In the Beginning: The Choices and the Choice.

The Utopian Impulse in American History.

The Golden Age of Utopianism, 1820’s to 1850’s:

In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. Part II.

Burton Weltman

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Tom Paine

The Utopian Origins of European Americans.

The utopian impulse in American history began with some of the first European immigrants to America.[1]  John Winthrop, in what can be considered his founding speech for the Puritan colony in Massachusetts in 1630, called upon his comrades to build a cooperative community that would reflect the glory of God and be “A modell of Christian charity” for all the world to follow.  He said that “we must be knitt together in this worke as one man” and “must entertain each other in brotherly affection.” 

Fleeing, the Puritans developed utopian proposals and sought to establish an ideal community in America. The Puritans were not socialists, but they were communitarians, that is, devotees of the common good over individual success.  Those, Winthrop said, who were fortunate enough to be rich must share their wealth with the poor and give up their luxuries “for the supply of others’ necessities.”  The rich must help the poor in their material need and, in turn, the poor must help the rich in their spiritual need.[2] 

Although Winthrop’s vision promoted the communitarian idea of one for all and all for one, there were inherent tensions within his ideal between the individual and the community that eventually undermined his goal.  In Puritan ideology, the goal of saving oneself in the eyes of the Lord was supposed to be consistent with the obligation of serving the Lord’s community, and the economic success of an individual was supposed to support the spiritual success of the community.  Theoretically and theologically, economic success would come to those individuals who were best serving the community and, in turn, an individual’s success would be a sign that the person was doing the Lord’s work. 

But things did not always work out that way.  The Puritan commonwealth was economically so successful that it attracted outsiders who did not share the community’s spiritual or collectivist goals.  When many of these outsiders became economically successful individuals, which was supposedly a sign they were doing the Lord’s work, the Puritans’ spiritual and communitarian ideals were undermined. 

Although the utopian goals with which the colony was founded were an essential ingredient in the success of the community — their ideals sustained colonists through hard times and provided them with the cooperative attitude that was essential in building the colony — the utopian spirit waned during the course of the seventeenth century.  In a sense, the community failed through success.[3]

The Utopian Origins of the American Revolutionaries.

The American revolutionaries who founded the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had utopian aspirations similar to those of the Puritans.  The historian Gordon Wood has called the American Revolution “one of the great utopian movements in American history”[4] and it was seen as such by the Founders themselves.  Expressing the sentiments of most revolutionaries following the Declaration of Independence, Tom Paine exclaimed in utopian terms that “The birthday of a new world is at hand” and that “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”[5] 

According to Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and other Founders, the Revolution would unleash the virtue of the American people so that they could build a republican society that would be a model for the world.  Their republican vision of politics and government was to a large extent a secular version of Winthrop’s model of Christian charity.  It encompassed both a commitment to shared and sharing community institutions — the res publica or public thing — and an emphasis on the individual’s role in serving the community — the virtuous man as a public servant.  All for one and one for all would benefit one and all. 

But there were tensions within the Founders’ republicanism as there had been within the Puritans’ ideals, tensions exemplified by the motto that the Founders chose for their new country: E Pluribus Unum — out of many comes one and out of one comes many.  In the Founders’ view, communalism was supposed to foster individualism and individualism was supposed to foster communalism.  That, however, is easier to say than to do and almost from the founding of the republic, there developed an intense debate between those who would emphasize individualism over the community and those who would emphasize cooperation over individualism.         

The Founders were both utopians and self-styled realists who saw themselves as trying to establish the most perfect government they could imagine for what they believed was inevitably an imperfect society made up of imperfect people, including themselves.  Theirs was an open-ended utopia rather than a fixed and rigid plan for society.  This pragmatic utopianism is reflected in the Constitution, which allows for endless amendments and continually changing interpretations as society evolves.

Perfection was for the Founders not something that could ever be achieved in substance but could be approximated in the processes they had established in the Constitution.  Perfection was for them the subject of an endless quest, the eternal “pursuit of happiness” promised in the Declaration of Independence.  And it required a social theory and a social structure that “would forever remain free and open,” flexible and ecumenical.[6] 

Things did not turn out exactly as the Founders expected in the wake of winning the Revolution and establishing the Constitution.  Instead of cooperation and unity among citizens, there developed partisan politics and regional conflicts.  But the country expanded enormously in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and this expansion encouraged and enabled the emergence of new utopian visions of America. 

