• What is utopian communism?
• Differences with scientific communism
• The utopian colonies

We explain what utopian communism is and how these socialist currents arise. Differences between utopian and scientific communism.

socialists that existed in the eighteenth century when the philosophers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels emerged with their theories of a scientific communism, that is, protected by the laws of history, according to doctrine theory that they baptized as "historical materialism".

In order to distinguish, thus, Marxist socialism from the already existing currents in this regard, which tried to achieve the Revolution through various procedures and postulates, this distinction was proposed between their proposals. Utopian communism is often accused of opposing the capitalist system of capital gain, but lack the tools to explain it, understand it and therefore overcome it.

It is common, therefore, to refer to the thinkers of utopian communism with the names of "utopian socialism", "pre-Marxist socialism", "protosocialism" or "first socialism".

The most important representatives of this socialist school of thought were Robert Owen (England) and Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Flora Tristan and Étienne Cabet (France). It is also worth mentioning Graco Babeuf, Filippo Buonarotti and Auguste Blanqui, for their insurrectionary social ideas.

Utopian communism came to an end during the 19th century, when the great socialist movement emerged, coordinated by the International Workers Association (1864-1876), based on the ideas of Marx and Bakunin.However, his legacy would have a marked influence not only on the Marxism, but in social democracy, cooperativism, the Hippie movement, the environmentalism and Social Christianity.

Differences with scientific communism

The difference between these two aspects of socialism, despite the fact that in the so-called "utopian" there are different approaches and approaches to the matter, is based on the method used to understand and defeat the capitalist system.

Utopian socialists are accused of being merely critical of the system, while Marxist or scientific socialism would have proposed a critical method of understanding society. reality, who understood history as a perennial struggle between the social classes (the famous class struggle) for assuming control of the means of production. Marxism called this confrontation "the engine of history."

Another difference lies in the fact that Marxism unified around its postulates the different critical approaches to capitalism, while utopian socialism consisted of a diversity of currents, often contradictory to each other, seeking a new path towards a more just society.

The utopian colonies

The main currents of utopian socialism tried to establish utopian colonies or utopian communities, not called that way at the time, and which were attempts to found communal agricultural colonies that did not depend on the capitalist model but explore other forms of more supportive relationship.

However, these communities failed due to philosophical discrepancies and economic problems, and the emergence of cliques and personalistic leaderships within them. Most of these communities experimental ones were tried to found in France, Brazil and the United States.