Early socialism

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Unrealized vision of the New Harmony colony , drawing by F. Bate, printed 1838

As early socialism or utopian socialism early to be socialist theories summarized: utopias of a just ideal state , early forms of communal property and especially socialist movements and theories of modern times , which arose before the 1848th Well-known early socialists were Henri de Saint-Simon , Robert Owen , Charles Fourier , Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Étienne Cabet . The end of the French Revolutionforms the beginning of modern socialism. This is divided into three sections, of which the first section is referred to as early socialism.

term

The term early socialism refers to the fact that the theories and ideas mentioned were published before the revolutions of 1848/1849 , before the first actually socialist associations and above all before the writings of Karl Marx . In addition to the work of Marx and the emergence of social democracy , personalities of the anarchism , especially in southern and eastern Europe, such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Michail Bakunin also played a role in replacing early socialist ideas.

The term utopian socialism is the delimitation by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves, which is also pointed out by modern researchers who adopt the term (sometimes in quotation marks). An example of this is Albert S. Lindemann , who also speaks of the “first socialists”, whom he places around 1800 to 1848. These early or utopian socialists all lived around the same time, namely from 1770 to 1825. Despite all the differences, according to Lindemann, it is worthwhile to group them together. However, these socialist authors were not utopians in the sense of Thomas More , because they believed that their ideally imagined societies could be realized in the near future.

According to Leszek Kołakowski , the concept of human nature is central to the early socialists . In this fundamental sense, all people are equal - with identical rights and duties. For these authors, the main question is why the previous history, with its wars and the exploitation of the natural destiny of man, has been exactly the opposite. In this context, traditional Christian teaching refers to original sin , which the early socialists did not believe, even if they were Christians.

Religion played a central role for the early socialists, at least since Saint-Simon's famous Noveau christianisme (1825). For example, the Saint-Simonists called themselves a "church" and saw themselves as "apostles". Cabet, in turn, coined the dictum "La communauté c'est le christianisme" criticized by Engels. Most of the French socialists under the July Monarchy articulated an explicitly Christian identity, which was usually accompanied by harsh criticism of the established churches. It is therefore not surprising that contemporary studies consistently viewed socialism as part of a religious tradition.

The concept of human nature then leads to the idea of ​​communist despotism . It is unimportant for the early socialists whether the people themselves support the realization of communism . Kołakowski quotes the communist author Jean-Jacques Pillot , according to which one does not ask the inmates of an asylum whether they want to take their bath. Kołakowski responds to this by asking who decides who is a doctor and who is a madman.

The starting point of the early socialists is the misery of the proletariat , which is to be abolished . However, they did not become specifically politically active, said Kołakowski, since purely political changes could not bring about a new economic order. As a historical law, socialism will unconditionally rule the world. They could not reconcile the assumption of historical necessity with the idea of ​​socialism as a project of moral value. For Marx, on the other hand, the starting point was not misery, but “dehumanization”, the alienation of humans from the human-made world. According to Marx, the seed of socialism will be the awareness of this dehumanization.

prehistory

antiquity

Common property, which should be equally accessible to all people and should therefore make social differences superfluous, is already known in some ancient religions, for example among the Persian Mazdakites , Taoism and Judaism . These understand the essential goods as a gift of a god or a universal order to all people and derive demands on a collective to distribute property fairly or to administer it together.

In ancient oriental class societies, a prehistoric age was often invoked in which there was still no division between the haves and the have-nots: this is the ideal of great commonality in Confucianism . In biblical prophecy since about 700 BC The forgotten right of God of the year of the Jubilee ( Lev 25  EU ) becomes part of the end times expectation . In early Christianity , the community of property of the early Jerusalem community became the normative ideal of the coexistence of all Christians, which stimulated many attempts at community of property and social criticism in the history of Christianity . In Greek philosophy , since about 400 BC. BC. Drafts of an ideal state that knows no private property and was projected into prehistoric times or a fictional island world: for example in Plato's state , with Phaleas of Chalkedon or in Iambulos ' utopian solar state.

middle Ages

In the so-called heretic and poverty movements of the Middle Ages, there were various attempts at communities of property and anti-hierarchical church reforms.

Early modern age

Thomas More or More , 1527

The humanism of the sixteenth century - parallel to the peasant uprisings caused by economic misery  - developed ideas of a just social order that was equally supported by all citizens, which in turn drew on the ancient polis and its ideas of democracy .

The Latin educational novel Utopia by the English constitutional lawyer Thomas More from 1516 was particularly momentous. Without the term itself, More represented a kind of communism as a counter-image to European feudal rule: everyone works and owns everything in common, including land as the main means of production at the time . However, it differs from many later socialist ideas through a mediaeval-style patriarchalism and anti-individualism.

Also Tommaso Campanella took in 1602 in his book La città del Sole again to the idea of the sun State back.

Enlightenment and Revolutions

In the 17th and 18th centuries, technical advances in manufacturing and publishing already made it possible to mass-produce products without using any mechanical means of production. This changed the living conditions and interests for ever larger sections of the population enormously.