American history during the second quarter of the nineteenth century can, in fact, be described as a battle between the proponents of three different utopian visions, that of a mercantilist commonwealth, a communal socialism, and a free enterprise capitalism.  It was the highpoint of utopian theory and practice in the United States, and the struggle among these visions left a permanent imprint on the country.  And the struggle between these three visions is the focus of this second part of “The Utopian Impulse in American History.”

Utopian Visions: Mercantilism, Socialism, Individualism.

Each of the three utopian visions – mercantilist, socialist and individualist – shared aspects of the Founders’ ideals but took them in different directions.

Mercantilist Republicanism.  The vision of a mercantilist commonwealth was based on the Founders’ traditional republican ideals, especially their pursuit of virtue.  This was a vision of a centrally controlled society with a government-controlled economy, governed by a natural aristocracy of the best and the brightest, and aiming toward the general welfare of one and all.  This was the view of both Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian republicans.  Their republican descendants, such as John Quincy Adams, emphasized the Founders’ belief that virtue was its own reward, and that a virtuous elite could and would rule in the interests of the common good.   

The key to this vision, and what made it utopian, was its dependence on the emergence of an elite leadership of the best and brightest Americans who would rule the country based on a consensus among themselves as to what was best for the country and a consensus of support from the populace.  This republican view of top-down social control and evolutionary social change derived in large part from the Whig tradition in England.  Like English Whigs, American Whigs such as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay promoted a centrally controlled capitalist economy similar to the mercantilism that England had practiced during the eighteenth century.  Clay’s “American System” of national improvements and support for a national bank exemplified this program. 

Clay’s stated goal was “to secure the independence of the country, to augment its wealth, and to diffuse the comforts of civilization throughout the society” and to do this “by blending and connecting together all its parts in creating an interest with each in the prosperity of the whole.”[7]  Clay and other traditional republicans emphasized the responsibility of the central government to promote the public welfare and of the natural elite to care for the general populace.

Communal Socialism.  The vision of a communal socialism had as its foundation the fact that most Americans lived in small communities in which cooperation among citizens was essential for their survival.  This was a vision of a decentralized society of small cooperative communities in which members would share the work and the produce, and would engage in exchange with other similar communities to the mutual advantage of all.  Utopian socialists, such as Albert Brisbane, emphasized the Founders’ republican commitment to e pluribus unum and one for all, all for one.

Utopian socialism is a model of social change that seeks to combine an immediate revolution in the lives of people who join a cooperative community with a gradual evolution in the structure of society as more and more people voluntarily join such communities and these communities proliferate.  Utopian socialists generally hope to combine a cooperative economic system within each community with a market relationship between different communities.

Utopian socialism is ostensibly a means of peaceful revolution in the lives of community members and peaceful evolution of society.  Unlike militant revolutionaries, utopian socialists reject violence.  Unlike social reformers whose incremental changes only gradually improve people’s lives, utopian socialists immediately live the intended good life in their cooperative communities.  Whereas for revolutionaries the end justifies the means, and for reformers the means are everything and there is no end, for utopians the end is in the means.  The thrust of utopian socialism is to build model communities that others will emulate when they see how well these communities can work.[8]

The key to this vision and what makes it utopian is its dependence on people reigning in their egos and genuinely cooperating with each other.  And like the Puritan colony, most utopian communes in America have historically been plagued with conflicts between individualism and communalism, dictatorship and democracy, creativity and conformity, which have led to the demise of most of them.[9]  

Utopian socialist communities were, however, a highly visible part of colonial America and were considered a viable option in colonial society.  Most of the socialist communities founded during the colonial period were based on religion.  Prominent among them were the Bohemian Manor in Maryland that lasted from 1683 to 1727, the Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania that lasted from 1732 to 1814, and the various Shaker communities in the Northeast and Midwest that began in the 1770’s and lasted into the early 1900’s.  These were substantial communities that lasted for substantial periods of time. 

Religious communes continued to proliferate after the Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century — the Mormons, for example, began as a socialist community.[10]  Secular socialist communities proliferated as well, especially in the period from the 1820’s through the 1850’s.  The English industrialist Robert Owen and the French thinkers Joseph Fourier and Etienne Cabet were the most popular utopian theorists of that time.  The most famous of the secular socialist utopias were New Harmony established by Owen in Indiana, Brook Farm established by George Ripley in Massachusetts based on Fourier’s ideas, and Icaria established by Cabet in Texas.[11]   

Utopian socialism was not considered an outlandish or unrealistic option during the early nineteenth century, and it was taken seriously by elite leaders and ordinary people alike.  When Robert Owen visited the United States during 1824 and 1825 to promote his utopian socialist vision and establish the New Harmony community, he was well received personally by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and John Calhoun, and he twice delivered speeches outlining his plans to the House of Representatives. 

