French utopian socialists as the first pioneers in development

It is the purpose of this paper to present a reassessment of the works of the first nineteenth century French Utopian Socialists. It is well known that their contributions have been highly criticised, from both the economic and social point of view and the political or ethical one. Recent commentators, mostly historians and philosophers, have, however, underlined the realistic ambition and the reformist spirit of those approaches. This paper aims to develop this perspective. Indeed, it is my intention to defend the idea that the realism of utopia can be even better characterised by economists: the analyses of Leroux, Enfantin, Chevalier, Buchez or Considérant can be interpreted in terms of development. We study more specifically the initial flowering between 1830 and 1835 of the writings of the Saint-Simonians (Enfantin, Chevalier, Pereire), the works of the dissidents (Buchez, Leroux) and those of the main supporters of Fourier (Considerant, Transon, Lechevalier). We will conduct our survey proceeding from the notion of 'vision' proposed recently by Robert Heilbroner. We then examine whether these socialist pioneers really worked in order to elaborate a 'vision' in terms of 'development'. Copyright The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.