THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM: II
On Attitudes and Ideas
GRANVILLE HICKS
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RE-MARXIAN SOCIALISM issued from· the marriage of humani–
tarianism and rationalism. The utopian socialists thought of a contin–
uous revolution: the ideals of liberty and equality to which the
bourgeoisie had appealed in its fight against feudal privilege were
to be realized in a socialist commonwealth. Increased confidence in
the human reason, also a part of the bourgeois revolution, encouraged
them to elaborate plans for the perfect state. To convert the people,
only practical demonstration was necessary: hence New Lanark and
New Harmony, Brook Farm, Oneida, and the North American
Phalanx.
"Reason," wrote Engels, "became the sole measure of every–
thing.... Every form of society and government then existing, every
old traditional notion was flung into the lumber room as irrational;
the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices;
everything in the past deserved only pity and contempt. Now, for
the first time, appeared the light of day, the kingdom of reason; hence–
forth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppression, were to be super–
seded by eternal truth, eternal right, equality based on nature and
the inalienable rights of man."
The ideas of the utopian socialists were put into circulation at
the very beginning of the nineteenth century. In spite of these ideas,
the first four decades of the century were filled with war, poverty, and
oppression. Something had gone wrong, and Marx and Engels, com–
ing to maturity in the forties, were prepared to say what it was. In
the first place, they argued, the development of society was not de–
termined by rational theories but by the operation of laws analogous
to the laws of physics and chemistry. In the second place, theories
were themselves the product of a particular social situation, not the
absolute achievement of an unfettered intellect. "The historical situa–
tion," Engels stated, "also dominated the founders of socialism....
The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in un-
