalized system of education, extending their ministrations to the smallest commune through a vast system of bureaucracy, must have given a solidity to his dreams which the interruption of the first Napoleon’s personal downfall could only have reinforced.
To understand why the Journey to Icaria, as we may call it, should have been one of the best sellers among workingmen in 1845, and to see why Louis Blanc should have attempted to set up an organization of National Workshops in 1848, one must realize the historic momentum of Napoleon’s dictatorship. Cabet consciously or unconsciously idealized the Napoleonic tradition; and in Icaria he consummated it. That Cabet’s futile will-to-power should have led him, under the inspiration of Owen, to the swamps of Missouri as the leader of a little band of communist pioneers is an ironic twist of circumstance: his Icaria was a national state, with all its pomp and dignity and splendor, and not a squalid collection of huts in the midst of a dreary prairie. Cabet died in America, as much perhaps from an outraged sense of dignity as from any physical disease, and nothing came of his utopia until Edward Bellamy gave it a fresh outline in Looking Backward.
II
With the romantic element in the Journey to Icaria—the English lord and the Icarian family he visits, and the various friendships and love affairs that are outlined in its pages—I purpose to have nothing to do. These things add an element of complication to Cabet’s picture without doing very much to illuminate it.
Icaria is a country divided into a hundred provinces almost equal in extent and almost the same in population. These provinces are in turn divided into ten communes, which are likewise almost equal, and the provincial capital is in the center of the province, whilst each communal city is the center of the commune. The elegance and precision of the decimal system has overlaid the facts of geography and as one looks over the map of the imaginary country one recalls the way in which the French revolution divided France into arbitrary administrative areas called departments, upsetting those ancient regional groupings which corresponded, roughly, with the natural units of soil, climate, population, and historic continuity.
In the midst of Icaria is the city of Icara. Icara is a reconstructed Paris, built on a reconstructed Seine. It is almost circular, cut into two equal parts by a river whose banks have been straightened and enclosed in two straight walls; and the bed has been deepened to receive ocean vessels. In the middle of the city the river divides into two arms, which form a rather big circular island—though the islands formed naturally by the division of a river are inevitably not circular!—and here is the civic center, planted with trees, in the midst of which stands a palace. There is a superb garden elevated on a terrace; in the center, a vast column surmounted by a colossal statue that dominates all the buildings. On each side of the river is a big quay, bordered by public offices. The effect is indubitably metropolitan.
The city is divided into quarters: Icara has sixty communes of almost equal size. In each quarter is a school, a hospital, a temple, shops, public places, and monuments. The streets are straight and wide, the city being traversed by fifty avenues parallel to the river and fifty perpendicular to it. How it is possible to reconcile this street plan with a circular city I have no notion; and Cabet apparently did not take the trouble to cast his verbal specifications into a definite picture or plan. Each block has fifteen houses on each side, with a public building in the middle, and one at each end; and between the rows of houses are gardens which the inhabitants of Icaria, like those of Utopia, have a great pride in keeping up. The blocks are arranged around squares, very much like those of Belgravia and Mayfair in London; but the gardens are public ones and are cared for by the inhabitants.
The Icarian villages are almost as metropolitan as the principal city itself. One notes a great preoccupation with hygienic conveniences and sanitary regulations. There are dust collectors of special model; the sidewalks are covered with glass against rain; and the stations for omnibuses are also covered. The streets are well-lighted and paved. Stables, slaughter houses, and hospitals are on the outskirts of the village. The factories and warehouses are on the railway lines and canals, and half the streets are closed to all traffic except dogcarts.
In sum, Icaria enjoys a highly sophisticated and metropolitan form of life. Everything has been “arranged,” everything has been “attended to.” There are no upsetting complications and diversities. Even the weather has been disposed of. Nothing short of a very powerful and persistent organization could have accomplished these things. What is this organization?
III
In the beginning was Icar, the dictator who established the government of Icaria, and out of Icar there sprang
