Founder of the Icarian movement who coined the term 'communism'
On February 3, 1848, sixty-nine of Cabet's followers boarded a ship at Le Havre. 'To Icaria!' They set sail to build a communist paradise in the New World.
French utopian socialist and founder of the Icarian movement. In 1840 he published Voyage en Icarie, laying out a blueprint for a communist society based on workers' cooperatives, and was the first to establish 'communism' (communisme) as a political term. The most popular socialist advocate of his day, with some 400,000 adherents in France, he fused Christianity and communism in Le Vrai Christianisme, recasting Jesus's teachings as a gospel of social equality. In 1848 he led followers to America, founding Icarian communities in Texas and Illinois that lasted until 1898, the longest-running non-religious communal experiment in U.S. history. A bridge between Enlightenment utopianism and the workers' movement.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1788Born in Dijon. Qualified as a lawyer.
- 1830–1831July Revolution participant. Attorney-general in Corsica, then elected deputy for Côte-d'Or.
- 1833–1834Founded Le Populaire. Convicted of treason; exiled to England.
- 1834–1839Developed communist ideas in England under Robert Owen's influence.
- 1840Published Voyage en Icarie. First to call himself a 'communist'.
- 1841–1847Revived Le Populaire (~400,000 readers). Published Le Vrai Christianisme.
- 1848Emigrated to U.S. Founded Icarian communities in Texas and Illinois.
- 1849–1856Led Nauvoo Icarian community. Died 1856 in St. Louis, Missouri, after internal rift.
Building and contesting a workers’ community
Amid France’s economic hardship in 1847, Cabet abandoned the prospect of reforming French society and set out with followers to establish a community in the United States. The 1848 settlement attempt in Texas faltered when the land company provided far less land than promised; disease led about one-third of the emigrants to return to France. Those who remained moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1849. Cabet was elected leader for the first year. The agricultural community grew to about 500 members by 1855, with schools, workshops, newspapers, a theater, and a library.
In 1851 he returned to France to answer fraud charges brought by former followers; a jury acquitted him, and he returned to Nauvoo in 1852. He tightened the community’s rules, intensifying internal conflict. In 1855 Cabet sought to revise its constitution to make him president for life, but the community rejected the change and removed him from leadership. Disputes over the division of labor and food continued, and in October 1856 he left Nauvoo for Missouri with about 180 supporters. Cabet suffered a stroke and died there the following month. Nauvoo’s experience combined the growth of collective production and communal life with unresolved conflict over leadership and members’ decision-making.