[STUDY GROUP] Socialism:Utopian and Scientific - Thread 3

[Severian]

Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific Chapter 1 - The Development of Utopian Socialism

Text of this chapter can be found here.

Summary/discussion starter:

Even though modern socialism comes from the class conflicts of present-day society, its ideas have had to evolve from the ideas inherited from the past. Starting with the ideas of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions like the Great French Revolution. These bourgeois-democratic ideas claimed to represent pure reason, to design a society based on pure reason, even though they really represented only the interests of the rising capitalist class.

The ideas of the first great utopian socialists, starting from this foundation, likewise claimed to represent pure reason and the freedom of humanity in general, not a particular class. They set out to design a truly free and reasonable society. They thought, that for such a society to happen, all that was required was for someone to come up with a good idea, and to publicize it, and perhaps to set up "communist colonies" - we'd say communes nowadays - to show by example the benefits of the new idea.

Of course their ideas for a future society had all kinds of flaws and were unrealistic in many details. This undeveloped concept of socialism was a product of the undeveloped state of capitalism and the working class. It shouldn't stop us from appreciating what was bold and insightful about these utopians' ideas.

First was Saint-Simon, who lived during the French Revolution. He recognized the revolution was a class war, not only between the nobles and the bourgeoisie, but also involving the propertyless laborers. Saint-Simon proposed that scholars, merchants, manufacturers, and above all bankers would collectively regulate a social economy. He hinted at the idea that political institutions flow from economic conditions, and predicted the replacement of government over by people by merely the administration of things.

Fourier gave a brilliant, witty, criticism of the existing order and its hypocrisy. He was especially strong in criticizing the oppression of women. Fourier described history in terms of stages of social evolution, pointed out the paradox of poverty from overproduction/ surplus, and used a dialectical method of reasoning.

Robert Owen, the third great utopian, began as a factory manager during the Industrial Revolution, who sought to treat his employees and their children with a certain amount of decency, and managed to make a profit while doing so. Owen pointed out how much wealth was produced by workers using the new industrial machinery and processes...and yet, they did not benefit from it. He came out for communism, and against the obstacles to achieving it: private property, religion, and "the present form of marriage." He lost his money and his respectability, but continued working along these lines. Owen fought for labor laws, was active in trade unionism, founded co-ops and "labor bazaars".

The utopians, for all their merits, saw socialism as an expression of abstract ideal of truth, justice, etc. Eternal and absolute. Each utopian thinker came up with a unique, subjective, version of these "eternal truths", and the versions clashed with each other, and could only be combined by removing the distinctive features and making a "mish-mash".

"To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis." But that's the subject of the next section.

[xnj]

Originally posted by Severian@Jun 17 2005, 11:37 AM
Fourier gave a brilliant, witty, criticism of the existing order and its hypocrisy. He was especially strong in criticizing the oppression of women. Fourier described history in terms of stages of social evolution, pointed out the paradox of poverty from overproduction/ surplus, and used a dialectical method of reasoning.

I think Fourier's method is a good way of exposing capitalist society, even today: "He points out how everywhere the most pitiful reality corresponds with the most high-sounding phrases, and he overwhelms this hopeless fiasco of phrases with his mordant sarcasm." It really just amounts to calling out the bourgeoisie on their hypocrisy and exposing the contradictions between their words and the facts.

One example I can think of is that Bush frequently calls the US an "ownership society," when in reality working people are more in debt than ever. Can anyone think of other examples?

Engels writes that Owen's "labor bazaars" were "necessarily doomed to failure," but he doesn't explain why. Any ideas on what his reasoning might be?

[Severian]

Originally posted by xnj@Jun 20 2005, 09:05 AM
Engels writes that Owen's "labor bazaars" were "necessarily doomed to failure," but he doesn't explain why. Any ideas on what his reasoning might be?

While they enabled workers to exchange the products of their labor, they didn't address the problem of who owned the means of production?

***
I think the utopian approach is very common today, when it lacks the degree of justification it once possessed.

Engels writes:
If pure reason and justice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been the case only because men have not rightly understood them. What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chains of historical development, but a mere happy accident. He might just as well have been born 500 years earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years of error, strife, and suffering.
and
It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. 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.

Sounds exactly like what one often encounters today: the ultimate goal is described, in more or less detail, it is propagandized for, to a more or less narrow audience; a connection to the living class struggle is lacking. The line of march of the working class is certainly not seen as the guide to communist political action.

[kurt]

To me, this chapter seems to basicly be explaining the reasons that utopian socialism developed. I think Engels is pointing out that the utopian thinkers were thinking too abstractly, and they had no actual concrete analysis, and allowed their subjective thoughts to get in the way.

"The great thinkers of the 18th century could, no more than their predecessors, go beyond the limits imposed upon them by their epoch."

I think that quote sums up the chapter fairly nicely.