Fourier was an early Utopian Socialist. He believed that social conditions were the primary cause of human misery. Social and economic inequality could be overcome if everybody had the basic minimum. Fourier believed in the goodness of human nature and rejected the dogma of “original sin”.
He saw harmony as the law of the cosmos and held that what is true for nature must be true for society. He envisaged a harmonious self-contained co- operative society called phalansteres . It was a community where there would be equal distribution of profit and loss. Robert Owen ( – ) Among the factory owners of Manchester there was a humanitarian by name Robert Owen.
Shocked by the condition of the factory workers, he introduced many reforms in his own factories and improved the condition of Saint Simon Charles Fourier Robert Owen the workers. He did not employ children below the age of in his industries. Later he criticised private property and profit. He began to advocate establishment of new cooperative communities that would combine industrial and agricultural production.
In his book A New View of Society ( ), he advocated a national education system, public works for the unemployed and reform of the Poor Laws. Thanks to his efforts, the British Parliament passed the Factory Act of . By the mid- 1820s Owen had developed a theory of Utopian Socialism based on social equality and cooperation. His other initiatives included formation of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union ( ) and the Cooperative Congresses ( - ).
Poor Laws: In Britain the Poor Laws, as codified ( – ) during Elizabethan period, provided relief for the aged, sick, and infant poor, as well as work for the able- bodied unemployed in workhouses. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ( – ) Proudhon was a French anarchist who contributed significantly to the development of socialism. Unlike the earlier Utopian socialists who were drawn from the middle class, he belonged to the working class. Drawing inspiration from the cooperative communities, he and other anarchists were opposed to the state and believed in revolution.
In his pamphlet titled “What is Property?” he wrote that “All property is theft.”