Origins of Socialism

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the origins of socialism, focusing in particular on: (i) the importance of the French Revolution which, whilst not itself a socialist revolution, inspired political radicals such as Gracchus Babeuf to imagine both a model socialist future and the means for arriving there; (ii) the widespread conservative reaction to the French Revolution and the suppression of socialism in the decades after the Congress of Vienna in 1815; (iii) ‘utopian socialism’ and its supporters such as Robert Owen who envisaged and sometimes actually created ‘model villages’ which would foster socialist political organisation; (iv) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s critique of utopian socialism for excessive idealism.

About the lecturer

Jeremy Jennings is Professor of Political Theory at King's College, London. His research focuses upon the history of political thought in France. He is presently finishing a book provisionally entitled Travels with Tocqueville and is acting as co-editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of French Thought. A larger, long-term project is to write a history of the concept of liberty.