Chapter II: Concerning Utopian Socialism

"Rarely do we reach truth except through extremes--we must have
foolishness ... even to exhaustion, before we arrive at the
beautiful goal of calm wisdom."

SCHILLER, _Philosophical Letters_, Preamble.

It would be strange if such a mighty revolution in economic and social matters as I have sketched for you should not have found its reflection in the minds of thinking men. It would be wonderful, I think, if with this overturning of social institutions a revolution of social thought, science, and faith should not follow. We find in fact that parallel with this revolution in life fundamental changes have taken place in the sphere of social thought. By the side of the old social literature a new set of writings arises. The former belongs to the end of the previous and the beginning of the present century; it is that which we are accustomed to call the classic political economy; it is that which, after a development of about one hundred and fifty to two hundred years, found the highest theoretical expression of the capitalistic economic system through the great political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. By the side of this literature, devoted to the capitalistic view of economics, now grows a new school of writings which has this general characteristic, that it is anti-capitalistic; that is, it places itself in conscious opposition to the capitalistic school of economics and considers the advocacy of this opposition as its peculiar task.

In accordance with the undeveloped condition of such economic thought it is, of course, a medley of explanations and claims as to what is and what should be, wherein the new literature expresses its opposition. All undeveloped literature begins in this tumultuous way, just as all unschooled minds at first slowly learn to distinguish between what is and what should be. And indeed in the immaturity of this new literature the practical element predominates greatly, as may readily be understood; there is a desire to justify theoretically the agitation, the new postulates, the new ideals.

For this reason, if we would see this literature in its full relations and distinguish its various _nuances_ (delicate differences), it will be convenient to choose as distinguishing marks the differing uses of the new "Thou shalt." Thus we recognise in general two groups in this new literature, the reformatory and the revolutionary. The latter word is not used in its ordinary meaning, but in that which I shall immediately define. The reformatory and the revolutionary literature divide on this point, that the reformatory recognises in principle the existing economic system of capitalism, and attempts upon the basis of this economy to introduce changes and improvements, which are, however, subordinate, incidental, not essential; also and especially, that the fundamental features of social order are retained, but that man desires to see his fellow-man changed in thought and feeling. A new spirit obtains, repentance is proclaimed, the good qualities of human nature win the upper hand--brotherly love, charity, conciliation.

This reformatory agitation that recognises the injury and evil of social life, but that with essential adhesion to the dominant economic system desires to mitigate the injury and to overcome or minimise the evil, has different ways of expression. It is a Christian, or an ethical, or a philanthropic impulse which calls forth the new literature and controls the writings that make for social reform.

The Christian thought is that which, in application to the social world, creates that trend of literature which we are accustomed incorrectly to designate under the phrase "Christian socialism." Of this are the writings of Lamennais in France, Kingsley in England, which, filled with the spirit of the Bible, address to employer and employe alike the demand--Out with the spirit of mammon from your souls, fill your hearts with the spirit of the gospel, the "new spirit," as they constantly call it. And quite similarly sound the voices of those earlier "ethical" economists, Sismondi, Thomas Carlyle, who do not become tired of preaching, if not the "Christian," at least the "social" spirit. Change of heart is their watchword. The third drift of thought, which I call the philanthropic, directs itself rather towards the emotions than towards the sense of duty or the religious element in man. Pierre Leroux in France, Grün and Hess in Germany, are men who, filled with a great, overpowering love for mankind, desire to heal the wounds which their sympathetic hearts behold, who would overwhelm the misery which they see by this universal love of man. "Love one another as men, as brothers!" is the theme of their preaching. All these three streams of thought, merely the sources of which I have specified, continue influential to the present day; and all of them have this in common, that they hold fast in principle to the foundations of the existing social order--therefore I call them reformatory. Opposed to them appears another class of literature, the "revolutionary"; so called because its great principle is the doing away with the foundations of capitalistic economy, and the substituting something different. This it proposes to do in two different ways,--if I may express my meaning in two words,--backwards and forwards.

At the very time when economic contradictions develop themselves and new phases of anti-capitalistic literature come to the surface, we find a revolutionary anti-capitalistic literature strongly asserting itself, which demands a retrogression from the existing system of economics. Such are the writings of Adam Müller and Leopold von Haller in the first third of our century, men who would change the bases on which the modern capitalistic economy is founded by introducing the crumbled feudalistic guild system of the middle ages in place of the middle-class capitalistic system of to-day. These are indeed manifestations which have not as yet reached their end.

