Gregory Claeys

Socialism and Utopia

SOCIALISM, AND

more particularly communism, is

the characteristic form that utopian aspirations
have assumed in the modern world. That is to say,
if we can agree that utopianism, as contrasted with
the literary utopian tradition, constitutes the desire
for a society greatly improved' over that of the
present, in which the regulation of production and
property relations is a crucial basis of social order,
then socialism has been the principal form such
desires have taken in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The appeal of socialism has lain chiefly
in the fact that its chief competitor, radical republi
canism, or democracy; seemingly failed in the nine
teenth century to solve the problem of poverty by
leaving, under a system of private property, political
power in the hands of the wealthy; the sole alterna
tive for socialists being recourse to the utopian
program of community of property in one variation
or another. From the early nineteenth century
onward, the constant point of reference for social
ists was thus the United States, so widely heralded
as a working-class paradise only decades earlier,
but increasingly derided by socialists (for instance,
in the chief Owenite literary utopia,John Francis
Bray's A Voyage to Utopia, r842) as tolerating a
rapacious and unscrupulous financial aristocracy
no less exploitative than the hereditary peerages
or their new capitalist counterparts of old Europe.
Historiography, Theory, Definition

Initially consciously linked to the utopian literary

tradition of Thomas More, socialism after Marx
came usually to reject the label of "utopian," and
instead to proclaim the historical inevitability of
the collapse of capitalism. Consequently the histo
riography of socialism usually; but tendentiously,
distinguishes between an early or "utopian" phase
of the socialist movement, dominated by Robert
Owen in Britain, by the French thinkers Charles
Fourier and Etienne Cabet, and the followers of
Henri de Saint-Simon, and in Germany by Moses
Hess, Wilhelm Weitling, and others; and a later,
"scientific" phase dominated by Marx. This distinc
tion originates in the Manifesto ofthe Communist
Party (r848) of Marx and Engels, and more especial
ly in Engels's later recasting of it in Anti-Diihrillg,
and the essay published from it subsequently under

the title Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The distinc

tion was initially driven politically by a desire to
separate the Marxian program from that of other
theoretical schools active at the time of the r848
revolutions. It also functioned to distance Marx
and Engels from the failures of the early socialists,
whose small-scale communities, notably the
Queenwood or Harmony community in Britain,
which collapsed in r845, seemed in their "failure,
disastrous and complete, as one observer put it,
utterly to discourage one generation and likely
to intimidate another." Nonetheless, the Marxian
distinction between "utopian" and "scientific"
socialism not only played down, by seeming to
deny entirely, the utopian element in Marxism, it
also caricatured the early socialist writers, whom
it disparaged chiefly for three reasons: (I) for seeing
the proletariat merely as a passive "suffering mass,"
rather than the active agent of revolution; (2)
for believing that society could or should be trans
formed by propaganda and experiments only; rather
than revolution; (3) for refusing to believe that the
needs of social development lay in the economic
development of capitalism.
I have contended elsewhere that these asser
tions, which are in some respect a conscious carica
ture of early socialism, are essentially false.' Many
early socialists, like the Chartist leadersJames
Bronterre O'Brien and William Lovett in Britain,
or the Cabetists in France, saw the struggle for the
franchise as a means to socialist ends, though they
rarely counselled revolutionary transformation
as such. Robert Owen and most of his followers
adopted a theory of economic immiseration, the
centralization of capital, and recurrent commercial
crises to argue that the existing economic system
would usher in its own collapse. They also saw
the advent of industrialization as ensuring a higher
standard of living for the working classes, and
contended thus that socialism could not have been
introduced in any earlier historical period. The
early socialists, particularly in Britain, were also well
aware of the same historical scheme that under
pinned Marx and Engels's account of the materialist
conception of history in 1845-46, drawn from Adam
Smith, Adam Ferguson, and the other leading writ
ers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Their vision was

thus much less ahistorical than is often assumed,

The differences between Marxian and earlier forms
of socialism thus lie less in these areas than in the
moral and quasi-religious form and emphasis of
many early socialists, and in other aspects of politi
cal and economic theory, of which more anon,
Socialism, then, can be described as "utopian"
in four main senses (barring the common-language
definition of "impossible" or "unworldly"): (r) in
the sense of continuity with the program and ideals
of More's Utopia; (2) in the chronological sense
of "early" or "pre-Marxian"; (J) in the possession of
some set of characteristics making its realization
less likely than other forms of socialism; (4) in any
essentialist presumption that it can tap or strength
en a "social" or "communal" basis in human nature
that has been somehow eroded or repressed by the
development of civilization,
The Origins of Socialism

In some respects, taking the first of these latter

definitions, socialism was clearly and consciously
based upon the "classical" utopian ideal from the
Spartan state (notably as described by Plutarch)
through Plato's Republic and More's Utopia, insofar
as community of property; or the holding of goods
in common, has proven the most distinctive attribute
of the "utopian" program, and was certainly recog
nized as such by the late eighteenth century.3
A teleological reading of this type can be mis
leading, however. Many literary utopians, whatever
lip service they may pay to Thomas More, have
not envisioned communal property-holding as the
basis of social order. Moreover, and more impor
tantly, many early as well as later forms of socialism
have urged experimentation with a variety of forms
of property organization and management, rather
than insisting on one model. Again, the predomi
nance of the Marxian model in the later nineteenth
and twentieth centuries must not be allowed to
obscure essential variations in the socialist tradi
tion, Nonetheless, other distinctive features of
Spartan life, such as the rearing of children in com
mon, and the abolition of many forms of exchange
and money, remain recurrent themes in most forms
of nineteenth-century socialism.
Though socialism is specifically the result of
the course assumed by the French Revolution, its
roots also lie in republicanism and in religiously
motivated schemes for the relief of the poor in
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such
as the plan for housing the poor in monastery-like
buildings proposed by the QuakerJohn Bellers in

r696. Republican writers had since the Renaissance

revival of classical letters emphasized that the end
of government was the common good of all, notably
the freedom of citizens from arbitrary government.
The rage of constitutionalist speculation that begins
with the American and French revolutions took
monarchical and aristocratical privilege as its chief
targets, and the virtues of citizenship as their
antidote. We are less likely today to see these as
"utopian." But in a historical context, the ideas of
democracy, popular sovereignty; and the restraint
of tyranny are remarkable, and went well beyond
what might reasonably be expected of political order
generally, the more so since the scope now proposed
was the nation-state, rather than the small-scale
classical Greek polis. (Here it is worth recalling
the recurrent, compulsive appeal of classicism, and
particularly the image of the Athenian polis, for
writers as diverse as Hegel, Nietzsche, and Matthew
Arnold throughout the nineteenth century.)
We tend today, thus, to forget that at the end
of the eighteenth century, democracy as such was
"utopian" insofar as classical, medieval, and early
modern political thought invariably regarded popu
lar sovereignty as an unstable and temporary form
of rule bound to end in tyranny and the reestablish
ment of hereditary kingship or aristocratic govern
ment. One of the most prominent doctrines of the
revolutionary period, the idea of natural rights, also
had several utopian dimensions, notably in its invo
cation of an original "state of nature" in which such
rights had been granted and then enjoyed (or violat
ed); and then in the explosive idea of formal human
equality (of master and servant or slave) man and
woman) peer and commoner) which has come to
dominate the civic ethos of the twentieth century.
The desire of creating a methodical, rationalist
uniform system of equality; and exporting it to
the less fortunate) was applied in the revolutionary
period to clothing, language, calendars, national
and provincial organization, money, and forms of
address as well as to constitutions and forms of law.
The desire to make all things new; to sweep away
vestiges of feudal privilege but also to impose
rational and scientific order on the world, is a char
acteristically modernist ideal, and one that is often
situated closer to a Baconian than a Morean vision.
The age of Enlightenment, whose hostility to
superstition and clericism did so much to popular
ize this rationalism, spawned a variety of utopian
schemes) both theoretically, in plans for model
constitutions such as David Hume's essay on the
)
"Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth ' (r752) and

in proposals for European peace, notably by Kant;

and in practical experiments, especially in the
colonies of the New World, which were often reli
gious in orientation and often included, at least at
the beginning, a measure of community of property;
as did the early colonies ofVirginia and Massachu
setts.4 The radical impulse of the eighteenth centu
ry; as manifested in the thought of Rousseau and
in British popular radicalism, however, was chiefly
concerned with individual and civil liberty; and
sought a balanced constitution as the means of
achieving this. The most extreme form of democra
tic sentiment, rare in this period, was the utopian
element in republicanism, often linked to primitive,
and especially puritan, Christianity, which sought
much more substantial social equality, often
through economic regulation and sometimes by
limiting trade and especially property in land
through the classical mechanism of an agrarian law.
In Britain such ideas were popularized early in this
period byJames Harrington's Oceana (1656), and
later by works such asJames Burgh's Account . . . of
the Cessares (1764), in which sumptuary restrictions,
notably on clothing, also ensure both greater social
uniformity and the inhibition of consumption.
(This theme is echoed in the sumptuary regulations
of the first American utopia,John Lithgow's Equali
ty -A Political Romance, 1802, where no variation of
dress or "equipage" was allowed.)
Though the American Revolution was clearly
driven in part by the greater social equality of the
colonies, as pamphlets likeThomas Paine's Common
Sense (1776) indicate, proposals for the abolition
of ranks as such were rare, the abolition of a heredi
tary monarchy and titled aristocracy being seen as
sufficiently idealistic. The French Revolution and
the movements and debates to which it gave rise,
however, pushed this egalitarian impulse in a more
extreme direction. Lacking the safety valve of
unlimited free land, it also invited speculation
about the division of existing landed estates. One
of the principal causes of the French Revolution
had been the failure of state regulation of the grain
trade, with a consequent sharp rise in food prices
during the '770S and 1780s. The prospect of further
regulation of these markets, and even of commerce
generally; in the interests both of economic justice
and social order, necessarily followed. Some utopian
writers of the revolutionary era, such as Thomas
Northmore, in Memoirs ofP/anetes (1795), remain
implacably hostile to luxury; and the association of
primitivism with civic and personal virtue remains
a pronounced theme throughout this period. In

