Explaining the origins of socialism: Thought and action in an age of revolution

Abstract

This paper draws some cornpariso~~ between the utopian socialist movements (as they are customarily described) in Britain and France between about 1830 and 1848: a period which witnessed a remarkable growth and dissemination of socialist ideas and the rapid spread of socialist organisation and various forms of collective action, particularly in the decade from 1838 to 1848. The paper focusses on the problem of how we are to explain that general expansion of socialism during this period, giving consideration also to the highly significant dgfferences between the socialist movements in these two countries. There can be little doubt that utopian, pre-Marxian socialism achieved a much greater level of popular mobilisation and commitment in France than in Britain, and this raises the question of whether this distinction was due to any particularly decisive features characteristic of the two countries at this stage of their development: including aspects of economic and technological transformation, dimensions of social structure, cultural identity, and the role of the state and political power relationships. In general, the importance of the political system and the overall culture of politics has tended to be neglected in most previous accounts of the origins of socialism, and there has been a marked tendency to put forward broadly socio-economic interpretations of utopian socia1ism.i While it is certainly the case that economic and social historians, both Marxist and nonMarxist, have added much to our understanding of the significance of the labour process as a context for the emergence of new values and aspirations amongst workers at this time, there is a danger that an emphasis on the economic and social context of ideas will lead to a neglect of the various ways in which new traditions of thinking, and the major movements in which they find expression, are actually moulded by the political alignments and cleavages which divide society, and by processes of political participation and mobilisation. We need to remind ourselves that utopian socialism in Britain and France emerged, flourished and declined in certain specific political contexts, and that the differences between the two national political systems and cultures had much to do with the contrasting positions in which the socialist movements of the two countries found themselves by the middle of the century.