Contemporary Thought on Nineteenth Century Socialism

Peter Gurney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781138321007
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429839443
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

This second volume considers various socialist impulses and developments after the collapse of the Owenite movement in Britain. Interventions by some leading Christian Socialists will illuminate one important tendency; publications by O'Brien another less vital strand. Central to this volume, however, will be far less well-known pamphlets, book extracts and articles in the periodical press by national and local co-operative writers and activists, who appropriated and transformed the legacy of utopian socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Old Owenites are naturally included, though more emphasis is given to reworkings by a younger generation of co-operators, now mostly forgotten. The volume will also cover relationships and controversies between co-operators and late nineteenth century state socialists, who attempted to portray the co-operative movement as merely diversionary for the working class.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: socialism and co-operation in Britain, 1850–1918
• Part 1 Redefining socialism
• Part 2 Political economy
• Part 3 Class, democracy and the State
• Part 4 Utopianism and the religion of co-operation
• Part 5 Gender and consumer organising
• Part 6 Internationalism, empire and war
• Part 7 The sense of the past
• Bibliography