We are a strange species, us humans. So many different faces.

That which is our ‘true’ self is known only to us.

Or is it?

If is said that each of us has a secret self, one so secret that even we do not know it.

We, as individuals, may not know ourselves as well as we think we do. May this also be true of groups of people? Is it possible that groups of people may have a ‘secret self’ which propels them in a direction not foreseen or intended?

Does socialism have a secret self? Has it been led along a path completely unforeseen by its founder, even though he was the one who led the way?

Time and again the liberator of the people from a dictatorial monarch has become a dictator himself: Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Jomo Kenyatta, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabwe, Peron, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Kmher Rouge, the list goes on and on. What is happening here? Were these people ever truly ‘Socialists’. Did they think they were? What is ‘Socialism’ anyway?

Could Socialism exist under a monarch? Some thought so. Time to take a look at its foundations, its founder, Robert Owen - and the socialist philosophers who followed him.