Utopian socialism (English: utopian socialism) is one of the sources of modern socialist thought, the accurate translation is "utopian socialism", popular in Western Europe in the early 19th century, famous representatives are Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier, advocating the establishment of an ideal society without the drawbacks of capitalism. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Utopian socialism" is also transliterated as "utopian socialism". The word "utopia" is derived from the Greek word "utopia", which means "no, toponic" means "place", which means "place that does not exist", that is, utopia.

In 1516, one of the earliest works of utopian socialist literature written by Moore in England was named after "utopia", depicting an ideal society to which the people of the overseas fox island aspired to in fact non-existent. In 1839, the French economist Gerlom Blanqui first associated the word "utopia" with "socialism" in his "Political Economy" to refer to the utopian socialist school in general. Early works of utopian socialist literature, such as Campanella's "Cité Soleil" by Campanella, a contemporary of Moore, are famous. Strictly speaking, this literary work is not yet a socialist doctrine, and their depiction of the new social picture is extremely primitive.

As a theoretical theory, utopian socialism arose in the era of the bourgeois revolution and reflected the demands of the masses of the people for political equality, social equality, and especially property equality at that time. From Winstanley's "Liberty Law" in the 17th century English Revolutionary Era, to Layley's "Liberty Law" in France in the 18th century, to Morelli's "Code of Nature" and Marbury's "On the Legal System and the Principles of Law" in the 18th century, they began to theoretically discuss and demonstrate the elimination of private ownership of the means of production and the establishment of an equal society without exploitation and oppression.

The early 19th century was the pinnacle of the development of utopian socialism. Saint-Simon and Fourier in France and Owen in England were prominent representatives of utopian socialism in this period. The utopian socialists of this period raised the theoretical level of utopian socialism to a height that the previous utopian socialists had not reached and could not reach under the new historical conditions. The great utopian socialists Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen got rid of egalitarianism and asceticism, demonstrated the temporary nature of the capitalist system, saw that the new social productive forces were the basis for transforming the social system, and put forward many views on the fact that the future society must be built on the basis of large-scale industrial production by machines.

Saint-Simon

Born into an aristocratic family in France in 1760, he was deeply influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment in his early years, and later turned to utopian socialism due to the deterioration of his living conditions. Saint-Simon believed that the French bourgeois revolution was not only a struggle between the bourgeoisie and the feudal lords, but also a struggle between the poor masses and the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie. In his writings, Saint-Simon offers a sharp critique of capitalism. His vision of an ideal society of the future is a utopian project. However, as an important ideology, his doctrine had an important impact on the formation of Marxism.

Saint-Simon's thoughts belonged to the toiling masses, and when he died, he cried out feverishly: "The future tense belongs to us." "In Saint-Simon's thought there is the embryo of a historical materialist point of view and a love for the broad masses of working people. However, in its thinking, the so-called "laborers" included not only wage workers, but also factory owners, merchants, and bankers. He believed that working people were incapable of political rule. On the contrary, those businessmen, bankers, etc., should be "the agents of the whole society".

In the Geneva Epistle, Saint-Simon had already made the argument that "everyone should work".

In the same work he has already pointed out that the reign of terror is the rule of the propertyless masses. "Look," he said, "what happened to France when your partners ruled it? They caused a famine! ”

Saint-Simon's recognition of the French Revolution as a class struggle between the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the dispossessed was a genius discovery in 1802. In 1816, Saint-Simon declared that politics was the science of production and predicted that politics would be completely dissolved into the economy. Although the realization that the economic situation is the basis of the political system is only embryonic here, it is clearly expressed that the political domination of man should be transformed into the management of things and the leadership of the production process, that is, the idea of abolishing the state.

Equally clever than his contemporaries was the fact that, just after the Allied forces marched into Paris in 1814 and then during the Hundred Days War in 1815, he declared that the alliance between France and Great Britain, and secondly between the two countries and Germany, was the only guarantee of prosperity and peace in Europe.

