Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the\u00a0aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against\u00a0modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July 1830,\u00a0and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again\u00a0succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political\u00a0contest was altogether out of the question. A literary battle\u00a0alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature, the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.<\/p>\r\n
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to\u00a0lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate\u00a0their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the\u00a0exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their\u00a0revenge by singing lampoons on their new master and whispering\u00a0in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.<\/p>\r\n
In this way arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half\u00a0lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at\u00a0times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the\u00a0bourgeoisie to the very heart's core; but always ludicrous in\u00a0its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of\u00a0modern history.<\/p>\r\n
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the\u00a0proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so\u00a0often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal\u00a0coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.<\/p>\r\n
One section of the French Legitimists and \"Young England\"\u00a0exhibited this spectacle.<\/p>\r\n
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to\u00a0that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they\u00a0exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite\u00a0different, and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under\u00a0their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget\u00a0that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their\u00a0own form of society.<\/p>\r\n
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary\u00a0character of their criticism that their chief accusation against\u00a0the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois regime\u00a0a class is being developed, which is destined to cut up root and\u00a0branch the old order of society.<\/p>\r\n
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it\u00a0creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary\u00a0proletariat.<\/p>\r\n
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive\u00a0measures against the working class; and in ordinary life,\u00a0despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the\u00a0golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter\u00a0truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and\u00a0potato spirits.<\/p>\r\n
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord,\u00a0so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.<\/p>\r\n
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist\u00a0tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property,\u00a0against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the\u00a0place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification\u00a0of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian\u00a0Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates\u00a0the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by\u00a0the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence\u00a0pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society.\u00a0The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were\u00a0the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries\u00a0which are but little developed, industrially and commercially,\u00a0these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising\u00a0bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
In countries where modern civilization has become fully\u00a0developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed,\u00a0fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing\u00a0itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The\u00a0individual members of this class, however, are being constantly\u00a0hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition,\u00a0and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent\u00a0section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures,\u00a0agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.<\/p>\r\n
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more\u00a0than half of the population, it was natural that writers who\u00a0sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use,\u00a0in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the\u00a0peasant and petty-bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate\u00a0classes should take up the cudgels for the working\u00a0class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the\u00a0head of this school, not only in France but also in England.<\/p>\r\n
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the\u00a0contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid\u00a0bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved,\u00a0incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and\u00a0division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a\u00a0few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the\u00a0inevitable ruin of the petty-bourgeois and peasant, the misery\u00a0of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying\u00a0inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of\u00a0extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral\u00a0bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.<\/p>\r\n
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires\u00a0either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange,\u00a0and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or\u00a0to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange,\u00a0within the framework of the old property relations that have\u00a0been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either\u00a0case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.<\/p>\r\n
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture,\u00a0patriarchal relations in agriculture.<\/p>\r\n
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all\u00a0intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism\u00a0ended in a miserable fit of the blues.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature\u00a0that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and\u00a0that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was\u00a0introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that\u00a0country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.<\/p>\r\n
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits,\u00a0eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when\u00a0these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social\u00a0conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with\u00a0German social conditions, this French literature lost all its\u00a0immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary\u00a0aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth\u00a0century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing\u00a0more than the demands of \"Practical Reason\" in general, and the\u00a0utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie\u00a0signified in their eyes the law of pure Will, of Will as it was\u00a0bound to be, of true human Will generally.<\/p>\r\n
The world of the German literate consisted solely in bringing\u00a0the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical\u00a0conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without\u00a0deserting their own philosophic point of view.<\/p>\r\n
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign\u00a0language is appropriated, namely, by translation.<\/p>\r\n
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic\u00a0Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of\u00a0ancient heathendom had been written. The German literate\u00a0reversed this process with the profane French literature. They\u00a0wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original.\u00a0For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic\u00a0functions of money, they wrote \"Alienation of Humanity,\" and\u00a0beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois State, they wrote\u00a0\"dethronement of the Category of the General,\" and so forth.<\/p>\r\n
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of\u00a0the French historical criticisms they dubbed \"Philosophy of\u00a0Action,\" \"True Socialism,\" \"German Science of Socialism,\"\u00a0\"Philosophical Foundation of Socialism,\" and so on.<\/p>\r\n
