What Is Utopian Socialism?

With the word socialism being thrown around like a cheap skank at motorcycle party, I figured why not talk about it here?

Socialist party time!

Like conservatism, socialism is sometimes, I think, misunderstood. I'm less interested on where it fits on the political scale and more interested in its historical evolution.

Socialism basically was a reaction to classical liberalism who, according to socialists, placed too much faith in the individual. The Industrial Revolution in particular, they believed, only confirmed the fallacy of competition "without regard" for each other.

Socialists, at its foundation, don't believe man's natural sate is to be competitive. Instead, humans can achieve its happiest state in the spirit of cooperation.

It's only natural that an ideology would coincide with a political movement and socialism found expression in the Romantic movement - its complicated evolution won't be considered here. The combined forces created something called Utopian Socialism:

"Before the coming of industrial capitalism, the yearning for an egalitarian society could only be a yearning, without any concrete analysis of social reality. Utopian socialism does not refer, therefore, to the vision of a William Morris, who was a scientific socialist, but to largely pre-capitalist visions of a socialist future. Under this heading come the mediaeval communists together with the Anabaptist and other religiously-motivated sects."*

In the process, Utopian socialism challenged the philosophes of the Enlightenment and its adherence to a highly mechanized, rational and efficient human. Socialist thinkers, like the romantics, viewed the Middle Ages as a time when social unity was preserved by the Church thus creating a stable and heroic period.

It would be wrong to dismiss socialism's positive impact on humanity and Western culture - think the concept of egalitarianism. It forced man to consider his or her conscience in matters of industry. Before long, for example, a tradition of compassionate (labor) laws took root.

Three main thinkers represented utopian socialist thought: Henri Comte de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen. I'll offer a quick overview on each.

Fourier sought to re-engineer society in an effort to end human suffering and misery brought on by the industrial age. And how would he do this? By creating small communities numbering around 1600 people called phalansteries. The goal was to allow people to prosper and enjoy life each according to personal needs.

Founder of the "Saint Simonian" movement, Saint Simon, interestingly, believed scientists, bankers, engineers, writers and artists would replace the clergy and aristocracy as the social elite. Kind of a new-age Nouveau Christian-humanism if you will. The only way society would progress was if it was in the hands of creative minds. He believed such people would have the will and the intellect to use technology in a way that would benefit mankind. In other words, he wanted trained experts at the top of the heap. This remains an influential argument and is known as Technocratic socialism - you know it as a bureaucracy. While he did converge with the philosophes on matters of reason and rational thought, he also didn't view society as being divided into classes with competing interests.

Both Fourier and Saint Simon were among the first thinkers in Europe to espouse woman's equality. It's hard to argue neither weren't dirigistes - a nice way of saying state control.

Finally, Owen differed with the Saint Simon and Fourier in that he was an owner and saw first hand at how workers were mistreated. Owen was one of the first men to increase wages, refuse to hire children under ten, improve workers conditions and provided food and shelter to workers. In Owen's mind, it was all just a matter of readjusting values and principles. As a result, people across Europe came to visit his factories.