Diverse Utopian Socialists Views example essay topic

Utopia is a term invented by Sir Thomas More in 1515. However, he traces the root two Greek words o utopia and e utopia which means a place does not exist and a fantasy, invention. It is widely accepted that Plato was to first to picture a utopian order. In his masterpiece, "Republic", he formed the principles of ideal commonsense and his utopia (Hertzler, 1922: 7). After the classical age, Sir Thomas More assumed to be the first of the utopian writers in early modern period. As a humanist, he gave the world in his "Utopia" a vision of a perfect communistic commonwealth (the history of utopian thought).

Utopia's influence on contemporary and rival scholars is so deep that it has given its name to whole class of literature. Following the appearance of More's Utopia, there was a lack of Utopian literature for nearly a century (Hertzler, 1922: 7). This period ended with the works of Francis Bacon, Campanella and Harrington. These early modern utopians, being the children of Renaissance, filled with a love of knowledge and high respect for the newly truths of science. Thus, they believed that the common attainment of knowledge means the largest participation of all members of society in its joys and benefits. After the period of early Utopians, continuation of a sprit of French Revolution and initial signs of industrial revolution resulted in the emergence of a new group of Utopians called Socialist Utopians (Hertzler, 1922: 181).

The word "Socialism" seems to have been first used by one of the leading Utopian Socialists, St Simon. In politics utopia is a desire that never come true neither now nor afterwards, a wish that is not based on social forces (material conditions and production) and is not supported by the growth and development of political, class forces. This paper discusses the validity of this claim, tries to present and evaluate the political reforms, if any, offered by Socialist Utopians. In order to assess the degree of appeal for the political reforms offered by the Utopian Socialists, their ideals should be examined from both structural and programmatic point of view.

Programmatic point of view helps us to clarify the basis of political reforms of the Utopian Socialists whereas the structural point of view forms the theoretical basis of these practical actions and reform plans. The period in which the early socialists were formulating their theories covers the development of industrialism which was causing the dislocation to the situation of existing social groups. Furthermore, in this period, a new working class, proletariat's, was being created (Goodwin and Taylor, 1982: 123). As a result of this process, the social values associated with the past lost much of their relevance and new norms were requested. Thus, the ides of the Utopian Socialists can be seen as a response to these requests. The response of most Utopian Socialists like Owen, Saint Simon, Fourier and Cabet was the vision of social harmony.

Although, this vision is also shared by classical and early modern utopians, the introduction of Newtonian view of the universe as an orderly and integrated order enabled the Utopian Socialist to draw analogies between the social order and Newton's Laws of universe. Harmony implied a view of social relations where members of society live together without conflict and with common interests. Thus, Utopian Socialists presented the future society as a large, happy family. Concept of harmony was broadened to association, community and co-operation by the Utopian Socialists (Goodwin and Taylor, 1982: 125). In the early nineteenth century, there was a common voiced by workers for being granted the right to associate for different social and economic purposes. Association promised a range of benefits like better working conditions through the right of bargaining.

It was argued that if the labors stopped competing with one another and replaced the competition by the association, there would be a greater security for employment with higher wages. Another important concept of the Socialist Utopian's is community. This concept grew out of sense of common living and common identity shared by persons living in diverse locations. The idea of community drives Utopian Socialists and their supporters building up experimental communities like the Owen's New Lanark. The third important idea of the Utopian Socialists is Co-operation. Socialist Utopians, specifically Owen and Fourier, believed that Co-operation could offer an alternative mode of organization for the production by aiming to distribute the any resulting income among the producers constituting the Co-operation.

The basic motivation for this is claim was to decrease the profit margin of the employers. In another point of view, Co-operation in favors the workers for acquiring their wealth collectively. In short, Utopian Socialists shared the vision of a new community of producers bound together through brotherhood. They opposed to the characteristic feature of their era, greedy individualism. They had equipped well with moralistic overtones and in this sense, they were very dogmatic. In the following, this paper will try to form the arguments explaining why their political actions and reforms do not provide a promising vision.

These arguments can be classified into two groups. The first group consisting of the arguments claiming that Utopian Socialists did not provide a political reform to the society because there was no common concept of political reform claimed by Utopian Socialism. Each Utopian Socialists provided different sets of actions for the realization of the Utopian Socialist ideas and these actions were in conflict with each other. Second group of the arguments claim that Utopian Socialists were just the dreamers. Their ideals were impossible to realize and their actions were impossible to realize by the society. Although Utopian Socialists agreed on the importance of association, community and co-operation, they did not agree on the steps, constituting their political reform, required to make these qualities operational.

They wrote in response to same problems but they proposed different practical recommendations. Thus, diverse practical recommendations could not lead to a common political reform proposal. The conflict among the Utopian Socialists on their practical politics can be exemplified by their arguments on industrialism, private ownership, religion, revolution and statism. Saint Simon and Fourier did not seek to abolish the private property as long as the private property is in use of the production. In contrast, other Socialist Utopians like Owen, Cabet and Weitling, saw the private property as the starting point of the capitalism, and they support the schemes of communism.

Similarly, religion is another major problem for Utopian Socialists, Fourier and Owen see the religion as an institution of the past and they claimed that it was not acceptable in the age of modern science. On the other hand, some of the Socialist Utopians remained convinced that religion as a necessity. As a third alternative view on religion, Christianity could be reformed and made compatible to the science (Goodwin and Taylor, 1982: 132). Another controversial issue is the type of control mechanisms on the society. Saint Simon, Cabet and Weitling proposed their utopias in terms of the societies under a high control of centralized control (Kate, 1963: 70).

On the other hand, Owen and Fourier focused on the small size, decentralized society structures. Linked to this issue, another controversy among the Utopian Socialists is the debate on democratic versus authoritarian society. In general, Utopian Socialists who were in favor of small, decentralized communities supported democracy. On the other hand, supporters of centralized control on society were in favor of authoritarian.

The above discussion clearly proves that the Socialist Utopians did not offer a consistent and promising political reform to the society because they were all distinct in a programmatic sense though they share certain structural elements. Thus, in this world of chaotic proposals, it is impossible to talk about a political reform. However, if we assume that the diverse Utopian Socialists views for realizing the harmony in the society construct different ways to reach a single target; all these views were focusing on the reformation of the society a whole rather than the simple reform of special social instructions. Obviously, such a transformation is unrealistic. For example, Saint Simon wanted a society to be run like a huge workshop in which rule of men would be replaced by dispensation of things; elimination of state as a forceful institution and replacing it by a system in which men did what they were best at was to suppose to eliminate public disorder. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985: 444).

Fourier was much more radical than Saint Simon and he claimed that the transformation of the society should go beyond the reordering of society. It had to occur in the realm of nature and it should have cosmological effects as well. (Kaufmann, 1879: 69) In general, Utopian socialists ignored the economic conditions of a society. They did not regard their economic conditions which is inevitable for a satisfaction of a society's people. Secondly they didn't prepare their societies for their future life they had no plan for constructing a new society should have been based upon their development and they did not think any detail about the society so that they can solve some problems if they come across in the future. This was the basic problem which causes collapsing their experimental societies.

They did not concern the people nature. Thus, Socialist Utopians had lack of understanding of the process by which the new society may be brought into being a new order. As a result, Utopian Socialism never posed a serious practical challenge to the class societies of their times. All writings of Utopian Socialists were theoretical without the sense of reality.

Their ideas of creating a new order were impractical economically and politically. They made human nature over into a steady regularity and the left no room for spontaneous growth for the humanity. Therefore, Utopian Socialism does not offer an attractive political reform to society. However, their contributions to humanity are great and worth of admiration.