ge
reads: "The idea of God must be destroyed. It is the keystone of a
perverted civilization. The true root of liberty, of equality, of
culture, is Atheism. Nothing must restrain the spontaneity of the human
mind." Had the opponents of Socialism been familiar with the teachings
of Marx, they would have known that he could not have said anything like
this, that it is absolutely at variance with all his teaching. The man
who formulated the materialist conception of history could not by any
possibility utter such balderdash. The fact is, the quotation is not
from Karl Marx at all, but from a very different writer, an Anarchist,
Wilhelm Marr, who was _a most bitter opponent of Socialism_. As given,
the quotation is a free translation of a passage contained in Marr's
_Das junge Deutschland in der Schweiz_, pages 131-134. Marr's programme,
as given in the _Report of the Royal Commission on Labor_ (Vol. V,
Germany), was the abolition of Church, State, property, and marriage,
with the one positive tenet of "a bloody and fearful revenge upon the
rich and powerful."

[55] See F. Engels, _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, page 16 (London
edition, 1892).

[56] F. Engels, Introduction to the _Communist Manifesto_ (English
translation, 1888). The italics are mine. J. S.

[57] F. Engels, _The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844_.
See, for instance, pages 79, 80, 82, etc.

[58] Introduction to the _Communist Manifesto_ (English edition, 1888).

[59] From _Friederich Engels_, a poem by "J. L." (John Leslie), in
_Justice_ (London), August 17, 1895.

CHAPTER IV

THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

I

Socialism, then, in the modern, scientific sense, is a theory of social
evolution. Its hopes for the future rest, not upon the genius of some
Utopia-builder, but upon the inherent forces of historical development.
The Socialist state will never be realized except as the result of
economic necessity, the culmination of successive epochs of industrial
evolution. Thus the existing social system appears to the Socialist of
to-day, not as it appeared to the Utopians and as it still must appear
to mere ideologist reformers, as a triumph of ignorance or wickedness,
the reign of false _ideas_, but as the result of an age-long
evolutionary process, determined, not wholly indeed, but mainly, by
certain methods of producing the necessities of life in the first place,
and secondly, of effecting their exchange.