19th-Century Social Theories: Utopian Socialism, Anarchism, Liberalism, and Materialism

Utopian Socialism

In the mid-nineteenth century, thinkers appeared who vindicated and defended the need to carry out social reforms to address resulting inequalities. They even proposed implementations in the production and distribution of wealth. Key figures included Saint-Simon and Fourier. However, the naivety and lack of scientific validity of their projects earned them criticism from Marxists, among others.

Anarchism

This is another philosophical and social current that demanded a radical transformation of society. The name means "without law or authority." Its principal ideologues, Bakunin and Proudhon, rejected all forms of power. They advocated the destruction of the State as the only way to achieve genuinely free, good, and supportive human beings.

Economic Liberalism

In England, a number of thinkers set out to legitimize economic liberalism and capitalism (most notably, Adam Smith and David Ricardo). According to these authors, the laws of capitalism are natural and immutable and must be respected. Therefore, the law of supply and demand, and the consequences arising from its application, including insecurity, were seen as inevitable and necessary for the system.

Materialism

Marx shared Hegel's idea that reality is not static, but dynamic and changing, a product of forces and material relations. However, Marx moved away from Hegel's idealism to a convinced materialism. This materialist view holds that ideologies do not determine reality; rather, it is the material reality that produces its own ideology. In other words, it is not the spirit in its development that builds and determines reality and history, but concrete social and economic conditions that mark the mindset of a people. The infrastructure of a community determines the superstructure (culture, ideology, moral norms, etc.).

Marx was a Hegelian in that he shared Hegel's conception of historical development as a dialectical process. But he was also anti-Hegelian because he saw in this process not the deployment of the spirit, but the opposition and overcoming of different systems of producing material goods. For this reason, Marxism is considered a form of *dialectical materialism*. It becomes a method of analysis of social reality with scientific claims. According to Marxists, it should serve both to discover the laws and mechanisms that govern historical development and to forecast the social future.