The Origins of Socialism

The Anti-Woke Book Club - June 12, 2023 Vol 1

“...the theoretical content of socialism cannot be divorced from the circumstances of its birth…a history of socialism must begin with the French Revolution, for the simple reason that France was the cradle of ‘utopian socialism’ and ‘utopian communism’ alike.” - George Lichtheim

By

James Pew

For the past few months I have appeared on the Richard Syrett Show on Sauga 960 AM every Monday at 4:50pm for a rapid 8-minute segment we call the Anti-Woke Book Club. Each week I pick a book, essay or some form of media that explains an aspect of Wokeism and Richard and I discuss it briefly.

In preparing for the Anti-Woke Book Club segments, my process generally involves making a couple pages of notes which outline key ideas in the material to be discussed. Because our  conversations are spontaneous and unscripted my notes serve as loose guides, but I often don’t end up using them at all. For my next appearance on the Richard Syrett Show I decided I would turn my notes into today's post for Woke Watch Canada - UPDATE: Here is a link to the Origins of Socialism segment of the Anti-Woke Book club.

The book I chose this time, The Origins of Socialism, was published in 1969 by German socialist intellectual George Lichtheim. In case any readers doubt the charge, evidence of  Lichtheim’s strongly held socialist position can be found in a letter he wrote to the New York Review of Books in 1964:

 "I am not a liberal and never have been. I find liberalism almost as boring as communism and have no wish to be drawn into an argument over which of these two antiquated creeds is less likely to advance us any further."

The books I have so far discussed with Richard have all had authors who can safely be considered anti-woke. However, Lichtheim is the first author whose politics place him firmly in the far-left camp. The camp from which the modern woke emerged. In other words, this is the first book we will discuss that was written by the enemy. To truly understand wokeism it is necessary to study the words and the actions of the left - how do they define themselves? In their own words, and on their terms, how do they see the history of their movement, and what they are trying to achieve? 

The Origins of Socialism is a book that Mr. M and I have included in the bibliography of our Great Illiberal Subversion project. On a related note, Mr. M wrote an excellent essay for that series on the utopian origins of socialism - a topic covered extensively in Lichtheim's book. That essay was published in March on Woke Watch Canada, and was called The Utopian Whimsy: Left Politics of Nowhere in the Here and Now.

Note: It should go without mentioning that wokeism comes from the political left, and is a modern adaptation, or mutation, of the socialism/communism described in Lichtheim’s book. This is why The Origins of Socialism was chosen for the Anti-Woke Book Club and as an important source for the Great Illiberal Subversion project.

It's also worth noting that we have deliberately chosen to create a bibliography of sources that represent both left-wing and right-wing world views. For reasons already explained, we feel it is important to study the issue of wokeism by examining a variety of both friendly and enemy positions. But what exactly is a left-wing or right-wing world view? As we previously laid out in our essay Feminism and the Janus-Face of Modern Politics:

“...the most important distinction one can make about the shape of modern politics is that it is Janus-faced — like the eponymous Roman god of beginnings, Janus, modern politics stands at the gate with two faces, each pointing in an opposite direction. One of these faces points to liberalism, the political and moral philosophy which holds that society should be broken down as individuals protected by individual rights; the other face points to collectivism, which governs socialism and collectivism, and which holds that society should be broken down by groups and advantaged differently according to governmental and authoritarian dictate.” 

In other words, individualism vs. collectivism. It is this binary, this Janus face duality that is important. In our examinations, the goal is to trace the history of ideas and events that led to modern wokeism. With each stage we first determine which side of the individualist/collectivist equation a given development lies. Again, determining which side of the Janus face is the consequential thing that is often lost in tangles of misunderstood political terminology. But establishing whether something is liberal and therefore prioritizes individual over collective rights is the essential first step in analyzing any aspect of the woke cultural revolution remaking Western society.

