The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an
inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the
modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this
phantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic attacks on
it lose all practical value and all theoretical justification.
Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many
respects, revolutionary, their disciples have in every case formed mere
reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their
masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the
proletariat. They, therefore, endeavor, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They
still dream of experimental realization of their social Utopias, of
founding isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of
setting up a "Little Icaria"(c)--duodecimo editions of the New
Jerusalem, and to realize all these castles in the air, they are
compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By
degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative
Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic
pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the
miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of
the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from
blind unbelief in the new Gospel.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively,
oppose the Chartists and the "Reformistes."
(a) Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the French
Restoration 1814 to 1830.
(b) This applies chiefly to Germany where the landed aristocracy and
squirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated for their
own account by stewards, and are moreover, extensive beet-root sugar
manufacturers and distillers of potato spirits. The wealthier British
aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, know how to
make up for declining rents by lending their names to floaters of more
or less shady joint-stock companies.
(c) Phalansteres were socialist colonies on the plan of Charles
Fourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia and, later
on, to his American Communist colony.
IV.
POSITION OF THE COMMUNISTS IN RELATION TO THE VARIOUS EXISTING
OPPOSITION PARTIES.
Section II. has made clear the relations of the Communists to the
existing working class parties, such as the Chartists in England and
the Agrarian Reformers in America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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