Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Socialism refers to doctrines and practices sharing a pattern of family resemblances centered on collective property, social equality, cooperation, and communal forms of economic and political association. Beyond these shared attributes, socialism as doctrine and practice is characterized by immense diversity and competing claims to authenticity, which belie the frequent eliding of socialism with Marxism. This internal diversity was already present when the term was first used in English in the 1820s and in French and German in the 1830s, as well as in earlier political and religious movements that anticipated future socialist practices. Although it is sometimes suggested that socialist forms of organization constituted the original human condition prior to the emergence of agriculture and urbanization in the Near East (8,000–10,000 bce ), the genealogy of socialism in its contemporary senses can be traced to early modern Europe. Early Christian-inspired radical movements, such as the Levelers and especially the Diggers in seventeenth-century England, and the Anabaptists in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Central Europe, propounded ideas that had a clear socialist resonance, as did Babeuf during the French Revolution, with his “Conspiracy of the Equals.” Socialist ideas received a more systematic elaboration, however, in the works of three early nineteenth-century thinkers – ... log in or subscribe to read full text