French Social Utopianists: A Thought

Engels famously described the origins of Marxism as "English economics, German idealism and French social-utopianism." Current academia is still wrestling with the Marxist legacy in the social-sciences and in historiography, whilst philosophers debate where exactly to place Marx in the pantheon. Since the '60 a vast corpus of work has arisen that seeks to come to terms with Marx as a either a perverted product classical economics or as a German idealist. However comparatively little has been spoken of him in relation to Engel's third element, French social-utopianism. The works of Fourier and Saint-Simon are mostly dismissed today as hallucinatory tracts. The Twentieth Century immunized us against attempts to build Utopia. This also had the adverse affect of causing us to lose sight of why the reasons most social- utopianists wrote. When Thomas Moore wrote his Utopia, its purpose was not present an imminently achievable society, but more to show the flaws in his own. Re-interpreting Fourier and Saint-Simon as vicious social critics and not hallucinatory prophets may shed light on the intellectual climate of the late Nineteenth Century. It may also help us finally come to terms with Marx.

The sketch is of a young Karl Marx.