More radical than liberalism or nationalism was socialism. Early socialist thinkers were a diverse group with wide-ranging ideas. Yet they shared a sense that the political revolution in France, the growth of industrialization in Britain, and the rise of laissez faire had created a profound crisis. Modern capitalism, they believed, fomented a selfish individualism that encouraged inequality and split the community into isolated fragments. Society urgently required fundamental change to re-establish cooperation and a new sense of community.

Early socialists felt an intense desire to help the poor, and they preached that the rich and the poor should be more nearly equal economically. To this end, they believed that private property should be strictly regulated by the government, or abolished outright and replaced by state or community ownership. Economic planning, greater social equality, and state regulation of property were the key ideas of early socialism.

One influential group of early socialist advocates became known as the “utopian socialists” because their grand schemes for social improvement ultimately proved unworkable. The Frenchmen Count Henri de Saint-Simon (awn-REE duh san-see-MOHN) (1760–1825) and Charles Fourier (sharl FAWR-ee-ay) (1772–1837) and the British industrialist Robert Owen all founded movements intended to establish model communities that would usher in a new age of happiness and equality.

Saint-Simon optimistically proclaimed the tremendous possibilities of industrial development: “The golden age of the human species . . . is before us!”2 The key to progress was proper social organization that required the “parasites” — the court, the aristocracy, lawyers, and churchmen — to give way, once and for all, to the “doers” — the leading scientists, engineers, and industrialists. Saint-Simon also stressed in highly moralistic terms that every social institution ought to have as its main goal improved conditions for the poor.

After 1830, the utopian critique of capitalism became sharper. Charles Fourier envisaged a socialist utopia of mathematically precise, self-sufficient communities called “phalanxes.” Fourier was also an early proponent of the total emancipation of women. Robert Owen, an early promoter of labor unions, likewise called for society to be reorganized into model industrial-agricultural communities. Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen all had followers who tried to put their ideas into practice. Though these attempts had basically collapsed by the 1850s, utopian socialist ideas remained an inspiration for future reformers and revolutionaries.

Some socialist thinkers embraced the even more radical ideas of anarchism. In his 1840 pamphlet What Is Property? Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), a self-educated printer, famously argued that “property is theft!” Property, he claimed, was profit that was stolen from the worker, the source of all wealth. Proudhon believed that states should be abolished and that society should be organized in loose associations of working people.

Other early socialists, like Louis Blanc (1811–1882), focused on more practical reforms. In his Organization of Work (1839), he urged workers to agitate for universal voting rights and to take control of the state peacefully. Blanc believed that the state should set up government-funded workshops and factories to guarantee full employment. The right to work had to become as sacred as any other right.

As industrialization advanced in European cities, working people began to embrace the socialist message. This happened first in France, where workers cherished the memory of the radical phase of the French Revolution. Developing a sense of class in the process of their protests, workers favored collective action and government intervention in economic life. Thus the aspirations of workers and radical theorists reinforced each other, and a genuine socialist movement emerged in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s.