Socialism

Origins and Early Development

Socialists and liberals drew on a common stock of Enlightenment assumptions. In this view, humankind had struggled successfully to control nature [Page 2449]by the application of reason. History was an ascent, though one in which irrationalist forces had obstructed the march of progress and were yet to be swept away completely. Reason applied to human affairs could in principle produce the same advances as science had already made possible in the effort to understand and subdue nature. The social world was the work of humanity, and human beings could understand its evolution and promote their self-improvement in the process.

Radical and dissident opinion within the Enlightenment pointed beyond mainstream liberalism and inspired future socialists. Thomas Paine, for example, had shown the imagination and audacity to advocate old age pensions, land nationalization, more liberal marriage and divorce laws, family allowances, free education, and a host of other reforms that became part of the social-democratic program in the 20th century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau contradicted his Enlightenment peers in the mid-18th century by identifying civil society (and the division of labor) as the source of inequality, which the political superstructure merely legitimated and protected. He also stressed the iniquities of private property, the multiplicity of artificial wants and the dependencies they generated, and the growth of invidious distinction, base rivalry, and competition that emanated from the same quarter. Where mainstream liberalism saw only progress, Rousseau saw also “an assembly of artificial men and factitious passions.”

Rousseau blamed these discontents on the whole course of civilization, whereas the socialists accepted that industrialism, its most recent phase, was here to stay. It was capitalism that would have to be reformed or overthrown. For large sections of the population, the first industrialization (in Britain) was experienced as a social and economic catastrophe—the destroyer of community, family, environment, and the quality of life in general. The motivating force behind this “great transformation” was individual profit. The socialists did not deny that wealth and technological advances were associated with this change, but they were also concerned with understanding and overcoming its destructive and divisive features. A new language was developed. It gave us terms such as working class, industrialism, capitalism, and middle class. In November 1827, the word socialism appeared in print for the first time in the Co-operative Magazine in Britain. The argument was now set forth that the problems of the new society were not attributable to industry as such but to capitalism in particular.

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