France, the Revolution also produced its own

revolutionary egalitarian, "Gracchus" Babeuf
(1760-1797), whose "Conspiracy of Equals," which
planned to overthrow the Directory in 1796 and
institute a division of land among the peasantry; was
the forerunner for most secret, conspiratorial revo
lutionary societies of the early nineteenth century.
Most of the leading revolutionaries and their intel
lectual allies, however, were hostile to the notion of
an agrarian law, though Thomas Paine, for instance,
included a mild variation on the theme in the form
of a scheme of progressive taxation on large landed
estates in his Rights ofMan, part two (1792).
For most participants, what the French Revolu
tion promised was not the arcadian commune, close
to the state of nature, which the poets Coleridge
and Southey planned for their "pantisocracy" on
the banks of the Susquehanna, not thus the renun
ciation of civilization, but the wider extension of its
benefits, and the supplanting of a society based on
privilege by one based on merit, secured by political
democracy. Wedded to the enticing promise of
political equality by 1830 was the equally alluring
image of industrial opulence, which the increasingly
popular science of political economy assured would
become universal if doctrines of free trade were
universally implemented. W hat industrialization
and urbanization brought the working classes, how
ever, was often low wages, recurrent bouts of unem
ployment, and unpleasant and dangerous working
conditions in the new factories. Disillusionment
with both capitalism and industry, and a nostalgic
affection for a life on the land, which for most
urban dwellers until the late nineteenth century
was a recent memory, play a major role in shaping
the horizons and expectations of early socialism.
The origins of nineteenth-century socialism
lie thus in two elements of the revolutionary experi
ence: the growth of poverty and hunger under the
ancien regime; and the failure of the revolution itself
to introduce democracy and political stability.
Commercial liberalism seemed increasingly not
to favor the poor; the politics of revolution had
brought Bonapartism rather than democracy. Social
ism would found its originality; and cement its iden
tity, on the claim to solve both of these problems.
Communitarianism

Three schools dominate early nineteenth

century socialism: Owenism, Fourierism, and
Saint-Simonism.'
Robert Owen (1771-1858) gained renown as an
immensely successful cotton spinner, whose factory

at New Lanark near Glasgow, though never

a utopian or socialist community, also became a
noted experiment in the improvement of working
conditions, infant education, and social order
generally; guided by Owen's famous principle that
the characters of mankind were "formed for them,
not by them." It was when Owen failed, after
repeated efforts, to persuade fellow manufacturers
to extend such regulations elsewhere in the rapidly
expanding factory system that he began to propose
a much more dramatic solution to the problems
of national poverty and unemployment. Though
the term "socialism" would only gain currency
slowly from the mid-r82os onward, Owen from
r8r7 proposed that the unemployed poor be
housed in "co -operative communities" of up to
about 2,500 individuals, who would work for
their common benefit, by sharing their produce
in common; being freed of the evil influences
of the competitive system, they would introduce
a "new moral world." (And the language of
millenarianism would often thereafter accompany
Owenite pronouncements.)
Owen was well aware, as were his early follow
ers like George Mudie andJohn Minter Morgan,
that the literary utopian tradition and the ideals
of Platonic republicanism, as well as the plans of
religious reformers like Bellers, had anticipated
these plans. (Owen was acquainted with Godwin
personally; and doubtless knew that the Enquiry
concerning Political Justice referred to Swift's Gulli
ver's Travels, Burke's Vindication ofNatural Society,
and similar works.) Most of the early socialist
writers rejected the liberal, Smithian principle
that a narrow division of labor was the essential
prerequisite for economic progress, and dismissed
suggestions that large-scale urbanization inevitably
accompanied the enclosure of common agricultural
lands and extension of the factory system. Instead
they proposed a routine of varied agricultural and
manufacturing activity, with sufficient free time for
both leisure and education.
The early socialists did not, however, insist on
one uniform solution to the problem of property
holding. Partially to attract wealthy investors, the
French writer Charles Fourier (r772-r837), the son
of a prosperous Besan<;on merchant family; agreed
that anarchic competition, and the profits of "para
sitic" merchants and middlemen, were the chief
causes of working-class poverty. Fourier is distinc
tive in the generous, indulgent, and epicurean,
rather than Spartan or stoical emphasis, given
in his vision of the future and of human nature. In

Fourier's phalansteries, work, as well as the rest

of life, was to be organized according to the grand
psychological principle, first outlined in the Theory
ofthe Four Movements (r808), of "passionate attrac
tion," whereby the passions rather than reason were
to be harnessed to ensure the maximum gratifica
tion of sexual, social, and other instinctual desires,
and the commensurability of aptitudes with socially
necessary labor. (A sexual "minimum" of pleasure
equivalent to a minimum wage was to be estab
lished.) Labor itself would be organized according
to the principle of "attractive association" in "com
pound groups/' with the aim being that "attractive
labor" would make work as free, and as interesting,
as possible. Individuals would rotate tasks up to
eight times daily; work no longer than two hours at
any job, and have as many as forty activities in all.
A typical day would involve five meals, attending a
concert, visiting the library; hunting, fishing, and
cultivation, with manufacturing occupying no more
than one-quarter of the total labor. Some creative
forms of competition would be permitted, and a
differential reward agreed upon for tasks of true
drudgery. The results of work were to be divided
between capital (four-twelfths), labor (five
twelfths), and talent (three-twelfths), without any
"general community of goods," though Fourier
hoped that "the spirit of societary or compound
property" would nevertheless prevail.
Nor were all the early socialists exclusively
devoted to small-scale communities. The French
nobleman Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-I825)
achieved fame through his incisive analysis of the
newly emerging industrial society, and his insistence
that the "industrialists" (by which he meant all use
ful laborers) should seize power, if need be by force.
Thereafter society would be organized meritocrati
cally; through social and industrial institutions, with
scientific power replacing older forms of spiritual
and military authority, and the vastly more produc
tive and efficient "industrial system" supplanting
earlier forms of "parliamentary system." European
nation-states in turn would become subordinate to
a new European parliament. These ideas were car
ried forward in the r830s and r840s by Saint
Simon's more socialistic followers, notably Olinde
Rodrigues, Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin, Gustave
d'Eichthal, Michel Chevalier, Saint-Arnand Bazard,
and Philippe Buchez, who established a quasi-reli
gious sect that emphasized the delights of free love,
spiritual rebirth, and artistic creativity. Of consider
able importance from the early r830s until late
nineteenth-century France, Saint-Simonism did

New Societ) New Mall

John Minter Morgan was a wealthy philanthropist and follower
of Robert Owen. The author of a number of books supporting
Owen's schemes, his main contribution was to inspire those
who wished to reconcile Christian beliefs with Owen's social
theories. Owen had spoken out sharply against Christianity, and
most particularly against the doctrine of Original Sin, although he
did encourage religious tolerance among his followers. Morgan
argued that the goals of Christianity and Owenism were the
same, so one ought to ignore any theoretical or dogmatic diffIcul
ties between them. Eventually, Morgan was to start his own orga
nization, the Church of England Self-Supporting Village Society,
which advocated a Christian Owenite community

John Minter Morgan

Hampden in the Nineteenth
Century; or, Colloquies on
the Errors and Improvement

ational facilities, gardens, and

of Society, vol. 2

working hours (from twelve to

1834

parks. Owen's efforts at social

reform also included a steady
reduction in the number of

John Minter Morgan

Hampden in the Nineteenth
Century; or, Colloquies on
the Errors and Improvement
of Society, vol. 1

1834

ten and a half per day) and his

London: Edward Moxon.

NYPL, General Research DIVISion

refusal to employ any chlldren

NYPL, General Research Division

In 1 799, Robert Owen pur

Lanark's guest book reveals

chased the cotton spinning

that the model factory com

gan's theories on "the variety

mills of New Lanark, Scotland,

munity received almost

of impediments which restrain

and shortly thereafter began

20,000 visitors between 1 8 1 5

the exercise of that love and

his first experiment in institut

and 1825.

London: Edward Moxon.

under the age of ten. New

This diagram expresses Mor

universal brotherhood enjoined

In the New Testament." The

ing his ideas of social and

labor reform. Although Owen

While Owen's experiment at

seven nngs relate to seven

paid lower wages than most

New Lanark was a success on

areas in which man may suc

of the surrounding factories,

many levels, he did not

cumb to vices and to those

his employees, whose num

believe it was the ideal com

vices that are often mistaken

ber fluctuated between 1.400

munity in which to establish

for virtues, These fourteen

and 1 ,500, enjoyed low-rent

his "New Moral World." In

vices impede man's progress

toward " unbounded sympa

housing, free medical care,

1824, he purchased the com

low-cost education, reduced

munity of Harmony, Indiana,

thy" for the community of "all

prices on food and other

and 900 of his followers

mankind." Of particular inter

household supplies, and free

moved there the following

est is the second ring, Reli

access to socia! and recre-

year to start over.

gion, which warns of the dan

gers of both Intolerance and
Steadfastness of Faith.

TilE

COOPERATIVE l\lAG.r\ZLI

!(IYI'I-ILY lIE1L\LD.

X" I

""_," "" j ,,"_ "-,IT' "_,,,",,,,,,.,,,,, ,,,,

Tbe C01l1!J111lllt)'
ofNew Harmony
The Co-operative Magazine
and Monthly Herald, no. 1
(January 1826)

centered on a greenhouse

both through some of its resI

london: Knight and Lacey

Houses made up the four

dents who started other com

NYPL, Rare Books DivISion

sides, with schools and

.
. conversation rooms" at

munities and through the Influ

ence on the American school
system of Owen's educational
ideas. Owen's son, one of the

architect Stedman Whitwell

pnvately. Nevertheless, New

Set on a platform, the design

Harmony had a lasting impact,

In 1824, Robert Owen pur

the corners. Other buildings

chased 20,000 acres and a

housed communal facilities

small settlement m Indiana

for dmmg and other activities,

first Senators from Indiana, was

from the Harmonists, a reli

Although the edifice was

active in the anti-slavery move

gious community who had

never built, a six-foot-square

ment and introduced the bill that

moved back to Pennsylvania,

model of it toured the United

established the Smithsonian

The followmg year, 900 of

States, and was displayed at

Institution in Washington, D.C.

Owen's followers immigrated

the White House

to the town, renamed New

The Co-operative Magazine

and Monthly Herald, one of

Harmony, which provided a

The New Harmony communi

substantial prefabricated Infra

ty never achieved the success

a series of OWenite publica

structure for Owen's commu

imagined by Owen; disorgani

tions, was the leading vehicle

nal experiment, with its many

zation and bad management

for the dissemination of

and vaned industries, includ

led to its demise in 1828.

Owen's ideas from 1 826 to

ing mills, a textile factory, a

By then, most of the settlers

1 830. Its purpose was to pro

tanning yard, orchards, vine

had left for offshoot Owenite

vide reports from the OweMe

yards, and almost 2,000 acres

communities or for other

communities and societies

of arable land. This illustration

groups such as the Shakers,

in America and Europe and

shows Owen's grand vision

or had set out on their own;

to foster "full and free discus

for a parallelogram-shaped,

those who stayed at New

sion to the cause of truth"

self-contained community

Harmony eventually divided

about Owen's social theorres.

of buildings designed by the

up the land and worked it

An Innovative Educa#on
M.

Egerton

Dancing, singing. playing.

and

Airy Nothings; or. Scraps

other activity-cemered learning

and Naughts, and Odd-Cum

were at the

Shorts; In a Clrcumbendibu$

educational principles. He

Hop, Step and Jump. By

abhorred book learning and

Olio Rlgmsroll

rote memorization. and for

London:

bade any artificial reward or

Pyall and Hunt. 1825

NYPL, The C a r l H. Pforzheimer
Collection 01 Shelley and His Circle

heart of his radical

punishment for the students.

Owen believed that the goal
of education was to teach

Owen's Institution Established

people the consequences of

for the Formation of Character,

their conduct and in doing so

which opened at New Lanark

to reveal to them that the

in 1 816, provided a nursery

well-being of the community

and school for children up to

was a necessary prerequisite

the age of ten (when they

to individual happiness. Rather

could start working) as well !IS

than punishing people for

classes for adults. For Owen,

stealing, lying, and other bad

education was the element

behavior, Owen believed that

most essential to effect social

a proper education about the

reform; he based all his theo

ries on the idea that"charac

ter is universally formed for

and not by the

individual. n

widespread conseque nc es of
those actions

could

prevent

them from occurring in the

first place.

Fourier's Classificatio1ls
ofthe PtlSS;OllS
top
Charles Fourier
Theorie socitHaire de
Charles Fourier: gammes
et echelles diverses
Nantes: P A GUllbaud,

1836

lithograph
BNF, Departement litterature et Art

bottom
Charles Fourier
Plan du traite de I'attraction
pass;onnelle
Pans: E, Duverger,

[18441

BNF, Departement Phllosophl8,

HlstOlre, SCiences de I'Homme

In the Phalenstenes of French

socialist writer Charles Fourier,
work, as well as the rest of life,
was to be organized according to
'" "

' "

the grand psychological principle

of "passionate attraction," where
by the passions rather than reason
were to be harnessed to ensure
the maximum gratification of
sexual, social, and other instinctu
al desires, These tables are
devices for decoding the secret
correspondences between the
physical, biological. psychic, and
social worlds; through the use
of analogies, they also attempt to
reveal the permanence of these
relationships. But these austere,
sCientific schemes cannot encom
pass Fourier's abundant imagina
tion, For Fourier, finding "the new
social world" meant discovering
the preexisting providential har
mony that allows society to be
organized so that individual tastes
blossom naturally. His diSCiple VIC
tor Considerant is true to Fourier's
theories in the formula " Each man
is a note in the great concert "
Similarly, the analogy between
"planetary keyboard and passional
keyboard arranged as in musIc
by major and mmor octaves" IS
one of the other keys that FOUrier
offers, For example, he reveals
a continuous gradation "m titles of
love," between the "faquiresse,"
the "bacchante," the "bayadere,"
and, at the bottom of the ladder,
the "romantic," the "prude,"
and, finally, the "faithful." In
keepmg with hiS lavish spint,
Fourier intermingles these mania
cal taxonomies of deSire with
his particular betes noires: "crimes
of commerce" and "aberration
of modern religions."

A Magical World
Grandville (pseud. of
Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gerard)
Un Autre Monde: transfor
mations, visions, incarna
tions ... et autres choses
Paris : H. Fournier, 1844

NYPL, Miriam and Ira D , Wallach

Division of Art.

Prints and

Photographs

Nothing provided greater inspi

ration to the talent of Grandville
than the fanciful work of Fourier.
Indeed, the conjunction of the
rapid expansion of European
utopian thought in the 1840s,
the perseverance of followers
of the "Phalanstery School,"
and the public's attraction to

Fourier's original ideas made

his work fashionable shortly
after Fourier's death in 1837
Many satiric artists took cruel
advantage of Fourier's extrava

gant predictions; others,

like Grandville, were clearly
seduced by the dreamlike
atmosphere that pelVades his
worldview. This drawing, which
accompanies a text by Taxile
Delord, depicts the "butterfly"
or "dilettante, " the passion
that invites one to "steal from
pleasure to pleasure."

Tbe FalJli/istere: A Pba/anstery'

for 1Vorkers' Families

Jean-Baptiste Andre Godin

Godin, an Industrialist who

shows no evidence of social

Solutions sociales

had made his fortune in the

innovation, and while it

Pans' A Le Chevalier, 1871

fabrication of cast-iron stoves,

provides great comfort for

BNF. Blbllotheque de I'Arsenal

undertook the creation

the factory worker, especially

of a social palace at Guise.

given the miserable condl

This bird's-eye view of the

tions of the time, the plan

for a "capltahst" willing to

Famllistere presents not only

indicates a retreat from

mvest in his Phalanstery was

the bUildings that had actually

Fourier's ambitions: rather

unsuccessful, and so, apart

been constructed (living

than integrating the majority

from some quickly aborted

spaces, cooperative stores,

of activities under a single

Fourier's lifelong search

projects, the Phalanstery

school. and theater) but also

roof, which was the original

remained only a beautiful

future projects (the right wmg,

plan of the Phalanstery, the

dream. In 1 859, inspired by

which Godm reserved for

Famllistere returns to a classic

the Fourierist ideas of his

himself, and the buildings sur

functional organization

youth, Jean-Baptiste Andre

rounding itL The design itself

kfl'OBG.IU'I'ISATIONDUTBAVAIL
..A.. U .....".."'O."""'

H. Fugere
1tCnR

DI [hUrl! Wirnl

DediC

aux

FourieriSIJl (11Id tbe

Revolutionaries of I848

n..presenlnnls do Pcnplo.

Phalanstery bookstore, or by

Organisation du travail par

la fondation d'une com
mune modele d'apres la
th{wrie de Ch. Fourier

took it upon themselves to

Pans: Impnmene de Wittersh8lm,

spread the doctrine; this 1848

118481

lithograph, published by the

the society bookstore. Inde

pendent disciples sometimes

BNF, Departement Phllosophle,

Lyonnais engraver Fugere,

Histoire. SCiences de I'Homme

advocates the creation of a

With the creation of the news

Fourier's theories. Although

"model commune" based on

paper La Phalange in 1836,

the general attributes have

a period of intense activity

stayed the same, the substitu

began among Fourier's discI

tion of the term " commUne"

ples. The most important of

for that of "Phalanx" shows

these efforts was the publi

signs of the evolution of Foun

cation of doctrinal texts for the

er's system and Indicates

common man, Issued by La

attempts to merge with the

Phalange Itself, by the

III4U

socialist or democratiC trends

of the Revolution of 1 848

Ligbt and Healtb

Postcard views of
Godin's Familistere,
Guise, ca. 1905-8

give birth to the new social

enlightenment." The vast cen
tra! courtyard was Illuminated

BNF, Departement des

by a skylight, and at each level

Estampes et de la Photographl8

a gallery surrounded the apart

At the beginning of the twentI

vlded shelter from bad weath

ments. This arrangement pro

eth century, the red brick

er, Fourier's great fear. On a

bUildings of the Familistere

more disturbing note, this plan

had been a part of the land

recalls Jeremy Bentham's

scape at Guise for more than

prison design, the Panopticon.

a generation. The architectural

Indeed, by Godin's own

organization attests to preoc

admission: "The principal fact

cupations with good hygiene.

of the order at the Familistere

Godin wanted spaces that

IS that the life of each person

were "wide open, in which

there is revealed." The cozy

the air purified ltse!f through

comfort of these resl"dences,

contact with the vegetation."

which greatly contrasts with

On the interior, "the light that

the unhealthiness of most

shines everywhere in the liv

workers' housing of the time,

ing quarters, in the courtyards,

testifies to the abandonment

the stairwells, signifl'es the

of the most subversive

Intellectual and moral progress

aspects of the Phalanstery.

of the generations who will

LES- SAlNTSIMONIENS
--.

- ,--"

>.

_ _ ___

I)'!S LEUR MAISON DE llIENILMONTAN'l'.

"

The Example ofSaint-Simonism

Setier, [1832J

Les Sa;nt-Simoniens dans

Paris:

leur maison de Menil

Lithograph

Paris. Louis Reybaud reported

during this period than previ

montant: description des

BNF, Reserve des Uvres Rares

on their occupations: "They

ously, placards promulgating

organized the work by cate

the example of their lifestyle

fravaux des Saint

on the then-rural outskirts of

produced less propaganda

Simoniens, leurs differens

In 1832, after a period of

gories: they made groups

and the rudiments of their

emplois selon ce que chs

intense intellectual activity

of shovellers, wheelbarrow

doctrine were still distributed

eun d'eux est capable de

marked by much divisiveness,

pushers, earth packers, and,

widely. Although there were a

fake, et I'histoire de Saint

the Saint-Simonian Barthelemy

so that the job would be less

few converts, it was generally

only mocking curiosity that

Simon, depuis sa naissance

Prosper (pere) Enfantin and

jusqu'a 58 mort, ses aven

harsh, they accompanied it

forty of his disciples came

with hymns composed by a

attracted Parisians to the spec

tures en France, dans fes

together to construct this

member of the community."

tacle of these ostentatious,

pays etrangers, et III grande

large building at Menilmontant,

Although the Saint-Simonians

eccentric reformers.

dispute conctJrnant ce que

veulent les Saint-Simoniens

A New Rt/igion:
Saint-Silllrmism
Pere Enfantin's vest
BNF, Bibliotheque de

IArsenal.

followers "took the habit.

The romantic character of the

fonds Enfantin

occasion. in which the " Fami

Within the liturgy of Saint

cles around the "Father." was

ly" gathered in concentric cir

Simonism, clothing played an

accentuated by a violent

important role. "White is the

storm.

color of love, red that of work.

blue violet. that of faith. Thus,

their blue violet leotard, short

Because the vests buttoned

up the back, members of the

skirt. patent leather belt, red

community could not dress

cap. white twill pants. and

themselves without help from

handkerchief knotted around

others, which symbolized fra

the neck harmonized with their

ternity. To signify individual

long haif and Eastern-inspired

responsibility, the name of

mustaches and beards.

each of the Saint-Simonians

On June 6, 1831, during the

vest in large letters. On this

retreat to Menilmontant, Pere

vest, which belonged to

Enfantin presided over an out

Enfantin, one can read

door ceremony in which his

Peren (nThe Father").

was inscribed on his or her

Skttch by a DiJdplc
Joseph Mllchereau

Untitled penand--ink drawing.

ce.1833
BNF. Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal.

fonds Enfantin

VVhen free from manual labor,

Enfantin's disciples devoted
themselves to doctrinal analy
sis. Numerous manuscripts
testify to their feverish specu
lations, especially Le Livre
nouveau [The New Bookl. a

synthesis that resulted from

a collaboration between
Enfantin and Michel Chevalier.
vvno later became known as
an economist. Whereas his

brOlhersq debated the con

ceptual bases of a "new life,"

Joseph Machereau drew
sketches like this one. Later,
having left, like Enfantin, for
the Orient, he settled in Cairo,
where he converted to Islam
and married an Egyptian.

