We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from IV - Secularity, reform and modernity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2011
Origins of socialist political thought
It might have been expected that the political thinking of German social democracy would build upon a variety of European socialists who wrote before 1848. However, that was seldom the case. To be sure, German intellectuals knew something of the ideas of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Proudhon, Simonde de Sismondi, Owen, Blanqui and Blanc, but it is difficult to show that those ideas guided the later organisations of the German labour movement. People familiar with the polemical literature in German, notably that produced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, often gained their knowledge of early socialist thought second hand. The intention of Marx and Engels, of course, was not to disseminate the ideas of those they labelled ‘utopian’, but to discredit them. To be sure, in 1888, August Bebel published a very sympathetic account of Fourier's ideas, but he also stressed the weaknesses of the ‘utopian's’ thinking.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