In the course of the Enlightenment, ideas of an equal and domineering coexistence arose with the idea of human rights . In numerous secret societies and associations - always threatened by the authorities - penniless craftsmen, farmers and intellectuals looked for a forum and supporters for their ideas. They were hardly interested in the scientific collection of empirical data, but developed their ideas from the contradicting experience of disappointed democracy hopes and relative legal advances. But only with the emancipation of the bourgeoisie did these ideas gain political impetus.

Important early socialists

Henri de Saint-Simon , mastermind of Saint-Simonism .

François Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) was probably the first author to strive for socialism as a form of government. To this end, during the French Revolution he founded the conspiratorial Société des égaux (“ Society of Equals ”): This was how early socialism began to organize itself politically. Via Filippo Buonarroti , Babeuf's ideas came to the early socialists Charles Fourier ( Theory of the Four Movements and General Provisions , 1808) and Louis Blanc (1811–1882). The Union of Outlaws, founded in Paris in 1834, was influenced by his ideas and those of Henri de Saint-Simon . The League of the Just split off from him in 1836 , and the tailor Wilhelm Weitling took over its leadership until 1848 . Weitling, an early socialist with Christian convictions, is considered to be the first German theoretician of communism

Robert Owen

Early socialists were also the German-Jewish philosopher Moses Hess (1812–1875), who founded the socialist wing of Zionism , Hermann Kriege and the German journalist Karl Grün (1817–1885). The German economist Karl Rodbertus (1805–1875) is considered to be the founder of state socialism.

In England, Robert Owen was the most important early socialist who had worked his way up from poverty to an entrepreneur at a young age. Especially up to his public avowal of atheism, he was also very popular in the upper classes of society. Owen was, an exception among the early socialists, also practically politically active, for example he influenced the labor protection laws and tried (unsuccessfully) in America with a socialist model settlement. He is considered a representative of cooperative socialism. The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union , founded according to his ideas in 1834, organized all workers, skilled and unskilled, in a General Union . It was fought by entrepreneurs with lockouts and by the government with repression, so that it collapsed after just a year.

anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism became an important element of early socialist ideology and took various forms. Among early socialists, the idea of ​​social parasitism is widespread as a metaphor for the commercial, entrepreneurial, and also scientific and cultural gainful activities carried out by Jews beyond practical work in production. This view was taken over from the physiocracy of the 18th century, when traders and factory owners, mostly Jews, were called parasites in contrast to the supposedly only productive class of farmers. In the 1840s in particular, many early socialists took an anti-Semitic stance. Fourier saw all negative aspects of capitalism personified in Judaism , which he understood not as a religion but as a nation. He therefore advocated reversing the emancipation of the Jews and depriving the Jews of citizenship. His pupil Alphonse Toussenel polemicized in his main work Les Juifs, rois de l'époque: histoire de la féodalité financière , published in 1846, against railway speculation by the Rothschilds and generally against the Jews: This is “a very typical black marketeer , a completely unproductive parasite , the one of the substance and the work of others lives ”. Proudhon called Judaism an inferior race of people , incapable of economic productivity, of metaphysical conceptual formation and of its own statehood. Jews are necessarily always parasites, an "enemy of the human kind", which is why he advised them either to expel them or to destroy them.

Relationship to Marxism

According to Walther Theimer, early or utopian socialism was the strongest of the currents that influenced Marx: this socialism “first gave it direction; otherwise there would only have been one more bourgeois, radical Young Hegelian , ”said Theimer. Marx only got to know this direction in Paris in the 1840s.

The ideas of the early socialists seem to anticipate the most important ideas of Marx, writes Kołakowski. In the area of ​​the analysis of history and capitalism, he lists, among other things:

With regard to the " projecting of the socialist future society", Kołakowski notes that Marx and the early socialists have, among other things, in common:

Marx and Engels , statue by Ludwig Engelhardt , made of bronze in the Marx-Engels-Forum in Berlin

Marx replaced Weitling in the League of the Just in 1848 and, in his own opinion, made a fundamental distinction from all earlier socialist theorists, whose ideas he criticized as not scientifically founded idealism . According to Marx, the early socialists were mostly aristocratic and petty-bourgeois romantics who turned not only against the consequences of industrialization , but also against technical progress itself. Since the manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Friedrich Engels , the early socialist equality and democratization efforts, which also extended to the economy , have been summarized as Utopian Socialism .

The Marxism limited his theory based on the font The Socialism: Utopian and Scientific "as scientific socialism " of all precursors and socialist counter-currents from. He sees utopian socialism as an outgoing bourgeois and belletristic phrase that emerged from left currents of Young Hegelianism and that negates the proletarian class struggle . According to the Marxist view, utopian socialists agree with the goal of a classless communist society of the future, but in their opinion pursue this in an unrealistic and doomed manner, because class antagonism and the question of the conditions for a successful revolution do not play a primary role in their thinking games.

