Presented by Prinjal Shiyal
Enrollment no. 2069108420190041.
Paper no. 6
Batch year, 2018- 2020.
Email ID. Prinjal00123@gmail.com
Submitted to ; Maharaja krishnakumarsinghji Bhavnagar university. (MKBU)
1.Introduction: Dickens and Socialism?
“The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood."
Dickens a socialist? Dickens a utopian? Most readers of the novels of Charles Dickens would probably regard these questions with incredulity. To many readers, Dickens’ novels are stories of cheerful folks regaling themselves with sumptuous repasts while reclining at a cozy fireside. They read his books as fairy tales that do not significantly challenge readers intellectually, emotionally or ethically. Dickens is said to have written kid stuff that also appeals to adults. His stories involve easy criticism of unjust Victorian social institutions that are long gone, and invoke easy moral judgments against the neglect of impoverished children. Rich philanthropists often save the day. And the stories resolve in happy endings, usually with the marriage of some long suffering couple. No socialism here, those readers would say.Other readers see another side to Dickens’ works. They read his books as dark tales that got darker as Dickens got older. Murder, starvation, neglect, bankruptcy, cruelty and injustices of all sorts pervade his stories. Public institutions of every sort are portrayed as corrupt, incompetent and cruel, with no hope for reformation. Although most of his novels have superficially happy endings, in which a hero or heroine marries a long sought-after mate, disaster or death are the fate of most of Dickens’ characters along the way. And there is usually a shadow over even the nuptials of the happy couple. No utopianism here, those readers would say.But there is a third side to Dickens. Dickens was neither a Pollyanna nor a cynic and negativist. In every one of his novels, there are examples of compassionate and cooperative communities of people who work and live together. Idylls and blessed isles in a generally hard and hard-hearted world, they provide glimmers of hope for humanity, and for Dickens’ readers, in the midst of the bleak times and dark happenings that pervade his books. Their configurations are various. They can be families, friendship groups, formal organizations, informal collectives, taverns, commercial businesses, factories, neighborhoods, or towns. They take different forms, but empathy and a “one for all, all for one” ethos is at the core of each.These communities include Wemmick’s bower in Great Expectations, a tiny retreat for family and friends from the horrors of daily life. George’s shooting gallery in Bleak House, a haven for the homeless and helpless. Small family businesses such as the Bagnet’s music shop in Bleak House and Solomon Gills’ chandler shop in Dombey and Son. Factories such as Daniel Doyce’s in Little Dorrit, George Rouncewell’s in Bleak House, and the paper mill in which Lizzie Hexam finds refuge in Our Mutual Friend. Pickwick’s social club in The Pickwick Papers. The Green Dragon tavern in Martin Chuzzlewit. Mr. Crummles’ theatre group in Nicholas Nickleby. Even Fagin’s gang of thieving boys in Oliver Twist. And Sleary’s circus in Hard Times, an oasis of caring in an emotional desert. In the midst of the hard realities that dominate the novels, these sites and situations can provide comfort and hope to readers. And it is these compassionate communities that place Dickens in the company of the utopian socialists.It is easy to overlook these communities in Dickens’ books and underestimate their influence on readers. Almost all of them play a secondary role in the plots of the novels. They are byways that the main characters pass through or sideshows that they encounter. But that does not detract from their interest, their importance, or their effect on readers. The main characters in Dickens’ books are often boring, bland, and just plain soppy. It is his minor characters who are usually more interesting to readers, and seemingly to Dickens as well. Similarly, these compassionate communities are secondary sites and situations in Dickens’ novels, but they often provide the most interesting scenes in his books, and the most important moral examples.Dickens’ compassionate communities offer glimpses of collective good will that is distinct from the individual achievements of his main characters. These communities are often idealized. They are, nonetheless, often more realistic than the heroic deeds of the main characters, which are largely beyond the ken of ordinary people. They exemplify collective achievement of the sort that ordinary people might envision accomplishing together. And the compassionate communities stand in stark contrast to the dysfunctional families, the dystopian cities, and the other grim sites and situations that predominate in Dickens’ stories.The thesis of this essay is that beneath the grimy surface of his novels, Charles Dickens was a utopian socialist of the heart. That is, through his portrayal of compassionate communities, Dickens promoted ideas and ideals that reflected the neonate socialist movement of early to mid-nineteenth century England. Because the movement was supposedly based on sentiment rather than science, and on vague hopes rather than precise predictions, it later came to be characterized and denigrated as “utopian” by ostensibly more realistic radicals. But the movement provided a social and moral template to the era that influenced a broad swath of the population, especially the working class and intellectuals, including many who were not explicitly socialists.Adherents of the so-called utopian socialist movement were dismayed by the social, economic, and environmental harm being wrought by industrial capitalism. They complained that capitalist society was ugly, immoral, and inefficient. Capitalism was a heartless economic system whose main product was hardhearted people. Inspired by the ethical principle of “From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs,” a formula that was created by the utopian socialist Louis Blanc, utopian socialists hoped to replace the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalism with cooperative communities. They intended to do this one family, farm, factory, and town at a time. It was a grass-roots, local-control, small-is-beautiful movement.Prominent among the leadership of the utopian socialists were the Englishman Robert Owen, and the Frenchmen Charles Fourier and le Comte de Saint-Simon. The word “socialism” was invented by followers of Saint-Simon during the 1820’s. The ideas of these three men were widely discussed, and were the inspiration behind many cooperative ventures. Each of them had detailed plans for how they thought a community should operate, and some of the specific proposals of Fourier and Saint-Simon were bizarre. But the humanistic sentiment behind their proposals, and the general outline of their proposed communities — which can be characterized as cooperative hierarchies and hierarchical cooperatives — were a big part of the intellectual background of the era that Dickens absorbed and that his works reflect.
While Dickens did not identify himself as a socialist, and did not subscribe to the specific proposals of any of the prominent utopians, his writings bespeak an underlying utopian socialist sentiment and sentimentality that I believe was one of the reasons for his popularity during the nineteenth century, and is one of the reasons for his enduring popularity today. His portraits of compassionate communities resonate with readers. The novel Hard Times will be a focus of this essay. It revolves around the stultifying effect that rote education has on students, and the devastating effect that industrial capitalism had on workers and the environment. It is not one of Dickens’ most popular books, but it most clearly exemplifies his socialist. “A Christmas Carol cannot be [considered] a story that promotes socialism because it is a story that depends upon capitalism.”Some socialists have claimed Dickens as one of their own, others have eschewed him as an apologist for capitalism. Karl Marx, for example, claimed that in Hard Times Dickens had “issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together.” Other socialists, such as George Bernard Shaw, cited Dickens’ negative portrait of the labor leader Slackbridge in Hard Times as evidence that he was not a socialist. Still other socialists claimed that Dickens was not only not a socialist, he was not even a social reformer, and was merely an apologist for the status quo.More sympathetic critics have countered that Dickens was portraying Slackbridge as merely the counterpart of the capitalist Bounderby, that is, as someone exploiting workers. They have noted that Dickens publicly supported labor unions and frequently encouraged workers to organize themselves.[2] In reporting on a labor strike that occurred during the time he was writing Hard Times, Dickens extolled one of the strike leaders for his emphasis on peacefully settling the dispute, and for raising the possibility of workers’ cooperatives.[3] And in discussing Hard Times at a meeting of the Mechanics Institute in the industrial town of Birmingham, he exhorted the workers there to organize so as to “work for their own good and for the welfare of society.”Anti-socialists have, in turn, excoriated what they saw as Dickens’ socialist sympathies. Thomas Macaulay, the preeminent English historian and literary critic of Dickens’ time, and an influential mainstream politician, condemned Hard Times as “sullen socialism.” He claimed that Dickens was an ignoramus and did not know what he was writing about. Other more sympathetic anti-socialists have argued that Dickens was not condoning socialism or condemning capitalism in the book, merely criticizing some of the excesses of industrialism in his Era. The question of whether Dickens was a socialist becomes even more complicated when one peruses his other books. Those who claim Dickens was not a socialist point to the large number of wealthy characters in his novels whose philanthropy and benevolence save the day. These include Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist, John Jarndyce in Bleak House, Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, and the reformed Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Without their capitalist wealth, these characters would not have been able to do good. These commentators point also to Dickens’ fears of the rioting masses in Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities, and the absence in his books of any call for central and centralized government intervention in the economy.Those who claim Dickens was a socialist point to the large number of capitalists whom he portrays as heartless villains and greedy egotists. These include the Ralph Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby, Paul Dombey, Sr. in Dombey and Son, Anthony and Jonas Chuzzlewit in Martin Chuzzlewit, and Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times. They also point to the sympathy Dickens extends to the poor in his books, and the scathing criticism he directs at governmental institutions that uphold the capitalist status quo. These institutions include the Courts of Chancery in Bleak House, the patent system in Little Dorrit, the criminal justice system in Great Expectations, the welfare/workhouse system in Our Mutual Friend, and the orphanages in Oliver Twist. Each of them is cruel and incompetent.
Dickens and Definitions of Socialism:-
“For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against the property relations [of capitalism]…The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.”The debate about Dickens’ political views has often been unnecessarily muddled because debaters were using different definitions of socialism. The word socialism can mean many different things, and many a heated political argument has floundered on the fact that the combatants were assuming different definitions of the term. In particular, the definitions of socialism that most people use today are quite different than the definition assumed by most people in Dickens’ time. If one uses definitions of socialism that have been generally accepted since the late nineteenth century, Dickens was no socialist. But if one uses the definition that was most prominent in his time, he seemingly was. Using that definition also has the effect of clearing up what seem to be conflicts between his socialist sentiments and his portrayals of benevolent rich people and rioting masses.Definitions of socialism since the late nineteenth century have usually focused on the role of the central government in a country’s economy. This was not the case during the early nineteenth century when socialism usually meant decentralization. The emphasis of more recent socialists on the central government and on centralized control of the economy seemed to follow logically from the huge concentrations of land, industry and wealth that developed during the mid to late nineteenth century, and that continue to the present. In this context, socialism has generally been described as an economic system that is founded on the presumptions that businesses will be publicly owned, and that the central government will control the economy. These are presumptions that for many socialists can be overcome if it can be shown that private ownership and/or free markets in particular businesses would be more efficient and fairer to the public.Discussions of socialism since the late nineteenth century have usually been based on scientific analyses of hard facts and material factors, unlike the supposedly soft and sentimental, ethical and aesthetic approaches of the early nineteenth century utopians. Following the lead of self-styled scientific socialists, such as Karl Marx, most socialists came to consider socialism to be a historically logical stage of social development. They also claim it is development that must be embraced if liberty and democracy are to thrive, and even survive. Most anti-socialists have rejected socialism on the supposedly scientific grounds that centralized control of a large-scale economy would not work, and that socialism would undermine economic progress. They also contend that a socialist economy would present a fatal danger to democracy and freedom.
Discussions of socialism have been further complicated by the fact that socialists since the late nineteenth century have often differed as to how much control the central government should exercise, and how a socialist society can and should be achieved. Socialists take a range of positions on the role of the public and private sectors in the economy. Some insist on the goal of a highly centralized command economy. They say that only if the government runs the economy according to a central plan can the system be considered socialist, and can it work. Other socialists promote a less centralized and more market-based socialism. Most of these would allow small private businesses, which could even constitute a majority of the economy, so long as they do not exploit their workers or do public harm. Many would also allow some economic activities to be coordinated through a marketplace, so long as it operates in the public interest.As to establishing socialism, some insist that it can be achieved only through revolution, and an immediate and complete takeover of the government and the economy. They consider any attempt at social reform or a gradual move toward socialism to be a betrayal of the movement and a sell-out to capitalism. Others claim, however, that socialism can best be achieved through social reforms, and a gradual socialization of the economy through political compromises and incremental changes. These two groups have often fought each other as much as they have fought their pro-capitalist opponents. Using present-day definitions of socialism, Dickens was not a socialist.
Summing up:-
So, we can say, He did not call for government control over the economy, whether centralized or decentralized, and whether by revolution or reform. But neither does Dickens seem to have been a devotee of capitalism. The point is that to most self-styled socialists in early to mid-nineteenth century England, socialism did not mean establishing government control over the economy.
