WHO WERE THE FIRST MODERN SOCIALISTS? Robert Owen and Henri de Saint-Simon were two of the early socialist thinkers with the most acclaim.Owen was an influential proponent of utopian socialism and was a Welsh manufacturer who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries.On both sides of the Atlantic, he participated in community experiments.Saint-Simon was born into a poor aristocratic French family, and his life also spanned the 18th and 19th centuries.He went on to become a social theorist and was one of the people who started Christian socialism, a movement of Christian activists who wanted to create social programs to help the poor in the middle of the 19th century. WHAT IS DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM? It is a form of socialism in which the economy is socialist and production and wealth are typically shared by all citizens, but the government is democratic.Democratic socialism opposes authoritarian forms of government and is of the opinion that the government should assist in...