The early French socialists, like their counterparts in Britain, clung to family values even as they rejected patriarchal norms.
Prosper Enfantin—who called himself Father—published the announcement above in Blacks Morning Chronicle in April 1832, hoping to recruit English-speakers to his cause.1 Critiques of individualism flew back and forth across the channel.
Anna Wheeler served as an important go-between and John Stuart Mill an occasional translator.2 The French socialists put greater emphasis than their British counterparts on the simple principle of equal opportunity. They imagined grand communitarian schemes with an exuberance that Americans found particularly attractive.France remained a relatively traditional, family-based economy, making uneven progress toward democratic governance. Critics of the existing order defined themselves more in opposition to patriarchal and feudal institutions than to capitalist ones. French feminists deployed the rhetoric of rights to challenge the sexual double standard, but they also invoked principles of social obligation, moving especially quickly to demand state support for motherhood.