Owenite Socialism

Owenite Socialism
Author: Gregory Claeys
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780415149778

Backwoods Utopias

Backwoods Utopias
Author: Arthur Bestor
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-07-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1512809640

The new society that the world awaited might yet be born in the humble guise of a backwoods village. This was the belief shared by the many groups which moved into the American frontier to create experimental communities—communities which they hoped would be models for revolutionary changes in religion, politics, economics, and education in American society. For, as James Madison wrote, the American Republic was "useful in proving things before held impossible." The communitarian ideal had its roots in the radical Protestant sects of the Reformation. Arthur Bestor shows the connection between the "holy commonwealths" of the colonial period and the nonsectarian experiments of the nineteenth century. He examines in particular detail Robert Owen's ideals and problems in creating New Harmony. Two essays have been added to this volume for the second edition. In these, "Patent-Office Models of the Good Society" and "The Transit of Communitarian Socialism to America," Bestor discusses the effects of the frontier and of the migration of European ideas and people on these communities. He holds that the communitarians could believe in the possibility of nonviolent revolution through imitation of a small perfect society only as long as they saw American institutions as flexible. By the end of the nineteenth century, as American society became less plastic, belief in the power of successful models weakened.

Co-operation and the Owenite Socialist Communities in Britain, 1825-45

Co-operation and the Owenite Socialist Communities in Britain, 1825-45
Author: Ronald George Garnett
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1972
Genre: Collective settlements
ISBN: 9780719005015

Historical study of owenite socialism and the cooperative movement in the UK from 1825 to 1845, based on a study of the experiments of three leading communities - includes bibliography pp. 241 to 260, illustrations and references.

Imagining Socialism

Imagining Socialism
Author: Mark A. Allison
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2021
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192896490

Socialism names a form of collective life that has never been fully realized; consequently, it is best understood as a goal to be imagined. So this study argues, and thereby uncovers an aesthetic impulse that animates some of the most consequential socialist writing, thought, and practice of the long nineteenth century. Imagining Socialism explores this tradition of radical activism, investigating the diverse ways that British socialists--from Robert Owen to the mid-century Christian Socialists to William Morris--marshalled the resources of the aesthetic in their efforts to surmount politics and develop non-governmental forms of collective life. Their ambitious attempts at social regeneration led some socialists to explore the liberatory possibilities afforded by cooperative labor, women's emancipation, political violence, and the power of the arts themselves. Imagining Socialism demonstrates that, far from being confined to the socialist revival of the fin de siècle, important socialist experiments with the emancipatory potential of the aesthetic in Britain may be found throughout the period it calls the socialist century--and may still inspire us today.