Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist PrinciplesSpargo, John
History
Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles
Spargo, John
Socialism
[31] For the history of these and other Utopian Socialist schemes, the
reader is referred to Professor Ely's _French and German Socialism_
(1883); Kirkup's _History of Socialism_ (1900); and Hillquit's _History
of Socialism in the United States_ (1903).
[32] The Encyclopaedists.
[33] Engels, _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, pages 6-7.
[34] Engels, _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, page 15.
[35] _Idem._
[36] _Idem_, page 18.
[37] _Autobiography._
[38] _Idem._
[39] See, for instance, _The Revolution in Mind and Practice_, by Robert
Owen, pages 21-22.
[40] _Essay on Robert Owen._
[41] Gerald Massey.
CHAPTER III
THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" AND THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT
I
The _Communist Manifesto_ has been called the birth-cry of the modern
scientific Socialist movement. When it was written, at the end of 1847,
little remained of those great movements which in the early part of the
century had inspired millions with high hopes of social regeneration and
rekindled the beacon fires of faith in the world. The Saint-Simonians
had, as an organized body, disappeared; the Fourierists were a dwindling
sect, discouraged by the failure of the one great trial of their system,
the famous Brook Farm experiment, in the United States; the Owenite
movement had never recovered from the failures of the experiments at New
Harmony and elsewhere, and had lost much of its identity through the
multiplicity of interests embraced in Owen's later propaganda. Chartism
and Trade Unionism on the one hand, and the Cooeperative Societies on the
other, had, between them, absorbed most of the vital elements of the
Owenite movement.
There was a multitude of what Engels calls "social quacks," but the
really great social movements, Owenism in England, and Fourierism in
France, were utterly demoralized and rapidly dwindling away. One thing
only served to keep the flame of hope alive--"the crude, rough-hewn,
purely instinctive sort of Communism" of the workers. This Communism of
the working class differed very essentially from the Socialism of
Fourier and Owen. It was Utopian, being based, like all Utopian
movements, upon abstract ideas. It differed from Fourierism and Owenism,
however, in that instead of a universal appeal based upon Brotherhood,
Justice, Order, and Economy, its appeal was, primarily, to the laborer.
Its basis was the crude class doctrine of "the rights of Labor." The
laborer was appealed to as one suffering from oppression and injustice.
It was, therefore, distinctly a class movement, and its
class-consciousness was sufficiently developed to keep its leaders from
wasting their lives in abortive appeals to the master class. The leading
exponents of this Communism of the workers were Wilhelm Weitling, in
Germany, and Etienne Cabet, in France.
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