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely\u00a0emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express\u00a0the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having\u00a0overcome \"French one-sidedness\" and of representing, not true\u00a0requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the\u00a0proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who\u00a0belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm\u00a0of philosophical fantasy.<\/p>\r\n
This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously\u00a0and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such\u00a0mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic\u00a0innocence.<\/p>\r\n
The fight of the German, and especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie,\u00a0against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the\u00a0liberal movement, became more earnest.<\/p>\r\n
By this, the long-wished-for opportunity was offered to \"True\"\u00a0Socialism of confronting the political movement with the\u00a0Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas\u00a0against liberalism, against representative government, against\u00a0bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois\u00a0legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to\u00a0the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose,\u00a0by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick\u00a0of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was,\u00a0presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its\u00a0corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political\u00a0constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment\u00a0was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.<\/p>\r\n
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,\u00a0professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome\u00a0scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and\u00a0bullets with which these same governments, just at that time,\u00a0dosed the German working-class risings.<\/p>\r\n
While this \"True\" Socialism thus served the governments as a\u00a0weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time,\u00a0directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the\u00a0German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a\u00a0relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly\u00a0cropping up again under various forms, is the real social basis\u00a0of the existing state of things.<\/p>\r\n
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of\u00a0things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the\u00a0bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction; on the one\u00a0hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the\u00a0rise of a revolutionary proletariat. \"True\" Socialism appeared to\u00a0kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.<\/p>\r\n
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers\u00a0of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this\u00a0transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their\u00a0sorry \"eternal truths,\" all skin and bone, served to wonderfully\u00a0increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public. And on\u00a0its part, German Socialism recognized, more and more, its own\u00a0calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois\u00a0Philistine.<\/p>\r\n
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the\u00a0German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every\u00a0villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher,\u00a0Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real\u00a0character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing\u00a0the \"brutally destructive\" tendency of Communism, and of\u00a0proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class\u00a0struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist\u00a0and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany\u00a0belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social\u00a0grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of\u00a0bourgeois society.<\/p>\r\n
To this section belong economists, philanthropists,\u00a0humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class,\u00a0organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of\u00a0cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner\u00a0reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has,\u00a0moreover, been worked out into complete systems.<\/p>\r\n
We may cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere as an example of\u00a0this form.<\/p>\r\n
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern\u00a0social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily\u00a0resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society\u00a0minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish\u00a0for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie\u00a0naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the\u00a0best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable\u00a0conception into various more or less complete systems. In\u00a0requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby\u00a0to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but\u00a0requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within\u00a0the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its\u00a0hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n
A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this\u00a0Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in\u00a0the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political\u00a0reform, but only a change in the material conditions of\u00a0existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage to\u00a0them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this\u00a0form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of\u00a0the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be\u00a0effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based\u00a0on the continued existence of these relations; reforms,\u00a0therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between\u00a0capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and\u00a0simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.<\/p>\r\n
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only\u00a0when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.<\/p>\r\n
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective\u00a0duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for\u00a0the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the\u00a0only seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism.<\/p>\r\n
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois\u2014for\u00a0the benefit of the working class.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great\u00a0modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the\u00a0proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.<\/p>\r\n
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own\u00a0ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society\u00a0was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing\u00a0to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to\u00a0the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation,\u00a0conditions that had yet to be produced and could be produced\u00a0by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary\u00a0literature that accompanied these first movements of the\u00a0proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It\u00a0inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its\u00a0crudest form.<\/p>\r\n
The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of\u00a0Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in\u00a0the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle\u00a0between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois\u00a0and Proletarians).<\/p>\r\n
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as\u00a0well as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form\u00a0of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them\u00a0the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any\u00a0independent political movement.<\/p>\r\n
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with\u00a0the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find\u00a0it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the\u00a0emancipation of the proletariat. They, therefore, search after a\u00a0new social science, after new social laws, that are to create\u00a0these conditions.<\/p>\r\n
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive\u00a0action, historically created conditions of emancipation to\u00a0fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organization\u00a0of the proletariat to the organization of society specially\u00a0contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in\u00a0their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of\u00a0their social plans.<\/p>\r\n