Saint-Simon had a genius vision, and almost all the economic ideas of later socialists were influenced by Saint-Simon, which was not strictly understood.

Fourier

Born in April 1772 in France to a wealthy merchant family, he was diligent and studious since childhood, and was good at thinking about problems. In his doctrine, he ruthlessly exposed all kinds of evils of capitalist society and established his own utopian socialist ideological system. Fourier made some attempts for his own beautiful ideas. Although all his ideas failed, Fourier's genius vision of the future society provided valuable ideological material for the birth of scientific socialism.

Almost every page of Fourier's work radiates sparks of satire and criticism of the poverty caused by a much-praised civilization. Fourier seized on what the bourgeoisie was saying, grasping for what their fanatical prophets before the revolution and the bought flatterers after the revolution. He ruthlessly exposed the material and moral poverty of the bourgeois world, contrasting it not only with the seductive promises of the Enlightenment scholars about a society ruled by reason alone, of a civilization capable of giving happiness to all, of the infinite perfection of man, but also with the flowery words of the bourgeois thinkers of the time; He pointed out that the loudest phrases corresponded to the most pitiful realities, and he poignantly mocked the irretrievable bankruptcy of such phrases.

Fourier was not only a critic, his eternally cheerful personality made him a satirist, and one of the greatest satirists of all time. He depicted in a skilful and witty tone the speculative fraud that prevailed with the decline of the Revolution and the petty peddler habits that prevailed in French commerce at the time.

Fourier skillfully criticized the bourgeois form of gender relations and the place of women in bourgeois society. He was the first to express the idea that in any society, the degree of women's emancipation is the natural measure of general emancipation.

Fourier's greatest feature is in his views on social history. He divides the entire history of society up to now into four stages of development: obscurantism, patriarchy, barbarism, and civilization. The last stage corresponds to what is now called bourgeois society, as he noted:

"This system of civilization makes every evil committed in a simple way in the barbaric age take the form of a complex, ambiguous, two-faced, hypocritical existence";

The age of civilization is in motion in a "vicious circle", in contradictions that it constantly recreates and cannot overcome, so that it always achieves the opposite of what it hopes to achieve or pretends to achieve. So, for example, "in civilized times, poverty was produced by surplus itself. ”

In Fourier's later literary works, it was repeatedly mentioned that the establishment of the "**** system" was the perfect mode of operation of human social organization in his mind.

"****" - is a small commune, that is, 2,000 people live together again on a certain area of land. Living together here is for the economic benefit of mass production, consumption. Members work together, enjoy together, and unconditionally guarantee their minimum living standards with the products of production. The remainder is distributed to labor, capital, and intelligence (management, command) in the proportion of five-twelve, four-twelve, and three-twelve. so that they "do what they can, and each according to his labor, capital, and talent to take what he needs." "****" is promoted from one place to all over the world, and then develops to the whole world, so that human society has also entered the "city of great harmony". But Fourier wanted to put the "****" commune into practice, but there was no way to find the land and production equipment he envisioned. So he turned to the capitalists for help, hoping to get their patronage. For the last decade of his life, he waited every day at home for the "coming" of the capitalists. However, a whole decade did not wait for the arrival of the capitalists.

Finally, a capitalist began his idealistic actions.

Robert Owen

A prominent utopian socialist in England, he was born in Wales in May 1771 into a family of craftsmen. Due to his poor family, Owen began to fend for himself at the age of 9. Through hard self-study, Owen finally became a very knowledgeable man. Subsequently, he accumulated a lot of capital through personal struggle, several business battles, and at the same time had a lot of political status, and he was also a member of the House of Commons of the British Parliament. There is no doubt that at the time the socialist regarded him as a well-known and wealthy generation.

The butt determines the brain, and Owen, who has no worries about food and clothing, sat in that seat and began to think about high-level problems......