There is a second method we employ in our analysis of these matters. The concept was introduced by Thomas Sowell and extends the Janus face binary established above. It works like this: People on the collectivist left hold what Sowell calls an “unconstrained social vision,” and those on the individualist side hold a “constrained social vision.” The unconstrained collectivist left believes that man is highly malleable and that society should be engineered for an egalitarian condition, while the constrained vision believes that man and society are better off when left to emerge naturally out of free activity and free association. It will be made obvious in the discussion that follows that this urge toward the unconstrained collectivists left is inexorably linked and rooted in the futurism of the Utopian Socialists of post revolutionary France.

In the introductory pages Lichtheim offers comment on his mode of historical analysis concerning the origins of socialism¹:

“Whatever may be the case in other fields, the choice of political terminology is never accidental, nor is it without practical significance. Theory and practice are interwoven from the start. The invention of a new concept signifies a new way of looking at the world, and thus helps to constitute forms of social life which at a later stage are embodied in institutions. The first step counts, and in the case of socialism it was taken in an environment profoundly affected by the recent experience of the French Revolution.” - George  Lichtheim

The times and places which can be attributed with the formation of socialist thought are of consequential importance. Commenting on the structure of his book, Lichtheim describes the setting where the socialist movement began the assemblance of its early doctrines  “..it was the industrial revolution in Britain which simultaneously created the material preconditions of modern capitalism and the labor movement; and it was the latter which became the principal vehicle of collectivist thought and practice, once liberal individualism and socialist (or communist) collectivism had been brought face to face. ”

“...the term ‘socialism’ made its first appearance around 1830 among the radical sects in Western Europe which had sprung from the French Revolution…” -  George Lichtheim

Even though the term had not been coined until the 1830s, it is during the French Revolution that what later became known as Socialism, was first incubated primarily through the influence of social theories by Utopian French intellectuals. Consequently, as history has shown, the result was a violent outcome  for the French people on the wrong side of the revolution. 

Why were French Utopianist ideas of the Romantic period so critical in the development of early socialism in countries outside of France? First it must be considered that utopian literature had been around since at least the 16th century, as seen in famous works such as Thomas More's Utopia. What differentiated the later period of French Utopianism from the earlier utopian writers, was the combination of the purely fantasy fiction of the utopian tradition, which up to that point had never taken itself so seriously as to believe a real utopia possible. With the Romanticism of Rousseau, these French theorists had become utterly intoxicated on the utopian whimsy, and so subsequently committed themselves to the creation of a real, albeit elusive utopia. In other words, the French Utopian Socialists were the first to actually make the creation of a utopian society a real goal to be pursued. This reification of utopianism is the thing that was so contagious it jumped borders and inspired social theories in other countries also undergoing major changes in the conception of society’s ordering (changes especially concerning monarchy).

Two French intellectuals, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, were key figures in the formation of early Utopian Socialism. Saint-Simonism is generally considered more important and influential. However,  in spite of the bizarre content found within Fourierism, surprisingly, many aspects of Fourier’s somewhat lesser influence still persist in the minds of many modern day leftist intellectuals and social theorists.

One example of the unhinged extremes of Fourier was his idea that children should be the people put in charge of all the dirty jobs. His thinking was that since children like to get dirty when playing, and adults hate doing dirty jobs (a large portion of the jobs that maintain the infrastructure of a technological industrial society), the natural solution would be to assign the children the task of all dirty jobs. Education, presumably, would have to wait.

“All told, Saint-Simonism has probably done more to shape our world than any other socialist school except the Marxian (which took over some of the Saint-Simonist inheritance).” - George Lichtheim

Claude-Henri de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon ( 1760-1825 ) was not a saint, but was known as Saint-Simon. A coherent school of thought  associated with his writings, known as Saint-Simonism did not emerge until 1830 after his death. “...the Saint-Simonist school had a deeper impact upon the nascent socialist movement in other countries-notably across the Rhine, where it impinged directly upon Marx and his predecessors.” It is interesting that the philosophy of Saint-Simonism was in large part mediated by Saint-Simons followers, Saint-Simonism “is really referring to a doctrine or a set of attitudes which his disciples-principally Barthelemy-Prosper Enfantin, Saint-Amand Bazard, and Pierre Leroux-worked out after the master had left the scene.”

But even more influential than Fourierism or Saint-Simonism to the development of Socialism was Marxism. The year of the third French Revolution, 1848, when Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published, represents a shift from the Utopianism of French romantic intellectuals to the Communist struggle of the newly forming industrial working class. The industrial revolution made it possible for the radical social revolutionaries of the time to see workers as an organizable class of labour locked in conflict with the owners of the means of production. However, even though in the final chapter Lichtheim describes what he calls the Marxian Synthesis (the fusing of the French, British, and German strains of socialist theory), the Marxian era is for the most part outside the scope of the book, so we will save it for a future essay.

“In its socialist version, the Romantic vision is projected upon the future: the lost community of values will be restored at a higher level. This had been the message of Fourier. What the Saint-Simonians did was to proclaim the imminence of a revolution that would inaugurate the golden age.” - George Lichtheim

During the same time that Fourierism and Saint-Simonism were forming into coherent schools of utopian socialist thought, Britain's Robert Owen was introducing his own brand of Utopian Socialism adapted for British revolutionaries. Owen, along with Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Etienne Cabet (founder of the French socialist Icarian Movement²) are considered the founders of utopian socialism. Lichtheim explains that in order to give a comprehensive accurate history of Socialism, one must  “clarify the origins of socialism, both as a world-view and as the specific response of workers and intellectuals to the twofold upheaval of the French Revolution and the industrial revolution.” While the industrial revolution, which began in England in 1760, would have had a direct impact on Robert Owen, the influence of the French Revolution may not be as obvious. However, the defining feature, the influence of Rousseau on the shaping of Owenism, is a pattern found in virtually all socialist thought.

The period prior to when the material conditions of capitalism made the labour movement of industrial workers in Britain the “principal vehicle of collectivist thought and practice,” was initially influenced by the utopianism of Romantic theorists influenced by Rousseau. While subsequent socialist theory eventually shifted and reorganized (the term socialism did not actually appear until its use by British radicals in 1830), becoming primarily concerned with the industrial proletariat, the utopian aspects of the French Romantics still maintain its grip on socialist doctrine to this day. 

The late 17th century up to the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 bookends the Enlightenment, aka the Age of Reason. It was this inspired period that, according to historian Roy Porter, was  ‘decisive in the making of modernity’.³ During this consequential time when the legitimacy of monarchical rule was brought into question, “centuries of custom and tradition were brushed aside in favour of exploration, individualism, tolerance and scientific endeavour, which, in tandem with developments in industry and politics, witnessed the emergence of the ‘modern world’.⁴ Many people felt that the monarchy was corrupt and elitist.  These developments mark the beginning of Liberal Democracy, but it would not be a straight line from Monarchy and the feudal system, to liberal democracy and capitalism. 

Mr. M published an essay in December of 2022 on Woke Watch Canada which expands on these ideas and movements, called Subversion of Meaning: Rediscovering Canadian Principles.

The relationship between the Revolutions in France and the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the effect on social theory, can be seen by tracing some of the key social and political developments of the time. Generally speaking, the French Revolutions played important roles in shaping the early contours of liberalism, democracy, nationalism and socialism.  The Revolution of 1789-1799, the most consequential, was extremely violent and chaotic, and catalyzed further discontent and subsequent revolutions in France in 1830 and 1848, which in turn inspired revolts in other parts of Europe. 

What had previously set the stage for the social political upheavals that occurred during the Age of Reason was the revolution in England, when “leading political thinkers began to reappraise how society and politics could (and should) be better structured. Movements for political change resulted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89.”⁵ In England, a bill of rights was passed in 1689 which made it illegal for the Crown  “to suspend or dispense with the law, to levy money without parliamentary assent, or to raise an army in peacetime, and insisted on due process in criminal trials.”⁶ 

A consistent thread across the social tribulations of the Glorious Revolution, the French Revolutions and Industrial Revolution, still felt in modern times, is the transition of society from Monarchical rule to various forms of parliamentary or constitutional democracy. In other words, this shift from rule by royal dynasty to liberal democratic elections,  and more pertinently, the revolutions designed to overrule the latter, have prefigured the rise of identity Marxism (wokeism).  Much of the contention found in today’s social political struggles is rooted in the dislocations of this massive change in the conception and governance of society.

Conditions in Europe during these revolutionary periods included mass unemployment, drastic rises in the price of commodities, and deeply felt suspicions that governments were corrupt.  The following bullet points provide a timeline summary of the consequential historical events most relevant to the origins of socialism:

1688 - Glorious Revolution (England)

1712 - The birth of Jean-Jaques Rousseau

1760 - Beginning of the industrial revolution.

1789 - First French Revolution.

1814 - Defeat and surrender of Napoleonic France.

1830 - July Revolution (France)

1848 - February Revolution (France)

1850 - The end of the Romantic Movement

Lichtheim’s book is for the most part an honest history of the origins of socialism - it covers the six decades between the first French Revolution and the third in 1848 (the year Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published, to little fanfare; but also, the year when an “autonomous socialist labor movement had begun to emerge in Europe from the matrix of the democratic revolution”). Lichtheim’s goal was to “clarify the origins of socialism, both as a world-view and as the specific response of workers and intellectuals to the twofold upheaval of the French Revolution and the industrial revolution.”

Many of the early Utopian Socialist intellectuals perceived a conflict between economic liberalism and social democracy, as well as a “deeper problem of the moral legitimacy attaching to a social order which had proclaimed individual self-interest as its only guiding rule.” In most cases, their prescriptions to resolve these perceived conflicts were tempered in some way by Rousseauian notions involving free and equal societies governed only by the “General Will” of the people, a naive and utopian notion if there ever was one.

It is worth underlining the direct link between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and  the Utopian Romanticist French intellectuals who catalyzed the murderous illiberal Jacobin uprising (the first French Revolution). With this in mind, the significance and consequential nature of the ideas of Rousseau cannot be overstated. They have had a profound impact on the course of history and in many ways continue to shape the thinking of modern day leftist intellectuals. From the essay mentioned above written by Mr. M:

“The man whose ideas are often deemed to have been responsible for the development of romanticism, collectivism and the French Revolution and many things besides.⁸ Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born, lived and wrote in the era immediately preceding the start of the French revolution (1789).”

As mentioned, Lichtheim’s book focuses mainly on the pre-Marxian beginnings of socialism. The French revolution was considered the first phase of French socialism. This was immediately followed by a period of reactionary romantic conservatism, which had exhausted itself by 1830 when a second stage of social disillusionment uniquely combined  “the rationalist faith in science and industry with a radical critique of the new individualism.” At this point, there was little desire to return to the utopian roots of early Socialism. Almost 20 years before the publication of the Communist Manifesto, there were signs indicating the direction socialist theory was moving was toward a more pragmatic  “scientific” mode of analysis considered more commensurate with the nascent labour class. This was not a full replacement of the early utopian sentiment, but an update which added the more technical “scientific” aspects that would be flushed out and expanded on in the coming years by Marx and Engels.

“Although Marx and his associates had their roots in the romantic socialism of the pre-1848 period, which (like the entire romantic movement) went out of fashion in the 1850's, Marxism represented a conscious break with the ‘utopian’ creed of the first generation of pioneers.” - George Lichtheim

For the sake of brevity, we will end here. A future essay will pick up where we have left off by covering the Marxian analysis of the industrial revolution.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author checkout the index of Great Illiberal Subversion essays co-written with Mr. M, The Ontology of the Great Illiberal Subversion

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1.  This method of tracing the historical development of ideas, where the conditions present at the time a given idea was formed becomes an important aspect of the analysis, was created by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (1873 – 1962). Lovejoy was an American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the discipline known as the history of ideas with his book The Great Chain of Being (1936) - which was regarded by Simo Knuuttila as 'probably the single most influential work in the history of ideas in the United States during the last half century'

2. The Icarians were a French-based utopian socialist movement, established by the followers of politician, journalist, and author Étienne Cabet. In an attempt to put his economic and social theories into practice, Cabet led his followers to the United States of America in 1848, where the Icarians established a series of egalitarian communes in the states of Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and California. The movement split several times due to factional disagreements.

3. Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2001), p. 3.

4. The Enlightenment | The British Library (bl.uk)

5. The Enlightenment | The British Library (bl.uk)

6. The Enlightenment | The British Library (bl.uk)