Etienne Cabet

From Philosopedia

Cabet, Etienne (1 January 1788 - 9 November 1856)

A French Utopian socialist, Cabet was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1831. But, following his bitter attacks on the government, he exiled himself to Great Britain (1834—1839), where he developed a theory of communism influenced by Robert Owen.

In his Voyage en Icarie (1840), Cabet depicted a society in which an elected government controlled all economic activity and supervised social affairs. A popular book, it led to the establishment of an Icarian community on the Red River in Texas. Other Icarian communities, dedicated to “Humanity” but none surviving after 1898, rose in Nauvoo, Illinois, and Corning, Iowa.

In 1839, Cabet returned to France to advocate a communitarian social movement, for which he invented the term communisme. Cabet's notion of a communal society influenced other socialist writers and philosophers, notably Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Some of these other writers ignored Cabet's Christian influences, as described in his book Vrai Christianisme (Real Christianity).

Cabet died in St. Louis, Missouri.

(See letter to Cabet from Marx and Engels; and information about the French Icarian Village in Iowa.)