The last half of the eighteenth century was a period of awakening for the masses of western Europe; revolution thundered in Paris and reverberated throughout all Europe. Thrones tottered and fell; others rose to take their places. Republics were created by the revolutions overnight to live and thrive only during the predominance of the French Revolution, and then fade into the kingdoms from whence they had emerged. Peoples were led to believe that the day of Utopia had arrived and they turned upon their masters and oppressors to destroy them, and then, in return, were led to the battlefields and slaughtered for the whimsical desire for glory of the man who rode the waves of emotional fanaticism to power. Out of the mad chaos created by such desires and emotions a new system of economic hope was created. French dreamers and intellectuals had seen, in a short time of twenty-five years, the ultimate hopes of a nation rise to exalted heights in a sort of religious fanaticism and then plunge to depths of despair. A culture or civilization in which such a catastrophe as that could happen, so the philosophers thought, must be faulty beyond repair. Some of these philosophers surrendered to discouragement and pessimism while others sought to rebuild and reconstruct the crumbling ruins of the past. Claude-Henri Saint Simon, Louis Blanc, FranÇois Fourier, Pierre Proudhon, Karl Marx, Robert Owen, Charles Kingsley, Saint Jean-Baptiste La Salle, Frederic Engels, and Johann Rodbertus were some of the most prominent socialists and thinkers who attempted to find a solution to the economic ills of Europe and to guarantee an equitable distribution of wealth to the masses of the people.[1]

This new system became known as socialism and was a middle class movement which developed out of the shattered eighteenth century era. Side by side with socialism developed communism, a doctrine developed out of the working class needs which, it was thought by some, neither socialism nor capitalism could satisfy. Socialism, as maintained by nineteenth century philosophers, stemmed not only from the old totalitarian doctrine of the Greek city-state but from the old concept of a universal pattern of cultural religion and economics of the medieval period. The philosophers were only substituting economics for medieval religion in the new social theory. The spirit of co-operative good, of theoretical equality and ultimate perfection of society are common to both Utopian socialism and religion. The socialists visualized a world of productivity sufficient to abolish poverty and furnish abundance to those who worked. The problem, as they understood it, was to prevent the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of a few individuals by which those who possess wealth deprive the masses of equitable distribution of goods. This concentration could be prevented, so thought the socialist, if production and distribution could remain in control of the people who produced the materials. The socialist dreamed of an economy in which there would be a social development along with the economic but in which all inequality and special privilege would be eliminated from both political and economic life. One writer has defined socialism as:

A socialized industry is one in which the material instruments of production are owned by a public authority or voluntary association and operated, not with a view to profit by sale to other people, but for the direct service of those whom the authority or association represents. A socialized system is one the main part of whose productive resources are engaged in socialized industries.[2]

Over against the socialist theory was the pragmatic theory of capitalism already operating in many parts of Europe and America. The same writer defines capitalism as:

A capitalist industry is one in which the material instruments of production are owned or hired by private persons and are operated at their orders with a view to selling at a profit the goods or services that they help to produce. A capitalist economy, or capitalist system, is one the main part of whose productive resources is engaged in capitalist industries.[3]

Out of the socialist movement there developed three different types: first, socialism as represented by the Utopian idealism which is apparently impractical but which doesn’t encourage hostility between classes, groups or individuals; second, Marxian socialism which theoretically conceives of a classless society and which recognizes a ceaseless war between the so-called privileged and the underprivileged; and third, liberal socialism which involves the gradual socialization of all means of production and distribution by permitting it to remain definitely in the hands of the producer and consumer through governmental agencies or co-operating groups.[4] This latter type of socialism is the kind that many governments of the world are adopting today by the procedure of the established political parties in those states acquiring what appears to them as the practical socialist doctrines as new platforms and policies. These conceptions of socialism are tenets of early socialism and not of the many varieties operating under the name at the present time.

It is Utopian socialism rather than Marxian which developed into a strong movement in Europe during the nineteenth century but failed to materialize as a successful movement. This failure to gain immediate success was accepted by the leaders of socialism as a weakness of society instead of lack of merit in socialism, and the failure was explained as due to the inherent conditions of a traditionally bound European culture. Therefore, success, so the leaders thought, required only the transfer of their efforts to new lands where traditions had not yet been so thoroughly established. America was one of these new lands where Utopias could be built in the vast spaces beyond the frontiers. And so these dreamers turned their eyes toward the United States as a place where doctrines could be established and success could be achieved. However, neither here nor in Europe has the Utopian dream approached realization.

Robert Owen was one of the Utopian socialists who crossed the Atlantic to the United States seeking to escape the inheritance of European culture so that he could develop his socialism in a new world. Owen was the son of a saddler, well-educated, religious, and thoroughly trained in business. He organized New Harmony in the United States, an undertaking which cost him three to five years of his life and four-fifths of his fortune. Another settlement similar to New Harmony, located near Glasgow, Scotland, was attempted by him but also failed. Perhaps due to his eminent success in business in the British Isles, Owen was received by American leaders with more public acclaim than any other socialist. However, due to rash unorthodox religious statements and his temporary denouncement of marriage, he soon became unpopular in the United States as well as in the British Isles.

Owen was absolutely opposed to violence of any kind and was extremely favorable to recognition of the value of capital. He withdrew from the labor movement after the leaders had violated his doctrine expressed in his Address to the Workman, namely, that all workers must renounce hatred and violence directed against the capitalist or ruling class.[5]

While Owen failed to establish a Utopia in Europe or America, he did have great influence as stated by one writer:

And yet, despite his errors in judgment and the failure of many of his plans, the great-hearted and lovable cotton manufacturer and communist did exert a profound influence on the social thinking of the world. His indictment of the present order of society for its waste, its injustices, its tragedy of unemployment; his emphasis on social happiness as the ideal of human progress; his insistence that character was profoundly influenced by social environment; his urgent plea that all co-operate for the common welfare in the production and distribution of wealth, all these left their imprint on future generations. And his life of untiring devotion and sacrifice proved one of the great sources of inspiration to those who followed later in the socialist, co-operative, and trade union movements, as well as those who worked in behalf of child training, of labor legislation, of prison reform, and of similar causes.[6]