Enrollment no. 2069108420190041.
Paper no. 6
Batch year, 2018- 2020.
Email ID. Prinjal00123@gmail.com
Submitted to ; Maharaja krishnakumarsinghji Bhavnagar university. (MKBU)
1.Introduction: Dickens and Socialism?
“The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood."
Dickens a socialist? Dickens a utopian? Most readers of the novels of Charles Dickens would probably regard these questions with incredulity. To many readers, Dickens’ novels are stories of cheerful folks regaling themselves with sumptuous repasts while reclining at a cozy fireside. They read his books as fairy tales that do not significantly challenge readers intellectually, emotionally or ethically. Dickens is said to have written kid stuff that also appeals to adults. His stories involve easy criticism of unjust Victorian social institutions that are long gone, and invoke easy moral judgments against the neglect of impoverished children. Rich philanthropists often save the day. And the stories resolve in happy endings, usually with the marriage of some long suffering couple. No socialism here, those readers would say.Other readers see another side to Dickens’ works. They read his books as dark tales that got darker as Dickens got older. Murder, starvation, neglect, bankruptcy, cruelty and injustices of all sorts pervade his stories. Public institutions of every sort are portrayed as corrupt, incompetent and cruel, with no hope for reformation. Although most of his novels have superficially happy endings, in which a hero or heroine marries a long sought-after mate, disaster or death are the fate of most of Dickens’ characters along the way. And there is usually a shadow over even the nuptials of the happy couple. No utopianism here, those readers would say.But there is a third side to Dickens. Dickens was neither a Pollyanna nor a cynic and negativist. In every one of his novels, there are examples of compassionate and cooperative communities of people who work and live together. Idylls and blessed isles in a generally hard and hard-hearted world, they provide glimmers of hope for humanity, and for Dickens’ readers, in the midst of the bleak times and dark happenings that pervade his books. Their configurations are various. They can be families, friendship groups, formal organizations, informal collectives, taverns, commercial businesses, factories, neighborhoods, or towns. They take different forms, but empathy and a “one for all, all for one” ethos is at the core of each.These communities include Wemmick’s bower in Great Expectations, a tiny retreat for family and friends from the horrors of daily life. George’s shooting gallery in Bleak House, a haven for the homeless and helpless. Small family businesses such as the Bagnet’s music shop in Bleak House and Solomon Gills’ chandler shop in Dombey and Son. Factories such as Daniel Doyce’s in Little Dorrit, George Rouncewell’s in Bleak House, and the paper mill in which Lizzie Hexam finds refuge in Our Mutual Friend. Pickwick’s social club in The Pickwick Papers. The Green Dragon tavern in Martin Chuzzlewit. Mr. Crummles’ theatre group in Nicholas Nickleby. Even Fagin’s gang of thieving boys in Oliver Twist. And Sleary’s circus in Hard Times, an oasis of caring in an emotional desert. In the midst of the hard realities that dominate the novels, these sites and situations can provide comfort and hope to readers. And it is these compassionate communities that place Dickens in the company of the utopian socialists.It is easy to overlook these communities in Dickens’ books and underestimate their influence on readers. Almost all of them play a secondary role in the plots of the novels. They are byways that the main characters pass through or sideshows that they encounter. But that does not detract from their interest, their importance, or their effect on readers. The main characters in Dickens’ books are often boring, bland, and just plain soppy. It is his minor characters who are usually more interesting to readers, and seemingly to Dickens as well. Similarly, these compassionate communities are secondary sites and situations in Dickens’ novels, but they often provide the most interesting scenes in his books, and the most important moral examples.Dickens’ compassionate communities offer glimpses of collective good will that is distinct from the individual achievements of his main characters. These communities are often idealized. They are, nonetheless, often more realistic than the heroic deeds of the main characters, which are largely beyond the ken of ordinary people. They exemplify collective achievement of the sort that ordinary people might envision accomplishing together. And the compassionate communities stand in stark contrast to the dysfunctional families, the dystopian cities, and the other grim sites and situations that predominate in Dickens’ stories.The thesis of this essay is that beneath the grimy surface of his novels, Charles Dickens was a utopian socialist of the heart. That is, through his portrayal of compassionate communities, Dickens promoted ideas and ideals that reflected the neonate socialist movement of early to mid-nineteenth century England. Because the movement was supposedly based on sentiment rather than science, and on vague hopes rather than precise predictions, it later came to be characterized and denigrated as “utopian” by ostensibly more realistic radicals. But the movement provided a social and moral template to the era that influenced a broad swath of the population, especially the working class and intellectuals, including many who were not explicitly socialists.Adherents of the so-called utopian socialist movement were dismayed by the social, economic, and environmental harm being wrought by industrial capitalism. They complained that capitalist society was ugly, immoral, and inefficient. Capitalism was a heartless economic system whose main product was hardhearted people. Inspired by the ethical principle of “From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs,” a formula that was created by the utopian socialist Louis Blanc, utopian socialists hoped to replace the dog-eat-dog competition of capitalism with cooperative communities. They intended to do this one family, farm, factory, and town at a time. It was a grass-roots, local-control, small-is-beautiful movement.Prominent among the leadership of the utopian socialists were the Englishman Robert Owen, and the Frenchmen Charles Fourier and le Comte de Saint-Simon. The word “socialism” was invented by followers of Saint-Simon during the 1820’s. The ideas of these three men were widely discussed, and were the inspiration behind many cooperative ventures. Each of them had detailed plans for how they thought a community should operate, and some of the specific proposals of Fourier and Saint-Simon were bizarre. But the humanistic sentiment behind their proposals, and the general outline of their proposed communities — which can be characterized as cooperative hierarchies and hierarchical cooperatives — were a big part of the intellectual background of the era that Dickens absorbed and that his works reflect.
While Dickens did not identify himself as a socialist, and did not subscribe to the specific proposals of any of the prominent utopians, his writings bespeak an underlying utopian socialist sentiment and sentimentality that I believe was one of the reasons for his popularity during the nineteenth century, and is one of the reasons for his enduring popularity today. His portraits of compassionate communities resonate with readers. The novel Hard Times will be a focus of this essay. It revolves around the stultifying effect that rote education has on students, and the devastating effect that industrial capitalism had on workers and the environment. It is not one of Dickens’ most popular books, but it most clearly exemplifies his socialist. “A Christmas Carol cannot be [considered] a story that promotes socialism because it is a story that depends upon capitalism.”Some socialists have claimed Dickens as one of their own, others have eschewed him as an apologist for capitalism. Karl Marx, for example, claimed that in Hard Times Dickens had “issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together.” Other socialists, such as George Bernard Shaw, cited Dickens’ negative portrait of the labor leader Slackbridge in Hard Times as evidence that he was not a socialist. Still other socialists claimed that Dickens was not only not a socialist, he was not even a social reformer, and was merely an apologist for the status quo.More sympathetic critics have countered that Dickens was portraying Slackbridge as merely the counterpart of the capitalist Bounderby, that is, as someone exploiting workers. They have noted that Dickens publicly supported labor unions and frequently encouraged workers to organize themselves.[2] In reporting on a labor strike that occurred during the time he was writing Hard Times, Dickens extolled one of the strike leaders for his emphasis on peacefully settling the dispute, and for raising the possibility of workers’ cooperatives.[3] And in discussing Hard Times at a meeting of the Mechanics Institute in the industrial town of Birmingham, he exhorted the workers there to organize so as to “work for their own good and for the welfare of society.”Anti-socialists have, in turn, excoriated what they saw as Dickens’ socialist sympathies. Thomas Macaulay, the preeminent English historian and literary critic of Dickens’ time, and an influential mainstream politician, condemned Hard Times as “sullen socialism.” He claimed that Dickens was an ignoramus and did not know what he was writing about. Other more sympathetic anti-socialists have argued that Dickens was not condoning socialism or condemning capitalism in the book, merely criticizing some of the excesses of industrialism in his Era. The question of whether Dickens was a socialist becomes even more complicated when one peruses his other books. Those who claim Dickens was not a socialist point to the large number of wealthy characters in his novels whose philanthropy and benevolence save the day. These include Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist, John Jarndyce in Bleak House, Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, and the reformed Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Without their capitalist wealth, these characters would not have been able to do good. These commentators point also to Dickens’ fears of the rioting masses in Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities, and the absence in his books of any call for central and centralized government intervention in the economy.Those who claim Dickens was a socialist point to the large number of capitalists whom he portrays as heartless villains and greedy egotists. These include the Ralph Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby, Paul Dombey, Sr. in Dombey and Son, Anthony and Jonas Chuzzlewit in Martin Chuzzlewit, and Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times. They also point to the sympathy Dickens extends to the poor in his books, and the scathing criticism he directs at governmental institutions that uphold the capitalist status quo. These institutions include the Courts of Chancery in Bleak House, the patent system in Little Dorrit, the criminal justice system in Great Expectations, the welfare/workhouse system in Our Mutual Friend, and the orphanages in Oliver Twist. Each of them is cruel and incompetent.
