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Chapter 4: The early

utopian socialists

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DESTRUCTION OF MEANING OUT

NOW

BY SIMON

Can one be communist without Marx?

Antonio Negri

Marx and Engels were not the rst socialists. Socialistic ideas had
existed for many years prior to the publication of the Communist
Manifesto. The idea of common ownership and greater equality is a
theme that appears in many religions, and has been the rallying call
for various progressive movements who resisted tyranny and
inequality in their societies. Acts 2:44 in the Bible referred to all the
believers were together and had everything in common in the early
church. Radical ideas of egalitarianism often emerge during times of
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Destruction of Meaning by Simon Hardy,

available on Amazon now.
Ever wondered why politics seems so empty
sometimes? Why media spectacle has
replaced meaningful debate? How someone
like Obama can be called a "communist" for
passing healthcare reform? How the most
successful capitalist country in the world
today, China, is run by a Communist Party?
Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

CHAPTERS

church. Radical ideas of egalitarianism often emerge during times of

social and political upheaval, for instance the Levellers and the
Diggers, two political trends in the parliamentarian side of the English
Civil War, advocated land redistribution and establishing a more
balanced relationship to nature. However, whilst there are several
examples of communist ideas and practices in movements prior to the
early 19th century which acted as early precursors the swallows
before summer it is not until the 1810-20s that socialism as a clearly
defined political trend really emerges.
Almost simultaneously in France
and
Britain
dierent
social
theorists or philosophers begin to
articulate an idea of communism
out of a criticism of capitalism.
What characterised the project of
the Utopian socialists was that
they all shared a moral criticism
o f distribution under capitalism,
that some
were
obscenely
wealthy whilst others were not.
They were appalled at the huge
social inequality, with child
labour, slum housing and terrible
diseases rife among the lower
classes.
The
primitive
accumulation of capital which
occurred at the beginning of
capitalism resulted in horric
poverty which was of concern to
many liberal minded gentlemen
Pierre Proudhon
who belonged to the same social
tradition represented by works
like Thomas Moores Utopia or
The Republic by Plato, in other words they were progressive members
of the ruling elites. 1
For them the goal then was to redistribute wealth, not to
fundamentally alter the basis of production under capitalism the fact
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CHAPTERS
Introduction: What is being discussed?
Chapter 1: The Enlightenment
Chapter 2: The breakthrough in philosophy
Chapter 3: Hegel and the completion of
German idealist philosophy

Chapter 5: The beginnings of scientific

socialism
Chapter 6: The materialist dialectic
Chapter 7: Historical Materialism
Chapter 8: The method of abstraction
Chapter 9: Alienation
Chapter 10: Social Oppression
Chapter 11: Surplus value, the working class
and ideology
Chapter 12: Boom and bust and the limits of
capitalism
Chapter 13: Revolutionary crises under
capitalism
Methodology I: Scientific Socialism as a
World-view
Methodology II: Marxism and determinism
Chapter 14: The capitalist state, workers
state, socialism and communism (the riddle
of history solved)
Chapter 15: The Second International

fundamentally alter the basis of production under capitalism the fact

that this occurs outside of production, the place for working class
action, and in wider society, is what leaves reformist or Utopian
socialists advocating action outside of the everyday class struggle.
Their projects and programme was always posited from outside, not
internal to, and based upon working class action in a struggle against
the ruling class 2. But what they attempted to do, each in their own
way, was to seek to develop a social system which could ensure
perfect harmony between the classes. In this sense they conceived
of themselves as social scientists, reformers who were using the latest
scientific observations and economic thinking to transform society.
One of the earliest and certainly one of
the most eccentric examples was
Charles Fourier. Although he was born
into a wealthy industrialist family
Fourier, rejected the bourgeois norms of
his era, despising industrialisation and
the degrading labour that the proletariat
was made to perform. His alternative
was to rationally plan everything and to
establish a phalanstere, a tightly-knit
community of men and women who
would live in perfect harmony. Fourier
was obsessed with mathematics and
drew up detailed plans of his his
community and how a perfectly
harmonious world would work. Since
there were, by Fouriers reckoning, 810
personality types, two men and women
Oceans of Lemonade Charles
from each personality type would be
Fourier
required to ensure a balance, which
meant that each community would
have precisely 1,620 people living
there. In this harmonious world our
personalities and characters could develop without alienation and
actually be integrated into a system whereby even supposedly
damaging character traits could be made to work for the benet of
humanity. However he drew some wildly optimistic conclusions from
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Chapter 16: The debates over historical

