The beginning of the 19th century is considered as the dawn of industrialism, economics and socialism. When J. B. Say proposed the concept of industrialism, Charles Fourier, the father of socialism, immediately challenged the term. Similarly, Simond de Sismondi was another thinker who contested the concept. Later, however, in this era, industrialism became the mainstream ideology of both the socialist thinking, and the economics discipline. This said, current intellectual debates for an ecological society highlights the importance of Fourier and Sismondi’s labor and nature-based theories. For Sismondi, a farmer must have his own land. This arrangement doesn’t provide the highest profit but achieves full employment and provides the highest gross total income. In the phalanstery of Fourier private property, rivalry, competition policy, and individual events are protected as principles. This differs considerably from the liberal use of the property, and has a collective nature of production. On private property, another approach is taken by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who claims that only the changes/swaps that are made in reciprocity can be fair. He suggests, there is no mutual benefit in the capitalist relations based on wages. In summary, the issue for Proudhon is not to eliminate private property, but to open the private property to everyone. In fact, according to him, only possession is possible, not property: and summarizes his views as”jus utendi, sed non abutendi”. Des Jardins supports Proudhon and claims that the human being can only possess the improvements on the earth and products obtained from it, rather the land property itself.

This media entry was a contribution to the special session „Back to the future: a debate among socialists at the dawn of industrialism“ at the 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest in 2016.