Socialist thought

Utopian socialism

Utopian socialism is a term used to describe the earliest currents of modern socialist thought exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen, which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists. Although it is technically possible for any set of ideas or any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label "utopian" by later socialists as a negative term, in order to imply naïveté and dismiss their ideas as fanciful or unrealistic. Later socialists argued that visions of ideal societies, which competed with revolutionary social democratic movements, were not grounded in the material conditions of society and were therefore "reactionary". Sociocracy is a socialist-positivist political view created by Auguste Comte, based on Saint-Simon's aristocratic, utopian socialist heritage, prioritizing social justice and a central government with direct democracy.