In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring\u00a0chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most\u00a0suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most\u00a0suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.<\/p>\r\n
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their\u00a0own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider\u00a0themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to\u00a0improve the condition of every member of society, even that of\u00a0the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at\u00a0large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the\u00a0ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand\u00a0their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the\u00a0best possible state of society?<\/p>\r\n
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all\u00a0revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by\u00a0peaceful means, and endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily\u00a0doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way\u00a0for the new social Gospel.<\/p>\r\n
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time\u00a0when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has\u00a0but a fantastic conception of its own position correspond with\u00a0the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general\u00a0reconstruction of society.<\/p>\r\n
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a\u00a0critical element. They attack every principle of existing society.\u00a0Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for the\u00a0enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures\u00a0proposed in them\u2014such as the abolition of the distinction\u00a0between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of\u00a0industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage\u00a0system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the\u00a0functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production,\u00a0all these proposals, point solely to the disappearance of class\u00a0antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and\u00a0which, in these publications, are recognized in their earliest,\u00a0indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore,\u00a0are of a purely Utopian character.<\/p>\r\n
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism\u00a0bears an inverse relation to historical development. In\u00a0proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes\u00a0definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest,\u00a0these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all\u00a0theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators\u00a0of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their\u00a0disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects.\u00a0They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in\u00a0opposition to the progressive historical development of the\u00a0proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently,\u00a0to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms.\u00a0They still dream of experimental realization of their social\u00a0Utopias, of founding isolated \"phalansteres,\" of establishing\u00a0\"Home Colonies,\" of setting up a \"Little Icaria\"\u2014duodecimo\u00a0editions of the New Jerusalem\u2014and to realize all these castles\u00a0in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and\u00a0purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category\u00a0of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above,\u00a0differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and\u00a0by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous\u00a0effects of their social science.<\/p>\r\n
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the\u00a0part of the working class; such action, according to them, can\u00a0only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.<\/p>\r\n
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France,\u00a0respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Reformists.<\/p>","rendered":"
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the\u00a0aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against\u00a0modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July 1830,\u00a0and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again\u00a0succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political\u00a0contest was altogether out of the question. A literary battle\u00a0alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature, the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.<\/p>\n
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to\u00a0lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate\u00a0their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the\u00a0exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their\u00a0revenge by singing lampoons on their new master and whispering\u00a0in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.<\/p>\n
In this way arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half\u00a0lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at\u00a0times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the\u00a0bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in\u00a0its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of\u00a0modern history.<\/p>\n
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the\u00a0proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so\u00a0often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal\u00a0coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.<\/p>\n
One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England”\u00a0exhibited this spectacle.<\/p>\n
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to\u00a0that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they\u00a0exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite\u00a0different, and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under\u00a0their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget\u00a0that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their\u00a0own form of society.<\/p>\n
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary\u00a0character of their criticism that their chief accusation against\u00a0the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois regime\u00a0a class is being developed, which is destined to cut up root and\u00a0branch the old order of society.<\/p>\n
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it\u00a0creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary\u00a0proletariat.<\/p>\n
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive\u00a0measures against the working class; and in ordinary life,\u00a0despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the\u00a0golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter\u00a0truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and\u00a0potato spirits.<\/p>\n
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord,\u00a0so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.<\/p>\n
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist\u00a0tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property,\u00a0against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the\u00a0place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification\u00a0of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian\u00a0Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates\u00a0the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.<\/p>\n
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by\u00a0the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence\u00a0pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society.\u00a0The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were\u00a0the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries\u00a0which are but little developed, industrially and commercially,\u00a0these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising\u00a0bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
In countries where modern civilization has become fully\u00a0developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed,\u00a0fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing\u00a0itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The\u00a0individual members of this class, however, are being constantly\u00a0hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition,\u00a0and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent\u00a0section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures,\u00a0agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.<\/p>\n
