On a term in "An Introduction to Class Struggles in France"

[Ol' Dirty]

On the third or fourth page, the 8th para. (I guess) what does Engels mean by "spontaneous worker-communism"?


Thus, here, for the first time, the proposition is formulated by which modern working class socialism is equally sharply differentiated both from all the idfferent chades of feudal, bourgeois, petity-bourgeois, etc. socialism and also from the confused community of goods of Utopian and spontaneous worker communism.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

It means we need political specialists to organize our activity for us, 'cos we're all to dumb to carry out immediate communization within our own lives.
It means that, given the opportunity to autonomously organize their lives, lots of folk wouldn't organize to live in a mass industrial society, and that's bad!
It means that Engels saw how great progress was and couldn't possibly imagine a form of life outside its logic.
It means, "MODERNITY FTW!"

:(

[ZeroNowhere]

It means we need political specialists to organize our activity for us, 'cos we're all to dumb to carry out immediate communization within our own lives.
It means that, given the opportunity to autonomously organize their lives, lots of folk wouldn't organize to live in a mass industrial society, and that's bad!
It means that Engels saw how great progress was and couldn't possibly imagine a form of life outside its logic.
It means, "MODERNITY FTW!"

:(You may not intend to do so, but I think that if you were allowed to hijack this thread you would run it into a tower not so much out of maliciousness as of negligence. Therefore, it should be safer if you ceased before anybody gets hurt, no matter how benign your intentions.

Anyhow, the translation on MIA only has 'spontaneous communism', and I guessed that this referred to either just the utopians, inasmuch as they were spontaneous in a sense (socialism which is utopian and spontaneous), or alternatively to what he had discussed in this early article (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/10/15.htm), in which he had actually used the term 'community of goods'.

[Dave B]

Whilst I accept the previous posters comment he was probably ‘equally’ referring to the Icarian movement that got a oblique reference in the communist manifesto itself as well as in the preface to the 1872 Eerman Edition.

They did persist as a movement in France

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm)

Engels also discussed them below;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/10/23.htm)


And they or Cabet undoubtedly had an early profound influence on their thinking.