French Socialists Before Marx

A reassessment of early socialist ideas and reforming strategies. It reveals a remarkable period of intellectual creativity and achievement wholly distinct from the post-1870 movement that has invariably formed the starting point for most histories of socialism.

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In this pioneering and wide-ranging reassessment of early socialist ideas and reforming strategies, Pamela Pilbeam reveals a remarkable period of intellectual creativity and achievement wholly distinct from the post-1870 movement that has invariably formed the starting point for most histories of socialism. The book pulls together and identifies the major issues that preoccupied the early socialists: revolution, religion, education, the status of women, association and work and outlines how socialist ideas developed from a morality-based plural socialism of men and women that sought to smooth away class conflict to a materialist, internationalist socialism that used the rhetoric of revolution and class war.