I'll confess that I've long held the view that '
utopian socialism' merely served as a foil for Marx and Engels, and that throughout their writings, especially in such texts as the Manifesto and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, they mostly disparaged and set themselves apart from anything related to the utopian socialists.
The strands of his legacy are a braid of totalitarianism and
Utopian socialism.
From laissez faire to anarchism,
utopian socialism and Fabianism, devotees of Malthus such as H.G.
The dominant New Australia narrative is one surrounding the failing of this experiment in
utopian socialism. (2) Almost immediately upon arrival in Paraguay, the party was riven by internal factionalism which within a few months led to several expulsions, the secession of a third of the original colonists and, finally, the removal of Lane as Chairman of the colony.
Set in Botswana before the end of apartheid, this novel, through a feminist anthropologist's pursuit of a
utopian socialism, asks: What do men and women really want?
Chapter 3, "Castles in the Air: Marx, Engels and
Utopian Socialism," is a methodical and illuminating study of Marx's and Engels's love-hate relationship with
utopian socialism.
On orthodox--and sometimes not-so-orthodox--Marxist accounts,
utopian socialism is merely an effect of "backwardness": A mature proletariat will sooner or later move on from utopian to more supposedly "scientific" socialisms; and its class consciousness will sooner or later become more or less coextensive with the findings of Marxist "science." By the mid-1960s, however, matters were no longer quite so clear, not even for Marxists.
Ironically, given his use of the word "utopian," much of the ideas that Gilk draws upon are in the provenance of what has often been termed "
utopian socialism." His negative appraisal of civilization echoes the work of that wonderful surrealistic social prophet Charles Fourier, whom Gilk does not mention in his book.
Articles averaging a little under a page in length describe such aspects as Brook Farm in 19th-century Massachusetts, Heaven's Gate community founded in 1970 and ended in mass suicide in 1997, William Morris' 1891 romantic utopian novel , and
utopian socialism. A list of known utopian communities is appended.
The theory and praxis of
Utopian Socialism during the first half of the 19th century would not be put to the test in Europe, but rather in the Americas.
Thompson's book on William Morris, that nineteenth-century
utopian socialism lay behind gay experiments in communal living during the early 1970s is a bit of a stretch.
The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky left the abstract liberalism of his earlier
Utopian socialism forever behind him when he returned to Russia in 1859 after years of imprisonment and exile in Siberia.