1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Considérant, Victor Prosper

CONSIDÉRANT, VICTOR PROSPER (1808–1893), French socialist, was born at Salins (Jura) on the 12th of October 1808. Educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris, he entered the French army as an engineer, rising to the rank of captain. Becoming imbued, however, with the phalansterian ideas of François Fourier, he resigned his commission in 1831, in order to devote himself to advancing the doctrines of his master. On the death of Fourier in 1837 he became the acknowledged head of the movement, and took charge of La Phalange, the organ of Fourierism. He also established phalanges at Condé-sur-Vesgres and elsewhere, but they had little success and soon died of inanition. During this period he published his Destinée sociale (1834–1838), undoubtedly the most able and most important work of the Fourierist school. After the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly for the department of Loiret, and in 1849 to the Legislative Assembly for the department of the Seine. Considérant’s share in the “demonstration” under the leadership of Ledru-Rollin on the 13th of June 1849 caused his compulsory flight to Belgium. Thence he went (1852) to Texas, but soon returned to Brussels, where he suffered a short imprisonment for alleged conspiracy against the peace of a neighbouring state. On his release he again set out for Texas, and founded at San Antonio the communistic colony of La Réunion. This experiment met with little more success than his former attempts, and in 1869 he returned to Paris, where he lived in retirement, needy and forgotten, till his death in 1893. The most important of Considérant’s other writings were Exposition du système de Fourier (1845), Principes du socialisme (1847), Théorie du droit de propriété et du droit au travail (1848).