Sources of Socialist Thought: Genesis of Workers’ Movements in Great Britain and France (1800-1830)

During the first three decades of the nineteenth century, socialist thought and workers’ movements attained an important level of development. This period gave rise to stream of thought that was subsequently called “utopian socialism” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in Great Britain were the most important representatives of the utopian movement. Early socialist thinkers attempted to develop a systematic criticism of the social, economic and political conditions, and they also launched actual projects for overcoming the existing social and economic system, and even tried, in some cases, to apply these projects. However, their socialist thought was not directly related to the workers’ movement. Instead, it was a response to the economic and social problems generated by industrial capitalism. This same period also gave rise to a revolutionary tendency inspired by Jacobinism. Neo-Jacobine and radical politicians and agitators were especially active in the press and in publishing. However, the revolutionary element was mainly absent from socialist thought before the 1830s.