od tools, for example, is too obvious for comment. The Marx assailed
by Mr. Mallock, and numerous critics like him, is a myth. The real Marx
they do not touch--hence the futility of their work. The Marx they
attack is a man of straw, not the immortal thinker. Endowed

"With just enough of learning to misquote,"

their assaults are vain.

VI

Having thus disposed of some of the more prevalent criticisms of Marx as
an economist, we are ready for a definite, consecutive statement of the
economic theory of modern Socialism. First, however, a word as to the
term "scientific" as commonly applied to Marxian Socialism. Even some of
the friendliest of Socialist critics have contended that the use of the
term is pretentious, bombastic, and altogether unjustified. From a
certain narrow point of view, this appears to be an unimportant matter,
and the vigor with which Socialists defend their use of the term seems
exceedingly foolish, and accountable for only as a result of
enthusiastic fetish worship--the fetish, of course, being Marx.

Such a view is very crude and superficial. It cannot be doubted that the
Socialism represented by Marx and the modern political Socialist
movement is radically different from the earlier Socialism with which
the names of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Owen, and a host of other
builders of "cloud palaces for an ideal humanity," are associated. The
need of some word to distinguish between the two is obvious, and the
only question remaining is whether or not the word "scientific" is the
most suitable and accurate one to make that distinction clear; whether
the words "scientific" and "utopian" express with reasonable accuracy
the nature of the difference. Here the followers of Marx feel that they
have an impregnable position. The method of Marx is scientific. From the
first sentence of his great work to the last, the method pursued is that
of a painstaking scientist. It would be just as reasonable to complain
of the use of the word "scientific" in connection with the work of
Darwin and his followers, to distinguish it from the guesswork of
Anaximander, as to cavil at the distinction made between the Socialism
of Marx and Engels and their followers, and that of visionaries like
Owen and Saint-Simon.

Doubtless both Marx and Engels lapsed occasionally into Utopianism. We
see instances of this in the illusions Marx entertained regarding the
Crimean War bringing about the European Social Revol