Le

much

to popularize notions of cultural as well as

in particular, many of the most influential early eco

industria) malaise, and their potential of being sup

nomic writers, notably the economists William

planted by a new system of familial, social, industri

Thompson and John Gray, envisioned a substantial

al, and political organization. (Saint-Simon's own

degree of national economic planning and the orga

secretary, Auguste Comte, would formalize these

nization of production. This indicates perhaps the

ideals of progress in a new system of sociological

most important division among the pre-Marxian

analysis.) Partially through its religious emphasis

writers: that over the question of luxury. Many early

on, and search for. a new Female Messiah, Saint

socialists inherited a Spartan, puritan bias against

Simonism like Owenism also gave an important role

both indolence and

to women, and demanded the extension of the fran

believed that the production of luxury goods for

refinement, and in addition

chise to women at the time of the revolution of

the rich entailed greater labor for the poor. In order

1830. Much contemporary feminist writing in this

period, until the 18605, when the women's suffrage

to make more free time available for the poor, to

movement begins, is thus linked to these socialist

inequalities that the possession of such goods intro

movements.

avoid the corrupting temptations of luxury, and the

duced, they proposed regulations to curtail or abol

The main schools of early socialism wCJ'e thus

ish the production of and trade in rare and costly

not exclusively concerned with or committed to

items, Other socialists, however, rejected this view.

"community" as the sole context in which the ideal

The British political economist John Gray is an

life could be lived, though this was certainly the

interesting case in point: having rejected luxury in

case for Owen and Fourier themselves. In Britain,

his Essay 011 Human Happiness (1825), Gray came to

and on the Continent among the Saint-Simonians

believe that any restriction on needs, and division

A New Religious Creed

Religion Saint-Slmon/enne
Roll, ca. 1831

BNF, Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal.

I

..

I. nml\ll,

fonds Enfantin

The

New Christianity

conceived by Saint-Simon
1\\\ \ .. .
'-\'\.
. ' .... .

in his later years is a strange

composite: he wanted to
combine a material mastery
of the universe founded on
scientific rationality with a
spirituality that would both
legitimate and invigorate it,
Completely transfiguring
Christian dogmas but not

111;," .,'.U'I
1'."01"('" '\ .>\1 .....,

abolishing them, this religion

coincided with the economic
boom - with its mechanization,
major building projects, and
the unification of the world
into a single unit - of which
Saint-Simon himself had seen
only the start or merely proph
esied as imminent. The faith
that underlay this religion was
also a powerful motivating
force for enterprise,

LA fIlIlE All JDE:ES. DESSINEE PR

BERTALL.

PROFESSEUR DE PROTHESE COMIQUE.

l1rclin.din. din! Drelin-aTl

i -d/lI! din!! aMlf! din -don
llnslilnt, eesile J//tlmtlll, profile: 'en, ces urceJ ne o/Jrerontpas

Satirizing UtopiaJl Ideds

Bertall [Albert d'Arnouldl

and socialist thought outdo

short-lived member of the

The artist also takes pleasure

La Foire aux idees, dessinee

par Bertall, professeur de
prothese comique

each other in rhetorical elo

provisionary government; and

In Including quests for "social

quence before an astonished

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who

prosthetics" and the quackery

audience. These so-called

IS infatuated with his own

of toothsellers, which was the

Pen lithograph from Journal pour

social reformers propose

Ideas - each in his way sings

specialty of a certain Fattet -

nre, no_ 37 (October 1848)

remedies to the most pro

the praises of socialist solu

bringing to mind the expres

BNF, Departement des Estampes

nounced evils of society_ At

tions. At the right. flanked by

sion, "lying through one's

et de 18 Photographl8

the left, Etienne Cabet flaunts

a one-man band (very possibly

teeth. " Thus, Bertall's satiric

a map of !caria. whose capital

the publicist Samuel-Franc;ois

drawing was directed at

The effervescence and variety

the illustrator has maliciously

of ideas Ignited In Paris dUring

placed in Charenton, at that

Girard) whose emanations

'
are doubtless not what Fourier

who were shocked by social

the first months of 1848 are

time the seat of the major

Intended with his dreams of

critics, denounced their con

represented here in a spirited

Insane asylum in France. Next

harmony, Victor Considerant

tradictions with relish, and

reacted vigorously against all

defenders of the status quo,

but very partisan Way by the

come Pierre Leroux, who had

seriously propounds one of

Illustrator Bertal\. Depicted as

the most extravagant aspects

utopias, in which they wanted

carnival barkers, the great con

J ust been elected deputy and

whose disheveled hair is met

of Fourier's theory: the future

to see only illusions.

temporary figures of utopian

with ridicule; Louis Blanc. a

biological mutation of humans

between "natural" and "artificial" needs or wants,

was false in theory, if not impossible to uphold in
practice. From his The Social System (I832) onward,
Gray thus argued for a managed, centralized system
of production in which, while basic needs had the
highest priority, no restriction on production as
such was proposed. It was this type of scheme that
Marx and Engels would adopt, thus renouncing any
association of socialism with a monastic or Spartan,
moralizing rejection of refinement. Thenceforth
the Athenian model of the expanding commercial
republic would predominate over the Spartan
model of restricted desire in socialism. A similar
contrast can be seen in the antagonism between
the future ideals of Edward Bellamy and William
Morris, discussed below. But the abandonment
of any form of ascetic renunciation also implied in
principle the willingness to relinquish giving educa
tion and cultural advancement the highest priority.
(This theme would reemerge in twentieth-century
utopias like B. F. Skinner's Walden Two.)
Nonetheless, it was the idealized small-town
and even arcadian vision of "Community" that
captured the imagination of many early socialists.
"Community" was a respite from excessive urban
ization and industrialization, from the life of slums
and factories that would come for so many to epito
mize the century. But it was much more besides.
In cooperative communities, no police forces were
to be required, since the vastly greater force of pub
lic opinion operating on a restricted scale would,
it was widely assumed, suffice to regulate moral
conduct through mutual supervision, with all living,
as More had expressed it in Utopia, in "full view" of
one another. (Social and psychological transparency
remains a quintessentially utopian quality, as
opaqueness similarly remains a recurrently attrac
tive aspect of modern urban life for many escaping
the weight of traditional society.) Expressions of
selfish individualism would be further curtailed
by the education of children in common, and by
an extension of the familial ideal to the community
itself Women in Owenite communities were to
have freedom of divorce and, in principle, equal
rights with men. Communitarian schemes also
frequently involved calls for a near-mathematical
similarity of housing, dress, meals, and work, in
the name of social justice and equality. Sometimes
counterbalancing mechanisms were introduced: in
Caber's !caria, for instance, the length, timing, and
content of meals are regulated, but the "republican
restaurant" varied its menus daily so as to ensure
variety amid uniformity.

Most forms of early socialism relied on varia

tions of traditional Christian themes to give the
communal and fraternal priority over the individual.
After a devastating attack in 1817 on the priest
hood, which he believed was a principal obstacle to
progress through its emphasis on original sin, Owen
came by 1830 to recast his necessitarian philosophy
as a 'new religion," with a muted, deistical respect
for the supreme being wedded to a scheme for
rational social improvement. At the height of the
Owenite movement (1839-45), though its meeting
places were called "Halls of Science," the chief
Owenite organization, the Association of All Class
es of All Nations, was also termed the University
Community Society of Rational Religionists, with
traveling lecturers called "Social Missionaries,"
and a scheme of organization that many thought
was indebted to Methodism. The Saint-Simonian
religion, similarly, took its cue from the demand in
Saint-SImon's Nouveau Christianisme (1825) that reli
gion be devoted to satisfYing the needs of the poor.
Etienne Cabet, too, gave great prominence to the
Christian basis of communism, as did the German
tailor Wilhelm Weitling, whose Nlankind as It Is
and as It SholildBe (I838), The Poor Sinner's Gospel,
and other works, forcibly drove home the Christian
origins of socialistic egalitarianism.
Most nineteenth-century communitarians
(Marx included) were explicitly hostile to "politics,"
and suggested or described its disappearance in
the future ideal society. Commonly - this is the
great Saint-Simonian theme - "politics" is simply
subordinated under "production," the great politi
cal divisions of the past being presumed to have
been mere epiphenomenal reflections of the
chief class divisions of the period (a view echoed
by Owen and Marx). Some writers, such as Owen,
solve the problem of politics in the Platonic or
Morean vein, by instituting a system of rule by
elders, or gerontocracy. More often, socialists pre
ferred that decision-making be simply left in the
hands of the majority. Sometimes more complex
arrangements are described, as in Morris's News
from Nowhere, where, while "politics" no longer
exists, a delicate harmony between minority and
majority opinion prevails in which majoritarian
tyranny is avoided by a reluctance to ride rough
shod over opinions held by substantial minorities.
Most communitarian socialists assumed that
the unit of government would be no larger than
the parish (the central unit for Thomas Spence
and William Godwin a generation earlier), and thus
thought some harmonious scheme of social and

political organization could be devised. For Owen,

whose scheme of communitarian government was
the most fully articulated, this was based on the
principle of age, with each person passing succes
sively through eight age groups that would replace
the existing class system, being successively educat
ed, laboring, supervising others, and governing the
community and its relations with other communi
ties. Morally, "community" was also meant to func
tion as an extension of the "social" ideal, combating
the selfish individualism of the "old society;" abol
ishing such divisive elements as the love of accumu
lation, rank, privilege, and domination, and replac
ing these with the "social" emphasis of the pursuit
of the communal good. Politically, the evils of con
tested elections, partisanship, and division of inter
est would be avoided by ensuring that the right of
government was in principle universal, but vested
in those possessing the greatest experience. This
ambiguity concerning, and sometimes opposition
toward, simple democratic procedures would be a
recurrent theme in many later forms of socialism.6
The heyday of communitarianism was from the
mid-I820s until the late 1840S. In the United States,
the most important early socialist community of
the I820S was at New Harmony, Indiana, bought
from George Rapp and expanded by Owen's follow
ers between 1824 and 1838. For this brief period,
however, New Harmony was a center of intellectu
al, cultural, and scientific life on the frontier, before
internal divisions, and poor planning and choice
of members on Owen's part, tore it asunder. Similar
problems were to plague other community experi
ments, few of which lasted longer than a year or
two. In France, a few Fourierist phalansteries were
attempte d in France, notably at Conde-sur-Vesgres
(I833) and Citeaux (I84I), though these were dis
avowed by Fourier himself, who insisted on absolute
conformity to his own plans and models. In Britain,
Owenite communities were founded at Orbiston,
Manea Fen, and elsewhere, and at urban sites in
London and Edinburgh. In the mid-I830S, develop
ing a new strategy to attract wider working-class
support, Owen flirted with trade unionism and
labor exchanges, where artisans traded produce
directly without the need for shopkeepers as mid
dlemen. The culmination of communitarianism
in England, and symbolically the most important
Owenite experiment, was the Queenwood or
Harmony colony at Hampshire, which began in
I839 and lasted until I845.' This was accompanied
by the construction of an elaborate network of
local Owenite branches, which often built "Halls

of Science" where teas and lectures were held.