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more\u00a0than half of the population, it was natural that writers who\u00a0sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use,\u00a0in their criticism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the\u00a0peasant and petty-bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate\u00a0classes should take up the cudgels for the working\u00a0class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the\u00a0head of this school, not only in France but also in England.<\/p>\n
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the\u00a0contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid\u00a0bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved,\u00a0incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and\u00a0division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a\u00a0few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the\u00a0inevitable ruin of the petty-bourgeois and peasant, the misery\u00a0of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying\u00a0inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of\u00a0extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral\u00a0bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.<\/p>\n
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires\u00a0either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange,\u00a0and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or\u00a0to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange,\u00a0within the framework of the old property relations that have\u00a0been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either\u00a0case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.<\/p>\n
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture,\u00a0patriarchal relations in agriculture.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all\u00a0intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism\u00a0ended in a miserable fit of the blues.<\/p>\n
The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature\u00a0that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and\u00a0that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was\u00a0introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that\u00a0country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.<\/p>\n
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits,\u00a0eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when\u00a0these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social\u00a0conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with\u00a0German social conditions, this French literature lost all its\u00a0immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary\u00a0aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth\u00a0century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing\u00a0more than the demands of “Practical Reason” in general, and the\u00a0utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie\u00a0signified in their eyes the law of pure Will, of Will as it was\u00a0bound to be, of true human Will generally.<\/p>\n
The world of the German literate consisted solely in bringing\u00a0the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical\u00a0conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without\u00a0deserting their own philosophic point of view.<\/p>\n
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign\u00a0language is appropriated, namely, by translation.<\/p>\n
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic\u00a0Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of\u00a0ancient heathendom had been written. The German literate\u00a0reversed this process with the profane French literature. They\u00a0wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original.\u00a0For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic\u00a0functions of money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity,” and\u00a0beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois State, they wrote\u00a0“dethronement of the Category of the General,” and so forth.<\/p>\n
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of\u00a0the French historical criticisms they dubbed “Philosophy of\u00a0Action,” “True Socialism,” “German Science of Socialism,”\u00a0“Philosophical Foundation of Socialism,” and so on.<\/p>\n
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely\u00a0emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express\u00a0the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having\u00a0overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not true\u00a0requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the\u00a0proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who\u00a0belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm\u00a0of philosophical fantasy.<\/p>\n
This German Socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously\u00a0and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such\u00a0mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic\u00a0innocence.<\/p>\n
The fight of the German, and especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie,\u00a0against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the\u00a0liberal movement, became more earnest.<\/p>\n
By this, the long-wished-for opportunity was offered to “True”\u00a0Socialism of confronting the political movement with the\u00a0Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas\u00a0against liberalism, against representative government, against\u00a0bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois\u00a0legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to\u00a0the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose,\u00a0by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick\u00a0of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was,\u00a0presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its\u00a0corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political\u00a0constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment\u00a0was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.<\/p>\n
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,\u00a0professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome\u00a0scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and\u00a0bullets with which these same governments, just at that time,\u00a0dosed the German working-class risings.<\/p>\n
While this “True” Socialism thus served the governments as a\u00a0weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time,\u00a0directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the\u00a0German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a\u00a0relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly\u00a0cropping up again under various forms, is the real social basis\u00a0of the existing state of things.<\/p>\n
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of\u00a0things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the\u00a0bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction; on the one\u00a0hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the\u00a0rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to\u00a0kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.<\/p>\n
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers\u00a0of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this\u00a0transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their\u00a0sorry “eternal truths,” all skin and bone, served to wonderfully\u00a0increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public. And on\u00a0its part, German Socialism recognized, more and more, its own\u00a0calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois\u00a0Philistine.<\/p>\n
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the\u00a0German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every\u00a0villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher,\u00a0Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real\u00a0character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing\u00a0the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of\u00a0proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class\u00a0struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist\u00a0and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany\u00a0belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.<\/p>\n
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social\u00a0grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of\u00a0bourgeois society.<\/p>\n
To this section belong economists, philanthropists,\u00a0humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class,\u00a0organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of\u00a0cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner\u00a0reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has,\u00a0moreover, been worked out into complete systems.<\/p>\n
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misere as an example of\u00a0this form.<\/p>\n