In a speech to Congress on February 25, 1825, Owen argued that “Man, through ignorance, has been, hitherto, the tormenter of man,” even in the relatively enlightened United States.  The cause of this evil, he claimed, was what he called “the trading system” of individualist competition in which everyone tries to get the better of everyone else.  Economic competition, Owen complained, breeds anger, hate, irrationality, ignorance and war.  And it brings “a surplus of wealth and power to the few, and poverty and subjection to the many.”  Cooperation, he claimed, brings greater liberty, equality, efficiency, harmony and happiness to all.  Owen concluded with the hope that his new community would be a model for the United States.[12] 

Utopian socialism had wide popular appeal and attracted considerable popular attention during this time.  The influence of utopian socialist thinking in America is exemplified by the more than one hundred utopian novels published in the United States during the nineteenth century, many of them best sellers.  Most of these novels portrayed societies that were not impossible to establish and some were the basis of utopian experiments.[13]  Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, the preeminent newspaper in ante-bellum America, was a convert to the utopian socialist ideas of Fourier.  Greeley employed Albert Brisbane, Fourier’s most prominent American disciple, to write a regular front page column on Fourierism in the Tribune, and Greeley supported the founding by Brisbane of some thirty socialist communes around the United States.[14]

Fourierist communities, which made up the biggest number of secular utopian communes during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, were based on the general principle of from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs.[15]  This principle meant that everyone would be treated with equal consideration but not exactly the same.  People with different abilities and skills would be given different tasks and different levels of responsibility.  Every person would play a dignified role in society of his/her own choice that fit with his/her interests and abilities and that contributed to the common good, but with some people having more decision-making power than others. 

In this respect, Fourier’s ideas were similar to the Founding Fathers’ ideal of a natural aristocracy or what we today might call a meritocracy.  For this reason, Brisbane claimed, Fourier’s ideas epitomized the American way of life and were “the culmination and expression of all those social ideals that had built the American Republic.”[16]  Properly implemented, according to Brisbane, Fourier’s plan would resolve the conflict between the individual and the community that had plagued the Puritans and American social reformers ever since.  But proper implementation required a large number of people with a variety of skills, more people and resources than the fledgling Fourierist communities could ever muster.          

 Brook Farm was a Fourierist community of intellectuals founded by George Ripley during the 1840’s “to ensure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker as far as possible in the same individual.”  Ripley and his colleagues hoped that their experiment would be a model of how to do away with social class distinctions, “opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all,” so as  to “permit a more wholesome and simple life than can be led amidst the pressures of our competitive institutions.”[17] 

In The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne reflected in fictional form on his experience as a member of Brook Farm, and complained that “The peril of our new way of life was not lest we should fail in becoming practical agriculturalists, but that we should probably cease to be anything else.”  Hawthorne claimed that mixing manual labor with mental labor worked to the detriment of intellectual life, and he concluded that farmers and intellectuals “are two distinct individuals, and can never be melted or welded into one substance.”[18] 

His was a common conclusion among intellectuals at the time, but it is called into question by the fact that the most successful projects at Brook Farm and at Owen’s New Harmony were their schools.  These utopian schools were models of progressive education for their time and provided creative alternatives to the common schooling model that was becoming the norm in American education during the middle of the nineteenth century.  With schools that stressed thinking and creating over drilling and memorizing, intellectual life was fostered in these and other communities.[19]

Some one hundred utopian socialist communes were established in all parts of the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.  Many of these communities lasted for decades.  Some were economically so successful that, like the Puritans’ Massachusetts Bay colony, they lost their utopian purpose along the way.  The Amana Society, for example, was founded as a religious commune during the mid-1840’s and became very successful as a cooperative commercial enterprise. 

This commercial success eventually led to conflicts between old-time members and newly recruited members over whether all should share equally in the wealth of the community or whether old-timers should get extra financial credit for the efforts they had initially put into making the community a success.  Members of Amana were eventually given shares in the community proportionate to their input into the business, and the commune was thereby transformed into a manufacturing corporation that has been producing high quality appliances from the nineteenth century to the present day.[20]  In a similar vein, the Mormons started as a radical, abolitionist, communitarian sect but eventually became a conservative, pro-capitalist community.

Utopian socialism flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in large part because it fitted in well with the way most Europeans settled in America.  Contrary to the impression that is usually created in conventional narratives, the decision to come to America during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not typically made by an individual who wanted merely to better his or her own social and economic position, but by a group of people who wanted to build a new and better community for themselves and for posterity. 

