facture; patriarchal
relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all
intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in
a miserable fit of the blues.

(_c_) _German or "True" Socialism_.

The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that
originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was
the expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced into
Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie in that country had just begun
its contest with feudal absolutism.

German philosophers,--would-be philosophers and _beaux
esprits_,--eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting that when
these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social
conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German
social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate
practical significance, and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to
the German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the
first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of
"Practical Reason" in general, and the utterances of the will of the
revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the laws of
pure will, of will as it was bound to be, of true human will generally.

The work of the German _literati_ consisted solely in bringing the new
French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience,
or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own
philosophic point of view.

This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language
is appropriated, namely, by translation.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints
over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom
had been written. The German _literati_ reversed this process with the
profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense
beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French
criticism of the economic functions of money they wrote "Alienation of
Humanity," and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois State they
wrote "Dethronement of the Category of the General," and so forth.

The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the
French historical criticisms they dubbed "Philosophy of Action," "True
Socialism," "German Science of Socialism," "Philosophical Foundation of
Socialism," and so on.

T