materialism
Chapter 17: Fabianism in Britain
Chapter 18: Revisionist controversy in
Germany
Chapter 19: Reform or revolution 1914-1919
Part Four The struggle for the soul of
Marxism
Chapter 20: Ultra leftism and the Third
International
Chapter 21: Hegelian Marxism, Lukcs and
Korsch
Chapter 22: Antonio Gramsci theories of
hegemony, civil society and revolution
Chapter 23: Soviet philosophy
Chapter 24: Leon Trotsky and the fight for
the International
Part Five The post war world
Chapter 25: The Frankfurt School and critical
theory
Chapter 26: Maoism in East and West
Chapter 27: The New Left
Chapter 28: Existentialism: a philosophy of
reality
Chapter 30: Structuralist Marxism
Chapter 31: Poulantzas and Eurocommunism

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humanity. However he drew some wildly optimistic conclusions from

what this social plan could achieve. Upon his system being
implemented it would see the Earth pass from its infancy into a new
epoch 70,000 year long, in which a series of apparently fantastical
things would occur, for instance lions would become servants of
humanity and draw carriages across France in a single day, and the
sea would loose its salt and become lemonade whilst there would be
six moons circling the earth. 3
Whilst it is easy to dismiss Fourier for his more fantastic statements,
his criticism of the alienating nature of work and the oppressive social
relations inherent within modern industrialisation clearly mark him out
as a progressive thinker who believed in the need some form of
socialist future. His model for an ideal community, based on dened
personality types and tastes would mean no need for a repressive
state with police or judges. Each group of people in the phalanx
would only undertake work most suited to their personalities, and be
able to rest after only a short time before turning to another type of
work so as to prevent boredom and repetition. His model communities
also did away with private accommodation and domestic chores,
because everything was organised around the communal areas, with
one giant kitchen and dining hall. 4
Fourier was also deeply concerned about the oppression of women,
and stood out starkly among all the the utopian socialists as the most
feminist. In 1841 he argued that; The change in a historical epoch can
always be determined by the progress of women towards freedom,
because in the relation of woman to man, of the weak to the strong,
the victory of human nature over brutality is most evident. The degree
of emancipation of women is the natural measure of general
emancipation. This phrase would later be taken up by Marx and other
socialists.
As capitalism developed in Britain so too did radical movements of
opposition. Because the social and cultural changes that the birth of
industrial capitalism was inicting on the working poor was so
immense, the upsurge of militancy from rural workers, labourers and
the desperate lower middle classes also increased signicantly. By
1816 Britain was experiencing its rst recession that was caused by
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1816 Britain was experiencing its rst recession that was caused by
overproduction as the end of the Napoleonic wars saw manufacturing
industry orders slump as government contracts ended. The growth of
strikes and protest movements was met with heavy repression from
the government of Lord Liverpool, who used laws banning public
meetings of over 50 people and prohibited movements who aimed at
political reform (the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800). A bad
harvest in 1816 saw parliament pass the Corn Laws which protected
the prots of British farmers through trade taris, which meant less
food in Britain, causing starvation in some areas. Angry food riots
broke out across the country, leading to the massacre of protesters by
soldiers in Manchester in 1819 at what became known as the Peterloo
massacre. Supporters of the radical author Thomas Spence, who
advocated agrarian reform and a return to the commons of all land in
Britain organised a conspiracy in London in 1820 from their
Headquarters in Cato street. Around 30 men plotted to attack a
meeting of the cabinet as a prelude to a wider insurrection, but their
organisation was riddled with police spies, who apprehended them
before it could be carried out.

Robert Owen

With this as the political background we

can understand some of the ideas of
Robert Owen, a wealthy philanthropist
and socialist who owned a cotton
manufacturing business in New Lanark in
Scotland. A man who was deeply
concerned with the plight of the poor,
Engels seems to dismissively describe him
someone of sublime, childlike simplicity
of character. 5 However, like Engels, his
experience of the factory system and the
conditions that the proletariat lived in
horried him, and he detested the
individualism of the capitalist ethos. He
set up what he called a Village of
Cooperation near New Lanark, a model
community which was based on small
scale manufacturing and agriculture in
which everyone worked according to a

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which everyone worked according to a

plan of production. Owens community
attracted
several
thousands
people
towards it, but it was no a success, it
suered from a lack of funds and was run paternalistically by Owen
himself, not by the people who worked there.
Not to be disheartened he and his followers moved to the US in 1824
and set up sixteen Villages of Cooperation attracting followers from
across the country and from Europe who believed in his vision of a
socialist society operating from inside capitalism itself. However this
venture also failed, and by 1829 all the communities had closed down.
The reasons for the failure can be found in the undemocratic model
that Owen used to run the villages, whilst increasing numbers of
people attracted to them not because of work but to enjoy the leisure
facilities. One village even collapsed after a US backer absconded with
the prots. Owen himself advocated using simpler tools, not the
latest machinery
which made the work much harder and
uncompetative with other, more standard factory models.

