Genesis, Content & Evolution of the Social Thought of Ludwik Królikowski (1799—1878)

Abstract

The article is in three parts. In the first the author defines the social and theoretical sources of the philosophical, social and political views of Ludwik Królikowski. He describes the agrarian problem in the Polish countryside in the first half of the nineteenth century and the struggle for independence which gave birth to Królikowskie social thought and determined its direction. He shows that the sources of Królikowskie social theory are to be found in the Polish political literature of the period both in Poland and among emigré circles abroad, in the Bible and in the Utopian thought of the Frenchmen Saint-Simon, Fourier and Cabet. Then the author sets out Królikowski’s religious views and social and philosophical principles, and describes his political ideology. In the third part the author examines Ludwik Królikowski’s social system against the background of the contemporary state of development of social thought in Poland and in Europe. In the light of this examination Królikowski is revealed as one of the leading Polish political workers and writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. He comes closest in his views to the revolutionary-democratic wing of Polish social thought, in particular to Father Ściegienny, Zenon Swiętosławski, Edward Dembiński and the „Communities of the Polish People*. At the same time the author defines the links and similarities and also the differences between the Utopian theory of Królikowski and Saint-Simon and in particular of Cabet, with whom Królikowski closely collaborated in editing Le Populaire, in organising the Icarus Association and in founding Communist colonies in the United States.

Against this background the author tentatively outlines the causes of the resemblances and differences between Polish and French Utopian thought in the first half of the nineteenth century, and suggests that there is no necessary link between materialist philosophy and radical social thought in the views of social theoreticians and thinkers.