Steam and the new machine tools transformed the workshop handicraft into a modern big industry, and thus revolutionized the entire basis of bourgeois society. The sluggish development of the factory handicraft era was transformed into a real period of frenzy in production. Between the increasingly rapid division of society into the big capitalists and the dispossessed proletarians, it is no longer the stable middle class that it used to be, but the precarious masses of artisans and small merchants, who lead a turbulent life and are the most mobile part of the population. The capitalist mode of production is still in the early stages of its upward phase, but it has already produced obvious social ills: homeless people are crammed into the slums of large cities; All traditional kinship, patriarchal affiliation, and family ties have dissolved; Working hours, especially for women and children, are prolonged to a terrible extent; The working class, which had suddenly been thrown into entirely new circumstances, degenerated en masse.

Eventually, Owen, a councillor of conscience, turned to utopian socialist ideas and became a prominent utopian socialist thinker, not only criticizing the capitalist system ideologically, but also actively practicing his ideals in action. The "New Harmony" commune he established in Indiana, USA, was a practical attempt by him. The commune covers an area of more than 1,200 hectares, and its members live in collective buildings, both as workers and farmers.

Robert Owen embraced the materialist Enlightenment doctrine that the human personality is the product of both innate organization and the environment in which the person finds himself during his or her life, especially during the period of development. Most people of the same social status as Owen agreed that the Industrial Revolution was just a mess of fishing in troubled waters and making a fortune. Owen, on the other hand, saw the Industrial Revolution as an opportunity to apply his beloved theories and turn chaos into order. He tried this theory when he was leading a factory with more than 500 workers in Manchester, and it worked. From 1800 to 1829 he managed the new Lanark Cotton Mill in Scotland in the same spirit, as shareholder and manager, only with greater freedom of movement and with the results that made him famous throughout Europe.

The population of New Lanark gradually increased to 2,500 people, who had been extremely complex and mostly degenerate, but Owen turned the place into a well-established model settlement where alcoholism, police, criminal courts, lawsuits, poverty relief, and philanthropy were all extinct. And he was able to do this only because he had made people live in a more dignified environment, especially for the growing generation to be well educated. He invented and founded a kindergarten here for the first time. Children enter kindergarten when they turn one year old; They lived there so happily that their parents could barely take it back. Owen's competitors forced workers to work 13 to 14 hours a day, while workers in New Lanark worked only 10 and a half hours. When the crisis in the cotton textile industry forced factories to shut down for four months, the workers who had stopped working continued to receive their full wages. Despite this, the value of the business has more than doubled, and it has been profitable for business owners until the end.

Owen wasn't satisfied with all this. The living conditions he created for his workers were far from being in his eyes worthy of human dignity; He said, "These people are my slaves."

The relatively good environment he arranged for them was far from sufficient for the comprehensive and rational development of human character and intelligence, let alone allowing them to carry out free life activities. "But the actual wealth that those who work for the society of these 2,500 people would have needed 600,000 less than half a century ago. I asked myself: Where is the difference between the wealth consumed by these 2,500 people and the wealth that 600,000 people should have consumed before? ”

The answer is yes. The difference goes to the owners of the business, who receive more than £300,000 (6 million marks) in profit in addition to the 5% interest on the basic investment. This is true for New Lanark, not to mention all the other factories in the UK.

"Without these new wealth, created by machines, the war to overthrow Napoleon and maintain the social principles of the aristocracy could not be waged. And this new power was created by the working class. Therefore, the fruit should also belong to the working class. In Owen's view, the new and powerful productive forces, which had previously enriched only a few and enslaved the masses, provided the basis for the transformation of society, and that it ought to serve only the common welfare of all as the common property of all.

Owen's communism arose through this purely business approach, as the fruit of so-called commercial calculations. It has always maintained this practical-oriented nature. In 1823, Owen proposed a solution to the elimination of poverty in Ireland through the communist settlements, with detailed calculations of the cost of its establishment, annual expenditures, and projected income. And in his final plan for the future, he has made a very expert plan for various technical details.

Irving's most important works are The Institution of Marriage in the New Moral World, The New Moral World Book, and Revolution in the Human Mind and Practice, which expresses communism most explicitly, not only in favor of equal labor obligations and equal access to products, but also in the elaborate design of houses with floor plans, frontal views, and bird's-eye views for the future communist commune.

Owen not only promoted "unequivocal communism", but also practiced communism for 5 years (late '30s and early '40s) in the immigrant district of Hampshire's "Harmony Building", where communism was nothing to fault with in terms of its explicitness.

The shift to communism was a turning point in Owen's life. When he was just a philanthropist, all he received was wealth, praise, respect, and honor. He is the most famous figure in Europe. Not only people with the same social status as him, but also dignitaries and princes nodded to listen to his speech. However, when he put forward his communist theory, the situation changed completely. In his view, there are three major obstacles to social reform in the first place: private ownership, religion and, now, the form of marriage. He knew what awaited him as he attacked these obstacles: the general exclusion of officialdom society, the loss of his entire social status. However, he did not determine, he desperately attacked these obstacles, and what he expected happened.

He was expelled from officialdom, the press imposed a silent boycott of him, and as a result of the failed communist experiments in the "Harmony Building", he became destitute, so he turned directly to the working class, where he continued his activities for another 30 years. All the social movements in England in favour of the workers, all the practical progress, were associated with Owen's name.

For example, after five years of his efforts, the first law restricting the labor of women and children in factories was passed in 1819. He presided over the first congress of the British trade unions, at which the trade unions of the country united into a general union. At the same time, as a measure of the transition to a fully communist social system, on the one hand he organized cooperatives (consumer cooperatives and production cooperatives); On the other hand, he organized the labor market, that is, the institutions that exchanged the product of labor with the help of labor vouchers in labor hours.

In 1824, Owen sold all his possessions, took his four sons, a group of friends, and more than 100 like-minded people from England to sail across the Atlantic to the United States.

When he arrived in Indiana, he immediately went to find the best place for him to build a new society. As a result, he bought 30,000 acres of land for $200,000. As a result, a completely new type of "paradise" - the "New Harmony Commune" began to be built brick by brick.

The village is located in a hilly and turbulent area with clear water. Outside the village, on the hills and valleys, vineyards are lined with purple bunches of grapes hanging under leafy shelves, dotting the village and town with extraordinary beauty. In the distance, on the green meadows that connect to the sky, shepherds wear wide-brimmed straw hats and walk leisurely along with the snow-white flock. In the orchard behind the village, apple trees, peach trees, and plum trees are arranged in rows, like the emerald barrier of the village. Walking towards the village, I saw that the streets were lined with aspen and mulberry trees, as well as beautiful golden rain trees. Further in, there is a factory not far away, with a flour mill, a shoe and hat factory, a brewery, a linen factory, and a winery and a dyeing mill. In the centre of the village, you can see new and neat dwellings and various public buildings, as well as meeting halls, reading rooms, schools, hospitals, reception rooms, and occasionally log huts used as temporary housing. These houses are surrounded by small gardens. The breeze blows, and the fragrance of flowers and plants wafts everywhere in the village.

Isn't this a "paradise"? Yes, it is indeed an ideal "paradise". However, it did exist in this world for 4 years. It is located on the banks of the Wabash River in southern Indiana, USA, under the name "New Harmony Commune" (or "New Harmony Village").

This is in stark contrast to the bloody society under the rotten rule of capitalism.

Owen led all the members of the Commune to work together and share the fruits of their labor, and they stipulated that all members of the Commune should perform all kinds of useful labor according to their age. Children between the ages of 5 and 7 are all enrolled in school unconditionally, and the sound of reading gives all members a sense of relief and pride, as if they see the hope for the future of the "New Harmony Commune" and the future of all mankind. Children between 8 and 10 years old. In addition to studying, they also participated in various useful activities and necessary tasks of the commune, such as pruning the garden and doing household chores, so that they could acquire knowledge that could not be learned in textbooks. Teenagers over the age of 12 must learn certain manual skills in factories and workshops in addition to knowledge, so that they can prepare for the job in the future.

