[7] As an instance of this I note the following example: "No severer critic of Socialists ever lived than Karl Marx. No one more bitterly attacked them and their policy toward the trade unions than he.... And yet Socialists regard him as their patron saint." Mr. Samuel Gompers, in The American Federationist, August, 1905.
[8] Preface to The Communist Manifesto, by F. Engels, Kerr edition, page 7.
[9] Quarterly Journal of Economics.
CHAPTER II
ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT
I
As a background to modern, or scientific, Socialism there is the Socialism of the Utopians, which the authors of the Manifesto so severely criticised. It is impossible to understand the modern Socialist movement, the Socialism which is rapidly becoming the dominant issue in the thought and politics of the world, without distinguishing sharply between it and the Utopian visions which preceded it. Failure to make this distinction is responsible for the complete misunderstanding of the Socialism of to-day by many earnest and intelligent persons.
It is not necessary that we study the Utopian movements which flourished and declined prior to the rise of scientific Socialism in detail. It will be sufficient if we consider the Utopian Socialism of Owen, which is Utopian Socialism at its best and nearest approach to the modern movement. Thus we shall get a clear view of the point of departure which marked the rise of the later scientific movement with its revolutionary political programmes. Incidentally, also, we shall get a view of the great and good Robert Owen, whom Liebknecht, greatest political leader of the movement, has called, "By far the most embracing, penetrating, and practical of all the harbingers of scientific Socialism."[10]