Its
_debut_ will be one of brilliant promise, but the result will be
an industrial inquisition, subordinating the whole people to the
interests of the affiliated monopolists."
Albert Brisbane prefaces this wonderful prophecy by these remarks: "In
1805 or 6, amid the preoccupation of war and military politics, he
[Fourier] foresaw and described with accuracy the future formation of
vast joint-stock companies destined to monopolize and control all
branches of industry, commerce and finance, and establish what he
called 'An industrial or commercial feudalism'--a feudalism that would
control society by the power of capital, as did the old baronial or
military feudalism by the power of the sword, and as despotically.
Under the dominion of the great barons who leagued together to control
the social world there was a monopoly of the then existing wealth,
namely, the land and the laboring classes. Now, society having passed
out of the military _regime_, and entered the industrial and
commercial, it is threatened with another vast system of monopoly."
He concludes as follows: "This was written seventy years ago [it is now
almost ninety years] when public attention was absorbed in military
conquests and glory.
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