udest form.

The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of St.
Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the early
undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between
proletariat and bourgeoisie (see: Section I., Bourgeoisie and
Proletariat.)

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms as
well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form
of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them
the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any
independent political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the
development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does
not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation
of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science,
after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action,
historically created conditions of emancipation to phantastic ones, and
the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an
organization of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future
history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the
practical carrying out of their social plans.

In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly
for the interest of the working class, as being the most suffering
class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class
does the proletariat exist for them.

The undeveloped state of the class struggle as well as their own
surroundings cause Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far
superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition
of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence they
habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class;
nay, by preference to the ruling class. For how can people, when once
they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan
of the best possible state of society?

Hence they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary
action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor,
by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force
of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.

Such phantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the
proletariat is