Summer 2025 readings: pre-Marxian socialism

(• required readings / + supplemental readings)

Liberal and socialist reading on late liberalism and early socialism:

Louis Blanc, History of the Ten Years 1830-1840 (1842)

Benjamin Constant, Liberty of the Ancients and Moderns Compared (1819)

Émile Durkheim, Saint-Simon and Socialism (1895-96)

Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (Labour Movement) [1845]

Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Utopian Socialism) [1880]*

G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1831) [HTML] [PDF pp. 14-128] [Audiobook]

Georgi Plekhanov, “Utopian Socialism in the Nineteenth Century” (1913)*

Plekhanov, The Initial Phases of the Theory of the Class Struggle — An Introduction to the Second Edition of the Russian translation of the Communist Manifesto (1898)

Background (secondary) reading on late liberalism and early socialism: 

Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962)

George Lichtheim, Origins of Socialism (1969)

Joseph Seymour (Spartacist), “Marxism and the Jacobin Socialist Tradition” (1976)

Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (1940) 

Week 1 6/7/25: Babeuf and Jacobin socialism

• Sylvain Maréchal, (1796) "Manifesto of the Equals" 

• Philippe Buonarroti, History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality (1828/36) selections: "Biographical Sketch of Buonarroti", "To the Reader", "Author's Preface", Part I pp. 5-36, 88-232

Supplemental:

+ French Republic Constitution of 1793

+ Buonarroti, History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality (1828/1836), Part I pp. 1-87, Part II

+ Gracchus Babeuf, (1797) The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf before the High Court of Vendôme
+ Herbert Marcuse, "Thoughts on the defense of Babeuf" (1969)

+ Auguste Blanqui, (1832) “Speech before the Society of the Friends of the People”

+ Blanqui, (1849) "To the Mountain of 1793! To the Pure Socialists, its True Heirs!"

Week 2 6/14/25: Henri de Saint-Simon

• Henri Saint-Simon, Social Organisation, the Science of Man, and Other Writings (1803-25)

Week 3 6/21/25: Charles Fourier

• Charles Fourier, Selections TBD

Week 4 6/28/25: Robert Owen

• Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings (“A New View,” “Address to the Inhabitants,” “Observations on the Effects,” “To the British Manufacturer,” “Address to the Working Class,” and “Catechism”)
• Declaration of Mental Independence

Secondary reading:

+ William Benbow, Grand National Holiday (1832)

Week 5 7/5/25: Left Ricardian socialism and Chartism

• Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital (1825)
•  David Black, “The elusive ‘threads of historical progress’: The early Chartists and the young Marx and Engels” 
• Chartist writings, Selection (1833-55)

Supplemental:

+ Charles Wentworth Dilke, The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties
+ Bronterre O’Brien, Progress of Human Slavery (1849-50) (Chapter I, VII, and XV to end)
+ Thomas Carlyle, Chartism (Chapters 1 & 9)
+ Theodor Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism (“The Chartist Movement” and “Appendix: 1848 in England”)

Week 6 7/12/25: Young Hegelian communism and Chartism

• August von Cjezkowski, Arnold Ruge, and Edgar Bauer (1841-44)
• Moses Hess, “Socialism and Communism,” “A Communist Credo,” and “Consequences of a Revolution of the Proletariat” (1843-47)

Week 7 7/19/25: Democracy and socialism

• Victor Considerant, The Principles of Socialism: Manifesto of 19th Century Democracy (1847) selections: Part One. The State of Society (complete); Part Two. The State of Opinion I. Study of the Great Divisions of Modern Democracy

Supplemental:

+ Louis Blanc, Organization of Labor [Selection TBD]