<strong>Socialism</strong>: <strong>Utopian</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Scientific</strong> (Chpt. 1)To make a science of <strong>Socialism</strong>, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.Next: The Science of DialecticsNotes[1] This is the passage of the French Revolution:"Thought, the concept of law, all at once made itself felt, <strong>and</strong> against this the old scaffolding of wrongcould make no st<strong>and</strong>. In this conception of law, therefore, a constitution has now been established, <strong>and</strong>henceforth everything must be cased upon this. Since the Sun had been in the firmament, <strong>and</strong> the planetscircled around him, the sight had never been seen of man st<strong>and</strong>ing upon his head — i.e., on the Idea —<strong>and</strong> building reality after this image. Anaxagoras first said that the Nous, reason, rules the world; butnow, for the first time, had men come to recognize that the Idea must rule the mental reality. And thiswas a magnificent sunrise. All thinking Beings have participated in celebrating this holy day. A sublimeemotion swayed men at that time, an enthusiasm of reason pervaded the world, as if now had come thereconciliation of the Divine Principle with the world."[Hegel: "The Philosophy of history", 1840, p.535]Is it not high time to set the anti-Socialist law in action against such teachings, subversive <strong>and</strong> to thecommon danger, by the late Professor Hegel?(2 Engels refers here to the works of the utopian Socialists Thomas More (16th century) <strong>and</strong> TommasoCampanella (17th century).[3] From The Revolution in Mind <strong>and</strong> Practice, p.21, a memorial addressed to all the "red Republicans,Communists <strong>and</strong> Socialists of Europe", <strong>and</strong> sent to the provisional government of France, 1848, <strong>and</strong> also"to Queen Victoria <strong>and</strong> her responsible advisers."<strong>Socialism</strong>: <strong>Utopian</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Scientific</strong>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htm (10 of 10) [23/08/2000 17:41:05]
<strong>Socialism</strong>: <strong>Utopian</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Scientific</strong> (Chpt. 2)Fredrick Engels<strong>Socialism</strong>: <strong>Utopian</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Scientific</strong>II[The Science of Dialectics]In the meantime, along with <strong>and</strong> after the French philosophy of the 18th century, had arisen the newGerman philosophy, culminating in Hegel.Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greekphilosophers were all born natural dialecticians, <strong>and</strong> Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, hadalready analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought. The newer philosophy, on the other h<strong>and</strong>,although in it also dialectics had brilliant exponents (e.g. Descartes <strong>and</strong> Spinoza), had, especially throughEnglish influence, become more <strong>and</strong> more rigidly fixed in the so-called metaphysical mode of reasoning,by which also the French of the 18th century were almost wholly dominated, at all events in their specialphilosophical work. Outside philosophy in the restricted sense, the French nevertheless producedmasterpieces of dialectic. We need only call to mind Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau, <strong>and</strong> Rousseau'sDiscours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inegalite parmi less hommes. We give here, in brief, theessential character of these two modes of thought.When we consider <strong>and</strong> reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectualactivity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations <strong>and</strong> reactions, permutations<strong>and</strong> combinations, in which nothing remains what, where <strong>and</strong> as it was, but everything moves, changes,comes into being <strong>and</strong> passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individualparts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections,rather than the things that move, combine, <strong>and</strong> are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsicallycorrect conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, <strong>and</strong> was first clearly formulated byHeraclitus: everything is <strong>and</strong> is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly cominginto being <strong>and</strong> passing away. [A]But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as awhole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, <strong>and</strong> so long as we do notunderst<strong>and</strong> these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In order to underst<strong>and</strong> these details, wemust detach them from their natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task of naturalscience <strong>and</strong> historical research: branches of science which the Greek of classical times, on very goodgrounds, relegated to a subordinate position, because they had first of all to collect materials for thesesciences to work upon. A certain amount of natural <strong>and</strong> historical material must be collected before therecan be any critical analysis, comparison, <strong>and</strong> arrangement in classes, orders, <strong>and</strong> species. Thefoundations of the exact natural sciences were, therefore, first worked out by the Greeks of theAlex<strong>and</strong>rian period [B] , <strong>and</strong> later on, in the Middle Ages, by the Arabs. Real natural science dates fromthe second half of the 15th century, <strong>and</strong> thence onward it had advanced with constantly increasingrapidity. The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processeshttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm (1 of 6) [23/08/2000 17:41:11]