Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

“The materialist conception of history and its specific application to the modern class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie was only possible by means of dialectics. And if the schoolmasters of the German bourgeoisie have drowned the memory of the great German philosophers and of the dialectics produced by them in a swamp of empty eclecticism—so much so that we are compelled to appeal to modern natural science as a witness to the preservation of dialectics in reality—we German Socialists are proud of the fact that we are descended not only from Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel.”

Here, Engels alludes to his synthesis of German dialectics and French utopian socialism. He simultaneously criticizes his contemporary German academics for largely forgoing materialism in favor of idealism. In short, Engels applies the techniques of German philosophy to the goals of French philosophy.

“The Socialist party in Germany was fast becoming a power. But, to make it a power, the first condition was that the newly-conquered unity should not be imperilled. And Dr. Dühring openly proceeded to form around himself a sect, the nucleus of a future separate party. It, thus, became necessary to take up the gauntlet thrown down to us, and to fight out the struggle, whether we liked it or not.”

Engels presents Dühring as a dividing force in Germany’s socialist community. In Engels’s view, Dühring curtailed the party’s growing power by sowing division. Likewise, his “throwing down” of the gauntlet implies a personal attack, to which Marx and Engels had no choice but to respond.

“Whenever anyone of us expounds what he considers a new doctrine, he has first to elaborate it into an all-comprising system. He has to prove that both the first principles of logic and the fundamental laws of the universe had existed from all eternity for no other purpose than to ultimately lead to this newly-discovered, crowning theory. And Dr. Dühring, in this respect, was quite up to the national mark. Nothing less than a complete ‘System of Philosophy’, mental, moral, natural, and historical; a complete ‘System of Political Economy and Socialism’; and, finally, a ‘Critical History of Political Economy’ —three big volumes in octavo, heavy extrinsically and intrinsically, three army-corps of arguments mobilized against all previous philosophers and economists in general, and against Marx in particular —in fact, an attempt at a complete "revolution in science" —these were what I should have to tackle.”

This passage helps to explain the grand scope of Engels’s task. An elaborate system proposed by an ideological rival allowed Engels to respond in kind.

“[H]ow do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? […] human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail.”

This is the basis of Engels’s materialism. He argues that successfully interacting with objects in the real world demonstrates our senses’ capacity to reflect objective truth: either we interact with these objects as we expect to from observing them (e.g., seeing a chair and sitting on it), or we get an unexpected result and change the way we interact with it.

“If the German middle-class have shown themselves lamentably deficient in political capacity, discipline, courage, energy, and perseverance, the German working-class have given ample proof of all these qualities.”

Here, Engels broadly personifies European social classes. He treats each group as a monolith. Nevertheless, these broad generalizations are helpful to building Engels’s philosophical framework, which focuses on schisms between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

“Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production.”

Engels describes modern socialism as the natural response to observing capitalism’s inherent flaws. Among these flaws, he specifically refers to capitalism’s amplification of widespread class inequity. By describing socialism as a predictable and measurable response to the realities of capitalism, Engels differentiates scientific socialism from utopian socialism.

“From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage-workers, and, in the same proportion as the mediaeval burgher of the guild developed into the modern bourgeois, the guild journeyman and the day-laborer, outside the guilds, developed into the proletarian.”

Here, Engels explains why class antagonism is inherent to capitalism. Industrial capitalists cannot exist without a working class. Underpaying workers for their labor is critical to preserving the profits mandated by capitalism.

“The development of industry upon a capitalistic basis made poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society.”

Just as the bourgeoisie cannot exist without the proletariat, this class system cannot exist without the necessary exploitation by the owning classes of the working underclasses. Only by exploited the proletariat can the bourgeoisie maintain profit margins in a capitalist framework.

“Rousseau’s Contrat Social had found its realization in the Reign of Terror, from which the bourgeoisie, who had lost confidence in their own political capacity, had taken refuge first in the corruption of the Directorate, and, finally, under the wing of the Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peace was turned into an endless war of conquest. The society based upon reason had fared no better. The antagonism between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into general prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of the guild and other privileges, which had to some extent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitable institutions of the Church.”

Engels describes Enlightenment-era philosophy and its love affair with liberalism as a utopian failure. Although the French Revolution toppled the monarchy and reduced the power of the clergy, in the short-term it led to massive bloodshed and a military dictatorship in Napoleon. These are hardly favorable outcomes for liberalism.

