ical supremacy has effected, but they do not want to accept the necessary consequences of that development, a suffering and revolutionary proletariat. They beg for social harmonies yet refuse to realize that the exploitation of the masses will not end until their form of society has been vanquished. To this end, they simply prolong the misery of the proletariat and stand in the way of historical progress. III. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism The first great expositors of Socialism and Communism (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, etc.) appeared very early in the bourgeois epoch. Accordingly, they did not fully appreciate the character of the proletariat as the revolutionary class, the vehicle of historical action. For them the proletariat was merely the locus of social misery, the class most in need of assistance. Their primary concern was with the well being of society as a whole and they directed their entreaties to those who they thought could effect change, those already in power. Change was to occur peacefully from above rather than violently from below. Their critical faculties, though, extended to all portions of society and have helped the working classes focus their own struggle. The visions of society that they propose, though, are Utopian to the point of being fantastical. Notably, as class antagonism develops, their suggestions become more far-fetched and less inspiring. They want to abolish class conflict without abolishing the conditions for the existence of classes. At the moment of revolution, then, they become reactionary, resisting the inevitable emancipation of the exploited masses for which they originally toiled. Chapter 3 Analysis: Socialist and Communist LiteratureThere are three major criticisms that Marx offers against rival brands of socialism. First, they use the present misery of the working class as a reason to restore older methods of social organization; that is, it is backward looking rather than forwar...