Some fifty of these existed by the early I840S,
chiefly in the industrial midlands, with as many as
ten thousand people attending Sunday functions.
Queenwood itself was constructed of t he most lav
ish materials, befitting the aesthetic as well as moral
promise held out by socialism. This expense, along
with the poor agricultural land of the site, finally
bankrupted the movement. Communitarianism
would never again be a serious option for socialists,
though a pronounced anti-urban bias was evident
in later writers like William Morris. Instead, the
principle of association was simply extended to
joint-stock enterprise as such, with workers' control
and ownership defining the "socialist utopias," as
Charles Bray put it in I844."
Marx and Engels

It has always been controversial to assert that

Marxian socialism after r848, or (following Althuss
er and other theorists of the intellectual "break"
that followed the discovery of the "materialist
conception of history") after the composition of the
German Ideology in I845-46, should also be termed
"utopian."9 In the preceding period, of course, both
Marx and Engels converted to communism, Engels
first via Moses Hess, and then by Owen's followers
in Manchester. Marx, more philosophically, was led
inexorably toward communism through his first
incursions into the critique of political economy.
In the i'Paris Manuscripts" of r844, he realized that
the problem of alienated labor could not be solved
without the abolition of private property; which
most divisively prevented mankind's (ispecies being"
or communal essence (the category is owed to
Feuerbach) from being expressed naturally and fully.
Both Marx and Engels clearly accepted the gist of
the early socialists' criticisms of capitalism and the
effects of the division of labor on the working class
es. In the most famous "utopiad' pronouncement
of the early writings, jointly composed in The
Gerlllan Ideology and clearly indebted to Fourier,
they agreed that variation and rotation of task
alone provided the basis for a rich, full human
life, one in which it would be possible to engage in
hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon,
rearing cattle in the evening, and criticism after
dinner, without as such ever becoming hunter,
fisherman, herdsman, or critic.
At the same time, however, Marx was critical
of much of the early socialist inheritance. He was
unwilling to assign to a specific class of "educators"
the task he felt Owen had given them, of remaking

The

ComlJlullist Alallifesto

Karl Marx and

Friedrich Engels
Manifest der
Communistischen Partei
London; Gedruckt In der Office
der ., Blldungs-Gesellschaft fur
Arbeiter," von J. C. Burghard. 1848
Houghton Library.
Harvard UniverSity

The Communist Manifesto

established the platform of
the Communist party and
proclaimed the Inevitability
and desirability of a full-scale
overthrow of nlneteenth
century Industrial capitalism
by the working class. The
aboiJtion of private property
was the stated ultimate goal
of the party. Calling for a
unified working-class revolt,
the pamphlet ends wlth a
rousing call to action; "The
proletarians have nothing to
lose but their chains. They
have a world to win. Workers
of all countries, unite ! "

the character of the working classes. (See the

third "Thesis on Feuerbach," on Owen, concerning
the tendency of the materialist doctrine of
circumstances to divide society into two parts,
one of which was necessarily superior to the other.)
Instead, Marx's "revolutionizing practice" was
now to solve the problem of educating the working
classes and rendering them fit to rule. Revolution
was now necessary, thus, not only because "the
ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other
way, but also because the class overthrowing it
can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself
of the muck of ages and become fitted to found
society anew;" a theme that would arise in later
theorists of the "cleansing" effects of violence,
such as Sorel and Fanon. Yet Marx and Engels too
were as reliant on the notion of a revolutionary
science as Owen had been on his "social science,"
and the notion of the inherent superiority of the
professional revolutionary, not too distant from
the Platonic ideal of the philosopher-king, would
be closely associated with later forms of Marxism,
and especially Marxism-Leninism.

Marx and Engels were also initially sympathet

ic to communitarian speculation of variou s types,
and as late as the Manifesto ofthe Communist Party
considered as appropriate plans to redistribute the
congested working-class population in "palaces"
in the countryside of a Fourierist and Owenite type,
Such proposals, however, as well as the priority
of overcoming economic specialization, largely
disappear from the later works of both Marx and
Engels, which programmatically differ little from
the scheme of nationalization and centralized
economic management outlined in the Manifesto.
Moreover, any priority given to superseding narrow
economic specialization in Marxism tends to give
way in the later nineteenth century to the provision
of a maximum productivity in order to raise the
standard of living of the working classes. Schemes
of rotation of task and variation of employment
thereafter are rarely discussed.
The "utopian" clement in lvIarxism, then,
might lie in any or all nf the following assumptions:
(r) that human behavior or "nature" might improve
dramatically following the revolutionary recon-

struction of society, particularly in the direction of

recapturing any supposed social "essence" in human
nature; (2) that the coercive apparatus of state, army;
and police might be dramatically reduced in the
future as a result (the state for Marx was to "wither
away" once the eventual stage of "communist soci
ety" had been reached); (3) that a limited range of
improvements in behavior, possible in a small-scale
community, and often inspired by religious motives,
might be transferred to a national scale and motivat
ed by a secular ideology; (4) that national, central
ized economic planning was viable; (5) that rotation
of employment might be combined with a plan for
large-scale collectivization on a national scale.
It should be noted that, from the perspective
of the early socialists, Marxism is in at least one
fundamental sense more utopian than the communi
tarian schools, for it accepted the logic of behav
ioral improvements while making two unaccept
able assumptions: that revolution as such would
aid in remaking working-class behavior; and that
improvements possible on a small scale could
be transferred to the nation state.

The Response of J. S. Mill

W hile much of liberalism is consciously anti

utopian in the sense of building any progressive
improvement in civilization upon sloW; steady;
modest economic development based on a system
of competition and private property; the revolu
tions of r848 provoked one of the leading nine
teenth-century liberals,John Stuart Mill, to react
more sympathetically to Owenite and Fourierist
communitarianism.
In revisions in the second and third editions of
his Principles o/Political Economy. first published in
1848, Mill broke firmly from the tradition of Smith,
Ricardo, Bentham, and his father,James Mill, in
suggesting that the division of profits between
capitalist and worker might be dramatically equal
ized through cooperative ownership and industrial
management. Mill, like Owen and to a lesser extent
Marx and Engels, was clearly driven primarily
by the notion that capitalist industrialization
produced an inferior type of human being. His
own "utopia," as he had put it in 1845, was "that
of raising the labourer from a receiver of hire to
the opposition of being, in some sort, a partner in

All Americ(/11 "New Edell"

J[ohnJ A[dolphus] Etzler
The Paradise Within the
Reach ofAll Men, Without
Labor, by Powers of Nature
and Machinery: An Address
to All intelligent Men

mankind. except death, and

even put death far beyond the
common period of human life.
and finally render it less afflict
Ing: mankind may thus live
in, and enjoy a new world far

Pittsburgh, Penn

supertor to our present, and

Etzler and Remhold, 1833

raise themselves to a far high

NYPl. General Research DIVIsion

er scale of beings,"

"I promise to show the means

Upholding parallel faiths in

for creating a paradise within

man's ability to reason and in

ten years, where every thing

the potential of future technol

desirable for human life may

ogy, and strongly influenced

be had for every man in super

by the organizational formulas

abundance, without labor,

of Fourier, John Adolphus

without pay; where the whole

Etzler dreamed of an Ameri

face of nature is changed into

can "New Eden" where man

the most beautiful form of

could dominate and domesti

which It may be capable;

cate nature with the help of

where man may live in the

machl'nes yet to be invented;

most magnificent palaces, in

The Paradise Within the Reach

all Imaginable refinements of

of All Men was the first of

luxury, In the most delightful

four books he wrote on the

gardens; where he may

subject. In the 1 840s, he

accomplish, without his labor,

attempted to bring hiS ideals

In one year more than hitherto

to life by establishing a

could be done in thousands

community in Venezuela; it

of years

ultimately disbanded due to

He may lead a

life of continual hapPiness.

dissension within the group,

of enjoyments unknown yet,

disease, and the everyday

he may free himself from

hardships of hfe in the jungle,

almost all the evils that afflict

:t

-, ..

' "

t..
: =-_
-Y
.

'''''. . .

,,", ,,,"--

.,
' I

, j1

L
I
,

'i
>\.,

lcorian Comml4nitieJ
learian flag

Icarians were unable to assure

Drawing, ca. ' 848

the expansion of their commu

BNF, Departement des Manuscrits

nities, the first of which was

founded in Texas and the sec

Plan of Cheltenham
BNF, Departement des

..(

r,.'"'l:- ..:,. ..,.

,-,...-.
.,
":_ I_"
", ..,.;. . .......
,. .
\ :,
.. 1.1
.

,.,.

Drawing, ca. 1 848

'

. :'
'F:':'?
' '.'

Manuscrits

Etienne Cabet's learia was

ond in Illinois, largely because

of Cabet's authoritarianism.
His desire to spread his ideas

by example was never real

ized, although a few isolated

more successful on paper

experiments survived until the

than in practice. In 1 847,

end of the century: the Chel

his "Let's Go to Icaria," a

tenham, Missouri. settlement

rousing article in the magazine

lasted until 1 864: the Corning,

Populaire. called for the new

lcarians to head for the New

World the following year. The

Iowa, community lasted, with

some interruptions, until 1 895.

;';

,,' _.. 4 _--' __ .A.

..
... ';-.-... . .."

::
';;__
-::--:-'
- "

"
.-

.
"'""

.:.
] .

..

: .,, ;
.
: ::";";-:-....2.
. :. .
:' :/::(..,5::_'.-. J

,"

it."'O By the third edition of the Principles (1852), this

was specified more precisely: The form of associa
tion that, if mankind continued to improve, must
be expected in the end to predominate is "the
association of the labourers themselves on terms of
equality, collectively owning the capital with which
they c arry on their operations, and working under
managers elected and removeable by themselves."
Beyond this, Mill went so far as to argue that
a "stationary state" - the bugbear of no growth or
development so feared by the classical economists far from being a condition to be avoided, might well
permit the shifting of social priorities toward moral
and intellectual development and the elimination
of that "trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading
on each other's heels, which form the existing type
of social life," with no further expansion of popula
tion or production. This conception, the progenitor
of all "green" Or ecological ideals of the "steady
state" economy in the late twentieth century; was
virtually ignored by later nineteenth century liber
als, but remains of great importance today.
Developments After 1848

