C H A P T E R T W E L V E Non-Marxian Socialism A socialist can be defined as anyone who asserts that capitalism has very serious problems, and who also believes that a substantial degree of common ownership is necessary if those problems are to be solved. | CHAPTER TWELVE Non-Marxian Socialism J. E. King Introduction A socialist can be defined as anyone who asserts that capitalism has very serious problems and who also believes that a substantial degree of common ownership is necessary if those problems are to be solved. Thus socialism covers a very wide range of opinions from revolutionary anarcho-syndicalists to moderate social democrats and even at the margin some conservatives Lichtheim 1983 1970 . It does exclude however the essentially neoliberal advocates of a post-1989 Third Way. Economics can also be defined very broadly to include any discussion of production consumption distribution or exchange whether it is conducted by specialist economists by political activists or by social philosophers. Even non-Marxist is an elastic term as the instances of Rudolf Hilferding Oskar Lange and John Roemer illustrate see sections and . There is inevitably some overlap with Geert Reuten s chapter on Marxism and with Warren Samuels s chapter on utopian economics. Socialism Before Marx 1800-50 Arguments for some form of socialism date back to classical antiquity. The case for beginning this survey around 1800 is a simple one all the writers considered here preached a socialism of affluence denying the Malthusian claim that nature placed severe limits on material progress. For them capitalism stood condemned for perpetuating poverty in the midst of potential plenty. The rise of modern industry they asserted demonstrated that human ingenuity was boundless social political and above all economic institutions were to blame for the continuing misery of the mass of the population not divine displeasure or the niggardliness of nature. Among the most important of the early British socialists were John Francis Bray John Gray Thomas Hodgkin Robert Owen and William Thompson Non-Marxian Socialism 185 Thompson 1998 . They all attacked Malthus and his followers sometimes drawing on Ricardo and other classical .
