Timesuck with Dan Cummins Short Suck #53: Icaria!: France’s Failed Communist Utopia in America
Mar 13, 2026
A 19th century French visionary tried to build a communist utopia in America. The tale follows disastrous Texas land claims, a takeover of abandoned Nauvoo, and communal dining, schools, and workshops. Authoritarian rules, fraud trials, internal splits, epidemics, Civil War losses, and failed western ventures chronicle one of the strangest communal experiments in U.S. history.
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Cabet's Icaria Shaped Early Communist Ideas
- Étienne Cabet popularized a communitarian vision in his 1840 novel describing Icaria, influencing early communist thought before Marx's prominence.
- His fictional rules emphasized democratic economic control and "to each following his needs, from each following his strengths."
Texas Trip Revealed Cabet's Exaggeration
- Cabet recruited colonists and bought land in Texas, but 69 French urban settlers found the frontier brutal and unprepared for prairie life.
- They discovered Cabet had exaggerated the land claim: 300 scattered acres, not a contiguous "million acres."
Disease and Desertion Crippled The First Icarians
- The 27 remaining Texas Icarians suffered cholera and malaria; four died and most were sick, while their single doctor deserted after a psychotic break.
- When reinforcements failed to arrive, survivors returned to New Orleans severely reduced and demoralized.