ution; in the theory
of the increasing misery of the proletariat; in Engels' confident
prediction, in 1845, that a Socialist revolution was imminent and
inevitable; and in the prediction of both that an economic cataclysm
must create the conditions for a sudden and complete revolution in
society. These, I say, are Utopian ideas, evidences that the founders of
scientific Socialism were tinctured with the older ideas of the
Utopists, and even more with their spirit. But when we speak of
"Marxism," what mental picture does the word suggest, what intellectual
concept is the word a name for? Is it these forecasts and guesses, and
the exact mode of realizing the Socialist ideal which Marx laid down, or
is it the great principle of social evolution determined by economic
development? Is it his naive and simple description of the process of
capitalist concentration, in which no hint appears of the circuitous
windings that carried the actual process into unforeseen channels, or
the broad fact that the concentration has taken place and that monopoly
has come out of competition? Is it his statement of the extent to which
labor is exploited, or the _fact_ of the exploitation? If we are to
judge Marx by the essential things, rather than by the incidental and
non-essential things, then we must admit his claim to be reckoned with
the great scientific sociologists and economists.

After all, what constitutes scientific method? Is it not the recognition
of the law of causation, putting exact knowledge of facts above
tradition or sentiment; accumulating facts patiently until sufficient
have been gathered to make possible the formulation of generalizations
and laws enabling us to connect the present with the past, and in some
measure to foretell the outcome of the present, as Marx foretold the
culmination of competition in monopoly? Is it not to see past, present,
and future as one whole, a growth, a constant process, so that instead
of vainly fashioning plans for millennial Utopias, we seek in the facts
of to-day the stream of tendencies, and so learn the direction of the
immediate flow of progress? If this is a true concept of scientific
method, and the scientific spirit, then Karl Marx was a scientist, and
modern Socialism is aptly named Scientific Socialism.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] An English edition of this work, translated by H. Quelch, was
published in 1900 under the title _The Poverty of Philosophy_.

[138] Cf. F. Engels, Preface t