Sure, take credit for it. But just a
In antiquity[edit]
See also:
History of communism § Communism in antiquity
Ideas and political traditions that are conceptually related to modern socialism have their origins in antiquity and the Middle Ages.
[6] Ancient Egypt had a strong, unified,
theocratic state which, along with its
temple system employed peasants in massive labor projects and owned key parts of the economy, such as the granaries which dispensed grain to the public in hard times.
[7] This system of government is sometimes referred to as 'theocratic socialism".
[8]
In
Ancient Greece, while private property was an acknowledged part of society with the basic element of Greek economic and social life being the privately owned estate or
oikos, it was still understood that the needs of the city or
polis always came before those of the individual property owner and his family.
[9] Ancient Greeks were also encouraged by their custom of
koinonia to voluntarily share their wealth and property with other citizens, forgive the debts of debtors, serve in roles as public servants without pay, and participate in other pro-social actions.
[9] This idea of
koinonia could express itself it different ways throughout Ancient Greece from the communal oligarchy of
Sparta[10] to Tarentum where the poor could access any property held in common.
[9] Another Ancient Greek custom, the
leitourgia resulted in the richest members of the community directly financing the state. By the late fifth century BC, more radical concepts of communal ownership became expounded in Greece.
[11] Possibly in reply to this,
Aristophanes wrote his early 4th-century play,
Ecclesiazusae, which parodies communist,
egalitarian, and
gynocratic concepts that were already familiar in
Classical Athens.
[12] In the play, Athenian women are depicted as seizing control of the Athenian government and banning all private property. As the character
Praxagora puts it "I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all."
[13] Plato later wrote his
Republic which argues for the common distribution of property between the upper elite in society who are, similar to Sparta, to live communally.
[14]
The economy of the 3rd century BCE
Mauryan Empire of India, under the rulership of its first emperor
Chandragupta, who was assisted by his economic and political advisor
Kautilya, has been described as," a socialized monarchy", "a sort of state socialism", and the world's first welfare state.
[15] Under the Mauryan system there was no private ownership of land as all land was owned by the king to whom tribute was paid by the
Shudras, or laboring class. In return the emperor supplied the laborers with agricultural products, animals, seeds, tools, public infrastructure, and stored food in reserve for times of crisis.
[15] In
Iran,
Mazdak (died c. 524 or 528
CE), a priest and political refomer, preached and instituted a religiously based socialist or proto-socialist system in the
Zoroastrian context of
Sassanian Persia.
[16]
In response to the inequalities in the industrializing economy of late 18th century Britain pamphleteers and agitators such as
Thomas Spence and
Thomas Paine began to advocate for social reform. As early as the 1770s Spence called for the common ownership of land, democratically run decentralized government..
In the post-revolutionary period in the decade after the French Revolution of 1789, activists and theorists like
François-Noël Babeuf and
Philippe Buonarroti spread egalitarian ideas that would later influence the early French labour and socialist movements...
The first modern socialists were early 19th-century Western European social critics. In this period socialism emerged from a diverse array of doctrines and social experiments associated primarily with British and French thinkers...
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was the founder of French socialism as well as modern theoretical socialism in general.
So who influenced whom? I still wonder, but I'm sure you will still give credit to Baha'u'llah.
