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p Utopian socialism underwent a considerable evolution under the impact of historical development, the aggravation of the antagonisms in exploiting society, and the class struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors. The works of the Utopians mirrored not only actual social development but also trends that, as Lenin wrote, forestalled this development.

p Let us briefly analyse what the Utopian Socialists gave to human development and the place occupied in history by Utopian socialism.

p First, the leading Utopian Socialists searchingly criticised the capitalist system, revealed its vices and lack of vitality and sought to prove that the downfall of capitalism and its replacement by a new, communist society were inevitable. Most of them linked the establishment of this new society up with the abolition of private ownership, which they regarded as the major cause of exploitation and other evils besetting the working man, and with the institution of collective, public ownership, which alone could serve as the foundation for genuine freedom, equality and fraternity. They raised the question of the ways and means of demolishing exploiting society. Leading exponents of Utopian socialism like Meslier, Babeuf and the Russian revolutionary democrats saw that socialism would triumph as a result of a political struggle, of a people’s revolution.

p Secondly, with the insight of genius, the Utopian Socialists anticipated some of the features of the society of the 26 future. Their plans for an ideal society sprang from profound humanist motives, and their main concern was to give the people of the new society the conditions for a real human existence, for developing and improving their abilities and talents. In the works of some of them we find profound ideas about man, about his abilities and the ways of improving these abilities, about labour as the principal benefit, right and duty of each person, about work according to ability, about turning work into a vital necessity and a pleasure, about abolishing the ugly distinction between mental and physical work and between town and country, and about a just distribution according to work and needs.

p Thirdly, the Utopian Socialists were the first to raise the question of guiding social processes consciously and purposefully, linking up the possibility of providing this guidance with the establishment of public ownership, with the creation of a single, centralised planned economy ( Babouvists, Saint-Simon and his followers, Chernyshevsky).

p They thus raised many basic problems that were later scientifically resolved by Marx, Engels and Lenin. The formulation of key problems of scientific development and the attempts of the Utopian Socialists to find an answer to them were highly appraised by the classics of scientific communism. The great Utopians brilliantly “ anticipated innumerable things, the correctness of which is now being scientifically proved by us”.  [26•*  It was, therefore, no accident that Utopian socialism, particularly the utopism of the 19th century, was one of the ideological sources of Marxism, a direct predecessor of scientific communism.

p While giving a high evaluation of the works of the Utopian Socialists, the classics of scientific communism showed their historical narrowness and criticised the idealistic principles underlying their theories. They pointed to the crude equalitarianism and the universal asceticism preached by the great Utopian Socialists of the West, and to the Utopian, unrealisable nature of the ways and means suggested by them for achieving socialism. The Utopian Socialists saw the antithesis between the class interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but they rejected the 27 idea that the proletariat could be a decisive force in history, failing to realise that this was the very force that could attain the lofty communist ideals. Many Utopian Socialists were opposed to the class struggle and the revolution, coming out against not only revolutionary but all political action.

p Many of them felt that society could be remade by reforms, by the preaching of abstract plans for reorganising society, by the establishment of impracticable “ communist" communes. They sought not material foundations for the emancipation of the proletariat but the creation of a social science, which, when it was assimilated by the people, would of itself bring mankind to the cherished goal. Failing to appreciate the social role of the proletariat, they appealed to the conscience of all classes, primarily of the ruling classes, and urged the achievement of a harmony of class interests.

p Nothing came of their efforts because they isolated themselves from the people, from the working class, ignored the material conditions of social life, knew nothing of the laws of social development and relied solely on ideas, on enlightenment and education. The abortiveness of their ideas was due to the social and historical conditions of their day—the immaturity of social relations and the embryonic nature of the proletariat, which had not yet taken shape as a class and, therefore, could not perceive its own position and the great mission that had been charted for it by history. Engels wrote: “To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions corresponded crude theories.”

Yet time marched on. Social relations grew ever more mature, the antagonisms of capitalism became ever more obvious, and the proletariat increased numerically and became steeled in revolutionary struggle, gradually developing into the decisive force behind social progress. History set social science the tremendously important task of evolving a theory that could serve the revolutionary classes as a guide to action. This theory, the theory of scientific communism, was created by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.