ABSTRACT
English History has become so Mandevilled (or Namierized) by questions as to whose hand is in the till, or whose interest is to be served, that the story of those who tried to save society behind its collective back has been ignored. The very term ‘Utopian’ is now associated with eccentricity and futility. Marx and Engels began the process (as they began so much else) by describing the ‘promoters of duodecimo editions of the new Jerusalem,’ 732 as ‘fanatical’, ‘superstitious’ and ‘pedantic’. Sidney Webb accused them of having too little faith in human nature, and of ‘throwing up the sponge in despair’. 733 To Bernard Shaw they were just funny :–
When they were managed by men who had made fortunes, like Robert Owen, in private commerce, they made a hopeless mess of communism. And when the managers were all amateurs they split at once into the few born bosses who could manage, and the idealists who thought they were going to have a happy paradise, and take it very easy. The capable ones soon found out that they could make their fortunes in the private labour market and could do nothing with the idle idealists; so they cleared out and went into business on their own account, whereupon, the linch pin being taken out of the cart, it upset; and the experiment came to an end. 734
