s of a
corresponding nature. Thus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
utopian pictures of an ideal social condition, in the eighteenth
century, absolutely communistic theories (Morelly and Mably). The
demand for equality was confined no longer to political rights, it had
to be extended to the social condition of individuals; the demand was
made for the abolition not merely of class privileges but of class
distinctions also. An ascetic communism patterned on that of Sparta
was the first form which the new teachings assumed. Then came the
three great utopians--Saint Simon, in whose eyes bourgeois aims
possessed a certain merit as well as those of the proletariat: then
Fourier and Owen, who, in the land of the most highly developed
capitalistic production, and under the influence of the antagonisms
which arise therefrom, developed in direct relation to French
materialism their proposals which tended to the abolition of class
distinctions.

One common feature pertaining to all the three is the fact that they
did not appear as the representatives of the interests of the
proletariat which had been in the meantime developed through the
historical process. Like the philosophers, their ambition is not to
free a particular class but the whole world. Like them they wish to
introduce the government of reason and eternal justice. But there is a
world of difference between their government and that of the
philosophers. According to the philosophers, the bourgeois world as it
exists is unreasonable and unjust and is destined for the rubbish
heap, just as feudalism and all other earlier forms of society. The
reason that true justice and reason have not dominated the world is
because up to the present man has not properly comprehended them. That
a man of genius has appeared and that the truth concerning these
things should have now been made clear are not results arising from a
combination of historical progress and necessity, but a mere piece of
luck. He might just as well have been born five hundred years earlier
and saved mankind the mistakes, conflicts and sorrows of five hundred
years.

This is actually the idea of all English and French socialists and of
the earlier German socialists, Weitling included. According to this
view, socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason, and
justice, and only has to be perceived in order to vanquish the world
by reason of its truth. Hence, absolute truth, reason, and justice