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Accounting And The Pursuit Of Utopia: The Possibility Of Perfection In Paraguay, Warwick Funnell

Accounting Historians Journal

For utopian socialists the capitalist state's protection and promotion of property rights is the source of entrenched injustice that alienates individuals from their fundamentally moral nature. Substituting cooperative associations for competition as the basis of economic exchange and social relations would allow justice to be reasserted and society to operate on moral principles. In the late 19th century an attempt was made by a small group of idealistic Australian socialists to put these principles into practice in the jungles of Paraguay by establishing the utopian colonies of New Australia and Cosme. An essential ingredient to their vision was a system …