Early Socialism
All socialist urged restriction of private property
but Utopians Socialists envisioned reform from the
top of the social ladder while others called for
radical change from the bottom.
Evidence
 utopian socialist
 Pierre Joseph Proudhon
 Henri de Saint-Simon
 Karl Marx
 Charles Fourier
 Friedrich Engels
 Robert Owens
 Communist Manifesto
 cooperatives
 Marxism
 New Lanark
 proletariat
 New Harmony
 bourgeois
 Louis Blanc
 In generally, Utopian Socialist called for the elimination
or restriction of private property. Instead, property
should be owned communally or by the state in the
name of the people.
 Henri de Saint-Simon, a French reformer, argued
that industrial development be used for the
improvement of all.
 Consider by many to be the founder of socialism
 The wealthy and educated classes should devote their energies
to activities that would benefit the lower classes.
 The economy ought to be controlled by technocrats
(scientists, engineers, industrialists)
 Large-scale public works projects should be undertaken to
improve the infrastructure and provide jobs.
 Robert Owens, a wealthy British industrialists who
opposed the employment of young children, believed that
workers would be more productive if treated well.
 He created cooperatives, socialistic communities were experiments in
new forms of organization of work and workers’ lives
 Contrary to general practice, he paid high wages, reduced working hours,
provide sanitary working conditions, built decent homes for his employees,
established schools for their children, and allowed the works to share in
management and profits.
 New Lanark in Scotland prospered
 New Harmony, Indiana in the U.S. failed
 I n 1834, Owens tried to create a national union of
workers with the short lived Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union
 Charles Fourier, a French philosopher, also advocated
for the establishment of cooperatives.
 A fierce defender of freedom of choice, he opposed
traditional marriage and established communities
where free love was the norm.
 Many women were enthusiastic followers of Fourier,
who was an early proponent of the total emancipation
of women.
 Louis Blanc, a French Socialists, fought for a new
right, the right to work
 He believed that every person had a right to a job
 Advocated the establishment of workshops and factories
by the government to achieve full employment
 Blanc organized a worker’s party and played a major role
in the French Revolution of 1848.
 Pierre Joseph Proudhon was not a utopian
socialist but an anarchist who rejected the power
of the state but he articulated a profoundly socialist
idea in his 1840 pamphlet What is Property?
 He simply stated , “Property is theft,” meaning that private
wealth is always stolen from the workers who create it.