“Formerly, the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad daylight; though not eradicated, they were now at any rate thrust into the background. In their stead, the bourgeois vices, hitherto practiced in secret, began to blossom all the more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater and greater extent cheating. The “fraternity” of the revolutionary motto was realized in the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition. Oppression by force was replaced by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever, by gold. The right of the first night was transferred from the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers.”

According to Engels, feudalism did not die to make way for capitalism. Rather, feudalism and its social structures became the skeleton that capitalism took shape around. Moreover, the violence and subjugation of feudalism persisted in the capitalist age, albeit in subtler ways.

“The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. […] These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.”

Here, Engels criticizes utopianism for its lack of grounding in the reality of economic conditions. Instead, utopian socialism is rooted in the ideals of individual thinkers, which leads to its disorganized subjectivity. However, he also celebrates the utopians’ values and goals.

“In 1816, [Saint-Simon] declares that politics is the science of production, and foretells the complete absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that economic conditions are the basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo. Yet what is here already very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production – that is to say, the ‘abolition of the state’, about which recently there has been so much noise.”

This passage outlines some of Saint-Simon’s most influential ideas in modern socialist circles. His prescience, Engels suggests, is limited because his knowledge was limited by his era. Although Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is an attack on utopianism, Engels also reserves immense praise for what utopian socialists got right.

“At this juncture, there came forward as a reformer a manufacturer 29-years-old – a man of almost sublime, childlike simplicity of character, and at the same time one of the few born leaders of men.”

Here, Engels praises Owen’s character before discussing his philosophical contributions. This is a rhetorical device used to lend extra credence to Owen’s work. Owen’s attempts to build communist enclaves failed because his contemporaries rejected his vision.

“This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away. But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In order to understand these details, we must detach them from their natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task of natural science and historical research.”

Engels embraces the fluid nature of dialectics which, unlike metaphysics, is not terribly concerned with rigid classifications. By combining the big-picture approach of dialectics with the granular analysis of each detail, Engels reasserts his confidence in materialism as an accurate measure of reality.

“To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. For him, a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis, one to the other.”

Engels rejects metaphysics as overly simplistic and inflexible. He argues that metaphysical philosophy can only contextualize reality in terms of absolutes and dichotomies, which he asserts is an incomplete framework.

“For everyday purposes, we know and can say, e.g., whether an animal is alive or not. But, upon closer inquiry, we find that his is, in many cases, a very complex question, as the jurists know very well. They have cudgelled their brains in vain to discover a rational limit beyond which the killing of the child in its mother's womb is murder. It is just as impossible to determine absolutely the moment of death, for physiology proves that death is not an instantaneous, momentary phenomenon, but a very protracted process.”

Engels uses the process of death as an example of metaphysics’ failings. While it is easy to define whether an animal is dead or not, this dichotomy is insufficient when one attempts to pinpoint the exact moment of death. By extension, metaphysics is therefore a poor framework for understanding historical trends in class antagonism, as these dynamics are constantly in flux.

“Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution.”

Engels argues that reality operates in a dialectical way, representing the give-and-take of opposing concepts and ideas. Therefore, the dialectical method is the best way to describe reality.

“The class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie came to the front in the history of the most advanced countries in Europe, in proportion to the development, upon the one hand, of modern industry, upon the other, of the newly-acquired political supremacy of the bourgeoisie.”

Here, Engels describes the conditions which lead to the development of class struggle. The rise of the bourgeoisie occurred in tandem with the industrial revolution, which forever changed the modes of production. Likewise, he also asserts that class struggle is a propulsive force in human history.

“The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange —in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period.”

This section exemplifies one of the main ideas of Marxist thought. There is a causal relationship between economic development, class struggle, and social change. In Engels’s view, those who disregard economic conditions in their historical analysis will be ill-equipped to understand the past, the present, and the future.

“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”

This is Engels’s clearest definition of historical materialism. This passage also externalizes sociopolitical shifts. Rather than being caused by the actions of individuals, Engels argues that “social changes and political revolutions” are caused by shifts in economic systems.

“The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.”

Engels argues that class antagonism is a symptom caused by capitalism’s internal contradictions. This is a fatal flaw which will ultimately cause the system to collapse. The flaw also leads to recurrent economic crises, calling into question the efficacy of capitalism.

“He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.”

Engels describes the social Darwinism inherent to capitalism. Although it is the cause of unnecessary suffering, he also sees this violence as the spark that will ultimately ignite a proletarian revolution.

“With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual.”

This sentence recalls the popular Marxist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This slogan describes the dream of Marxist socialism: a society wherein everyone works to serve their community to the best of their abilities, and as a result, all community members’ needs are filled.