Utopian socialism finds adherents among France’s intellectuals…

Utopian socialism finds adherents among France’s intellectuals and workers.

A label used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet and Robert Owen, utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction.

Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism will viewe "utopian socialism" as not being grounded in actual material conditions of existing society and in some cases as reactionary

These visions of ideal societies will compete with Marxist-inspired revolutionary social democratic movements.

The term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the nineteenth century who had been ascribed the label "utopian" by later socialists as a pejorative in order to imply naiveté and to dismiss their ideas as fanciful and unrealistic.

One key difference between utopian socialists and other socialists (including most anarchists) is that utopian socialists generally do not believe any form of class struggle or political revolution is necessary for socialism to emerge.

Utopians believe that people of all classes can voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it is presented persuasively.

They feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society and that their small communities can demonstrate the feasibility of their plan for society.

The term "utopian socialism" had been introduced by Karl Marx in "For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything" in 1843 (and then developed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848), although shortly before its publication Marx had already attacked the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in Das Elend der Philosophie (originally written in French, 1847).

The term will be used by later socialist thinkers to describe early socialist or quasi-socialist intellectuals who created hypothetical visions of egalitarian, communalist, meritocratic, or other notions of "perfect" societies without considering how these societies could be created or sustained.