Socialism, Utopian and ScientificEngels, Friedrich
Philosophy
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Engels, Friedrich
Socialism
But, side by side with the antagonism of the feudal nobility and the
burghers, who claimed to represent all the rest of society, was the
general antagonism of exploiters and exploited, of rich idlers and
poor workers. It was this very circumstance that made it possible for
the representatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves forward as
representing, not one special class, but the whole of suffering
humanity. Still further. From its origin, the bourgeoisie was saddled
with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage-workers,
and, in the same proportion as the mediæval burgher of the guild
developed into the modern bourgeois, the guild journeyman and the
day-laborer, outside the guilds, developed into the proletarian. And
although, upon the whole, the bourgeoisie, in their struggle with the
nobility, could claim to represent at the same time the interests of
the different working-classes of that period, yet in every great
bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class
which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern
proletariat. For example, at the time of the German reformation and
the peasants' war, the Anabaptists and Thomas Münzer; in the great
English revolution, the Levellers; in the great French revolution,
Baboeuf.
There were theoretical enunciations corresponding with these
revolutionary uprisings of a class not yet developed; in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, Utopian pictures of ideal social
conditions; in the eighteenth, actual communistic theories (Morelly
and Mably). The demand for equality was no longer limited to political
rights; it was extended also to the social conditions of individuals.
It was not simply class privileges that were to be abolished, but
class distinctions themselves. A Communism, ascetic, denouncing all
the pleasures of life, Spartan, was the first form of the new
teaching. Then came the three great Utopians; Saint Simon, to whom
the middle-class movement, side by side with the proletarian, still
had a certain significance; Fourier; and Owen, who in the country
where capitalist production was most developed, and under the
influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked out his
proposals for the removal of class distinction systematically and in
direct relation to French materialism.
One thing is common to all three. Not one of them appears as a
representative of the interests of that proletariat, which historical
development had, in the meantime, produced. Like the French
philosophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to
begin with, but all humanity at once. Like them, they wish to bring in
the kingdom of reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as they
see it, is as far as heaven from earth, from that of the French
philosophers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account