Since an article by Engels on “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent” (1843), religion has been one of the superficial distinguishing features from the French “utopians”. The alleged “mysticism” of the Saint-Simonists and Fourierists is lacking in scientific and rationalism, and thus in practical value. While the followers of Cabet are busy with the establishment of a "Duodec edition of the new Jerusalem", one must call for unification for class struggle. Later researchers such as Gareth Stedman Jones , Frank Paul Bowman and, more recently, Julian Strube have argued that the development of this polemical Marxist narrative led to the lasting obscuration of the actually religious origins of socialist and communist ideas.

According to Marxist criticism, utopias are pure thought constructions that abstract from the historical growth of power relations and in which the political view is decoupled from the social, especially economic foundations. The utopians try to develop a system out of their heads instead of recognizing the revolutionary, subversive side of the misery of contemporary history. Scientific socialism understands the emergence of socialism, in contrast to the utopians, as a necessary process-like and dialectical (contradictory propulsive) development out of the concrete historical situation.

Other theorists did not believe in the inevitability of historical developments towards progress and socialism. Ernst Bloch therefore developed his “ Principle Hope ” from the utopian content of almost all socialist ideas. With the concept of the concrete utopia , he too criticized abstract, unrealistic utopias of early socialism.

See also

Collective works

  • Frits Kool, Werner Krause (ed.): The early socialists . In: Documents of the World Revolution. Volume 1 and Volume 2. dtv, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-423-04102-1 and 3-423-04103-x. First: Walter, Olten 1967; again: Gutenberg Book Guild 1968
  • Thilo Ramm (Ed.): The early socialism. Source texts (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 223). 2nd, expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1968, DNB 456679537 .
  • Michael Vester (ed.): The early socialists 1789–1848 . 2 volumes. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970 a.

Web links

Commons : Utopian Socialism  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thilo Ramm: The early socialism. Source texts. Alfred Körner, Stuttgart 1968, p. XII .
  2. ^ Albert S. Lindemann: A History of European Socialism . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1983, p. 38.
  3. ^ Leszek Kołakowski: The main currents of Marxism. Formation - development - decay . Piper, Munich 1977, pp. 249/250.
  4. ^ Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and Occultism in France in the 19th Century . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 41–95.
  5. ^ Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and Occultism in France in the 19th Century . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 105–115.
  6. ^ Leszek Kołakowski: The main currents of Marxism. Formation - development - decay . Piper, Munich 1977; P. 251.
  7. ^ Leszek Kołakowski: The main currents of Marxism. Formation - development - decay . Piper, Munich 1977, pp. 253/254.
  8. ^ Ferdinand Seibt : Utopica. Future visions from the past . Orbis, Munich 2001, pp. 26-35.
  9. ^ Otto Wittelshöfer:  Weitling, Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, p. 624 f.
  10. ↑ Walther Theimer: The Marxism. Teaching - Effect - Criticism . 8th edition. Francke, Tübingen 1985; Pp. 97-98.
  11. ^ AE Musson: British Trade Unions 1800-1875 . Macmillan, London 1972, p. 32f.
  12. ↑ Edmund Silberner: Socialists on the Jewish question. A contribution to the history of socialism from the beginning of the 19th century to 1914. Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1962, p. 290-291 .
  13. ^ William Brustein, Luisa Roberts: The socialism of fools? Leftist origins of modern anti-Semitism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2015, pp. 32 .
  14. ^ Christian Ebhardt: Politics of Interest and Corruption: Personal Networks and Debates on Corruption Using the Example of the Railway Industry in Great Britain and France (1830-1870). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, p. 123.
  15. ↑ Lisa Moses Leff: Fourier, Charles. In: Richard S. Levy (Ed.): Antisemitism. A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. ABC-Clio, Berkeley 2005, Vol. 1, p. 238; Annette Schaefgen: Fourier, Charles. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 243 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  16. ↑ "ce nom méprisé de juif, tout trafiquant d'espèces, tout parasite improductif, vivant de la substance et du travail d'autrui." Christian Ebhardt: Interest politics and corruption. Personal networks and corruption debates using the example of the railway industry in Great Britain and France (1830–1870). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, p. 123.
  17. ↑ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: Carnets, December 26, 1847 (Notebooks, December 26, 1847), quoted from Dominique Trimbur: Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , pp. 657 f. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  18. ↑ Walther Theimer: The Marxism. Teaching - Effect - Criticism . 8th edition. Francke, Tübingen 1985, p. 96.
  19. ^ Leszek Kołakowski: The main currents of Marxism. Formation - development - decay . Piper, Munich 1977, pp. 252-253.
  20. ↑ See Marx / Engels: Die deutsche Ideologie , 1845/46
  21. ^ Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and Occultism in France in the 19th Century . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 48–53.
  22. ^ Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and Occultism in France in the 19th Century . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 41–95; See Gareth Stedman Jones, “Utopian Socialism Reconsidered.” In: Raphael Samuel (ed.): People's History and Socialist Theory . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London et al. 1981, pp. 138-145 and Frank Paul Bowman: Le Christ des barricades . Editions du Cerf, Paris 1987.
  23. ↑ Engels: The development of socialism from utopia to science . Paris 1880
  24. ↑ Spirit of Utopia , 1918/1923. Freedom and order. Outline of the social utopias , 1946. The principle of hope , 1955.