Besides these reactionary manifestations, there is another movement which does not want this regression to old forms, but in the same way demands an overthrow of the principles of the existing capitalistic system. But this change must be under the influence of those modern advanced ideas which, especially on the technical side, betoken that which we are accustomed to call "progress." Systems, that is, theories, they are which hold fast to an historic essence of capitalistic methods of production--that it is built upon the basis of modern production in the mass; but which, under the influence of advanced ideas, call for a new order of production and distribution in the interests of those classes of the people which under the capitalistic economy seem to come short--thus essentially in the interests of the great masses of the proletariat. The theorists who desire such a development of the capitalistic economy in the interests of the proletariat, while upholding methods of production on a large scale, are the ones whom we must call socialists in the true meaning of the word. And we have now to do with a strange species of these socialists, with those whom we are accustomed to call utopists or utopian socialists. The typical representatives of these utopian socialists are St. Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in England. Of these, the most conspicuous are the two Frenchmen; their systems are most frequently presented. Owen is less known. As I now attempt to make clear to you, through him, the essence of utopian socialism, it is because he is less known, but especially because in my opinion he is the most interesting of the three great utopists. It is he who on the one side most clearly shows to us the genesis of the modern proletarian ideal, and on the other side has been of greatest influence upon other socialistic theorists, especially upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Robert Owen was a manufacturer. We find him at the age of twenty years already the manager of a great cotton-mill. Soon after he established a mill at Lanark. Here he learned practical life by personal experience. We distinguish two periods in his life. In the first he is what we may call an educationalist, a man who interests himself especially in the education of youth and expects through it an essential reformation of human society. The chief work of this epoch is the book _A New View of Society_. In the second period he is a socialist; and his most important work is _A Book of the New Moral World_. Owen really interests us in this second period, as a socialist. What does he thus teach? And what is the essence of this first form of utopian socialism?

Robert Owen takes as the starting-point for his theorising the investigations which he made in his immediate surroundings. He pictures to us the state of affairs in connection with his own manufactories; how the workers, especially the women and children, degenerated, physically, intellectually and morally. He begins also with a recognition of the evils which distinguish the modern capitalistic system; his starting-point is proletarian. Upon these investigations of his own he now builds a social-philosophic system which is not unknown to one who has studied the social philosophy of the eighteenth century. Owen's social philosophy is essentially characterised by this, that he believes in man as good by nature, and in an order of communal life which would in like manner be naturally good if only these men were brought into proper relations with each other--faith in the so-called _ordre naturel_, in a natural order of things which has possibly existed somewhere, but which in any case would exist, were it not that artificial hindrances stand in the way, evils which make it impossible for man to live in this natural way with others. These evils, these forces, which stand in the way of the accomplishment of a natural communal life, Robert Owen sees of two kinds: one in the faulty education of men, the other in the defective environment in which modern man lives--the evils of a rich _milieu_. He infers logically, if we would again realise that natural and beautiful condition of harmonious communal life, that _ordre naturel_, both these evils must be driven out of the world. He demands, therefore, better education on the one side, a better environment upon the other. In these two postulates we find side by side the two periods of his development as we have heretofore seen them. In the first he lays stress rather upon education; in the second, rather upon change of environment. He recognises, further--and this is perhaps the particular service rendered by Owen to socialistic theory--that these evil conditions, on the overcoming of which all depends, have not been provided by nature, but have grown out of a definite system of social order, which he believes to be the capitalistic. In the capitalistic economy he sees nothing of that natural law which the representatives of the classical economies assert; but an order of society created by man. Even his opponents believed in the _ordre naturel_, only they thought that it was realised; Owen did not. Much more, Owen was compelled to demand the overthrow of this economic system in order that his goal might be reached, that man might be able to enjoy a better development and a better environment. For this reason he demanded that the artificial economic system should undergo essential changes, especially in two points, the main pillars upon which the economic system is built. Owen repudiated the competition of the individual and the profit-making of the master.

If this be allowed, the further practical arrangements which Owen demanded must in like manner be granted: in place of individualism, socialism must stand. In this way private operation will be replaced by communal production, and competition will be in fact overthrown; also, the profit of the employer will flow into the pockets of the producers, the members of the social organisation. These ideas of socialistic production grew, for Owen, spontaneously out of the capitalistic system in which he lived.

Here we come directly to the attitude of spirit in which Robert Owen has conceived his socialistic system, and it is necessary for the completion of this sketch to make reference especially to the means which Owen would use to reach his goal. These means are essentially a universal understanding and agreement among men; to them the truth and beauty of this new order should be preached, so that the wish may be aroused in them to accomplish this new order. But Owen does not think of the possibility that, when it is once made clear how wonderful this new order would be and how wonderfully men would live therein, men would not wish for the new order, and even if they did wish for it, that they might not be able to accomplish it. Only let the matter be known, then the wish and the ability will follow. For this reason, it is possible that the new order may enter at any moment; "as a thief in the night," Owen expresses it, socialism can come over the world. Only intellectual perception is necessary, and this can illumine the mind of man suddenly as a lightning flash. This peculiar conception of the means and ways that lead to the goal is one of the characteristic traits which distinguish the system of Owen, and in like manner of all utopian socialists.

If we look at this system as a whole, we find as the starting-point a criticism of existing social circumstances in a proletarian community. We find, further, as the basis upon which the system stands, the social philosophy of the eighteenth century. We see, as its demands, the overthrow of the capitalistic economy and the replacing of private production by communal operation. We find, finally, as the means for accomplishing this, as the roadway that leads to the object desired, the enlightenment of mankind. How he then exerted himself to carry out his plans in detail, how he created a New Lanark, and how his plans were entirely frustrated--all that interests us now as little as does the fact that Owen reached large practical results, in the shortening of the hours of labor and in the limitation of work by women and children, through improvement and amelioration of work in his manufactories, in which a new race began to rise in intellectual and moral freshness. Just so little are we interested in the fact that he is the father of English trade-union agitation. We would only look at his significance for the social movement, and this lies especially in the fact that he first, at least in outline, created that which since has become the proletarian ideal. For this point must be made clear to us, that all the germs of later socialism are contained in Owen's system.

If I now, after having sketched the fundamental ideas of Owen's system, may attempt to condense the essence of the so-called utopian socialism into a few sentences, I would specify this as essential: Owen and the others are primarily socialists because their starting-point is proletarian criticism. They draw this immediately out of spheres in which capitalism asserts itself, out of the manufactory as Owen, out of the counting-house as Fourier. They are, further, socialists for this reason, not only that their starting-point is proletarian, but also because their object is socialistic in the sense that it would put joint enterprise in the place of private operation; that is, a new economic order which does not longer provide for private operation and the sharing of the profit between master and workman, but is based upon communal effort, without competition and without employer. But why, we ask ourselves, are they called socialistic utopists? And how are they to be distinguished from those theorists whom we shall learn to call scientific socialists? Owen, St. Simon, and Fourier are to be called utopists for the reason that they do not recognise the real factors of socialism; they are the true and legitimate children of the naïve and idealistic eighteenth century, which we, with right, call the century of intellectual enlightenment.

I have already showed to you how this belief in enlightenment, in the power of the knowledge of good, predominates in Owen's system. In this lies essentially its utopianism, because those are looked upon as effective and impelling factors which do not in fact constitute social life and the real world. Thus this belief mistakes doubly: it contains a false judgment of present and past, and it deceives itself concerning the prospects of the future. So far as his followers assume that the present order of things is nothing other than a mistake, that only for this reason men find themselves in their present position, that misery rules in the world only because man has not known thus far how to make it better--that is false. The utopists fail to see, in their optimism, that a part of this society looks upon the _status quo_ as thoroughly satisfactory and desires no change, that this part also has an interest in sustaining it, and that a specific condition of society always obtains because those persons who are interested in it have the power to sustain it. All social order is nothing other than the temporary expression of a balance of power between the various classes of society. Now judge for yourselves what mistaken estimate of the true world, what boundless underestimate of opposing forces, lie in the belief that those who have power can be moved to a surrender of their position through preaching and promise.

As the utopists underestimate the power of their opponents, so they overestimate their own strength, and thus become utopists as to the future. They are pervaded by the strong conviction that there is needed only an energetic, hearty resolution in order to bring to reality the kingdom of the future. They rate too highly the ability of the men who will constitute the future society. They forget, or they do not know, that in a long process of reconstruction men and things must first be created in order to make the new social order possible.

For the practical working of the social movement, the most interesting conclusion which the utopists draw logically out of this conception is the kind of tactics which they recommend for reaching the new condition. From what has been said it follows necessarily that this strategy must culminate in an appeal to men collectively. It will not be accomplished by a specific and interested class; but it expects from all men that, when the matter is rightly explained, they will wish for the good. Indeed, it is assumed that it is only ignorance on the part of the opponent that keeps him from accepting openly and freely this good, from divesting himself of his possessions and exchanging the old order for the new. The characteristic example of this childish way of viewing things is the well-known fact that Charles Fourier daily waited at his home, between the hours of twelve and one, to receive the millionaire who should bring to him money for the erection of the first phalanstery. No one came.

In closest connection with this belief in the willingness of the ruling classes to make concessions stands the disinclination to all use of force, to all demand and command. Thus we find, as the simple thought in the tactics of the utopists, the repudiation of class strife and political effort. For how can this be brought into harmony with their main idea? How can anything that is to be accomplished by intellectual illumination, or at most by example, be achieved through strife? It is unthinkable. So, just as utopian socialism rejects political exertion, it also stands opposed to all those efforts which we are accustomed to call the economic agitation of the workman, such as trade-unions and the like. It is the same thought: how shall the organisation of working-men for strife tend to the improvement of the condition of work, when this can come only through the preaching of the new gospel? Robert Owen indeed organised in England trade-unions. But their work was really the propagation of his socialistic theories, not painful struggle against capitalism. Rejection of class strife in the sphere of politics as of economic agitation, repudiation of this in speech and writing and example--herein culminate the tactics of the utopian socialists. This, as I have attempted to show to you, is the necessary outcome of their system, built upon beautiful but narrow lines.

As we now take leave of utopian socialism we must guard ourselves from the thought that the spirit of this great historic influence has fully disappeared from the world. No! no day passes without the reappearance, in some book or speech, of these fundamental thoughts which we have recognised as the essence of utopian socialism. Especially in the circles of the well inclined middle-class social politicians does this spirit live to-day; but even in the proletariat itself it is not by any means dead. We shall see how it is revived later, in connection with revolutionary thought. For this reason a more than merely historic interest invests this particular line of thought.