One thing more. I will call it "revolutionism," and I mean by that term the fact that never has there been another time, like ours, of such entire change in all the conditions of life. All is in flux—economics, science, art, morals, religion. All ideas on these matters are in such a process of change that we are impelled to the delusion that there is nothing now certain. And this is perhaps one of the most important considerations for the explanation of the real meaning of modern social agitation. It explains in two ways. In it we see the reason for that destructive criticism of all that exists, which allows nothing as good, which throws away all earlier faith as old iron in order to enter with new material upon the market. Also, it explains the fanatical belief in the feasibility of the desired future state. Since so much has already changed, since such wonders, for which no one has dared to hope, have been realised before our very eyes, why not more? Why not all that man wishes? Thus the revolutionism of the present becomes fertile soil for the Utopia of the future. Edison and Siemens are the spiritual fathers of Bellamy and Bebel.
These seem to me the essential conditions under which a social movement has developed itself in this later time: the peculiar existence of the proletariat; the specific misery, contrast, uncertainty, springing from the modern economic system; a reorganisation of all forms of life, through the tearing apart of earlier relations and the upbuilding of entirely new social forms upon a communistic basis, and of new consolidations in the great cities and operations; finally, the peculiar spirit of the time in which the social movement exhibits itself, intensity of life, nervosity, revolutionism.
Now let us consider this social movement itself, in theory and practice.
CHAPTER II[ToC]
CONCERNING UTOPIAN SOCIALISM
"Rarely do we reach truth except through extremes—we must have foolishness ... even to exhaustion, before we arrive at the beautiful goal of calm wisdom."
Schiller, Philosophical Letters, Preamble.