Communitarianism after 1848 was chiefly an Ameri

can phenomenon." Both established and new reli
gious foundations, such as the Amana community
in Iowa, founded in 1855, and itself the offspring
of a Buffalo, New York, community begun in 1842,
retained considerable vitality, and usually far greater
longevity, than secular efforts. (Amana, reorganized
on a joint-stock basis and famous for the produc
tion of household appliances, still claimed six hun
dred members in the late 1970s, while Amish and
Mennonite communities still persist in some num
bers.) In the United States, early religious founda
tions like the Rappists and Shakers were joined
by the 1830S and 1840S by colonies of Separatists,
Transcendentalists, Millenarists, and others.
Following the decline of Owenism, a number of
Fourierist communities were created under the
leadership ofAlbert Brisbane, Parke Godwin, and
Horace Greeley; including, among some twenty
eight communes, the North American Phalanx and
the Clermont Phalanx." Another Fourierist effort
in Texas, established in 1852, was led by one of
Fourier's chief followers, Victor Considerant.
Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), wbose voyage en learie
(1840) spawned one of the most impressive commu
nistical movements in nineteenth-century France,
led several hundred socialists to New Orleans
in 1848-49, and purchased the old Mormon settle
ment at Nauvoo, IllinOis, which under his guidance

grew to some 1,800 persons before splitting under

severe internal strains in 1856.'3 Caber's great princi
ple, ('fraternity," aimed to maximize equality and
popular democracy by providing education and
work in common, and rewarding labor on the p rin
ciple adopted by Marx, "To each according to his
needs, from each according to his powers." Though
some colonies were in the eastern states (in New
England, Transcendentalism helped to underpin
the Brook Farm experiment, while lateJewish
agricultural settlements existed in NewJersey),
most sought cheaper land on the frontier. Various
colonies of other European socialists enjoyed a
brief existence, such as that of the Weitlingians at
Communia in Iowa, while the followers of the Ger
man-American inventorJohn Adolphus Etzler emi
grated further still, to South America. As the centu
ry progressed, colonies were founded in the West.
Mystical communes emerged at Fountaingrove and
elsewhere; Theosophical communities were devel
oped; a belated karian effort, karia Speranza, was
founded in California in 1881; and many other com
munes were established in the West and Northwest.
Perhaps the best-known late nineteenth-centu
ry American community was that founded byJohn
Humphrey Noyes at Oneida, New York, lasting
from 1848 to 1881. Oneida was distinguished less
by its property arrangements than by Noyes'S group
marriage ideals, which involved the regulation of
sexual intercourse by the community and, coinci
dentally; the fathering of a substantial number
of children by various mothers by Noyes himsel'4
It also included an institutionalized system of
weekly ((mutual criticism" designed to suppress
authoritarian tendencies and, like many forms
of early socialism, was underpinned by Christian
religious beliefs, without which, Noyes insisted,
socialism could never be practicable.
In Europe, communitarian socialism was
throughout the nineteenth century displaced by
revolutionary socialism, which aimed to reorganize
the nation-state, and by a melange of schemes
derived from various strands of socialist economic
criticism. The revolutions of 1848 gave a tremen
dous impetus to socialist speculation, while mark
ing at the same time a watershed in socialist theory;
and the transition from communitarianism to
statist and other forms of socialism. The ideas of
Owen and Fourier now seemed too little relevant
to changing events. Instead, those of Marx, and
ofsuch other revolutionary socialists as Auguste
Blanqui (1805-1881), whose followers would play a
prominent role in the workers' uprising that created

.A

(
n

1I
./1m 42 "
J :/';J.tr; ... ..J
0\ )J, />.,"
JC . , ....fi ..

L.

7-N I " t ,If.,..

t'u \...:;.,..1<4 '..._
.
.t. 'I#o., t.. /

The lcarian Colony QfNauV()()

EtabiisSl!mnt prov;so;re

I! Nauvoo (ancien couvent

the ruins and used to con

struct a new schoolhouse,

des Mormons, dans

at left. Education was very

I'Jllinois, EtatsUnis) de la

important to Cabet, and

colonie Icarifmne arrivee

members of the community

Ie 15 mars 1849
Pen, ink., and watercolor on paper,

received free schooling from

age four until adulthood.

ca. 18505

NYPL, Miriam and Ira O. Wallach

The refectory, on the right,

Division of Art, Prints and

was one of the first buildings

Photographs

constructed by the Icarians.

The ground floor contained a

After the failure of Etienne

dining room that seated 400

Caber's settlement in Texas,

he relocated 275 of his follow

and a stage on which theatrical

ers to the town of Nauvoo.

were frequentty presented.

I llinois, in 1 849, a year after

The walls were festooned with

and musical productions

it was abandoned by the Mor

painted words and phrases

mons. In the center are the

that reinforced Cabet's ideas:

ruins of the old Mormon Tem

Fratemity, Equality, Unity. and

ple building. which had been

the like. Upstairs were living

destroyed by fire, and which

quarters. Other buildings

Cabet had planned to recon

in the community included a

struct for use as a school. He

distillery (all working men

was thwarted in this intention

in the community started the

when the Temple was hit with

a tornado and demolished

day with a shot of whiskey).

a flour mill. a sawmill. a shop

blocks were recovered from

a large library.

beyond repair; the limestone

housing a printing press, and

The Slxlkers
Nathaniel Currier
Shakers Near Lebanon
Lithograph, n.d.

NYPl, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach

Division of Art, Prints and
Photographs
Dancing, whirling. singing,
clapping. marching, and other

physically expressive means

of worship were central to

the Un ited Society of Believ

ers in Christ's Second Appear
ing, and such activities led
to their being popularly called
Shakers. The ecstatic state

induced by their dancin g

encouraged direct communi

cation from the spirits of
ancestors, especially Mother
Ann Lee, the founder of the
Shakers, who died in 1 784.
An eyewitness account by

Charles Nordhoff in 1 875

described the tYpe of dance
shown here: " I n thair march

ing and dancing they hold

their hands before them, and
make a motion as of gathering

something to themselves:
this is called gatheri ng a bless
ing. In like manner, when
any brother or sister asks for
their prayers and sympathy,

they, reversing their hands,

push towards him that which

he asks.P Shakers were
not entirely closed off from
the outside world: they hi red
laborers to work their fields,
they sold their seeds and

other products in local towns,

and they a llowed outsiders

to visit and stay in their com

munities. Here, the woman

in the red dress, on the leh,

is clearly a visitor to the

Shaker community.

MeJSflgesfrom the Spirit World

[Polly Ann (Jane) Reed1

and shapes, they conta ined

"The Word of the Holy

messages from the spirit

Heavenly Father To II Child

world, communicated to a

connect the growing new

populations of Shakers with

their predecessors.

of his Love"

Shaker in an ecstatic state.

Ink on paper, [Mount Lebanon,

The wording is both in English

NY], April 14, 1 844

and in "Indian w riting,"

1 844, the members of the

NYPL, Manuscripts and

which was thought to be

Shaker Community at Mount

Archives Division

the direct result of spirit

On the morning of June 2,

Lebanon entered their meet

posseSSion. Many drawings

ing house and found paper

I n the 1840s and 1 850s, an

contain messages thought to

hearts laid out on the table.

have been directly transferred

For each member of the

ings" were created by the

from Mother Ann Lee, from

community, there was a heart

Shakers; fewer than 200,

Jesus, and from other spiritual

contai ning a spiritual blessin g.

most of them from the Mount

"parents" or ancestors. They

This one was made by Polly

to other members of the

ty, who made many of the gift

community and seem to have

hearts in April 1 844.

estimated 1 ,320 spirit draw

Lebanon, New York. communi

ty, s urvive today in public and

private coll ections. Depicti ng

religious and secular symbols

were often given as gi fts

been part of an effort to

Read, a tailor in the communi

the Paris Commune (1870-71), were widely popular

ized for the first time. Much better known during
the revolution itself were the proposals of the
French socialist Louis Blanc (1811-1882), who
became a member of the Provisional Government
following the February revolution. Blanc's The
Organization ofLabor (1839) advocated the state
establishment of workshops controlled by their
employees as a means to achieve a form of socialism
devoted not to absolute equality; but to the just
reward of labor. Like most socialist proposals of
the period, it thus shifted away from the notion
of voluntarily begun, small-scale experiments, and
toward nationally organized, public initiatives.
In Britain, following the collapse of Owenism,
many socialists immigrated to the New World.
Others took up Rochdale-style retail cooperation
as a lesser, but more dependable, alternative to
the "new moral world," and derided as utopian the
notion that any fundamental change in human
character would have to precede a more just social
order. Owenite economics remained influential
chiefly through the adaptation of their chief
themes inJohn Ruskin's Unto This Last (1862), which
was enormously influential on New Liberal writers
such as John Hobson, and on socialists, from the
1880s until World War 1. (Ruskin's own colony, the
Guild of St. George, did not prosper.) In Britain,
the statist, interventionist ideals of Thomas Car
lyle, dubbed "feudal socialism" by Marx and Engels,
continued to be of influence, and popularized the
idea that "industrial armies" might be created in
which lifetime employment could be guaranteed in
return for the acceptance of an ethos of profession
al devotion to work on the part of the employed.
By the late nineteenth century, the notion of
a planned and organized economy had become the
most commonly accepted definition of socialism.
That this ought to be the beau ideal of socialism
was not uncontested, however. WIlliam Morris's
Newsfrom Nowhere (1890), for instance, was written
specifically against the enormously influential
Looking Backward (1888), by the American Edward
Bellamy. Where Bellamy described a centrally
planned economy and the state guarantee of nur
ture, education, and a comfortable maintenance
from cradle to grave through centrally organized
credit and the management of society; Morris,
who in such matters admired the anarchist writers
more than Marx, was explicitly hostile to central
ization, and left even the regulation of markets and
exchange to the vague determination of "custom"
and established practice. Rather than life being

organized around the system of production and

consumption, the latter was to be subordinated to
the higher realms of aesthetic and cultural experi
ence. Much inspired by Ruskin, Morris famously
described his leading passion as a hatred of modern
civilization, and did much to popularize a medieval
ethos in manners and style, through his firm, Morris
and Company, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
The appeal to the pre-industrial past would remain
a recurrent theme within British socialism until
World War II (for instance, in the early writings
of Orwell). But while Newsfrom Nowhere remains
the best-known nineteenth-century socialist liter
ary utopia, its glorification of the medieval found
few sympathizers in the mainstream, increasingly
Marxian world of the Second International.
Divisions over the question of how centralized
and hierarchic the revolutionary movement should
be were to become pronounced in the second half
of the nineteenth century, and were fuelled by the
growing popularity of anarchism. Individualist
communities were established in Britain under the
influence of the Russian anarchists Tolstoy and
Kropotkin and of Edward Carpenter (The Fellow
ship of the New Life), and in France (the Free Soci
ety at Vauxj the colony at Aiglemont). In France, too,
the mutualist anarchism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
(189-1865), which proposed that property be left
in the hands of the primary producer, whether
peasant or artisan, proved very popular. (See Whtlt
Is Property, 1840.) Proudhonist ideas attained popu
larity among Russian and Spanish popularists, and
in the syndicalist wing of the trade union move
ment. Equally critical of centralized communism
were other anarchists, notably Mikhail Bakunin
(,8'4-,876), who proved to be Marx's primary
antagonist in the First International, and who insist
ed that .Marx's dictatorial personal style heralded a
future dictatorship of intellectuals over the workers'
movement, and of German socialists over European
labor in general. From the constructive, rather than
the critical, viewpoint, the anarchist schemes of
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) proved more influential
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Collectivism and the Conquest of Liberalism

The most important turning point in modern social

theory lay in the decades between 188o and World
War I, when liberalism and conservatism alike
moved in a sharply collectivist direction, partially
in response to the threat of socialism from below,
and laid the foundations of modern welfare states.
Though undiluted collectivism of the Marxist-

Stereoscopic Views ofa

Shaker Community
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Shakers allowed
themselves and their communities to be photographe<l extensive
ly, often in the hope of promoting their communities and attract

ing new converts; stereoscopic views were an extremely popular

form of information and entertainment at that time, and the Shak
ers sold sets of them along with seeds and homemade products.

