Okay, Here I’m gonna outline the entire syllabus for a decent history of Socialism up to 1918. This is based on a class I took at my university. This post will be the syllabus outline. I will then be making posts for all texts, including secondary sources. I will go week by week just like the original class. Yes I did all the readings, and yes it was not fun sometimes lol.

NOTE: Marx and Engels are absent from this syllabus. The reason for this is that Marx in addition to not being the dominant figure in radical circles during most of his life with a lot of work unpublished, everyone also knows Marx. Any list will generally have the manifesto, capital, the German Ideology, Socialism Utopian and scientific etc on it. I will interject and add those, however they won’t be the focus here. So although I will put them, I won’t be putting in depth discussion or secondary sources and they won’t get their posts.

Here we go,

Introduction:

This course is an introduction to radical thought in Europe across the long nineteenth century from the French to the Russian revolutions. This period marks the entrance of the lower orders onto the political stage—and not merely in moments of revolt, but as a permanent presence around which politics and government subsequently must needs orient, and not merely to be recorded in the texts of their aristocratic enemies, but as inspiring and expositing their own political doctrines. This course is an introduction to radical thought in Europe across the long nineteenth century from the French to the Russian revolutions. This period marks the entrance of the lower orders onto the political stage—and not merely in moments of revolt, but as a permanent presence around which politics and government subsequently must needs orient, and not merely to be recorded in the texts of their aristocratic enemies, but as inspiring and expositing their own political doctrines.

Schedule of Readings:

Primary source readings will average approximately 100–150 pages per week. There may be some weeks with heavier reading. They are marked in bold

Secondary sources are given as suggestions obligatory or exhaustive, and are normal text.

Week 1

  • Claeys, Gregory. “Non-Marxian Socialism 1815-1914.” In The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys, 521–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • Hobsbawm, Eric J. Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back on the French Revolution. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. pp. 1-61. (61 pages)
  • Claeys, Gregory, and Christine Lattek. “Radicalism, Republicanism and Revolutionism: From the Principles of ’89 to the Origins of Modern Terrorism.” In The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys, 200–253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Week 2

  • Robespierre, Maximilien. Virtue and Terror. New York, NY: Verso, 2007. “On the Silver Mark,” “Draft Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,” “On Revolutionary Government,” “On the Principles of Political Morality,” (pp. 5-19, 98-107, 108-126)(41 pages)
  • Buonarroti, Phillippo. Buonarroti’s History of Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality. Edited by James Bronterre O’Brien. London: H. Hetherington, 1836. pp. 20-39, 54-60, 64-70, 88-94, 100-6 (43 pages)
  • Buonarroti, Phillippo. Buonarroti’s History of Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality. Edited by James Bronterre O’Brien. London: H. Hetherington, 1836. pp. 148-176, 180-1, 184-205, 212-3 plus the footnote that runs to 222, 227-9. (62 pages)
  • Birchall, Ian. The Spectre of Babeuf. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2016.
  • Lovell, David W. “The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism: The Case of Early French Socialism.” French History 6, no. 2 (1992): 185–205.
  • Rosanvallon, Pierre. “Revolutionary Democracy,” and “The Republic of Universal Suffrage.” In Democracy Past and Future. Edited by Samuel Moyn. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Pp. 79-97 and 98-116

Week 3

  • Paine, Thomas, Agrarian Justice
  • Calhoun, Craig. The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Read Chapters 1 “Resituating Radicalism” or 2 “Social Movements and the Idea of Progress” (pp. 12-81)(69 pages) Read one or the other chapter, depending on interest.
  • Claeys, Gregory. “The French Revolution Debate and British Political Thought.” History of Political Thought 11, no. 1 (1990): 59–80. [If you like, just read the introduction, pg. 59-62, and the summary of Paine, pg. 64-67, if you’re very pressed for time. But it’s useful to read the rest from 67 to the end. ]
  • Claeys, Gregory. “The Origins of the Rights of Labor: Republicanism, Commerce, and the Construction of Modern Social Theory in Britain, 1796-1805.” The Journal of Modern History 66, no. 2 (1994): 249–90. [read at least the intro and the Paine segment (which is about Agrarian Justice), pg. 249-263. You may also want to read the Godwin segment, 277-9; he is often claimed as an ancestor by anarchists or left-libertarians; I strongly recommend reading the Charles Hall section (279-88)]
  • Owen, Robert. A New View of Society and Other Writings. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1991.
  • A New View of Society (1813), preface and parts 1, 3, 4 (1-18, 37-93) (74 pages) “Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System,” (93-104) (11 pages)
  • Claeys, Gregory. Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ———. Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815-1860. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1987.
  • Jones, Gareth Stedman. “Malthus, Nineteenth Century Socialism, and Marx.” The Historical Journal, 2019, 1–16.

