In the 1820s a small number of men and women who imagined a more cooperative and egalitarian world began to meet in London in Chancery Square.
They challenged the notion that individual pursuit of self-interest would always benefit society as a whole. Reaching for an alternative to individualism they arrived at a new word: “socialism”.
The concept, if not the word, had religious antecedents. Both pagan worship of Mother Earth and Christian confidence in God the Father held the family up as a model for the organization of society as a whole. The early socialists departed from religious tradition by describing solidarity and concern for others as a feature of the natural rather than the spiritual order.Socialism was typically described as kinship writ large, ‘‘as if one family had multiplied as to fill the earth” and was then ‘‘by the stipulations of kindred... pledged to co-operation in the full extent.”1 As Thomas Paine had explained in simple language, individuals had much to gain from commitments to mutual protection and support. Some socialists described a new society organized like a vast insurance company for the bearing of all losses from fire, shipwreck, old age, and widowhood.2 Others developed a more ambitious vision of farms and factories as cooperative egalitarian enterprises.
Embracing the family as a model for society made it difficult to take the family for granted. Unlike their intellectual predecessors the early socialists defied complacency regarding traditional rules of marriage, the sexual double standard, and the gender division of labor. They hoped to banish both greed and lust. Most of their contemporaries felt that they hoped for way too much. But if their idealistic ardor diminished their political success, it also energized their vision.