ROBERTO TUMMINELLI 

Il socialismo etico di François Vidal 

N.4/1986

Summary — François Vidal (1812-1872) Secretary of the Commission of Luxemburg (1848), Member of Parliament, journalist and socialist theorist, asserts the operative value and of stimulus for the action of Utopia. His political and social thought is disclosed in numerous essays, articles and pamphlets and in his major works, De la répartiton des richesses (1846) and Vivre en travaillant! (1848). Arguing with the classical economists whom he accuses of "fatalism", Vidal puts forward a model of ethical society, realizable through the collectivization of the means of production and a new distribution of wealth. In Vidal’s opinion, Utopia and socialism are synonyms; socialists, then, are distinct from communists for the method (democratic) by which they want to attain the common aim, the collectivization of the means of production. In fact, socialists are Utopian and democratic, whereas communists are revolutionary and despotic. Influenced in various ways and extent by Sismondi, Saint-Simon, Fourier and Cabet, Vidal maintains that it is allowable to hope for a society capable of guaranteeing the welfare to everybody, but this will only be the result of economic collectivism.