W  H  0   r   U

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to
historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite
shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical
value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were,
in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary
sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive
historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to
deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental
realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home
Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”*
 – duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem – and to
realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the
bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists
depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and
superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action,
according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.

P I S S D R A W E R