Oscar Wilde wrote uncompromisingly of his radical desire for the complete and total abolition of private property – a precondition, he believed, for the emancipation of all humanity.
But how did Oscar Wilde arrive at such a radical socialist position? Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and raised in the affluent Merrion Square area. His family were part of the Anglo-Irish intellectual tradition. His father, Sir William Wilde, was an influential surgeon, and his mother, Lady Jane Wilde, was a well-known poet.
Yes, it might seem surprising that someone from such privilege would come to embrace left politics. Yet, his upbringing planted the seeds of revolutionary thought. Jane Wilde, writing under the pen name “Speranza,” was a radical poet and political agitator. Against the backdrop of the Great Famine in 1848, Jane Wilde explicitly called for revolutionary armed struggle to liberate Ireland from British imperialism. Writing in The Nation, she urged:
"Now is the moment to strike, and by striking save, and the day after the victory it will be time enough to count our dead."
Jane Wilde defended the Fenians, precursors to socialist movements, and aligned with the First International’s principles of workers’ liberation and solidarity. She was deeply committed to the emancipation of Ireland, labour, and women.
Her legacy echoes in Irish revolutionary thought. Marxist republican James Connolly referenced her work in Labour in Irish History, tracing Ireland’s socialist tradition. With such a powerful figure as his mother, it becomes clearer how Oscar Wilde came to develop his radical politics.
The Soul of Man Under Socialism: By 1891, Wilde had articulated his vision of a perfect society in this essay, he calls explicitly for the abolition of private property, declaring:
"Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community."
For Wilde, socialism was not merely about collective ownership. He envisioned it as a pathway to true Individualism:
"Private property has crushed true Individualism... With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things... One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
Unlike collectivist motivations typically associated with socialism, Wilde’s advocacy centred on freeing individuals, particularly artists, from the constraints of capitalist society. Art, for Wilde, was the highest form of Individualism:
"Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known."
Rather than being driven by material accumulation, Wilde’s socialism sought to liberate humanity’s creative potential.
Wilde rejected authoritarian paths in socialism. He argued that “all modes of government are failures” and envisioned a state with limited functions:
"[But] as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to do. The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful."
He saw a future where automation and machinery would free humanity from menial labour:
"Were that machinery the property of all, everyone would benefit by it. Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure... Machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work."
This aligns with Wilde’s ideal of socialism enabling human flourishing – artists creating beauty, thinkers advancing knowledge, and people simply enjoying life. Some might dismiss Wilde’s vision as utopian. He embraces the label, writing:
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing... Progress is the realisation of Utopias."
However, Wilde’s utopianism reveals a crucial limitation. He focuses on imagining an ideal society while remaining unconcerned with how to achieve it. Unlike Marxist socialism, which analyses class contradictions to determine the material conditions for revolution, Wilde’s approach reflects a more idealistic notion that great thinkers impose their visions on society.
This is evident in his understanding of historical movements. For instance, Wilde claimed:
"Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves... It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere."
This overlooks the agency of enslaved people, who resisted and rebelled in uprisings like the Stono Rebellion and Nat Turner’s revolt. Wilde’s perspective is rooted in the belief that oppressed classes require external agitators to awaken them to their suffering.
"Misery and poverty... exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people."
This view contrasts sharply with Marx’s materialist conception of history, where the working class is the primary agent of its liberation.
Oscar Wilde died young in 1900 at just 46 years old. His radical ideas remain strikingly relevant today. Many of his critiques of capitalism – its reduction of human life to accumulation and profit – resonate deeply in the face of contemporary crises. Wilde’s utopian socialism challenges us to imagine a better world, but the task before us is far more urgent. With #climatecatastrophe looming, the choices before humanity are stark: socialism or extinction.
The time for dreaming is over. To honour Wilde’s vision, we need to confront the contradictions of capitalism and fight for a progressive future. It is a struggle that, if alive today, both Oscar would undoubtedly support.