a way that the existing forms of production on a large scale shall be retained--then the results will be socialism. There is no third possibility. If the proletariat does not vanquish capitalism by a return to the smaller forms of operation, it can accomplish this only by putting a socialistic organisation in place of the capitalistic. And further: the proletariat can attach itself only to the latter method, because its whole existence is interwoven with the system of production on a large scale; it is indeed only the shadow of the system, it exists only where this system rules. Therefore we can say that socialism as the aim of the social movement arises fundamentally and necessarily out of the economic situation of the proletariat. The whole demonstration falls to the ground in a moment, wherever a tendency to the development of proletarian production on a large scale does not exist in economic life. What I would here show, let me say again, is the necessity of the ideal; but this must not be confused with the certainty of its realisation. In order to prove this, it would be necessary to present other considerations, which lie far from our subject. Thus, whether any such realisation of the ideal is scientifically possible seems to be doubtful. For this would not be proved even if it should be demonstrated that what the proletariat desires and strives for has been provided in the course of social development. I shall have opportunity later to draw attention to this, that the conception of socialism as a need of nature, and thus "necessarily" to be realised, does not rest upon clear thought. What we must now hold fast as the result of our investigation is this, and it is a true Marxian thought, that social ideals are only utopianism so long as they are merely evolved in the head of the theorist. They obtain reality only when they are united to actual economic conditions, when they arise out of these conditions. The possibility of realising the good and beautiful is enclosed within the sheath of economic necessity. This covering, created out of capitalistic and proletarian conditions and historic economic circumstances, is of such a nature that the ideal of proletarian exertion can only lie in the direction of a socialistic order of society.