Marxist and Socialism

Socialism
1.How Socialism Emerged
2.Utopian Socialism
3.Influence of Karl Marx
4.Socialism in Britain
5.Sources
Socialism describes any political or economic theory that says the
community, rather than individuals, should own and manage
property and natural resources.

The term “socialism” has been applied to very different economic and
political systems throughout history, including utopianism, anarchism,
Soviet communism and social democracy. These systems vary widely
in structure, but they share an opposition to an unrestricted market
economy, and the belief that public ownership of the means of
production (and making money) will lead to better distribution of
wealth and a more egalitarian society.

How Socialism Emerged

The intellectual roots of socialism go back at least as far as ancient
Greek times, when the philosopher Plato depicted a type of
collective society in his dialog, Republic (360 B.C.). In 16th-century
England, Thomas More drew on Platonic ideals for his Utopia, an
imaginary island where money has been abolished and people live
and work communally.
In the late 18th century, the invention of the steam engine powered
the Industrial Revolution, which brought sweeping economic and
social change first to Great Britain, then to the rest of the world.
Factory owners became wealthy, while many workers lived in
increasing poverty, labouring for long hours under difficult and
sometimes dangerous conditions.
Socialism emerged as a response to the expanding capitalist
system. It presented an alternative, aimed at improving the lot of
the working class and creating a more egalitarian society. In its
emphasis on two things-
1.public ownership of the means of production,
 2.socialism contrasted sharply with capitalism, which is based
around a fre market system and private ownership.
Utopian Socialism
Sketch of a city plan for a new community in Indiana, based on the
principles advocated by Robert Owen, a socialist philanthropist.
The city was designed to give "greater physical, moral, and
intellectual advantages to every individual." 
Early socialists like Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and
Charles Fourier offered up their own models for social organization
based on cooperation rather than competition. 
While Saint-Simon argued for a system where the state controls
production and distribution for the benefit of all society’s
members, both Fourier and Owen (in France and Britain,
respectively) proposed systems based on small collective
communities, not a centralized state.
Owen, who had owned and operated textile mills in Lanark,
Scotland, headed to the United States in 1825 to launch an
experimental community in New Harmony, Indiana. His planned
commune was based on the principles of self-sufficiency, cooperation
and public ownership of property. The experiment soon failed, and
Owen lost much of his fortune. More than 40 small cooperative
agricultural communities inspired by Fourier’s theories, were founded
across the United States. One of these, based in Red Bank, New
Jersey, lasted into the 1930s.
Influence of Karl Marx
It was Karl Marx, undoubtedly the most influential theorist of
socialism, who called Owen, Fourier and other earlier socialist
thinkers “utopians,” and dismissed their visions as dreamy and
unrealistic.
 For Marx, society was made up of classes: When certain classes
controlled the means of production, they used that power to exploit
the labour class.
In their 1848 work The Communist Manifesto, Marx and his
collaborator, Friedrich Engels, argued that true “scientific
socialism” could be established only after a revolutionary class
struggle, with the workers emerging on top.
Karl Marx (1818-1883).
Though Marx died in 1883, his influence on socialist thought only
grew after his death. His ideas were taken up and expanded upon by
various political parties (such as the German Social Democratic Party)
and leaders like Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.
Marx’s emphasis on the revolutionary clash between capital and
labour came to dominate most socialist thought, but other brands of
socialism continued to develop. Christian socialism, or collective
societies formed around Christian religious principles. Anarchism saw
not just capitalism but government as harmful and unnecessary.
Social democracy held that socialist aims could be achieved through
gradual political reform rather than revolution.
Origins of British socialism
British socialism emerged in the time when Victorian
society began to overcome the principles of classical