From the Pilgrims and Puritans on through the early twentieth century, most immigrants came from Europe to America as groups of people who had lived in the same locality in their old country and then settled together in the new country.  They came as a community with the intention of maintaining their community.  Likewise, when European-Americans moved westward across the continent, they generally moved in groups, first setting up new towns and community institutions before attempting to attract more people.  It took cooperation among a village of people in order for anyone to survive in newly settled lands. 

So, the community came first, individual people came after.  Communalism and cooperation formed the primary pattern of immigration to the United States and migration within the country through the nineteenth century, and this provided plausibility and opportunity for the development of utopian socialist communities. 

 Capitalist Individualism.  The vision of an entrepreneurial capitalism was based on the prevalence and success of small farmers and manufacturers in America.  Entrepreneurial individualists, such as Andrew Jackson, envisioned a society of small farms and businesses that would compete with each other in a market place free of government interference.  The actions of entrepreneurs would be governed by the “hidden hand” of the free market to produce the best possible results for each individual and for the society as a whole. 

This vision picked up on the Founders’ republican ideal of the heroic individual but largely dismissed the Founders’ concerns for the community.  Laissez-faire individualism was a new development in early nineteenth century America.  While traditional histories, in an ex post facto line of reasoning, try to portray laissez-faire capitalist individualism as stemming from settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it wasn’t so.

Capitalist individualism developed in large part out of opposition by Jacksonian Democrats to the mercantilist economic policies being promoted by President John Quincy Adams, Senator Henry Clay, and Nicholas Biddle, who was the director of the Bank of the United States (BUS).  Jackson and his followers demonized the BUS as a “monster” and claimed that Biddle was using his influence over the country’s banking system to strangle small farmers and businessmen in favor of the rich.[21]  Its goal was what the historian James Willard Hurst has called “a release of energy,” that is, to unleash the latent entrepreneurial energies of ordinary Americans.[22]  

Utopian individualism is an anti-communitarian prescription for social development in which each person is responsible for making a revolution in his own life.  In its extreme form, it even denies the existence of society as a collective entity — what we call society is just a collection of individuals.  It is the ideal of the self-made man.  In this vision, society exists in a state of perpetual upheaval as individuals compete with each other and defeat one another, with the better man winning and thereby contributing to social progress. 

Utopian individualism is supported by a simplistic form of egalitarian theory which swept the country during the early nineteenth century, and which maintained that anyone could become anything he wanted — and this was a “he” ideology.  This moral theory was derived in large part from the philosophy of John Locke.  Locke taught that humans found happiness through exercising their talents in collecting property.  He claimed that society existed to further the “life, liberty and property” of individuals, goals which could be best obtained through a limited government that protected private property and encouraged competition among people.[23]

Utopian individualism is also bolstered by a simplistic laissez-faire economic theory which became popular during the mid nineteenth century.  This theory maintains that anyone should be able to do anything he wants and that it is every man for himself to succeed or fail on his own.  Utopian individualism promises that with everyone doing anything and everything he wants, a productive competition among people will ensue and this competition will be guided by an “invisible hand” (often equated with God) toward an ideal outcome.  A key to this vision was, and is, its dependence on the magic of the marketplace and the deus ex machina of competition. 

Economic individualism has historically been supported by a misreading of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations that has interpreted Smith as favoring a weak government and a laissez-faire economy.  While Smith objected to mercantilism as a system that was inherently corrupt and that stifled both creativity and cooperation, he, in fact, supported a strong government and a cooperative community, something that many of his self-styled followers have missed in using his name to support their laissez-faire individualistic ideas.[24]  As the ideology of individualism developed during the nineteenth century, American individualists cited Smith in rejecting both the mercantilism and the communalism that had largely prevailed in America during the colonial period.  And what began as opposition to government controls that were considered oppressive to ordinary people developed into opposition to almost any government intervention in the economy.

