Early French communist thought was moral, not economic or industrial.

Evidence

The critique of property that arose with the liberalism of eighteenth-century France was not… geared to the industrial system at all. Aside from advocating that private property be eliminated, it had no economic orientation. Rather, the concern of such a characteristic communist thinker of the era as Morelly was entirely moral, and the abolition of private ownership was for him simply the focal point of a rationalized social and political structure that would then bring about the moral regeneration of man. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 286

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how exactly does the moral-not-economic character of pre-industrial communism compare to the moral character Robinson later ascribes to African and African-American oppositional cultures?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 286