From Utopian Republicanism Towards Scientific Socialism

Abstract Enlightenment republicanism of the kind promoted by Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, during the second half of the eighteenth century, was rooted in a providential, protestant, religious tradition, stretching back to the seventeenth century. It looked forward to a utopian political state, in which the adoption of equality before that law and the removal of excessive economic inequality would foster virtuous citizens, who would each make the common good the common care and voluntarily submit to a rational law. Early in the nineteenth century, this democratic republicanism was overtaken by the emergence of political economy that no longer sought economic equality but justified economic inequality and capital accumulation as the means to bring about the progress of civilization and the wealth of nations. This chapter introduces this pivot towards political economy, as developed in the popular writings of Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau.