Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

An important document by Engels on scientific socialism. Written in January–March 1880, originally published in the journal Revue Socialiste, Nos. 3, 4 and 5, on March 20, April 20, and May 5, 1880, and published in French in Paris in 1880 under the title F. Engels Socialisme utopique et Socialisme scientifique, in a single volume.

From the 1870s onwards, capitalism began a period of relatively peaceful development in its transition from liberal capitalism to imperialism. Against this historical background, a new situation emerged in the international workers’ movement: the bourgeoisie, which was in a monopolistic position, used various means to buy off the upper echelons of the working class and cultivate its spokesmen. Some anti-Marxists dressed up as Marxists, distorted and confused Marxism from within, and fomented opportunist currents. Among the various anti-Marxist currents, the spread of Dühringism was particularly ferocious. Under the banner of a “reformer” of socialism, Dühring cobbled together a set of so-called “final and ultimate truths” and “highest forms” in a vain attempt to replace Marxism. In order to dispel the confusion of Dühringism and defend the fundamental principles of Marxism, Engels interrupted the writing of Dialectics of Nature and published a series of articles criticizing Dühring’s thoughts in the organ of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, Vorwärts between 1877 and 1878. In the summer of 1878, Engels published the book, Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, i.e. the famous Anti-Dühring. In 1880, at the request of the French revolutionary Paul Lafargue, Engels rewrote three chapters of Anti-Dühring (the first chapter of the Introduction and the first and second chapters of Part III) into an independent, popular work, which was translated by Lafargue into French and published under the title Socialisme utopique et Socialisme scientifique.

The whole book, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific consists of the Introduction to the French Edition of 1880, written by Marx, the Preface to the First German Edition of 1882, the Preface to the Fourth German Edition of 1891, the Introduction to the English Edition of 1892, and the three chapters of the main text. The Prefaces and the Introduction focus on introducing the intention of writing, the process of writing and the arrangement of the content of writing. The parts of the main text respectively elaborate the ideological sources, the theoretical foundations and the fundamental principles of scientific socialism. Its main contents are:

First, it expounded that utopian socialism is an ideological source of scientific socialism. Engels pointed out that scientific socialism, in terms of its content, is a scientific reflection of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, the result of an examination of the class antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in capitalist society and of the anarchy in production. Engels believed that the 19th-century utopian socialism and scientific socialism were two successive stages in the history of the development of “modern socialism”, and that they were both reflections of the fundamental contradictions and class antagonisms of capitalist society in form of ideas. The difference is that the former is an immature, incomplete and inadequate form of expression, while the latter is a mature, complete and scientific form of expression, and the former is the immediate ideological source of the latter. The historical merits of utopian socialism are: first, it exposed and criticized the evil system of capitalism, and attacked the whole foundation of capitalism, and were “full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class”; second, it made a speculation on the objective laws of historical development in a direction to the best of their ability, which contained some reasonable elements of historical materialism; third, it put forth positive propositions on the future society.

Second, it identified the two major discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the surplus-value as the theoretical foundation of scientific socialism. The emergence of scientific socialism is directly connected with the revolution in philosophy, that is, the emergence of dialectical materialism. Engels pointed out: “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.” When the socio-historical movement is analyzed with materialist dialectics, it was discovered 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.” Moreover, by applying the materialist conception of history and starting with the commodities, Marx and Engels comprehensively analyzed the concrete process of movement of the capitalist society and founded the theory of surplus-value. Engels pointed out: the task of socialism is not to artificially imagine and work out a perfect framework of social system, but to examine “the historico-economic succession of events” from which the two major classes and their struggle against each other had of necessity sprung, i.e., the contradictory movement of the productive forces and the relations of production of capitalism, thus criticize and expose “its essential character, which was still a secret”, i.e., the relations of exploitation, and thus find the means for abolishing capitalism.

This task was accomplished by the founding of the doctrine of surplus value. These two major discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and surplus-value, transformed socialism from utopia into science.

Third, it elaborated the fundamental principles of scientific socialism. These principles mainly include: (1) the proof of the inevitable downfall of capitalism and inevitable victory of socialism. Engels pointed out: “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, and they are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.” The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private appropriation of the means of production, and this contradiction is manifested in two ways: First, the antagonism between the working class and the bourgeoisie. Second, the antagonism between the organized nature of production in individual factories and the anarchy of production in the capitalist society as a whole. The result of these antagonisms inevitably leads to cyclical economic crises. Economic crises undermine the development of the productive forces on the one hand and increase the pauperization of the proletariat on the other. The cyclical economic crises have profoundly demonstrated that the capitalist relations of production can no longer accommodate the continuous development of the productive forces, and that the social attribute of the productive forces inevitably require breaking the fetters imposed on them by private appropriation, and that the reconstruction of socialist relations of production appropriate to socialized large-scale production become an necessity of historical development. (2) It described the basic economic features of socialism. Main features of socialist society include: highly developed productive forces; the appropriation by the society of all means of production; production upon a definite plan to satisfy the needs of society as a whole and of each individual member of the society; with the rapid development of productive forces, constant improvement of people’s lived, etc. (3) It clarified the glorious historical mission of the proletariat and the arduous historical task of scientific socialism. Engels pointed out: “To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, i.e., scientific socialism”.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is an extremely important work in the history of Marxist thought. In this work, Engels outlined the historical development of socialist thought, reviewed the theoretical contributions and historical limitations of the three major utopian socialists, Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, clarified the ideological sources of scientific socialism, discussed the process of founding of the dialectical-materialist conception of nature and history as well as the fundamental difference between materialist dialectics and metaphysics, and pointed out that the materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus-value founded by Marx turned socialism from utopia to science. He revealed the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, proved the historical law of the inevitable downfall of capitalism and the inevitable victory of socialism, and scientifically predicted some basic features of the future society. The publication of the work corrected misconceptions about socialism, defended Marxism and enabled socialism to spread among the workers in in a complete and accurate way, and has been a lighthouse pointing out the direction of the world socialist movement. Marx called it an “introduction to scientific socialism”, and Lenin believed that it was a “summary of the history of the development socialism” and “like The Communist Manifesto, [a] handbook for every class-conscious worker”.