economics, the laissez-faire system, and was immersed in
faith crisis. Traditional British liberalism and radicalism played
a far more important role in shaping socialism in Victorian
Britain than the works of Karl Marx. Although Marxism had
some impact in Britain, it was far less significant than in many
other European countries, with thinkers such as David
Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and John Ruskin having much
greater influence. Non-Marxist historians speculate that this
was because Britain was amongst the most democratic
countries of Europe of the period, where the ballot box
provided an instrument for change, so parliamentary reforms
seemed a more promising route than revolutionary
socialism advocated by Marx. As Sir Ivor Jeggins put it,
“British socialism has always been as much British as socialist.”
(429)
Socialist ideas became the natural outcome of modern
industrial conditions, and their origins can be sought in the
beginnings of modern industry. In England socialist ideas were
shaped as the by-product of the Industrial Revolution. The word
'socialism' was first used in the English language in 1827 in
the working-class publication, the Co-operative Magazine, and
it meant co-operation as opposed to competition. (Garner et al.
115) In the 1830s, the word socialism was used
interchangeably with the word Owenism, and Robert Owen
(1771-1858) became the central figure of British socialism in
the first half of the 19th century.
The rise of working-class radicalism
The first political movement of the working-class was launched
by the London Corresponding Society, founded in 1792, by
Thomas Hardy (1752-1832), a shoemaker and metropolitan
Radical. The Society, consisting mostly of working-class
members, agitated among the masses parliamentary reform,
universal manhood suffrage and working class representation
in Parliament. The Society met openly for six years despite
harassment by police magistrates and arrests of its members,
but was finally outlawed in 1799 by an act of Parliament as a
result of fear that it made a dangerous challenge to the
established government.
Robert Owen and co-operative socialism
Robert Owen (1771-1858), who was a textile mill owner,
philanthropist, social and labour reformer, is considered
as the father of British co-operative socialism. He and his
followers founded several co-operative communities in Britain
and the United States which offered workers decent living
conditions and access to education. Although all Owenite
communities eventually failed, the communitarian tradition
persisted in Victorian England and elsewhere. Owenism
exerted a significant influence on various strands of British
socialism, including Christian socialism, ethical socialism, guild
socialism,Fabianism, and socialist labour movement. Co-
operative socialism was perceived by these organisations as a
replacement for the unjust competitive capitalist system.
Ricardian socialists
Another group of thinkers who exerted a direct influence on
Victorian socialism were so called Ricardian socialists. They
based their theories upon the work of the economist David
Ricardo (1772-1823), who claimed that the economy moves
towards social conflict because the interests of ownership
classes were directly opposed to those of the poor
classes. In this aspect Ricardo and Ricardian socialists
anticipated the conception of Karl Marx about adversarial
class relations.
The principal members of this group were Charles Hall
(1740-1820), William Thompson (1785-1833), Thomas
Hodgskin (1783-1869) and John Gray (1799-1883).
Paradoxically, Ricardian socialists, rejected some of Ricardo's
assumptions and argued that private ownership of the means of
production should be supplanted by central ownership of
means of production, organised as a worker-controlled joint
stock company. (Toler 46)
Marxian socialism
Marxian socialism had little impact on various strands of
Britain's socialism. Karl Marx (1818-83), who lived and wrote
his works in London from 1849, was not widely known in
England until his death. He met few Englishmen and was not
very keen on making acquaintances with English radicals. The
only Englishmen who expressed serious interest in the
ideas of Marx during his lifetime were Ernest Jones, a
revolutionary Chartist, who made a vain attempt to revive that
dying Chartist movement, and Henry Mayers Hyndman, the
founder of the Social Democratic Federation, the first Marxist
socialist party in Britain. However, Marxism hardly appealed to
Victorian socialists in its orthodox form.
Late-Victorian socialism

