Summary
Summary Engels - Utopian and scientific socialism
- Module
- Marx and Marxism
- Institution
- Oxford University (OX)
Notes on Engels' 'Utopian and scientific socialism'
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Engels - Utopian and Scientific SocialismChapter One
● Modern socialism was borne out of French enlightenment thinking, which subjected
everything to the judgement of reason - religion, concepts of nature, society, political systems
○ superstition, injustice, privilege and oppression were to be superseded by
eternal truth, eternal justice, equality based on nature, and the inalienable rights of man
○ But it transpired that this reason was no more than the ‘idealised realm of
the bourgeoisie’ - antagonism between rich and poor grew, freedom of property became
freedom from property for the small peasants who were forced to sell because of
economic competition etc etc - the institutions borne out of the ‘triumph of reason’ were a
caricature of the promises of the Enlightenment
● During the French Revolution (and all bourgeois revolutions) there ran simultaneously
the struggle between bourgeois and nobility and the struggle between exploiters and exploited -
the bourgeoisie claimed to represent universal man but there were sporadic offshoots of the class
that was being created e.g. Babeuf in France, Levellers in England
○ The theoretical manifestations of this class were ascetic - they preached
the abolition of privilege through the prohibition of all pleasures
● Then came the three utopian socialists - Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen
○ They did not represent the interests of the proletariat - they were
interested in universal emancipation, and thus remained in the French enlightenment
paradigm
○ When they wrote capitalist production was at an immature stage, and
thus their theories were immature critiques - ‘the solution of the social problems which as
yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic relations was to spring from the human brain’
(idealism?)
● Saint Simon saw the French Revolution as an antagonism between workers, who
included proles, merchants and bankers, and idlers, who included all those who lived on incomes
earned without any part played in production
○ He also saw it as a battle between nobility, bourgeoisie and the
propertyless class
○ The propertyless class had proved themselves unable to rule in the Reign
of Terror, so science and industry were to rule - bourgeois?
● Fourier demonstrated the ‘moral misery of the bourgeois world’ and showed how under
bourgeois rule ‘the most pitiful reality corresponds with the most high sounding truth’
○ He claimed that in any society the degree of women’s emancipation is
the measure of the general emancipation
● Fourier also drew up a history of the development of society, from savagery, to the
patriarchy, to barbarism and finally civilization - bourgeois rule
○ He had a dialectical understanding - bourgeois society constantly attains
the opposite of what it wants to achieve, or pretends to want to achieve, so that ‘under
civilization poverty is born of abundance itself’
● Owen tried to remodel capitalism so that it was non-exploitative
○ he ran a factory in New Lanark with generous working hours, freedom of
action, schooling, unemployment pay. This colony became a model, and showed that
profit did not necessitate brazen exploitation
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