Week 4

  • Owen, Robert. A New View of Society and Other Writings. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1991. Sections “Further Development for the Plan for the Relief of the Poor and for the Emancipation of Mankind,” (136-158) (22 pages) [make sure you read the correct “Further Development”— there are two with very similar titles!] “Report to the County of Lanark” (1820) (250-309) (59 pages)
  • Heighton, William, An Address to the Members of Trade Societies (1827)
  • Skidmore, Thomas, The Rights of Man to Property! (1829), 1829) Preface, 5-16, 28-50, (skim 63-71 if interested in his comments on Paine), 77-80, 97-108, 113-122, 125-147, 150-160, 172-174, 192-197, 204-207, 226-228, 230-231, 238-243, 247-249, 264-276, 294-300, 316, 341-345, 355-361, 374-390.

Week 5

  • John Gray, The Social System (1831). Selections Chapter I to V, but within Chapter V, please skip (or skim if you prefer) p. 76 (mid) to p. 89 (mid). Those pages aim to argue that metallic money can still function for small change without messing up his new fiat labor-money monetary system. Read the last couple pages of Chapter V that follow that discussion. Then flip to Chapter VI, and read pp. 93-114 and 126-8, which will add his thoughts on wages, (in)equality, and education.

Note: It’s now probably worth it to consider the modifications and modulations of Owenism, of which you will now have been introduced to at least four variants: Early Owen, Mature Owen, Heighton, and Gray. They differ on their normative grounds, the problems they diagnose, their proposed solutions, their envisaged social schemes, their modes of reform, propagation, and transition, and probably several other axes.

  • Claeys, Gregory. Citizens and Saints: Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ———. Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815-1860. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1987
  • Thompson, Noel W. The People’s Science: The Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816-34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ———. The Market And Its Critics: Socialist Political Economy In Nineteenth Century Britain. London ; New York: Routledge, 1988.
  • Saad-Filho, Alfredo. “Labor, Money, and ‘Labour-Money’: A Review of Marx’s Critique of John Gray’s Monetary Analysis.” History of Political Economy 25, no. 1 (1993): 65–84.
  • Hunt, E.K. “The Relation of the Ricardian Socialists to Ricardo and Marx.” *Science
  • gammison [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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    4 years ago

    Ran out of space, continuing here with the secondary sources for week 7:

    • Desanti, Dominique. A Woman in Revolt, a biography of Flora Tristan. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1976.
    • Beik, Doris and Paul. Flora Tristan: Utopian Feminist: Her Travel Diaries and Personal Crusade. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993
    • Dijkstra, Sandra. Flora Tristan: Feminism in the Age of George Sand. London: Pluto Press, 1992.
    • Melzer, Sara E. and Rabine, Leslie W. Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1992.
    • Schneider, Joyce Anne. Flora Tristan: Feminist, Socialist, and Free Spirit. New York: Morrow, 1980.
    • Strumingher, Laura L. The Odyssey of Flora Tristan. New York: Peter Lang, 1988.
    • Cross, Máire. The feminism of Flora Tristan. Berg, Oxford, 1992.
    • Sowerwine, Charles (1998). “Socialist, Feminism, and the Socialist Women’s Movement from the French Revolution to World War II.” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, pp. 357–388. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company

    Week 8

    • Louis Blanc, The Organization of Work (1839)
    • Chartism: TBD texts from the collection Chartism and Society. We skipped this so I have no actual readings.
    • Stedman-Jones. “Rethinking Chartism,” in his Languages of Class. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
    • Epstein, James. “Rethinking the Categories of Working-Class History.” Edited by Gareth Stedman Jones. Labour / Le Travail 18 (1986): 195–208.
    • Taylor, Miles. “Rethinking the Chartists: Searching for Synthesis in the Historiography of Chartism.” The Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (1996): 479–95.

    From here some selections were ad hoc decided during class, so I’m not putting them here. Week 9

    • Petr Lavrov, Historical Letters (1870)
    • Pomper, Philip. The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970.
    • Venturi, Franco. Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia [1952]. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960.
    • Walicki, Andrzej. The Controversy Over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
    • Paperno, Irina. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior. Stanford: Stanford Universitiy Press, 1988.
    • Billington, James H… Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
    • Pomper, Philip. Peter Lavrov and the Russian Revolutionary Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
    • Kingston-Mann, Esther. In Search of the True West: Culture, Economics, and Problems of Russian Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
    • Berlin, Isaiah. “Russian Populism.” In Russian Thinkers. 2nd Edition. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.
    • Berlin, Isaiah. “Fathers and Children.” In Russian Thinkers. 2nd Edition. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.

