Utopia

Utopia:From the Novel to Revolution

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THE TRANSFORMATION OF UTOPIA IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, FROM A ROMANTIC IDEAL TO A POLITICAL OBJECTIVE

Until the Age of Enlightenment, utopia was a popular literary genre, but without concrete political effects. However, in the decades leading up to 1789, its status gradually changed from an entertaining thought experiment to a socialist project. Imagining the ideal city took on the task of articulating revolutionary transformation of society towards equality and social justice.

In Utopia, Stéphanie Roza explores the nascent ideal of a community of property and labour, not yet called communism, and the thinkers who engaged with it in the lead-up to the French Revolution. These philosophers included Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, a fierce critic of private property and the mysterious author of the Code de la Nature; the Abbé de Mably, a radical republican and interlocutor of Rousseau; and Gracchus Babeuf, who, from the 1780s onwards, defended the natural right to subsistence and dreamed of a more fraternal world.

Together, they laid the foundations for modern socialist movements. In the crucible of the French Revolution, ‘real equality’ became the goal of a handful of conspirators gathered around Babeuf, who had meanwhile become the ‘tribune of the people’. The Conspiracy of Equals was considered by Marx to be ‘the first active communist party’: the hopes and questions that ran through the group prefigured those of the militants of later periods, including today.

Reviews

  • Some books are stimulating for what they present as unprecedented. Stephanie Roza's work is undoubtedly one of those.

    Sébastien RomanAsterion
  • Stéphanie Roza's work fills a conspicuous gap in the history of utopia, describing and analyzing a relatively overlooked moment in its intertwined genealogy.

    Alex BellemareActa fabula
  • In this important and innovative book, Stéphanie Roza sheds light on the intellectual origins of revolutionary utopia. Focusing on three important but too little-known figures, she offers an insightful and fresh approach to the radical Enlightenment.

    Antonie Lilti, author of The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris