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[NOTE: Posted on behalf of Guido Erreygers. -- RBE] 
 
Brian Eggleston wrote: 
 
> In some of my old HETM lectures I found a margin note that the word 
> "socialism" was coined by the French journalist Pierre Leroux in 1798.  
> Unfortunately, I provided myself with no citation to such. Can anyone 
> assess the veracity of this claim? 
 
This is extremely unlikely, since Piere Leroux was born in 1797. He  
did claim that he was the one who invented the term "socialism" (as  
opposed to "individualism"), but this happened only around 1830. 
 
> I note that Brue (p. 180) indicates that the word "in the modern sense 
> was first used in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine in 1827 to designate 
> the followers of Owen's cooperative doctrines." 
 
According to Elie Halevy, *Histoire du Socialisme Europeen* (Paris,  
Gallimard, 1948, pp. 17-18, note) the term seems to have been  
created independently by two different schools and in two different  
senses: (1) the French Saint-Simonians, among which Pierre Leroux,  
in the years 1831-33, and (2) the British followers of Robert Owen,  
around 1835. 
 
Guido Erreygers 
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