The origins of socialism

About this book

"Socialism in its conceptual origins is an Anglo-French creation, but its classical formulation was achieved by Marx in Germany. This three-fold movement, involving the principle countries of western Europe, is the theme to which George Lichtheim turns his attention in his new history of early socialism. Beginning with the utopians and egalitarians of revolutionary France, and dealing in turn with the major figures of French socialist and communist thought--Fourier, Proudhon, Saint-Simon, and many minor ones, with the economists and theorists who shaped the socialist movement in England before 1848, and finally, with Germany's "pre-Marxist" thinkers and with Marx himself, the author offers a pioneering analysis of the interrelation between socialist theory and the historical circumstances in which it arose and flourished. Socialism was not, of course, a homogeneous movement, and it is the particular merit of Mr. Lichtheim's discerning and eloquent presentation that it preserves all the richness and complexity of the political history of those tumultuous decades before 1848. In particular, the author throws new light on the distinctive meanings--then and later--of the terms "socialism" and "communism." Mr. Lichtheim offers an analysis of the major theoretical formulation of socialism, but at the same time he sets them in larger philosophical and historical contexts in which they belong. This is intellectual history of the highest order, and a major contribution to the study of European political philosophy." -- Publisher's description