Willis G. C. Kimball

These views, made by Willis G. C. Kimball, depict the community

Church Family from

of Canterbury, New Hampshire. Founded in 1 792, Canterbury

the Off;c.

became relatively prosperous, especially in the nineteenth and

Conoord, N.H.:

twentieth centuries. Members engaged in diverse pursuits

WG.C. Kimball,

such as farming, livestOCk, weaving, broom making, and washing

Stereoscopic

118657-857]
view

machine production, and they welcomed m,my visitors during

NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallacn

the summers. The last resident of the Canterbury community

Division of Art, Prints aM

died in 1 992, and today, like other former Shaker communities,

Photographs

Canterbury is a popular tourist attraction (the only remaining

active Shaker community is at Sabbathday Lake. Maine).

Each Shaker community

was divided into "families"

The stereoscopic views illustrated here are from The New York
Public Library's Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views.

or groups of thi rty to one hun

dred people who had entered

the community around the

same time. The Canterbury
community had three families,
and this stereoscopic view
shows the buildings of one
of them. the Church Family.

Willis G. C. Kimball
Group of Shakers

Concord. N.H.: w.G.C.

Kimball,

11865]857]
Stereoscopic view

NYPL, Miriam and Ira

D.

Wallach

Division of Art. Prints and

Photographs

Zion in Utah
A(ndrewl J[oseph) Rustell
Great Mormon TabMnac/e
1868. Plate 50 in

The Grear WBsr

/IIustroledVol. 4 1New York.: Union

Pacific Railroad Company, 1869)

Albumen print

{black and whitel

on letterPfe5s mount

Wallach
and

NYPl, Miriam and Ira O.

Division of Art, Prints

Photographs

The Mormons, also called

the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints, believed
that in these "latter days"

before the second coming ,

it was necessary to construct
a holy city to be Jerusalem's

equivalent in the Western

Hemisphere. Believing that
this city, named Zion, should
be modeled on the Celestial
Jerusalem, founder Joseph
Smith designed a city on

grid pattern, with the commu

nal temples and storehouses

at the c ent er surrounded

by wide streets and uniformly

sized residential lots for
private houses and ga rdens
One always knows where
one is in relation to the
temple as all the streets are
named for their distance and
direction from the Temple
(such as Fourth East Street)
Brigham Young, Smiths suc
cessor, brought the Mormons
from Illinois to the Salt Lake
area and established the citY

there.
While the Temple is the
central sacred space for the
Monnons. the Tabernacle has
always served as the main

social and cultural center.

hosting conferences hom

the moment it could accom
modate an audience. Built

between 1865 a nd 1875, it

measures 250 feet by 1 50
feet, and the dome is held up

A Mormon Town

entirely by wooden pegs a nd

published, and the town is

Dorothea Lange
[Untitled], from the series

unidentified. Mormon coloniza

Southern Utah -

tion of the West was highly

Mormon Towns

organized and systematic,

Silver gelatin

following a prescribed pattern

print.

NYPL, Miriam end

1953

I ra O. Wallach

for establishing a town. Often

Division of An, Prints and

the first building constructed

Photographs

was for a temple and a school.

and, as in Salt Lake City, it

This photograph was taken by

provided the center around

Dorothea Lange in

which uniformly sized housing

1953 for a

story on Southern Utah towns

in Life m agazi ne . It was never

lots were demarcated.

rawhide thongs.

Views ofOneida
like many utopian groups, the Perfectionists believed that their

social ideals should be reflected and supponed by the architecture

of their community. When John Noyes and his followers arrived

in Oneida from Vermont, they lived in wooden buildings that were

included in their land purchase. Initially, the Oneidans hoped to make

[View of the Oneida

Community1

[N.p., 1865?-75?J
Stereoscopic view
NYPL. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach
Division of Art, Prints and
Photographs

their jiving from hortiCUlture, and they built numemus frame build

ings and designed orchards and gardens that reflected this pastoral

This is a view of the new

ideal. By 1859, they had abandoned their hope for agricultural

complex from the south,

self-sufficiency and begun to look to their manufacturing enterprises

showing the South Wing,

for income; they had also abandoned their ideas about creating an

which housed the children's

EderHike garden and begun to construct a series of brick buildings

area. bedrooms, parlors. and a

designed to house a growing population and reflected the dual

were used for socializing and

needs of communal and solitary activities. Private bedrooms were

for the practice of "mutual

around a central courtyard . The interiors of the buildings were

large hall with a stage. Parlors

grouped around or near public parlors, and the central building

criticism." Viewed as a means

housed a large hall with a stage for community meetings and

to achieve perfection, mutual

entertainment. V\lhile satellite communities of Perfectionists existed

in Wallingford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Putney and

criticism required a member

of the community to come

Cambridge. Vermont; and Manlius, New York, Oneida remained

before a committee that

the central community.

would discuss the strengths

and weaknesses of the mem
ber's character.

D. E. Smith
[View of the Oneida

Community)

Community. N.Y., 11865?-75?J

Stereoscopic view

NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach

Art, Prints and

Division of

Photographs

This is a view of the

community from the east.

Ranger & Austen

[View of the Oneida
Community]
Syracuse, N.Y.. [1865?-75?J
Stereoscopic view
NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach

Division 01 An.

Prints and

Pt'iotographs

This view shows the front

lawn of the "Mansion
House," the central building

of the Oneida community. In

the early 1870s, the communi
ty was experiencing 8 peak
in population. in part because
of stirpicultural (or selective
breeding) experiments and in
part because of the prosperity

that resulted from successful

enterprises in the production

of steel traps, silk thread. and

fruit preserves. This prosperity
would continue throughout
the decade. By 1881, dis
agreements over leadership
and widespread criticism from
the outside world over the
practice of Complex Marriage
led to the dissolution of the
community and the formation
of a joint stock. corporation to

manage the businesses. One

of their enterprises. the manu
facture of silver and stainless
steel dinnerware, remains e
successful company today.

Moulton & Dopp

the Perfectionists believed,

Children Bnd Playground,

produced better-behaved

Oneida Community

Rome, N.Y. [18651-75?1

children and allowed new

mothers time for educational

Stereoscopic view

and social pursuits.

NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach

Di....isioli of Art.

Prints and

Between 1869 and 1 878,

Photograptls

Noyes enlisted ana hundred

The Oneida communily

munity for his experiments

practiced what they believed

in "stirpiculture" or selective

men and women in the com

was complete " Bible

breeding. Since procreation

Communism," sharing not

was the desired way to

only possessions and prod

increase membership in the

ucts. but also people. Their

community (rather than to

system of Complex Marriage

bring in new members).

discouraged monogamy,

which was considered selfish

Noyes thought he could

create a new generation of

and possessive, and the rais

better inhabitants by pairing

ing of children was considered

together the most "robust"

the responsibility of the entire

members of the community.

community. From shortly after

His experiments resulted

birth. children were housed

in fifty-eight children bom

in a separate building and

raised by a group of nurses
and teachers. This system,

to eighty-one parents.

Leninist sort, with complete cent.ralized economic

planning, fell into disfavor at the end of the twenti
eth century, this mixture of liberalism and socialism,
in most respects equidistant from the "pure" ideo
logical types of each belief, has proven enormously
popular, and is the predominant form ofgovern
ment among developed nations. It dates from vari
ous efforts to contend with the crises of poverty
and unemployment of the 1880s, and from rhe will
ingness to adapt socialist ideas to the creation of
dual, statist and private, economies. Guarantees
of unemployment and disability benefits, education
and medical care, and old age pensions, which
derived from existing socialist demands (in Brirain,
for instance, notably by the prominent New Liberal
writerJohn Hobson), were now gradually provided
by legislation, but secured rhrough schemes of pro
gressive taxation rather chan communal or collective
ownership of the means of production as such.
The early years of the Soviet revolution included
some mixtures of private and state ownership and
management, too, though the predominant model
after the mid-I920s was to be wholesale collectiviza
tion and centralized planning along the lines first
suggested in the Communist Manifesto. Mainstream
European socialism and Social Democracy, however,
blended increasingly with collectivist forms of
liberalism rhroughour this period.

The notion o f a compromise between liberal

ism and socialism was in some respects a conscious
ly anti-utopian choice by some types of socialists.
With reference to means, Fabian socialism, for
instance, abjured revolution in favor of a gradualist
"permation" of existing political institutions, as did
German Social Democracy in embracing the ballot
box rather than the bayonet. Yet another prominent
Fabian, H. G. WeJls, used the utopian literary device
to popularize socialist ideals in works like A Modern
Utopia ('905), and became his era's leading propher
of a new, rational economic order, and, eventually, of
the idea ofworld government. Most of the socialists
of this era, like Wells, welcomed the Soviet experi
ment, despite Marx's warnings, mitigated to some
degree in his private correspondence, that Russia
would have to pass through a bourgeois, capitalist
stage prior to any possible movement toward social
ism. Many; however, became antagonistic toward
Stalinism in the 1930S and, like Orwell, began to
perceive a generalized onslaught on individuality
and nonconformity as the legacy of the less tolerant
forms of nineteenth-century socialism.
The Socialist Utopia:
Some Unanswered Questions

Nineteenth-century socialism was firmly rooted

in the notion that human character could be

Standing SLTaigIJt &fore God

L!2.0KI NG
B l\GKVlAR
2000 1887

Edward Bellamy

depended on his favor, but

Looking Backward,

always, in the words of that

2000-1887

sermon which still rang in

Boston: Ticknor and Company,

my ears, had 'stood up

1888

straight before God.'" In this

N'r'PL General Research Division

completely classless society,

Since its initia l publication in

jobs t hat are equal in prestige

1888, Edward Bellamy's most

and salary, eat in common

all men and women work at

famous work has never been

restaurants, and shop in

is the story of a man. Julien

government-owned stores.
FuJ I access to education,

out of print. Looking Backward

West, who sleeps for 1 1 3

m ed icine, and financial assis

yea rs and then awakens in

tance leads to a society in

an idealized Boston in the year

which povertY. disease, and

2000. He describes a vivid

crime are virtua lly unknown.

dream-world, in that g loriou s

I n a dream, West returns to

city. with its homes of simple

the Boston of his own time,

comfort and its gorgeous pub

lic

palaces

. . .

faces unmarred

where his story of this won

drous future city and his con

by arrogance or servil ity, by

demnation of h is own society

envy or g reed, by anxious

a re considered the ravings

care or feverish ambition . and

of a madman. Happily for him,

stately forms of men and

he awakens in the Boston

women who had never known

of 2000, where he remains.

fear of a fellow man or

improved if the environment were first altered

to need and the principles of justice, on a scale that

so as to accentuate only the higher or more moral

is national, even international, rather than commu

aspects of behavior. The advance of science, espe

nal in scope. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,

cially the advent of psychology and the application

it has been a commonplace, following Hayek and

of Darwinism to humanity, gave a much stronger

others, to assert that such complex calculations

impetus to the view that an original human nature

could never in principle have been achieved, and

existed which, if perhaps not fallen in the Christian

that the distributive mechanism provided by the

sense, nonetheless was far less malleable than

market, whatever its wasteful shortcomings and

socialists suggested. Society could no longer there

injustices, is inevitable. This is the principal objec

fore be made at will, like an architectural edifice;

tion now levelled against Marxian economics, but

it had an organic existence, a history and biology,

it is frequently deployed to contend that socialism

which were independent of the will of even the

as such is untenable. And if communitarianism

most determined legislators. Much less, given the

on any other than a very small scale has also proven

individualist and competitive emphases of both

unattractive to the majority, such arguments seem

psychology and Social Darwinism, could human

dismissive of the viability of nineteenth-century

nature be bent in

socialism as such.

an

overwhelmingly altruist direc

tion, or returned to a state of pristine sociability.

