As we come nearer modern times, there are clearly large ele ments of Socialism and Communism in such works as More's Utopia and Campanella's City of the Sun; and in the 17th and i8th centuries, though Utopia-making went out of fashion, doc trines resembling modern Socialism in one or another respect were abundant. Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, Peter Chamberlin, John Bellers and James Harrington, all in their several ways emphasized the vital influence of the economic organi zation on the political and social condition of the people, and sought to bring economic institutions under some sort of collective control. And, in i8th century France, before the Revolution, while Rousseau attacked the influence of inequality on social insti tutions and stressed the authority of the State as the embodiment of the general will, writers such as Mably and Morelly worked out social systems based on communism and collective organization of the economic forces of society. On the morrow of the Revolu tion, the Conspiration des Egaux of Gracchus Babeuf and his fol lowers struck the first definitely proletarian note in modern revolutionary history, and influenced not only the French Social ists of the next generation, but also, through James Bronterre O'Brien, the English Chartists.
It is not, however, very profitable, at any rate in this brief treatment, to delve deeply into the history of those doctrines and movements which can be regarded as, in this or that respect, antic ipations of modern Socialism. The Socialism with which it is necessary to deal here owes its rise to the growth of large-scale production based on machinery and steam-power. It made its appearance when the changes in methods of production and trans port, usually described as the "Industrial Revolution," had created the modern working-class or "proletariat," and had caused that class to organize in some degree for common protection against the evil effects of the new industrial conditions. There was plenty of misery among the workers long before the "Industrial Revolu tion," and plenty of attempts to make a stand against it were made. But continuous working-class organization, and Socialist doctrines aiming at the collective control of the means of produc tion in the interests of the workers, alike date from the rise of the factory system, which not only subjected them to an un familiar and bitterly resented discipline, but also, by massing them together in factories and industrial towns, made agitation among them easier, and combination the natural means of seeking redress.
Socialism of this type naturally arose first in Great Britain, which, in the latter part of the i8th century, took the lead in the transformation of economic processes by the application of machinery and steam-power. The real foundations of modern Socialism were laid in Great Britain during the first three decades of the 19th century. The Radical and revolutionary writers and leaders of the later i8th century in Great Britain can, for the most part, not be called Socialists. Ogilvie and Tom Paine were Radi
cal land reformers ; and Paine put forward advanced Radical views on taxation and the development of social services under the State. But neither was a Socialist in any real sense; and even Thomas Spence, whose followers, the "Spencean Philanthropists," are often regarded as the first English Socialists, was an advocate of land nationalization hardly conscious of the problems presented by the new industrialism. William Godwin, whose Political Justice was the bible of intellectual Radicalism at the end of the i8th century, was far more Anarchist than Socialist, and barely discussed the organization of industry.
This was natural ; for it was not until the end of the Napoleonic Wars that there was opportunity for an articulate working-class movement to develop in Great Britain, or that the problems of the new industrial system forced themselves on public attention. British Socialism, as a theoretical movement, was born in the decade which followed the battle of Waterloo ; and this decade saw also the beginnings of effective political and industrial corn bination among the workers in the rapidly-growing factory districts.
Owenism.—Robert Owen, the great and successful textile em ployer of New Lanark, was the first to formulate the doctrine of Socialism in comprehensive form, and to his followers the name "Socialists" was first applied, though he himself commonly spoke of his scheme as "the social system," or "the rational system for the organization of society," or, sometimes, as "the New Moral World." Owen first appeared as a Socialist in the years immedi ately after 1815. Known earlier as a great educational and factory reformer, he was led by the distress and unemployment which followed the peace to formulate and propose to the Government a scheme for the productive employment of the poor in "villages of co-operation." Rejected by the Government and by the rich, to whom Owen next appealed, this scheme was taken up by the workers, and Owenite societies, with a predominantly working class membership, were formed all over the country. The growing trade unions were largely captured by the new doctrines, and in 183o and the following years Owen found himself at the head of a great working-class movement seeking to establish Socialism by means of industrial organization and action. Then, in 1834, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, attacked by em ployers and Government alike, went to pieces, and Owenism shrank up into small propagandist groups, whose greatest achievement was the creation of the Co-operative movement. Socialism, as a doctrine commanding a wide body of adherents, died away in Great Britain, and had to await, for its revival, the coming of Marxism as an international force among the workers.