Socialists by William Strang R.A. (1859-1921). 1891. Etching

and drypoint on paper. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

The British socialist movement re-emerged in the 1880s. A

strong critique of capitalism, which was voiced by various
groups of social critics, literary figures and working-class
militants, led to the formation of three distinct strands of late
Victorian socialism: (1) the Social Democratic Federation (SDF)
and the Socialist League, (2) the Fabian Society and its
predecessor, the Fellowship of the New Life, and (3) the ethical
socialists, together with the Independent Labour Party.
The Social Democratic Federation, which became the first
Marxist political party in Britain in 1884, advocated imminent
revolution and nationalisation. Its tiny offshot, the Socialist
League, formed by William Morris in 1884 after his
secession from the Social Democratic Federation, attracted a
few social democrats, but in 1990 it became dominated by
anarchists, which prompted Morris to withdraw from it.
The Fabian Society, also founded in 1884, was not
radical, but tried to permeate peacefully the existing institutions
and Parliament in order to implement its socialist reforms.
The Fabians supported the so-called 'gas and water
socialism', i.e. government ownership of municipal utilities,
as well as municipalisation and nationalisation of land and
many industries, canals, railways, water and gas companies,
tramways, docks, hospitals, markets, libraries and even lodging
houses. (Haggard 94)
Ethical socialism was not associated with any particular
party and overlapped with other strands of Victorian socialism.
It included a disparate group of social activists and literary
figures who championed the ideas of ethical socialism,
emphasising moral development of individuals above economic
and social reforms. Ethical socialism emerged in the 1880s,
flourished in the 1890s, and inspired the formation of the
Independent Labour Party and also the Labour Party. (Bevir
1999: 218)
The most characteristic representatives of ethical socialism
were Thomas Hill Green, Edward Carpenter, John Ruskin, and
William Morris. Other important figures included the pioneer
labour leader, Keir Hardie, Robert Blatchford, the editor of the
weekly newspaper, The Clarion, and the author of the
bestselling socialist tract, Merrie England (1893), John Bruce-
Glasier, one of the leaders of the Independent Labour Party. As
Mark Bevir put it, ethical socialists believed in the ideal of moral
fellowship and thought of a co-operative and decentralised civil
society where individuals could exercise full control of their own
daily activities. (McDonald 58-59)
The land nationalisation movement
The roots of the British land nationalisation movement, which
strongly influenced the mainstream tradition of late Victorian
socialism, can be sought in the activity of Thomas Spence
(1750-1814), a self-taught militant, who devoted most of his
adult life to various forms of political agitation. In the 1770s, he
argued that all land must be owned not by individuals but by
parochial corporations. (Parssinnen 135) In the early 1800s
Spence became the leader of a group of radicals who
advocated social revolution in Britain. After his death the radical
followers of Spence formed the Society of Spencean
Philanthropists (1815). Its members gathered secretly in small
groups in alehouses and discussed Spence's socialist agrarian
plan and the best way of achieving an equal society. They also
distributed tracts, pamphlets, broadsheets, posters and poems
and metal tokens advertising Spence's ideas (Benchimol 153).
Land reform was one of the hottest issues among British
radicals and social reformers from the 1860s until World War
One. In mid-Victorian England, James Bronterre O'Brien (1805-
64), a Chartist leader and working-class reformer, proposed a
scheme for government purchase of land and then its
redistribution by rental. (Bronstein 107) O'Brien's followers,
grouped in the National Reform League, continued to
propagate the idea of land nationalisation after his death in
1864. The Land and Labour League, that grew out of the
National Reform League in 1869, advanced a programme that
called for land nationalisation, but it made little public impact.
In late Victorian England, Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-
discoverer with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural
selection, revived the land nationalisation movement. Wallace
believed that land should be owned by the state and leased to
people. In 1881, he was elected as the first president of Land
Nationalisation Society, which devised a plan of State-owned
and -leased lands. Wallace's view of land reform was close to
the spirit of Henry George's treatise, Progress and
Poverty(1879), which promoted a single progressive tax on
land values in order to reduce economic inequality.
The Land Nationalisation Society and the Social
Democratic Federation gave a full support to land
nationalisation programmes. The Land Restoration League and
the Land Reform Union (LRU), also advocated state land
appropriation. All these schemes strengthened the land
nationalisation movement in late Victorian Britain and aroused
an awareness for the need of land reform. Wallace's as well as
George's ideas of land reform were approved by labour unions
and inspired both the Liberal and Labour Parties to form a
policy of land redistribution at the turn of the 19th century.
The Labour Church
The last two decades of the Victorian era also saw the
emergence of the Labour Church, which was started in
Manchester in 1891 by a Unitarian minister, John Trevor (1855-
 1930), and had a distinct socialist message. The Labour
Church soon became a nationwide movement and claimed
100 churches with congregations between 200 and 500.
(Worley 154) The conference held at Bradford in 1893 to
form the Independent Labour Party was accompanied by a
Labour Church service which was attended by 5,000
people. However, the Labour Church movement began to fade
after 1900. At the annual conference of 1909, held in Ashton-
under-Lyne, the name Labour Church was changed to Socialist