The model community of New Harmony, as imagined by Robert Owen

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Owens
scheme was
in
many
ways more
realistic than
Fouriers, but
suffered
from
the
same
utopian
perspective.
It
was
utopian
because
it
sought
to
create model
communities
simply
by
design,

design,
irrespective
of what was
going on in wider society. It did not overthrow the prevalent power
relations but simply attempted to get around them, through
establishing communities, which nevertheless had to operate
surrounded by a capitalist society with all of its greed and exploitation.
No wonder his villages attracted people who wanted to escape from
work altogether and as a result were unproductive, but also scheming
capitalists who saw in the co-operatives a chance to make a quick
buck. A book written in 1860 about Owen recorded his achievements
thus The present generation [thinks of Owen] as the father of cooperative societies, as the founder of equitable labour exchanges, as
the promoter of communistic arrangements, as the great leader of
English Socialism. 6
Another utopian thinker whose ideas became popular in the early to
mid 19th century was Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. Saint-Simon led a
particularly colourful life, at various times a revolutionary ghter, a
wealthy Parisian (followed by poverty) and an inmate of an insane
asylum. He was no socialist in the manner of Owen or Fourier, but his
ideas were very inuential in radical circles. Like Hegel, Saint-Simon
had various groups of followers after his death who drew quite
radically dierent conclusions from his ideas. One of them, Pierre
Leroux, is credited with introducing the word socialism into the lexicon
in his writings from around the 1830s. 7Saint-Simon was a beneciary
of the post revolutionary reaction in France which saw massive prots
generated for sections of the bourgeois class. No doubt as a result he
did not have a moral indignation against capitalism as Fourier and
Owen had, but he did detest the nobility, seeing in them a relic of the
previous age. He preferred a society run along socially responsible
lines, ideally organised and ruled by a technocratic elite, not the
working class. In this sense he did not have an anticapitalist critique,
he wanted the society run along rational lines where prot could be
generated and private property accumulated, but his followers
emphasised the importance of industrialisation in Saint-Simons
writings, which marked him out considerably from Owens villages of
co-operation. Indeed, many believed that the growth of
industrialisation would lead to the end of the nation state across
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industrialisation would lead to the end of the nation state across

Europe, and indeed his was highly critical of the role of the state in
holding back natural development of civil society and the economy.
Saint-Simon was opposed to any separation from society by small
scale collectives but instead a reorganisation of society itself. On this
level his ideas coincide and influence the agenda of scientific socialism
more than other utopian thinkers, even though Saint-Simon would not
doubt have been horrified at such a thought.
These thinkers were part of the intellectual climate of the time, and
certainly a product of the early anticapitalist impulses of some of the
middle classes and bourgeoisie to turn on their own system. What all
of them lacked was a comprehensive understanding of what were the
causes of the exploitation and alienation of capitalism. Because of this
their solutions tried to avoid the problem, to create separate
communities. These islands of socialism were all eventually swallowed
up and destroyed by the power of organised capital, despite the best
intentions of many of the people involved in running them. They
collapsed just as the Digger communities in England had collapsed
after the English Civil War, unable to challenge the ruling class or win
enough adherents to their banner.
Before we move onto Marx and Engels contribution to socialist
theory, two more thinkers of the time are worth mentioning. A crucial
bridge between the utopian socialists of the early industrial period and
Marx was a French socialist named Louis Blanc. A member of the 1848
provisional government he was an advocate for workers rights from
within the elite (his father had been Napoleon Bonapartes Inspector
general to Spain during the occuption). After eeing France for alleged
involvement in an insurrectionary conspiracy against the government,
he returned in 1871 to be elected to the Paris Commune. However he
quickly moved to the right, opposing the insurrection and supporting
the outlawing of the First Workers International in France in 1872.
Regardless of his political evolution, Blanc proposed several ideas
which became quite common staples of subsequent socialist thinking
on the reorganisation of society. To combat unemployment and social
deprivation, Blanc believed that the state should guarantee work for
all, and small workshops should be gradually replaced by a social
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all, and small workshops should be gradually replaced by a social