    Week 10

    • Blanqui, TBD selections from The Blanqui Reader
    • Bernstein, Samuel. Auguste Blanqui and the Art of Insurrection. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971.
    • Goff, Philippe Le. Auguste Blanqui and the Politics of Popular Empowerment. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
    • Greene, Doug Enaa. Communist Insurgent: Blanqui’s Politics of Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2017.
    • Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873), pp. 129-63; 168-89; 198-220 (74 pages)
    • Avrich, Paul. The Russian Anarchists. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.
    • Eckhardt, Wolfgang. The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016.
    • Vincent, K. Steven. “Visions of Stateless Society.” In The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, edited by Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys, 433–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
    • Berlin, Isaiah. “Herzen and Bakunin on Individual Liberty.” In Russian Thinkers. 2nd Edition. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.

    Week 11

    • Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (1892)
    • Emma Goldman, sadly we skipped her for time

    Week 12

    • Bernstein, The Preconditions of Socialism (1899)[1896-1898]
    • Steger, Manfred B. The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
    • Rogers, H. Kendall. Before the Revisionist Controversy: Kautsky, Bernstein, and the Meaning of Marxism, 1895-1898. Routledge, 1992.
    • Tudor, Henry, and J. M. Tudor, eds. Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate, 1896-1898. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
    • Schorske, Carl E. German Social Democracy: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955.
    • Schaev, Brian. “Anticipating the Social Democratic Schism: Theoretical Disputes within the SPD on Capitalist Evolution and the Nature of the Imperial German State, 1891-1914.” Focus on German Studies 18 (2011): 19–52.
    • Colletti, Lucio. “Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International.” In From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society, 45–108. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972

    Week 13

    • Rosa Luxemburg, Reform and Revolution (1899)
    • Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike (1906)
    • Donald, Moira. Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists 1900–1924. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
    • Salvadori, Massimo. Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Revolution. London ; New York: Verso, 1990.
    • Gronow, Jukka. On the Formation of Marxism: Karl Kautsky’s Theory of Capitalism, the Marxism of the Second International and Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 1986.
    • Day, Richard B., and Daniel F. Gaido, eds. Discovering Imperialism: Social Democracy to World War I. Reprint edition. Chicago, Ill.: Haymarket Books, 2012.
    • ———, eds. Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2011.
    • Frölich, Paul. Rosa Luxemburg. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2010.
    • Stedman Jones, Gareth. “Engels and the End of Classical German Philosophy, NLR I/79, May–June 1973.” New Left Review I, no. 79 (1973): 17–36.
    • ———. “Engels and the Genesis of Marxism.” New Left Review I, no. 106 (1977): 79–104.

    Week 14

    • Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
    • Haimson, Leopold H. The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955.
    • Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought: Theory and Practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2009.
    • Lih, Lars T. Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2008.
    • Harding, Neil, ed. Marxism in Russia: Key Documents 1879-1906. Translated by Richard Taylor. 1 edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
    • Krausz, Tamas. Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2015.
    • Mullin, Richard, ed. The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, 1899-1904. Haymarket Books, 2016.
    • Donald, Moira. Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists 1900–1924. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
    • Sochor, Zenovia A. Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
    • gammison [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 years ago

      Okay that’s everything. Some people who didn’t make the cut but I wish had include William Manning, Eugene Debs, DeLeon, Kautsky’s The Class Struggle, Lenin: On The Unity of His Thought, Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid and a whole bunch of others I definitely missed but it’d take a lifetime to read everything.

      Some early socialists intentionally left out are Saint Simon and Fourier as I found there’s not much to get out of those readings that couldn’t be done with a quick summary in one of the secondary sources. Also note that every primary source was published. I did not use anything unpublished as the purpose was to construct a history that represented what was available to radicals by other radicals at that moment in time.

      The important Marx and Engels works that were intentionally left from this syllabus that would likely be worth including on it are imo: The Communist Manifesto, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1859 Preface, Capital, Theses on Feuerbach, The Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

      Also, for people interested in studying capital, one book which takes into account the context of socialist theoy surrounding Marx is Marx’s Inferno by William Clare Roberts. His book partly served to inspire the course, although we took it a lot further than he did.