Young people between the ages of 20 and 25 were the main force in the construction of the commune, and depending on the division of labor, some worked in factories, some participated in agricultural work in the fields, or participated in a certain amount of mental work. The future development of the Commune depends on the main force of this age group. Between the ages of 25 and 30, they were required to participate in production for only two hours a day, while the rest of the time was devoted to the work of defending the commune and participating in the distribution of products, while some were engaged in intellectual work such as scientific research and artistic work.

People between the ages of 30 and 40 are responsible for managing, organizing, and leading the production of various departments. People between the ages of 40 and 60 preside over foreign exchanges. Reception of guests, exchange of products, etc. The elderly over the age of 60 form a collective of the elderly, which is responsible for defending the Constitution, safeguarding the dignity of the Constitution, and supervising the implementation of the Constitution.

In this way, all members of the "New Harmony Commune" perform their duties and do their best to live in harmony.

The establishment of the "New Harmony Commune" attracted the attention of the whole world, and people from all over the world rushed to it. I want to see how this commune is "harmonious", especially the laborers in the situation of oppression and exploitation, with surprise, envy, and hope, like a tide. They also wanted to have their place in this commune.

Even famous scientists of the time, such as William McClure, president of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, and Josiah Warren, an economist and naturalist, came to enthusiastically participate in the construction of the Harmony Commune.

The establishment of the "New Harmony Commune" was so attractive that in addition to the praise of those who favored it, even the opponents also sighed in unison.

However, the "New Harmony Commune" is not isolated from the world. It is surrounded by capitalism as a whole. In addition, the people who came to join the commune were diverse, with various goals and ideas, so it was not long before various conflicts arose among the members, and they became not as "harmonious" as expected.

What's more, the construction theory of its chief designer, Owen, also has a fatal weakness, according to Owen's theory, the purpose of the activities of the members of the commune is sufficient as long as it meets the needs of the members of the commune, so it leads to the lack of finished products of the commune, less production, and more consumption, resulting in contradictions. Because of the different levels of consciousness of the members, the number of intellectual workers increased day by day, and the number of manual workers decreased day by day, so that there was a shortage of skilled and general workers, factories and workshops were often shut down, and even the most advanced machines of the time had to be idle, such as a dyeing mill in the Commune that could compete with the most complete dyeing mill in the United States at that time, but there was no work to be done, a textile mill capable of producing 400 pounds of cotton yarn per day, and a flour mill capable of producing 60 barrels of flour per day, all had to be shut down from time to time. There is also a 3,600-acre wheat field with a meager income due to a lack of sufficient labor to cultivate it. As a result of this situation, Owen himself no longer had money to subsidize the daily losses of the commune. Four years later, the "New Harmony Commune" finally declared bankruptcy.

In the beginning, the production and living arrangements of the commune of this new system were in good order, but later due to differences of opinion in management, the dissolution of the "new harmony" was caused. In Britain and the United States, Owen also founded several communes, but they also disintegrated.

Owen was a wealthy factory owner, but he was also an unusual factory owner, Engels said, and he appeared as a "reformer" ......, a man of childlike purity and noble character, and at times a natural leader rarely seen in the world.

In Owen's factory, he was the first person in Britain to reduce the working hours of workers from 14 hours a day to 10 and a half hours, and he also built workers' houses, established workers' kindergartens, organized publicly-funded health care, implemented vocational education, and provided cheap food in his factory.

Owen and Fourier both had a common plan, he spent 30,000 pounds of his own to buy a piece of land in North American India, to conduct experiments, named "New Harmony", but after three years of hard work, Owen finally failed. Owen did not blame this failure on the basis of any error in its principles and methods, but on the lack of funds that led to the failure of the plan.

Owen was a utopian socialist who not only enthusiastically propagated his ideas, but also actively put them into practice. But each of his efforts ended in failure.

Robert Owen died in November 1858.

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All experiments on this mode of social functioning have failed. The theory of immaturity is compatible with the immature state of capitalist production and the immature class condition. The solution to social problems is still hidden in underdeveloped economic relations, so it can only be generated from the mind. All that society manifests itself is its ills, and the elimination of these ills is the task of thinking reason.

