The Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain came into existence as the result of the “impossibilist revolt” of 1900–1904. The “revolt” was a movement of a few hundred socialists within the Social Democratic Federation, itself a social revolutionary party with a membership of only a few thousands. The absence of widespread support for any of these revolutionary movements in a country whose political tradition has remained predominantly constitutional accounts for the fact that the crisis inside the S.D.F., and with it the origins of the S.L.P. and the S.P.G.B. themselves have been consigned to obscurity in the history of British Socialism.

The socialism of Charles Fourier (1772–1837) though primarily a French movement succeeded in exerting a not insignificant influence in early nineteenth century Britain. At first it did little more than modify the views of native pioneer socialists who imported a sprinkling of Fourierist ideas into their own writings – usually greatly modified and without acknowledgement of their origin. Gradually, however, Fourierism made more wholehearted converts and by the eighteen forties a group of enthusiastic disciples in London had succeeded in creating an embryonic movement, with mass meetings and a weekly journal. Though the movement died out after about a decade of active propaganda and even if it never achieved anything like the success it obtained in the United States (where no less than twenty-seven Fourierist communities were attempted), English Fourierism produced a fairly extensive literature and undoubtedly exerted an important influence on the general pattern of English socialist thought, having in this respect a probably more significant career than the more spectacular movement of the Saint Simonians.

Soit qu'on l'en blâme, soit qu'on l'en loue, on rapporte souvent au Marxisme la paternité de l'idée des oppositions de classes dans la société industrielle. Nous voudrions montrer ici qu'il y a là une vue excessivement schématique et que, s'il est vrai que c'est le Marxisme qui a donné à cette idée sa portée sociale, sa portée de propagande surtout, la notion des “antagonismes” immanents à la société contemporaine s'est formée bien avant les premiers manifestes du Marxisme. Nous utiliserons pour cela la littérature sociale française en prenant pour point de départ les oeuvres de Saint-Simon et en nous bornant à suivre l'évolution de cette idée dans la lignée de quelques auteurs qui se rattachent à son influence, jusqu'en 1848.

Aus dem Nachlass des am 16. März 1953 verstorbenen Historikers Paul Frölich veröffentlichen wir die nachfolgende Studie zu seinem unvollendet gebliebenen Werk: „Demokratie und Diktatur in der Französischen Revolution”.