They want to
improve the condition of every member of society, even that of
the most favoured. 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
endeavour,
by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the
force of
example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time
when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has
but a fantastic conception of its own position correspond with
the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general
reconstruction of society.
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a
critical element. They attack every principle of existing
society. Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for
the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures
proposed in them -- -such as the abolition of the distinction
between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of
industries for the account of private individuals, and of the
wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion
of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of
production, all these proposals, point solely to the
disappearance
of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping
up,
and which, in these publications, are recognised in their
earliest,
indistinct and undefined forms only.
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