Church, but by the beginning of World War I the recently
renamed Labour Church had disappeared.
Conclusion
The term socialism was generally synonymous in Victorian
Britain with social reform, collectivism, communitarianism
and improvement of living conditions of the working class
and it did not bear strong Marxist connotations. In fact, few
people were interested in socialist revolution in Victorian
Britain, but quite a great number were fascinated by the
mystical features of socialism. Unlike Marxism, which criticised
liberal democracy and advocated revolutionary class struggle,
the main strands of Victorian socialism can be characterised by
ethical, non-Marxian, anti-capitalist outlook which combined
traditional English radicalism with traditional English respect for
democracy.
References and Further Reading
Beer, M. A History of British Socialism. London: G. Bell and Sons,
Ltd., 1919.
Benchimol, Alex. Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the
Romantic Period: Scottish Whigs, English Radicals and the
Making of the British Public Sphere. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate
Publishing, Ltd., 2010.
Berlin, Isaiah. Karl Marx: His Life and Environment. New York:
Time, 1963.
Bevir, Mark. The Making of British Socialism. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2011.
_____. “The Labour Church Movement, 1891-1902,” Journal of
British Studies, 38(2) 1999, 217-245.
Britain, Ian. Fabianism and Culture: A Study of British Socialism
and the Arts 1884-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982.
Bronstein, Jamie L. Land Reform and Working-class Experience in
Britain and the United States, 1800-1862. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1999.
Carter, M. T. H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism.
Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2003.
Christensen, Torben. The Origin and History of Christian Socialism,
1848-54. Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1962.
Claeys, Gregory. Machinery, Money, and the Millennium: From
Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–60. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1987.
____. Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-politics in Early British
Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Claeys, Gregory, ed. Owenite Socialism. Pamphlets and
Correspondence: 1832-1837. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Cole, Margaret. The Story of Fabian Socialism. London:
Heinemann, 1961.
Ely, Richard T. Socialism: An Examination of Its Nature, Its
Strength and Its Weakness, with Suggestions for Social
Reform. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1894.
Fremantle, Anne. This Little Band of Prophets: The Story of the
Gentle Fabians. London: Allen & Unwin, 1960.
Garner, Robert, Peter Ferdinand, Stephanie Lawson. Introduction
to Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Haggard, Robert F. The Persistence of Victorian Liberalism: The
Politics of Social Reform in Britain, 1870-1900. Westport:
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Poverty and Compassion: The Moral
Imagination of the Late Victorians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., 1991.
Hobsbawm, E. J. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of
Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1959.
Hyndmann, H. M. The Historical Basis of Socialism in England.
London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1883.
Inglis, Kenneth S. Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian
England. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
Jennings, Ivor. Party Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1962.
Lawrence, J. “Popular Radicalism and the Socialist Revival in
Britain,” Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992) 163-86.
McBriar, Alan M. Fabian Socialism and English Politics 1884-1918.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Mackenzie, Norman, and Jeanne Mackenzie. The First Fabians.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977.
Mc Donald, Andrew, ed. Reinventing Britain: Constitutional Change
Under New Labour. University of California Press, 2007.
Manton, Kevin. “The Fellowship of the New Life: English Ethical
Socialism Reconsidered,” History of Political Thought, 24(2)
2003, 282–304.
Milburn, Josephine Fishel. “The Fabian Society and the British
Labour Party,” The Western Political Quarterly, 11(2), 1958,
319-339.
Norman, Edward. The Victorian Christian Socialists. Cambrige:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Parssinnen, T. M. “Thomas Spence and the Origins of English Land
Nationalization,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 34(1) 1973,
135-141.
Pease, Edward R. The History of the Fabian Society. New York:
E.P. Dutton & Company Publishers, 1916.
Raven, Charles E. Christian Socialism, 1848-1854. 1920. New
York: Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, 1968.
Shaw, George Bernard, ed. Fabian Essays in Socialism. London:
Fabian Society, 1889.
____. The Fabian Society: Its Early History. London: Fabian
Society, 1892.
Thompson, E. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
Toler, Pamela. The Everything Guide to Understanding Socialism: The Political, Social, and Economic
Concepts Behind this Complex Theory. Avon, MA: Everything Books, 2011.
Ward, P. Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism and the British Left, 1881–1924. Woodbridge,
UK: Royal Historical Society, 1998.
Waters, C. British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture 1884-1914. Manchester: Manchester
Univerrsity Press, 1990.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice Webb. A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920.
___. Industrial Democracy. London: Longman, 1897.
White, R. E. O. Christian Ethics. Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing Publishing, 1994.
Worley, Matthew, ed. The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives,
1900-39. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009.
Yeo, S. “A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883– 1896,” History Workshop, 4 (1977) 5-56.