From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our - Chris J. Young

Fourierist groups arose in many places, as did many communes loosely based on Fourier’s ideas.
The most famous of them, Brook Farm in the United States, even published an unofficial journal,
the Harbinger, promoting Fourierism. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), a founding member of
Brook Farm, would later fictionalize his experience in his utopian novel The Blithedale Romance.
41. Robert Owen (1771–1858). The Book of the New Moral World. London: E.
Wilson, 1836-1844.
Like most utopian-socialists, Robert Owen put his ideas into practice. At an early age he became
involved in the textile industry and by 1800 had taken control of the mills at New Lanark in Scotland.
Within a decade he had amassed a considerable fortune and had become increasingly involved in
the reform of labourers’ working and living conditions, which subsequently led him to make drastic
changes at New Lanark. Thousands of visitors would come each year to see his model industrial mill,
and by the end of the nineteenth century, nineteen Owenite model communities had been established
across England, Scotland, ireland, and the United States. Although many of the communities were
unsuccessful and lasted only a few years, Owen had awakened many to the possibility of improving
the human condition by effecting social and economic change in the life of workers. in 1835, seeing
that his model could be applied to society as a whole, he formed the Association of All Classes of All
Nations, later renamed the Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists, or Rational Society
for short. it was during this period that the Owenite movement gained momentum, publishing a
regular paper, The New Moral World, from 1834 to 1845. it was also during this time that he published
his most extensive work on his ideals for a rational society, The Book of the New Moral World, which
was issued in seven volumes from 1836 to 1844.
42. Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Das
kommunistische Manifest. London: German Cooperative Publishing Co., 1890.
The Communist Manifesto established the platform of the Communist Party and proclaimed the
desirability and inevitability of a full-scale overthrow of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism by
the working class. The abolition of private property was the stated universal goal of the movement, to
be achieved through a unified working class revolution. The revolution would result in the temporary
dictatorship of the proletariat in which state confiscation and redistribution of property on an equal
basis would take place following the final clash between the bourgeoisie and the working class. This
revolution would then be followed by the emergence of a classless society, a millennial heaven on
58 Case Seven: Quest for Equality