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern\u00a0social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily\u00a0resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society\u00a0minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish\u00a0for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie\u00a0naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the\u00a0best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable\u00a0conception into various more or less complete systems. In\u00a0requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby\u00a0to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but\u00a0requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within\u00a0the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its\u00a0hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n
A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this\u00a0Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in\u00a0the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political\u00a0reform, but only a change in the material conditions of\u00a0existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage to\u00a0them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this\u00a0form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of\u00a0the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be\u00a0effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based\u00a0on the continued existence of these relations; reforms,\u00a0therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between\u00a0capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and\u00a0simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.<\/p>\n
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only\u00a0when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.<\/p>\n
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective\u00a0duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for\u00a0the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the\u00a0only seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism.<\/p>\n
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois\u2014for\u00a0the benefit of the working class.<\/p>\n
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great\u00a0modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the\u00a0proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.<\/p>\n
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own\u00a0ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society\u00a0was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing\u00a0to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to\u00a0the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation,\u00a0conditions that had yet to be produced and could be produced\u00a0by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary\u00a0literature that accompanied these first movements of the\u00a0proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It\u00a0inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its\u00a0crudest form.<\/p>\n
The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of\u00a0Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in\u00a0the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle\u00a0between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois\u00a0and Proletarians).<\/p>\n
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as\u00a0well as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form\u00a0of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them\u00a0the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any\u00a0independent political movement.<\/p>\n
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with\u00a0the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find\u00a0it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the\u00a0emancipation of the proletariat. They, therefore, search after a\u00a0new social science, after new social laws, that are to create\u00a0these conditions.<\/p>\n
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive\u00a0action, historically created conditions of emancipation to\u00a0fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organization\u00a0of the proletariat to the organization of society specially\u00a0contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in\u00a0their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of\u00a0their social plans.<\/p>\n
In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring\u00a0chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most\u00a0suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most\u00a0suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.<\/p>\n
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their\u00a0own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider\u00a0themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to\u00a0improve the condition of every member of society, even that of\u00a0the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at\u00a0large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the\u00a0ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand\u00a0their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the\u00a0best possible state of society?<\/p>\n
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all\u00a0revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by\u00a0peaceful means, and endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily\u00a0doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way\u00a0for the new social Gospel.<\/p>\n
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time\u00a0when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has\u00a0but a fantastic conception of its own position correspond with\u00a0the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general\u00a0reconstruction of society.<\/p>\n
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a\u00a0critical element. They attack every principle of existing society.\u00a0Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for the\u00a0enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures\u00a0proposed in them\u2014such as the abolition of the distinction\u00a0between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of\u00a0industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage\u00a0system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the\u00a0functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production,\u00a0all these proposals, point solely to the disappearance of class\u00a0antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and\u00a0which, in these publications, are recognized in their earliest,\u00a0indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore,\u00a0are of a purely Utopian character.<\/p>\n
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism\u00a0bears an inverse relation to historical development. In\u00a0proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes\u00a0definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest,\u00a0these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all\u00a0theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators\u00a0of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their\u00a0disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects.\u00a0They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in\u00a0opposition to the progressive historical development of the\u00a0proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently,\u00a0to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms.\u00a0They still dream of experimental realization of their social\u00a0Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres,” of establishing\u00a0“Home Colonies,” of setting up a “Little Icaria”\u2014duodecimo\u00a0editions of the New Jerusalem\u2014and to realize all these castles\u00a0in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and\u00a0purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category\u00a0of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above,\u00a0differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and\u00a0by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous\u00a0effects of their social science.<\/p>\n
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the\u00a0part of the working class; such action, according to them, can\u00a0only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.<\/p>\n
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France,\u00a0respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Reformists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"menu_order":4,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-49","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/251"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/49\/revisions\/141"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/49\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/communistmanifesto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}