If you haven't read it already I highly recommend reading "The Making of the English Working Class", by E. P. Thompson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_English_Work...). I know it's almost required reading in many Anglo-Saxon countries but as a guy who grew up and lives in (Eastern) Europe I only found out about it pretty recently, and I was pretty fascinated by it (and I say that as a guy who leans to the right of the political spectrum).
In the same vein I also recommend Jacques Rancière's "La Nuit des prolétaires. Archives du rêve ouvrier." (link to English translation on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Proletarian-Nights-Workers-Nineteenth..., I've read the book in French, can't vouch for the translation), which writes about the French worker movements active around the 1840s-1860s and their relation to utopian ideas. There are also a couple of chapters on Étienne Cabet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Cabet), a pretty interesting character.
> In 1848, Cabet gave up on the notion of reforming French society. Instead, after conversations with Robert Owen and Owen's attempts to found a commune in Texas, Cabet gathered a group of followers from across France and traveled to the United States to organize an Icarian community.[6] They entered into a social contract, making Cabet the director-in-chief for the first ten years, and embarked from Le Havre, February 3, 1848, to take up land on the Red River in Texas. Cabet came later at the head of a second and smaller band. Texas did not prove to be the Utopia looked for, and, ravaged by disease, about one-third of the colonists returned to France.[2]
In the same vein I also recommend Jacques Rancière's "La Nuit des prolétaires. Archives du rêve ouvrier." (link to English translation on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Proletarian-Nights-Workers-Nineteenth..., I've read the book in French, can't vouch for the translation), which writes about the French worker movements active around the 1840s-1860s and their relation to utopian ideas. There are also a couple of chapters on Étienne Cabet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Cabet), a pretty interesting character.
> In 1848, Cabet gave up on the notion of reforming French society. Instead, after conversations with Robert Owen and Owen's attempts to found a commune in Texas, Cabet gathered a group of followers from across France and traveled to the United States to organize an Icarian community.[6] They entered into a social contract, making Cabet the director-in-chief for the first ten years, and embarked from Le Havre, February 3, 1848, to take up land on the Red River in Texas. Cabet came later at the head of a second and smaller band. Texas did not prove to be the Utopia looked for, and, ravaged by disease, about one-third of the colonists returned to France.[2]