Nonetheless, as we have seen. this is to take

Various forms of socialism attempted to come to

too limited a view of socialism. Between anti

terms with Social Darwinism, even to wed eugenics

centralist communitarianism and wholly centralist

to a socialist worldview, though this was to be devel

Marxism there lay a variety of mixtures of collec

oped much further by German fascism.

tivist ideals, sometimes termed socialist, sometimes

If socialism could be said to be "utopian" in

"New Liberal," which have proven remarkably

two negative senses (as opposed to the neutral or

popular and resilient. These involve, to a substantial

positive sense of building on the literary utopian

degree, the same guarantees of social and economic

tradition), then the first is the insistence on the

security; if not of full employment, which are

fundamental, as opposed to the temporary or partial,

associated with the utopian tradition as a whole,

malleability of human nature. The second is the

but without the degree of economic planning

belief that production can be organized rationally,

associated with Marxism, or the social equality

planned centrally, and distributed justly according

and uniformity frequently commended by the early

The Paris UJmmune

Commune called for the use

W. Alexis
J. veux etre fibre! . . . C'est

of the Revolutionary calendar,

mon droit et je me defends

the abolishing of religion, and

IParisl: Duclaux, 118717]

Lithograph
NYPL Miria m and Ira D. Wallach
Division of Art Prints and
Photographs

better working conditions.

At the end of May 1871 , gov

ernment troops, seeking to
Quash the insurgents of Paris,
entered an undefended sec
tion of the city and for one

In the wake of France's defeat

week attacked the barricades

in the Franco-Prussian War.

erected by the Parisian peo

the citizens of Paris staged

ple. At the end of the week,

a violent rebellion, founded

in large part on their fear of

20,000 insurgents were

dead, 38,000 more had been

a return to a monarchy. As a

arrested, and 7,000 had been

result, the Parisians elected

deported. Although the Paris

their own government and

Commune lasted only two

established the Paris Com

months. Karl Marx saw it as

mune in March 1871. Led by

the first real attempt by the

a loose assembly of socialists

proletariat to rise up against

and revolutionaries, the

the bourgeoisie.

A World Withollt lHarriage

James Lawrence
The Empire of the Nairs;
or,. The Rights of Women.
An Utopian Romance,
in twelve books

TIlE

EMPIRE OF THE

the possibility of a nation's

reaching the highest civiliza
tion without marriage, " Based
on a SOCiety in India, and
heavily Influenced by the ideas

London: Ponted for T Hookham,

of Mary Wollstonecraft and

Jun and E, T Hookham, 1 8 1 1

William Godwin, the society

NYPL, The Carl H , Pforzhelmer

he describes IS a matrilineal

Collection of Shelley and His Circle

one where men fight wars,

and women own property,

UTOPIAN ROMANCE,
IN 'l:Wl:LYE nOOKS,

BY JAMES LAWRENCE,
AIJTIIO..

j(

"
TUE nOSOl l'RU:NDI

"

LOYE, AN ALLEGORY,"

ETC.

(1nU h\lic mterm. supulJUm

Ncbili1as dab"t, inerlum de pat.... fcrcbaL

VI'C. b<. :1-\1.

IN FOUn ,OLUME,.

YOLo r.

tlllttU:m :
1'1UTI:D FOR T. HII01UU3f, JUN. AND

1:. T.

UOOXH.!M,

1811.

The City OfNowhere

[Samuel Butler]

where people seem happy

Erewhon; or, Over the

Range

and tolerant and open, but

London: Trubner. 1872

facade, they suffer from

In fact. behind this hYPOCritical

NYPL, Henry W and

all the human weaknesses

Albert A Berg Collection of

A nation of luddites, they

English and American Literature

abhor technology and claSSify

Samuel Butler's Erewhon

The protagonist finally

(an anagram of "nowhere")

escapes the city of Erewhon

deSCribes a dystoplan city

by means of a hot air balloon

themselves by horsepower

I n his introduction, James

raise children, and hold powee

Lawrence explains, "This

Paternity is unimportant. and

work was deSigned to shew

free love IS encouraged

W0rk as Creativity
William Morris

pleasure of serving others

News from Nowhere;

and expressing their own

or, An Epoch of Rest.

creativity. Morris's "Nowhere"

Being Some Chapters

reflects his own socialist

from a Utopian Romance

and anti-industrialist points

Hammersmith: The Kelmscott

of view and depicts a post

Press, 1892

revolutionary society free of

NYPL, Rare Books Division

class division, formal educa

tion, governmental structures,

In William Morris's utopian

money, poverty. crime. and

novel, a man named William

industrial pollution.

Guest awakens one moming

after a troubled sleep to find

This edition of News from

himself in a world completely

Nowhere was printed by Mor

unlike the industrial london of

ris at his Kelmscott Press in

the nineteenth century, where

Hammersmith, England, and

he fell asleep. As he explores

reflects Morris's highly decora

this clean, prosperous place,

tive style of book design. The

he discovers a society of

frontispiece depicts Kelmscott

youthful people who are

Manor, where Morris lived

happy, energetic, free from

and where the character of

want, and, most important,

William Guest finds himself

engaged in work for the pure

at the end of his adventures.

William Morris's Workshops

(/t MertOIl Abbey
Edmund Hart New

a. Merton Abbey Mill

Proofs on woodcut to illustrate

Pond with Weaving and

The Life of Willtam Moms by

Painting Sheds

J. W Mackail (London, 1899)

The Pierpont Morgan library,

h.

New York

Painting Sheds from

Merton Abbey Glass

Oyehouse

William MOrris's work as an

author and designer reflected

c. Merton Abbey Chintz

his aesthetic and philosophical

Printing Room

beliefs. He valued handmade

objects and favored pre-indus
trial methods of production
His workshops at Merton
Abbey, where, in 1881, he
established facilities for dye
making, textile printing and
weaving, and glass painting,
were designed to provide a
pleasant environment that pro
moted equality and creativity
among the employees. These
scenes - proofs for illustra
tions in J W Mackall's Impor
tant biography of Morris show some of the working
areas at Merton Abbey

The Libertarian GoldenAge

Paul Signac
Au temps d'hllrmonie
Color litOOgraptl, 1895--96
BNF, Departement des Estampes
at de 1&

Photographie

This idyllic image of a libertari

an utopia was inspired by the
artist Paul Signac's anarchist
ideas. He initially entitled it
" I n the time of anarchy," then
added a subtitle, taken from
Saint-Simon, to clarify the alle
gorical meaning: "The golden
age of mankind is not behind,
but before us." This is one
of seven known proofs of a
print reproduction; the monu
mental painting itself hangs
in Montreuil's City Hall.

Notes

utopians, which have an undoubted tendency to

suppress individuality. Such doctrinal compromises
have also entailed renouncing substantial concerns
for the moral improvement of humanity, or con
scious genetic manipulation of the species, or the

1 Not a "perfect" society,

8 Charles Bray, The Philoso

as is often suggested; the

phy of Necessity, 2nd ed.

concept is essentially theologi

(london: longman, Green,

cal. There is some crime and

Longman & Roberts, 1 863).

disorder in virtually all utopias,

374-4 1 2 ,

including More's.

9 For a summary o f the argu

abolition of "politics," since class systems remain

2 See my Citizens and Samts

ments, see Vincent Geoghe

in place in such mixed economies.

Politics and Anti-Politics in

gan, Utopianism and Marxism

Early British Socialism (Cam

(london: Methuen, 1987).

The enormous appeal of socialism in the twen

tieth century indicates not merely the persistent
vitality of the utopian ideal, but the explosive rise in
expectations, and the progressive appeal of egalitari
an systems, which fuel it. The legacy of nineteenth

bridge, England: Cambridge

University Press, 1 989).

10 John Stuart Mill. Disserta

3 See, for instance, the

4 vols. (london: longmans,

linkage of More to Owen in

Green, Reader and Dyer,

Robert Southey's Sir Thomas

1 862), 2: 210.

tions and Discussions,

century socialism at the end of the twentieth centu

More, or ColloqUies on .

ry lies less in communitarianism, however, than in

Society (london: John Murray,

1 1 The most recent survey

1829)

is Robert Fogerty, American

ecological efforts to restrain the growth of produc

Communes and Utopian

1860- 1914

tion and population in order to assure the survival

4 See my Utopias of the

Movements

of the species, an idea which, in modern terms, dates

British Enlightenment (Cam

(Chicago: University of Chicago

bridge, England: Cambridge

Press, 1 990).

from the socialist writers of the

I820S and I830S.

The Green utopia notably mirrors the tensions

of nineteenth-century socialism, too: whether to
aim for systems of restricted, local and small-scale
production or to focus on the nation-state; whether
to attempt to supersede national sovereignty by
some form of world government; whether to give
the often-unpopular restraint of needs a high priori
ty; and how to deal with the population problem
effectively. Finally, there lingers at the end of the
twentieth century another vestige of Enlightenment
cosmopolitan utopianism that passed into socialism

University Press, 1991), for

this and further examples

12 See Carl Guarneri, The

5 See generally W.H.G.

erism m Nineteenth-Century

Armytage, Heavens Below

Amenca (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

Utopian Experiments in

University Press, 1991)

Utopian Alternative: Four i

England

1560-1900 (London

Routledge and Kegan Paul,

13 Two studies of the move

1961).

ment are Christopher John

6 A survey of the problem

son, Utopian Communism

N.Y,; Cornell University Press,

Keith Taylor, The Political

Ideas of the Utopian Socialists

1 974), and Robert Sutton,

(London and Totowa, N.J '

Les Icariens: The Utopian

Frank Case, 1 982)

government, based probably on the United Nations,

7 Its history is now told in

al sovereignty in matters of international order and

humanitarian aid.

1839-1851 (ithaca,

Icarians,

IS

in the nineteenth century: the proposal for world

and superseding to an unprecedented degree nation

in France,' Cabet and the

of politics In early socialism

Dream m Europe and America

(Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1 994).

Edward Royle, Robert Owen

and the Commencement of

14 The theme generally is

the Mlflennium' A Study of

treated in Raymond lee

the Harmony Community

Muncy, Sex and Marriage in

(Manchester: Manchester

Utopian Communities in Nine

University Press, 1998).

teenth Century America (lon

don: Penguin Books, 1 975)