“Rationalistic modern Socialism is based, not exclusively on certain economic theories and maxims, as some narrow-minded ‘Socialists pure and simple’ think and would fain make us believe, but on the broad foundation of modern science and thought. The economic theories peculiar to modern Socialism are derived from the application of the results of the achievements of modern knowledge and philosophy to the field of social economics. The trouble with the ‘Socialists pure and simple’ is in the extreme limitation of their mental horizon. They happen to know, or rather imagine they have mastered Marxian economics, while modern science and philosophy remains to them a sealed letter. That is why they get irritated whenever and wherever they meet in the socialistic press an article containing something else than the everlasting parrot-like repetitions of pseudo-socialistic commonplaces and shibboleths. Every attempt to present to the attention of the readers of socialistic publications, glimpses of the radiant world of science and philosophy, leading up to socialistic ideas and ideals in all their world-redeeming significance, appears to the simpleminded and superstitious simon-pure Socialists as an attack on somebody or something, as a heresy and heterodoxy of some kind. To such people the religion of science is the religion of ignorance and vice versa, ignorance is their religion and science.” The use of science and philosophy by the ruling class as a pretence for the appropriation of the lion’s share of the wealth produced by labor does not prove that workingmen should abandon philosophy as useless to their cause. On the contrary, as Dietzgen says: “Philosophy is a subject which closely concerns the working class,” and he adds: “This, of course, does by no means imply that every workingman should try to become acquainted with philosophy and study the relation between the idea and matter. From the fact that we all eat bread does not follow that we must all understand milling and baking. But just as we need millers and bakers, so does the working class stand in need of keen scholars who can follow up the tortuous ways of the false priests and lay bare the inanity of their tricks.” It is quite clear that working men, instead of underestimating the value of mental training, should remember what a terrible weapon it has proved in the hands of their enemies. It is precisely because the workers have lacked this weapon, that in spite of their overwhelming numbers and physical strength, they have always been outwitted. “The emancipation of the working classes,” concludes Dietzgen, “requires that they should lay hold on the science of the century.”