ABSTRACT
The market was anathematised by almost all nineteenth century socialist writers. It embraced both the market's performance as an economic mechanism and the social, moral, aesthetic, psychological and environmental repercussions of the triumph of the market economy. To admit the market was to admit a Trojan horse within the walls of the New Jerusalem. For early nineteenth century communitarian socialists these walls were to be built high to prevent such an incursion of market forces and market values. If the market impoverished the working-classes materially, it impoverished the whole of society spiritually and morally. For late nineteenth century socialists the theoretical problems resulting from a determination to abandon the market were more acute. The mid-century period did see attempts to come to terms with the market as a fact and an obviously intransigent fact of economic life.
