Echoes From Our Past

I recently had the pleasure of reading Dennis Hardy's well-researched and supported book, Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England (1979). Covering the communities of utopian and agrarian socialism, sectarianism, and anarchism, Hardy lays out a history of socialist thought well worth searching for a library or used copy to add to your socialist reading list. 

Hardy, not overlooking the role scientific socialists also had in the development of workers readying themselves to give capitalism the final toss, one marvels at the simplicity and vigour of the ideas set by early socialist Diggers how to do this:

"The earth is to be planted, and the fruits reaped, and carried into barns and storehouses by the assistance of every family; and if any man or family want corn, or other provision, they may go to the store-houses, and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go into the fields in summer, or to the common stables in winter, and receive one from the keepers, and when your journey is performed, bring him where you had him without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers shops, and receive what they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep, or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling. And the reason why all the riches of the earth are a common stock is this, because the earth, and the labours thereupon, are managed by common assistance of every family, without buying and selling . . ." Gerald Winstanley c.1652

For socialism,

 Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC.