unism from Phales of Chalcedon down to Cabet.[20] More
than this, it is by the study and the knowledge of these forms that the
consciousness of the separateness of scientific socialism from all the
rest becomes developed and fixed. And in making this study who is there
who will refuse to recognize that Thomas More was a heroic soul and a
great writer on socialism? Who will not find in his heart a large
tribute of admiration for Robert Owen who first gave to the ethics of
communism this indisputable principle, that the character and the morals
of men are the necessary result of the conditions in which they live and
of the circumstances which surround them? And the partisans of critical
communism believe it is their duty, traversing history in thought, to
claim fellowship with all the oppressed, whatever may have been their
destiny, which was that of remaining oppressed and of opening the way
after an ephemeral success for the rule of new oppressors.

But the partisans of critical communism differentiate themselves clearly
on one point from all other forms or manners of communism, or of
socialism, ancient, modern or contemporaneous, and this point is of
capital importance.

They cannot admit that the ideologies of the past have remained without
effect and that the past attempts of the proletariat have been always
overcome by pure chance, by pure accident, by the effect of a caprice
of circumstances. All these ideologies although they reflected in fact
the sentiment directly due to social antitheses, that is to say, the
real class struggles, with a lofty sense of justice and a profound
devotion to an ideal, nevertheless all reveal ignorance of the true
causes and of the effective nature of the antitheses against which they
hurled themselves by an act of revolt spontaneous and often heroic.
Thence their utopian character. We can moreover explain why the
oppressive conditions of other epochs although they were more barbarous
and cruel did not bring that accumulation of energy, that concentration
of force, or that continuity of resistance which is seen to be realizing
itself and developing in the proletariat of our time. It is the change
of society in its economic structure; it is the formation of the
proletariat in the bosom of the great industry and of the modern state.
It is the appearance of the proletariat upon the political scene,--it is
the new things, in fine, which have engendered the need of new ideas.
Thus critica