Socialism is actually pretty old, it just never used to really get anywhere as peasant rebellions tended to have issues dealing with cavalry and a warrior class who weren't confined to harvest cycles in their warfare
If you're looking for the earliest echoes of proto-socialist thinking, you'd have to go back at least to Jesus, and probably all the way back to the earliest recognizable human civilizations. There's a great quote from some anthropologist about how the first real sign of civilization wasn't pottery or buildings, but evidence that someone born with significant medical issues was supported by the people around them and wound up living to old age. There's a lot of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" in ancient history.
But it's still useful to view capital-S "Socialism" as a product of the 19th century and defined by Marx and those who built on his writings. It encompasses so much more, and with so much more specificity, than earlier impulses towards egalitarianism or ensuring that everyone was provided for.
There's also a lot of quite socialist stuff in the old testament as well.
I'm not sure about Marx inventing Socialism I think he more refined Socialist economic understanding. After all way back to the socialist urges during early agriculture the general principal of "I should be paid according to the value of work i'm doing" and "we should hold things in common" can be found.
Marx certainly didn't invent socialism or 19th century socialism or even communism; he was a critical scientific examiner of capitalism and a communist, who was able to criticize other socialist positions for being weak and insufficient in actually changing capitalism, and then went beyond others before in specifics critiquing political economy.
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. For as long as one class has ruled over another there has been people fighting to end the injustice.
Exactly when you can call that struggle socialism is a matter of definition but I reckon that socialism proper starts with the reaction to capitalist exploitation that arose in the first half of the 19th century. The world socialism in English dates back to at least 1822.
it's even older than that John Ball was active around 1320 and he was going around saying all kinds of socialist stuff
Ball preached that "things would not go well with England until everything was held in common". At these meetings he argued: "Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? So what can they show us, what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves?" It is in Ball's words that we find the early concept of the equality of all men and women.
He also said "the lords are lords only by their power to force us to labour and produce that they may spend"
John Ball was so cool. I'd need to do a lot more research, because so far all I've done is read Wikipedia articles around the Peasant's Revolt, but I've vaguely considered writing a novel centered around that uprising. In my head it'd be from the POV of fictional peasant characters, but the named historical figures would appear in some capacity. I just wouldn't necessarily want to make the POVs be people like Ball or Wat Tyler, they're too extraordinary. I'd very much want the protagonists to be as much normal, everyday people as possible, who get swept up in a revolutionary moment.
William Morris wrote an interesting book "a dream of John Ball" which told the story of him meeting John Ball in a dream and describing industrial capitalism to him and hearing his responses.
That's awesome, thanks. I'd be willing to bet the socialist vision has been around ever since some morons created the concept of private property right around the implementation of agriculture.
I stubbed my toe today on a drawer I left open. Yet another victim of communism
In 1771 plague killed 52.000 people in Moscow. They were the first victims of communism.
I was thinking a volcano personally. Stalin marched 8 billion kulaks to their death at yellowstone.
Marx inking up his pen and ten thousand liberals drop dead. A single scratch mark decimates the city of Monaco. His hand begins to trail across the page. Manhattan exterminated. London obliterated. Berlin expunged. He licks the tip of his instrument, and a dozen African colonial ports simply turn to dust. He freshens a new page, and the English Royal Navy implodes.
I ate a piece of bread that tasted funny. 898970990 more victims of communism
I thought it was pretty obvious but in their defense it’s hard to separate bits like this from the bullshit some people believe
All the way back to Minute Man Yancy Fry, who blasted commies in the US revolution
