This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the 
contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare 
the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, 
the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the 
concentration of capital and land in a few hands; over-production 
and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois 
and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in produc- 
tion, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the indus- 
trial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old 
moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities. 

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either 
to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with 

them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping 
the modern means of production and of exchange, within the 
framework of the old property relations that have been, and were 
bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both 
reactionary and Utopian. 

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal 
relations in agriculture. 

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all 
intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in 
a miserable fit of the blues.? 

c. German, or “True”, Socialism 

The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that 
originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that 
was the expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced 
into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had 
just begun its contest with feudal absolutism. 

German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits,” 
eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these 
writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social 
conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with 
German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate 
practical significance, and assumed a purely literary aspect.‘ Thus, to 
the German philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands 
of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands 
of “Practical Reason”” in general, and the utterance of the will of 
the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the laws 
of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will 
generally. 

The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the 
new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical 
conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without 
deserting their own philosophic point of view. 

This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign 
language is appropriated, namely, by translation. 

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints 
over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient 
heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this 
process with the profane French literature. They wrote their 
philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, 
beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, 
they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”, and beneath the French 
criticism of the bourgeois State they wrote, “Dethronement of the 
Category of the General”, and so forth.* 

The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the 
French historical criticisms? they dubbed “Philosophy of Action”, 
“True Socialism”, “German Science of Socialism”, “Philosophical 
Foundation of Socialism’, and so on. 

The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus complete- 
ly emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to 
express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of 
having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not 
true requirements, but the requirements of Truth; not the interests 
of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in 
general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the 
misty realm of philosophical fantasy. 

This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously 
and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mounte- 
bank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence. 

The fight of the German, and, especially, of the Prussian 
bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in 
other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest. 

By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to “True” 
Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist 
demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, 
against representative government, against bourgeois competition, 
bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois 
liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had 
nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. 

German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French 
criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of 
modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic’ condi- 
tions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the 
very things whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle 
in Germany. 

To the absolute governments,” with their following of parsons, 
professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome 
scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie. 

It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets 
with which these same governments, just at that time,‘ dosed the 
German working-class risings. 

While this “True” Socialism thus served the governments as a 
weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, 
directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the 
German Philistines. In Germany the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the 
sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again 
under various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of 
things. 

To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in 
Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie 
threatens it with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the 
concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a 
revolutionary proletariat. ““True” Socialism appeared to kill these 
two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic. 

The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of 
rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental 
robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry “eternal 
truths”, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of 
their goods amongst such a public. 

And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its 
own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois 
Philistine. 

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the 
German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous 
meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic 
interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the 
extreme length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive” 
tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and 

impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, 
all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now 
(1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and 
enervating literature.* 

2. CONSERVATIVE, OR BOURGEOIS, SOCIALISM 

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social 
grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois 
society. 

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, 
improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of 
charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to 
animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every 
imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked 
out into complete systems. 

We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misére as an example of 
this form. 

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social 
conditions? without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting 
therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its 
revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a 
bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally con- 
ceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois 
Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or 
less complete systems.” In requiring the proletariat to carry out such 
a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social‘ New 
Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should 
remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all 
its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. 

A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this 
Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the 
eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, 
but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in 

* The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and 
cured its protagonists of the desire to dabble further in Socialism. The chief 
1epresentative and classical type of this tendency is Herr Karl Grün. [ Note by Engels to 
the German edition of 1890.] 

economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes 
in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, — 
however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois 
relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a 
revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued 
existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect 
affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, less- 
en the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois 
government. 

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only 
when, it becomes a mere figure of speech. 

Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: 
for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit 
of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously 
meant word of bourgeois Socialism. 

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for 
the benefit of the working class. 

3. CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM 

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great 
modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the 
proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others. 

The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, 
made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being 
overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then 
undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the 
economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to 
be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois 
epoch alone.» The revolutionary literature that accompanied these 
first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary 
character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its 
crudest form. 

The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of 
Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the 
early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between 
proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section I. Bourgeois and Pro- 
letarians). 

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, 
as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing 
form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to 
them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any 
independent political movement. 

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with 
the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, 
does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the 
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new 
social science, after new> social laws, that are to create these 
conditions. 

Historical* action is to yield to their personal inventive action, 
historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and 
the gradual, spontaneous¢ class organisation of the proletariat to an 
organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future 
history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the 
practical carrying out of their social plans. 

In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly 
for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering 
class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class 
does the proletariat exist for them. 

The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own 
surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves 
far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve 
the condition of every member of society, even that of the 
most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, 
without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. 
For how can people, when once they understand their system, 
fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of 
society? 

Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, 
action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and 
endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, 
and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social 
Gospel. 

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when 
the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a 
fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first 

instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of 
society. 

But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a 
critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. 
Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for the 
enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures pro- 
posed in them—such as the abolition of the distinction between 
town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for 
the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the 
proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of 
the State into a mere superintendence of production, all these 
proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms 
which were, at that time. only just cropping up, and which, in these 
publications, are recognised in their earliest indistinct and undefined 
forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian 
character. 

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 
fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic 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, endeavour, and that consistently, to 
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. 
They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, 
of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home Col- 
onies’’, of setting up a “Little Icaria”*—duodecimo editions of the 
New Jerusalem—and to realise all these castles in the air, they are 
compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By 

* 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. 
[Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.} 

“Home Colonies” were what Owen called his Communist model societies. 
Phalansteres was the name of the public palaces planned by Fourier. Icaria was the 
name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist institutions Cabet 
portrayed. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890.) 

degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary [or]? conser- 
vative 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, violentiy 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 Réformistes.?°° 

IV