workshop, a much larger enterprise funded with interest free credit
by the government. Whilst the government should initially appoint
experienced managers and administrators in the rst year, after that
workers should have the power to elect the administrators to establish
the principle of workers control. 8 Blanc coined the term from each
according to his ability, to each according to their needs as a radical
measure of not just equality but to ensure that the weaker and poorer
would recieve more. This was in contrast for instance, to Saint-Simon,
who believed that your reward should be commensurate to your input.
Finally, a summary of the views of the utopians pre Marx would not
be complete without Pierre Proudhon. Although he has subsequently
been
claimed
by
the
anarchists,
some
of
his
ideas
also lent themselves much more to the socialist wing of the
anticapitalist movement. Also a member of the 1848 government,
Proudhon proposed a system of free association (what became known
as the federalism of independent producers) an idea so far ahead of
the time that it received only 2 out of 693 votes in the assembly.
Proudhon was opposed to the schemas of the other utopian thinkers,
he did not see social engineering or elaborate social experiments as
the way forward. Society should be organised according to the
principles of anarchy, where no one can have power over anyone else,
where no one could be sovereign at the expense of others. Society
should be guided by the data produced by a Department of Statistics,
where every citizen can be a politician and society would make
decisions based on rational discussion, not simply personal will or
ambition. The guiding principles of such a society was the motto of the
French revolution of 1789, but with a radical addition, that all
property is theft. In What is Property?, Proudhon propounds a theory
of value which shared some similarities with Marxs subsequent
writings, that property is the right to enjoy and dispose at will of
anothers goods the fruit of an others industry and labour. 9 But his
anarchism was not a plea for small scale production and an end to
national institutions, he argued for the creation of a state bank which
could provide money (interest free) for workers and peasants to buy
tools and equipment needed for production. What marked him out as
dierent to what became Marxist-communism was that he aimed to
create equality of wealth production, and since there is no plan to the
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create equality of wealth production, and since there is no plan to the

economy it is possible for individual hard work to enrich some over
others. All should produce equally The question of how redistribution of
wealth could occur without a state or a political force to make it
happen was one that was ambiguous in Proudhons concept of liberty.
His model was a series of self governing communes with no central
authority, each commune bound to others through agreed contracts
for distribution and exchange.
In conclusion, almost from the birth of capitalism many were already
questioning the supposed principles of bourgeois society, the gap
between rich and poor, the right to property, the freedom of the
market. The desire to nd ways to overcome the inequities of
capitalism was a powerful one. But more work had to be done, a
critique of society in its which took into account not just the injustice
or irrationality of a society based on alienated labour and market
economics, but could consciously identify a subject within society that
could make that change. A more materialist system had to be
developed, one that could point to a method which could overthrow all
existing social relations, and not try and skirt around the central social
divisions of the new socio-economic order which was being established
over the broken backs of the peasants of feudal Europe and the slaves
toiling on plantations across the new world. If Marxism was the
continuation and deepening of the kind of utopian thinking that came
before, we can reverse Negris quote which started this chapter Marx
could not have been a communist without the utopian socialist ideals
of earlier thinkers.
The year that Saint-Simon died, 1825, also saw a severe crisis rip
through the British economy. Almost 75 years of rapid industrial
growth saw the economy overheat, and a general crisis of
overproduction emerge. This overproduction saw profits collapse in
key industries and a huge rise in unemployment. This crisis radicalised
large sections of the working class and urban poor, creating the
conditions which would see the rise of the Chartist movement, in
particular in the north of the country. But for the ruling class the crisis
had been most unexpected. Why was their system in such a dire state
when production was expanding so rapidly? The person who would
work to provide the answer to this economic question was, at the
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work to provide the answer to this economic question was, at the

time, only 7 years old, and his close co-thinker only five. We can turn
to their efforts in the next section.
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Notes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Norman K, The political ideas of the utopian socialists, p1-2

Clarke, 1980, p17
Laidler, 1927 p71
Laidler, 1927, p72
Socialism: Utopian and scientific
Robert Own and his social philosophy William Lucas Sargant p xix
Though an Owenite called Goodwyn Barmby also stakes a claim to this
Laidler 1927, p76-77
Proudhon, 2008, p 159

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Ali Helal
William Paterson University

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POSTED IN TH E U TOPIAN SOCIALISTS | TAGGED AN ARCH ISM, EARLY SOCIALISM,

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FOU RIOR, PROU DH ON , ROBERT OWEN, SAIN T SIMON, U TOPIAN SOCIALISM | LEAVE A
COMMEN T |

Chapter 3: Hegel and the completion of

Chapter 5: The beginnings of scientific

German idealist philosophy

socialism

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