Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter Born Edward Carpenter (1844-08-29)29 August 1844 Hove, Sussex, England Died 28 June 1929(1929-06-28) (aged 84) England Occupation English socialist poet, anthologist, early gay activist and socialist philosopher Part of a series on Socialism Development History of socialism Socialist calculation debate Socialist economics Ideas Calculation in kind Cooperative Common ownership Economic planning Equal opportunity Free association Input-output planning Labour voucher Material balancing Peer-to-peer economy Production for use Public ownership Self-management Social dividend Socialism and LGBT rights Socialization To each according to his contribution Workplace democracy Models Decentralized planning Participatory economics Market socialism Lange model Mutualism Economic democracy Planned economy Soviet-type Project Cybersyn Socialist market economy Socialist-oriented market Variants Agrarian Anarchist Authoritarian Democratic Ethical Ecological Guild Impossibilism Liberal Libertarian Market Marxian One country Owenism Reformism Religious Revisionism Revolutionary Ricardian Scientific Social democracy State Syndicalism Utopian Zionist 21st-century History by country Brazil Canada France India Netherlands New Zealand Pakistan United Kingdom United States People Charles Hall François-Noël Babeuf Henri de Saint-Simon Robert Owen Charles Fourier Louis Auguste Blanqui William Thompson Thomas Hodgskin Pierre Joseph Proudhon Louis Blanc Moses Hess Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Mikhail Bakunin Ferdinand Lassalle William Morris Peter Kropotkin Edward Carpenter Mary Harris Jones Georgi Plekhanov Fernand Pelloutier Eugene V. Debs Ben Tillett John Dewey G. D. H. Cole Eduard Bernstein Antonio Gramsci Luis Emilio Recabarren Sidney Hook Leon Trotsky Rosa Luxemburg José Carlos Mariátegui Enrico Barone Fred M. Taylor Errico Malatesta Anton Pannekoek Farabundo Martí Oskar R. Lange Abba P. Lerner Léon Blum Mao Tse Tung Edvard Kardelj Farabundo Martí Clement Attlee Josip Broz Tito Einar Gerhardsen Olof Palme Fidel Castro Ho Chi Minh Ernesto Guevara Salvador Allende Deng Xiaoping Mikhail Gorbachev Hugo Chávez Evo Morales Organizations First International (International Workingmen's Assoc) Second International Third International (Comintern) Fourth International Fifth International Socialist International World Federation of Democratic Youth International Union of Socialist Youth World Socialist Movement International Committee of the Fourth International Socialism portal Economics portal Politics portal v t e Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early LGBT activist. A leading figure in late 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and both friend and lover of Walt Whitman. He corresponded with many famous figures such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, James Keir Hardie, J. K. Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E D Morel, William Morris, E R Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner. As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. Civilisations, he says, rarely last more than a thousand years before collapsing, and no society has ever passed through civilisation successfully. His 'cure' is a closer association with the land and greater development of our inner nature. Although derived from his experience of Hindu mysticism, and referred to as 'mystical socialism', his thoughts parallel those of several writers in the field of psychology and sociology at the start of the twentieth century, such as Boris Sidis, Sigmund Freud and Wilfred Trotter who all recognised that society puts ever increasing pressure on the individual that can result in mental and physical illnesses such as neurosis and the particular nervousness which was then described as neurasthenia.[citation needed] An early advocate of sexual freedoms, he had a profound influence on both D. H. Lawrence and Aurobindo, and inspired E. M. Forster's novel Maurice.