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144 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
the socialist sects, but like
Darwin's theory of evolution
it was assailed from every angle by every school of economists.
The important practical question that arises out
of this scientific work, and which particularly concerns
us here, is that this theory of the class struggle forever
destroyed the old ideas of revolution, scrap-heaped conspiracies
and insurrections, and laid the theoretical
foundations for the modern working-class movement.
Actually, it was Utopian socialism that was destroyed
by this new theory. It expressed itself in at least three
diverse ways. There were groups of conspirators and
revolutionists who believed that the world was on the
eve of a great upheaval and that the people should prepare
for the moment when suddenly they could seize the
governments of Europe, destroy ancient institutions, and
establish a new social order. Another form of utopianism
was the effort to persuade the capitalists themselves
to abolish dividends, profits, rent, and interest, to turn
the factories over to the workers, to become themselves
toilers, and to share equally, one with another, the
products of their joint
labor. Still another form of
Utopian socialism was that of Owen, Fourier, and Cabet,
who contemplated the establishment of ideal communities
in which a new world should be built, where all
should be free and equal, and where fraternity would be
based upon a perfect economic communism. Some really
noble spirits in France, England, and America had devoted
time, love, energy, and wealth to this propaganda
and in actual attempts to establish these Utopias. But
after '48 the upper classes were despaired
of. Their
brutal reprisals, their suppression of every working-class
movement, their ferocious repression of the unions, of
the press, and of the right of assembly — all these materially
aided Marx's theory in disillusioning many of the