Dickens and Definitions of Socialism:-
“For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against the property relations [of capitalism]…The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.”The debate about Dickens’ political views has often been unnecessarily muddled because debaters were using different definitions of socialism. The word socialism can mean many different things, and many a heated political argument has floundered on the fact that the combatants were assuming different definitions of the term. In particular, the definitions of socialism that most people use today are quite different than the definition assumed by most people in Dickens’ time. If one uses definitions of socialism that have been generally accepted since the late nineteenth century, Dickens was no socialist. But if one uses the definition that was most prominent in his time, he seemingly was. Using that definition also has the effect of clearing up what seem to be conflicts between his socialist sentiments and his portrayals of benevolent rich people and rioting masses.Definitions of socialism since the late nineteenth century have usually focused on the role of the central government in a country’s economy. This was not the case during the early nineteenth century when socialism usually meant decentralization. The emphasis of more recent socialists on the central government and on centralized control of the economy seemed to follow logically from the huge concentrations of land, industry and wealth that developed during the mid to late nineteenth century, and that continue to the present. In this context, socialism has generally been described as an economic system that is founded on the presumptions that businesses will be publicly owned, and that the central government will control the economy. These are presumptions that for many socialists can be overcome if it can be shown that private ownership and/or free markets in particular businesses would be more efficient and fairer to the public.Discussions of socialism since the late nineteenth century have usually been based on scientific analyses of hard facts and material factors, unlike the supposedly soft and sentimental, ethical and aesthetic approaches of the early nineteenth century utopians. Following the lead of self-styled scientific socialists, such as Karl Marx, most socialists came to consider socialism to be a historically logical stage of social development. They also claim it is development that must be embraced if liberty and democracy are to thrive, and even survive. Most anti-socialists have rejected socialism on the supposedly scientific grounds that centralized control of a large-scale economy would not work, and that socialism would undermine economic progress. They also contend that a socialist economy would present a fatal danger to democracy and freedom.
Discussions of socialism have been further complicated by the fact that socialists since the late nineteenth century have often differed as to how much control the central government should exercise, and how a socialist society can and should be achieved. Socialists take a range of positions on the role of the public and private sectors in the economy. Some insist on the goal of a highly centralized command economy. They say that only if the government runs the economy according to a central plan can the system be considered socialist, and can it work. Other socialists promote a less centralized and more market-based socialism. Most of these would allow small private businesses, which could even constitute a majority of the economy, so long as they do not exploit their workers or do public harm. Many would also allow some economic activities to be coordinated through a marketplace, so long as it operates in the public interest.As to establishing socialism, some insist that it can be achieved only through revolution, and an immediate and complete takeover of the government and the economy. They consider any attempt at social reform or a gradual move toward socialism to be a betrayal of the movement and a sell-out to capitalism. Others claim, however, that socialism can best be achieved through social reforms, and a gradual socialization of the economy through political compromises and incremental changes. These two groups have often fought each other as much as they have fought their pro-capitalist opponents. Using present-day definitions of socialism, Dickens was not a socialist.
Summing up:-
So, we can say, He did not call for government control over the economy, whether centralized or decentralized, and whether by revolution or reform. But neither does Dickens seem to have been a devotee of capitalism. The point is that to most self-styled socialists in early to mid-nineteenth century England, socialism did not mean establishing government control over the economy.
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