ABSTRACT
Utopian socialism has rarely been considered in its own right. Its very title suggests a juxtaposition to a scientific' successor and the general approach to the subject still bears the imprint first placed upon it in the Communist Manifesto and Anti-Duhring. A number of speakers questioned Stedman Jones's emphasis on utopian socialism as an ideological phenomenon. Patricia Hollis argued that by the early 1830s Owenism was a bran tub from which many different things might be taken. Andrew Spooner suggested that another way of looking at the context of utopian socialism was to compare their utopia with the rival utopia of the classical political economists in which there was a vision of wealth widely distributed. Finally, there is the classical issue of those junctures of major crisis where the policy adopted by a communist party appears to have been disastrous, mistaken or at least missed crucial opportunities.
