American Union of Associationists

The American Union of Associationists (AUA) was a national organization of supporters of the economic ideas of Charles Fourier (1772–1837) in the United States of America. Organized in 1846 in New York City as a federation of independent local Fourierist groups, the AUA published a weekly magazine called The Harbinger and published more than 70 books and pamphlets, which helped it to enjoy a brief moment of influence spreading the ideas of communitarianism to a circle of leading intellectuals.

The failure of the Fourierist model in its various practical incarnations led to the rapid dissolution of the Fourierist movement and with it the AUA, however, and the organization rapidly atrophied as the decade of the 1840s drew to a close. The final issue of the official AUA organ, The Harbinger, was published in February 1849 and the final national meeting of the organization took place in 1851.

The 1840 publication of the book Social Destiny of Man by Albert Brisbane (1809–1890) and subsequent publication of a regular column by him in the pages of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune ushered in a period of popular enthusiasm for the ideas of Charles Fourier in the United States.

American Fourierists were divided between the bookish advocates of "pure" Fourierism such as Brisbane, Osborne Macdaniel, and Parke Godwin — who advocated for the establishment of very specific Fourierist "phalanx" (commune), properly funded and containing between 1600 and 1800 people — and those who sought immediate implementation of Fourierist cooperative ideas at whatever size determined by available funds and the number of committed participants. These practical communitarians, exemplified by George Ripley and his transcendentalist experiment near Boston called Brook Farm, initially held sway.

...
Wikipedia