No Social Revolution Without Sexual Revolution

Recent studies have revealed how workers' movements adapted republicanism into a language of anticapitalism in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the role feminists played in this process. This essay addresses this oversight by introducing the voices of the utopian socialists under July Monarchy France. These socialists insisted that there could be no social revolution without sexual revolution. Although they are often positioned outside of the republican tradition, this essay argues that the utopian socialists are better understood as rendering the legacy of classical and French republicanism compatible with nascent workers' movements in the 1830s. By foregrounding the feminist Flora Tristan, this essay shows how utopian socialists weaponized republican tropes to address the social question, thereby expanding what a republican critique of capitalism could look like.