Utopian Socialists - Utopian Socialism in Literature and In Practice

Utopian Socialism in Literature and In Practice

Perhaps the first utopian socialist was Thomas More (1478-1535), who wrote about an imaginary socialist society in his satire Utopia, which was published in 1516. The contemporary definition of the English word "utopia" derives from this work.

Saint-Simonianism was a French political and social movement of the first half of the 19th century, inspired by the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). His ideas influenced Auguste Comte (who was, for a time, Saint-Simon's secretary), Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and many other thinkers and social theorists.

Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a successful Welsh businessman who devoted much of his profits to improving the lives of his employees. His reputation grew when he set up a textile factory in New Lanark, Scotland, co-funded by his teacher, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, and introduced shorter working hours, schools for children and renovated housing. He wrote about his ideas in his book A New View of Society, which was published in 1813, and An Explanation of the Cause of Distress which pervades the civilized parts of the world in 1823. He also set up an Owenite commune called New Harmony in Indiana, USA. This collapsed when one of his business partners ran off with all the profits. Owen's main contribution to socialist thought was the view that human social behavior is not fixed or absolute, and that human beings have the free will to organize themselves into any kind of society they wished.

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was by far the most utopian of the socialists. Rejecting the industrial revolution altogether and thus the problems that arose with it, he made various fanciful claims about the ideal world he envisioned. Despite some clearly non-socialist inclinations, he contributed significantly - if indirectly - to the socialist movement. His writings about turning work into play influenced the young Karl Marx and helped him devise his theory of alienation. Also a contributor to feminism, Fourier invented the concept of phalanstère, units of people based on a theory of passions and of their combination. Several colonies based on Fourier's ideas were founded in the United States by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley.

Étienne Cabet (1788–1856) who was influenced by Robert Owen, published a book in 1840 entitled Travel and adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria in which he described an ideal communalist society. His attempts to form real socialist communities based on his ideas, through the Icarian movement however, did not survive, but one such community was the precursor of Corning, Iowa. Possibly inspired by Christianity, he coined the word "communism" and influenced other thinkers, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), published Looking Backward in 1888, a utopian romance novel about a future socialist society. In Bellamy's utopia, property was held in common and money replaced with a system of equal credit for all. Valid for a year and non-transferable between individual persons, expenditure of this credit was to be tracked via 'credit-cards' (which bear no resemblance to modern credit cards which are tools of debt-finance). Labour between the ages of 21-40 was to be compulsory, and organised via various departments of an 'Industrial Army' to which most citizens belonged. However working hours were to be cut drastically due to technological advances (including organisational). People were expected to be motivated by a Religion of Solidarity, and e.g. criminal behavior was treated as a form of mental illness or 'atavism'. It was the second or third ranking best seller of its time (after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur). Bellamy published a sequel Equality in 1897 as a reply to his critics, and from which the Industrial Army and other authoritarian aspects were absent.

William Morris (1834–1896) published News from Nowhere in 1890, partly as a response to Bellamy's Looking Backwards which he equated with the socialism of Fabians such as Sydney Webb. Morris' vision of the future socialist society was centred around his concept of useful work as opposed to useless toil, and the redemption of human labour. Morris believed that all work should be artistic, in the sense that the worker should find it both pleasurable and an outlet for creativity. Morris' conception of labour thus bears strong resemblance to Fourier's, whilst Bellamy's (i.e. the reduction of labour to a minimum) is more akin to that of Saint-Simon or indeed Marx.

The Brotherhood Church in Britain and the Life and Labor Commune in Russia were based on the Christian anarchist ideas of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wrote about anarchist forms of socialism in their books. Proudhon wrote What is Property? (1840) and The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1847). Kropotkin wrote The Conquest of Bread (1892) and Fields, Factories and Workshops (1912). Many of the anarchist collectives formed in Spain, especially in Aragon and Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War were based on their ideas.

Many participants in the historical kibbutz movement in Israel were motivated by utopian socialist ideas, but few examples of this type of kibbutz remain.

Augustin Souchy (1892–1984) spent most of his life investigating and participating in many kinds of socialist communities. He wrote about his experiences in his autobiography Beware! Anarchist!.

The philosopher and pornographer Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) anticipated Charles Fourier in his project of a harmonious utopia based on the free play of sexual passion in the pamphlet Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans, found in Philosophy in the Bedroom.

Behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) published Walden Two in 1948. The Twin Oaks Community was originally based on his ideas.

Ursula K. Le Guin (born 1929) wrote about an impoverished anarchist planet in her book The Dispossessed, which was published in 1974. The anarchists agree to leave their home planet and colonize the barren planet in order to avoid a bloody revolution.