t by any abstract consideration.

It is a remarkable fact that it is only since Karl Marx that Socialism
has taken its stand upon the class war. The Utopian Socialists had no
notion--even an inexact one--of it. And in this they lagged behind their
contemporary theorists of the bourgeoisie, who understood very well the
historical significance at any rate of the struggle of the third estate
against the nobles.

If every "new conception" of human nature seemed to supply very
definite indications as to the organisation of "the society of the
future," Scientific Socialism is very chary of such speculations. The
structure of society depends upon the conditions of its productive
forces. What these conditions will be when the proletariat is in power
we do not know. We now know but one thing--that the productive forces
already at the disposal of civilised humanity imperatively demand the
socialisation and systematised organisation of the means of production.
This is enough to prevent our being led astray in our struggle against
"the reactionary mass." "The Communists, therefore, are practically the
most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every
country ... theoretically they have over the great mass of the
proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march,
the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian
movement."[5] These words, written in 1848, are to-day incorrect only in
one sense: they speak of "working class parties" independent of the
Communist party; there is to-day no working class party which does not
more or less closely follow the flag of Scientific Socialism, or, as it
was called in the Manifesto, "Communism."

Once again, then, the point of view of the Utopian Socialists, as indeed
of all social science of their time, was human nature, or some abstract
principle deriving from this idea. The point of view of the social
science, of the Socialism of our time is that of economic reality, and
of the immanent laws of its evolution.

It is easy, therefore, to form an idea of the impression made upon
modern Socialists by the arguments of the bourgeois theorists who sing
ceaselessly the same old song of the incompatibility of human nature and
communism. It is as though one would wage war upon the Darwinians with
arms drawn from the scientific arsenal of Cuvier's time. And a most
noteworthy fact is that the "evolutionists" like Herbert Spencer,
themselves a