Original scientific paper
Utopian socialism
Ivan Vejvoda
; Institute for European Studies, Beograd
Abstract
Utopian socialism is a response to the social and political situation in the aftermath of the French revolution when the industrial and urban transformation began to radically change the existing modem societies. The utopian socialists, known at the time as social reformers, which they in fact were, reacted to the violence and the abruptness of the previous social and political upheavals by proposing peaceful and gradual transformations of society on the basis of ideas of association, cooperation, universalism and cosmopolitanism. Fourier, Saint-Simon, Owen and their followers criticzed the nascent capitalism, the influence of such institutions as religion, private property, marriage, aiming at the creation of social conditions for the rise of an independent individual. These social theoreticians seeked to implement their ideas in communal ways of life that would in turn influence by their success others to join the movement. They were not as is often said merely »predecessors of socialism«, but free thinkers in their own right whose thought was challenged by the modem age. They seeked responses to the new society that was appearing often conscious of the evils it was bringing as well of its positive contributions. Although 1848. does mark a halt to the breadth of this movement it does nonetheless continue in the 19th century creating later a »new spirit of utopia«
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155116
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1990.
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