The rise of laissez-faire individualism in the United States was aided by social, economic and demographic developments.  Enormous opportunities for individual advancement were made possible by the territorial expansion of the country during the first half of the nineteenth century (the Louisiana Purchase and the conquest and purchase of Florida during the first quarter, then the annexation of Texas and the conquest of Mexican territories during the second quarter), and by the economic expansion of the country that resulted from the beginnings of the industrial revolution.  Despite the institution of slavery and slave plantations in the South, the United States was overwhelmingly a country of small-scale farmers and businessmen who operated in large part on their own initiatives, and whose activities made an individualistic ideology plausible.[25]

Utopian individualism was also bolstered by the transformation of the typical American farm during the mid nineteenth century from a neighborly endeavor to an isolated enterprise.  During the colonial period, most farmers lived with other farmers in a close-knit village.  In the nineteenth century, as farmers spread into the vast spaces of the Midwest, many came to live on solitary farms at a considerable distance from their neighbors.[26]  This isolation gave support to the myth of the self-made, self-sufficient man that became a predominant ideal for Americans during the later nineteenth century, and continues as such with many people to the present day.[27] 

Utopian individualism became the political ideology of the Jacksonian Democrats who dominated American government for most of the second quarter of the nineteenth century and who used the ideal of the self-sufficient, freedom-loving individual to beat down their Whiggish opponents.[28]  President Martin Van Buren summarized this view when he defined the goal of Jacksonian Democrats as “a system founded on private interest, enterprise, and competition, without the aid of legislative grants or regulation by law.”[29] 

Utopian individualism was a self-contradictory vision that confuses freedom – a free-for-all in which everyone does whatever they want – with liberty – in which people make choices within limits that are set by the community and that are in the best interests of individuals and the community.  Liberty is the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not freedom which is a self-contradiction.  It is a contradiction that we are still struggling with today. 

This is the second of three parts to this essay on utopianism.  “Part I: Historical Cycles” was posted in 9/24.  “Part III: Individualism Triumphant” is intended to be posted in 11/24.                                                                                                                                              BW  10/24

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[1] The gist of the essay is taken from a chapter of a book that I published some years ago called Was the American Revolution a Mistake, Reaching Students and Reinforcing Patriotism through Teaching History as Choice (2013).  The book looks at historical turning points in which people had to consider their feasible options, make what they decided were their best choices, and then evaluate the consequences of their actions.  

[2]  Primary Source: John Winthrop. “John Winthrop: “A Modell of Christian Charity (1630)” American History. ABC-CLIO, 2011.

[3]  Secondary Source: Perry Miller. Errand into the Wilderness. (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), 1-15.

[4]  Gordon Wood. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 54.

[5]  Quoted in William Goetzmann. Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 3.

[6]  William Goetzmann.  Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), xi.

[7]  Quoted in William Appleman Williams. The Contours of American History. (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966), 264.

[8]  Arthur Bestor, Jr. Backwoods Utopias. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), 4, 10-16.

[9]  Robert Sutton. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Religious Communities, 1732-2000. (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2003), x, 1-11, 17-31. 

[10]  Thomas O’Dea. The Mormons. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 18, 186-197.

[11]  Robert Sutton. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000. (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2004), 7-16, 37-44, 53-70.

[12]  Primary Document: Robert Owen. “Speech to Congress.” American History Online. Facts on File, Inc., 2011.

[13]  Ellene Ransom. Utopus Discovers America or Critical Realism in American Utopian Fiction, 1798-1900. (Nashville, TN: Joint Universities Libraries, 1947), 3-4.

[14]  Robert Sutton. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000. (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2004), 5-6, 23-25.  William Goetzmann. Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism. (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 365.

[15]  Brett Barney & Lisa Paddock. “Fourierism.” American History Online. Facts on File, Inc., 2011.

[16]  Arthur Bestor, Jr. “Albert Brisbane – Propagandist for Socialism in the 1840’s .” New York History, Vol. XXVIII. (April, 1947), 146.

[17]  Quoted in Alice Felt Tyler. Freedom’s Ferment. (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), 177.

[18]  Fiction: Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Blithedale Romance. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1961), 7. 81-82.

[19]  Arthur Bestor, Jr. Education and Reform at New Harmony. (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana Historical Society, 1948), 399.  Arthur Bestor, Jr. “American Phalanxes: A Study of Fourierist Socialism in the United States.” Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University. (University Microfilms No. 70-23, 045, 1938), 230.

[20]  Alice Felt Tyler. Freedom’s Ferment. (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), 131.

[21]  Secondary Source: Edward Pessen. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, Politics. (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1969), 146-148.

[22]  James Willard Hurst. Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), 32.

[23]  John Locke. The Second Treatise of Government. (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1952), 48, 70-71.  C.B. MacPherson. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 194-262.

[24]  James Buchan. The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006).  Garry Wills. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 232, 254.

[25]  James Willard Hurst. Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), 8.

[26]  David Hawke. Everyday Life in Early America. (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 153.

[27]  James Willard Hurst. Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), 7.

[28]  Edward Pessen. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, Politics. (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1969), 227, 296.

[29]  Quoted in William Appleman Williams. The Contours of American History. (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966), 246.