FROM GIDE TO DESROCHE, FROM COOPERATION TO UTOPIA: TWO DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF CHARLES FOURIER

The paper examines how two very different readings of Charles Fourier influenced the reflections of Charles Gide and Henri Desroche on cooperatives and their potential to change market economies and emancipate mankind. Deliberately ignoring the more imaginative aspects of Fourier's huge work, Gide underscored Fourier's ideas about how to overcome liberal market economies. Inspired by twentieth-century scholarship on Fourier's writings, Desroche appreciated the subversive tension in Fourier's work and believed that the more unattainable, or «Utopian», aspects of his thought could not be separated from those more practical elements which could be organizationally implemented and that both sides of his thought should be considered together as inspirational sources for social innovation.