All these utopian socialists have one basic characteristic in common. They focused their attention on the principles and clear ways of operating in the model societies they designed. However, the question of how these model societies would replace existing societies has never been seriously considered. They have vague expectations of getting help from wealthy or powerful patrons. Saint-Simon, for example, tried to enlist the support of the Pope and Louis XVIII. Fourier sat in his room every day at noon, waiting for 12 years to be answered to his newspaper plea for support. That is, none of the utopian socialists were revolutionaries. Although they have a programme for social change, they do not expect or intend to bring about it through the uprising of the proletarians. They certainly do not think from the point of view of revolution or class struggle. In fact, they barely think about how their elaborate blueprint can be put into practice. It is for this reason that they are called utopian socialists. Moreover, none of them appeared as representatives of the interests of the proletariat, which had already arisen historically at that time. Like the Enlightenment scholars, they did not want to emancipate one class, but to emancipate all of humanity. Like the Enlightenment scholars, they wanted to establish the kingdom of reason and eternal justice; But there is a world of difference between their kingdom and the kingdom of the Enlightenment scholars. The bourgeois world, built on the principles of these Enlightenment scholars, is also irrational and unjust, and therefore should be thrown into the garbage heap like feudalism and all earlier social systems. Practical reason and justice have not yet ruled the world, and this is only because they are not correctly recognized. What is missing is only a few geniuses who are now present and have come to know the truth; As for the emergence of geniuses in the present, and the fact that the truth is recognized in the present, this is not an inevitable and inevitable thing that arises from the course of historical development, but is purely a fluke and accidental phenomenon. It is also possible that such a genius was born 500 years ago, so that he could save humanity from 500 years of error, struggle and suffering. It is therefore necessary to invent a new and better social system and to impose it on society from the outside through propaganda and, possibly, through exemplary demonstrations. This new social system was doomed from the outset to be utopian, and the more elaborate it was formulated, the more it would fall into pure fantasy.

This insight was essentially that of all the socialists in England and France, as well as of the first German socialists, including Weitling. For all these people, socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and if it is discovered, it can conquer the world with its own power; Because absolute truth does not depend on time, space, or the historical development of mankind, it is purely a matter of chance when and where it is discovered. At the same time, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different from the founders of each school; And since, in the founders of each school, the distinctive forms of absolute truth, reason, and justice are determined by their subjective intellect, their conditions of life, their level of knowledge, and their level of mental training, the only way to resolve this conflict of absolute truths is that they wear each other out. From this can only be derived an eclectic and nondescript socialism which in fact dominates the minds of the majority of socialist workers in France and England to this day, and which is an extremely complex mixture of the milder critical statements of the founders of the various schools, of the principles of economics and of ideas about the society of the future, the more easily the constituent parts of this mixture, the more easily they are constituted the more the sharp edges and corners of the torrent of debate are polished. In order for socialism to become a science, it must first be placed on the basis of reality. They had to conceive from their minds the elements of the new society, which had not yet been generally evident in the old society itself; They could only turn to reason to conceive the essential features of their new building, because they could not yet turn to the history of their contemporaries. However, the complexity and laziness of human nature have repeatedly destroyed the rationality of this idealistic assumption.

More than once in the long history of mankind, thinkers have advocated the abolition of private property, the abolition of class differences, the common labor, the equal distribution of products, and the establishment of social equality. Some of their representatives even advocated the establishment of the so-called new human world they imagined through violent revolution, and even put forward and demonstrated some details of the transition period between the old and new worlds. But in the end, they all failed. The reason is simple, human nature. They have never been able to get rid of their fantasies on the most basic issues of human nature. The lack of full awareness of the nature and complexity of human nature makes these people's ideal society fundamentally flawed from the beginning, and their ideal society will ultimately not be realized in the long term, and even if it is achieved, it will not be able to function for a long time.

The "ideal country" of utopian socialists can only be a "utopia".