Question

Name some important socialists of the 18th century

Answer 1

In the 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, laboring for long hours under difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions.

READ MORE: The Original Luddites Raged Against the Machine of the Industrial Revolution

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 public ownership of the means of production, socialism contrasted sharply with capitalism, which is based around a free 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."

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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

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