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Socialism, Utopian and Scientific SOCIALISM UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC BY FREDERICK ENGELS TRANSLATED BY EDWARD AVELING D.Sc., Fellow of University College, London WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR NEW YORK NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY 1901 THE first complete American edition of the authorized translation of Frederick Engels’ Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, was edited by Lucien Sanial and published by the New York Labor News Company, publishing arm of the Socialist Labor Party of America, in January 1901. This online version of that edition was prepared for the official website of the SLP and uploaded in December 2005. PUBLISHER’S NOTE. This is the first complete American edition of Freder- ick Engels’ popular essay on Socialism, Utopian and Sci- entific.1 Besides the actual essay in three chapters, it contains an Introduction and an Appendix from the same pen, which are in themselves important contribu- tions to the science of history as finally constituted by the materialist conception of social development. When the colonization of America began, private property in land, though as yet in the feudal stage, was firmly rooted in Europe and was consequently trans- planted to this continent. Here it evolved into its present American form, which is, by the way, substantially the same as in France, but differs in notable particulars from both the English and the German forms. In order to obtain that fundamental knowledge of the facts relative to the origin of private property in land which is re- quired for the understanding of its evolution here as well as in other countries, the American student must there- fore go back to the primitive forms of it in the Old World, and in this line of inquiry he will find the Appendix es- pecially valuable. Originally written in German, this work was trans- 1 [The Charles H. Kerr Company of Chicago published “an exact re- production of the standard English translation” in 1900, but without the Appendix. In a note to that edition, Mr. Kerr explained the omis- sion, as follows: “The appendix on the origin of the German Mark has been omitted from the present edition for the reason that the development of agri- culture in this country has been so different from that in Europe that this appendix would be more confusing than helpful to the average American reader.”—R.B.] Socialist Labor Party 3 www.slp.org PUBLI SHER ’S NOTE. lated into English by Edward Aveling, D.Sc., under the direct supervision of the author, who had as good a command of our language as of his own. It is therefore given to the American public in the exact words of the authorized English translation. The only additions made to it in this edition are the, chapter headings, the table of contents, and the footnote (by Lucien Sanial, page 17) concerning the origin and meaning of the terms “bour- geoisie and “proletariat.” It may be stated here that the essay itself, without the Introduction or the Appendix, was translated some years ago by Daniel De Leon for The People, which is the offi- cial organ of the Socialist Labor Party. Later it was printed in pamphlet form with the title, The Develo p - ment of Socialism from Utopia to Science . 2 At the pre- sent time over two thousand copies of this popular trans- lation are being sold annually to workingmen, a fact that speaks volumes for the future of the working-class movement in America. NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY 2 [The reader will notice that Engels does not list De Leon’s 1891 translation among the others he mentions in his introduction to the 1892 Swan Sonnenschein edition. (See page 6) The reason is that he did not approve of that effort or the decision to print it in The People without his consent. Although Engels expressed his disapproval in private letters to Frederick Sorge (Sept. 30 and Oct. 24, 1891), no evi- dence has surfaced to suggest that he shared those concerns with the SLP. Had he done so, it is almost certain that the SLP would not have published De Leon’s translation as a pamphlet, which it did several months ahead of the Swan Sonnenschein edition.—R.B.] Socialist Labor Party 4 www.slp.org INTRODUCTION. THE present little book is, originally, a part of a larger whole. About 1875, Dr. E. Dühring, privat-docent at Ber- lin University, suddenly and rather clamorously an- nounced his conversion to Socialism, and presented the German public not only with an elaborate Socialist the- ory, but also with a complete practical plan for the reor- ganization of society. As a matter of course, he fell foul of his predecessors; above all, he honored Marx by pouring out upon him the full vials of his wrath. This took place about the time when the two sections of the Socialist party in Germany—Eisenachers and Lassalleans—had just effected their fusion, and thus obtained not only an immense increase of strength, but, what was more, the faculty of employing the whole of this strength against the common enemy. The Socialist party in Germany was fast becoming a power. But to make it a power, the first condition was that the newly- conquered unity should not be imperilled. And Dr. Dühring openly proceeded to form around himself a sect, the nucleus of a future separate party. It thus became necessary to take up the gauntlet thrown down to us, and to fight out the struggle whether we liked it or not. This, however, though it might not be an over diffi- cult, was evidently a long-winded business. As is well known, we Germans are of a terribly ponderous Gründlichkeit, radical profundity or profound radicality, whatever you may like to call it. Whenever anyone of us expounds what he considers a new doctrine, he has first to elaborate it into an all-comprising system. He has to prove that both the first principles of logic and the fun- Socialist Labor Party 5 www.slp.org I NTR ODUCTI ON. damental laws of the universe had existed from all eter- nity for no other purpose than to ultimately lead to this newly-discovered, crowning theory. And Dr. Dühring, in this respect, was quite up to the national mark. Nothing less than a complete System of Philosophy, mental, moral, natural, and historical; a complete System of Po- litical Economy and Socialism; and, finally, a Critical History of Political Economy—three big volumes in oc- tavo, heavy extrinsically and intrinsically, three army corps of arguments mobilized against all previous phi- losophers and economists in general, and against Marx in particular—in fact, an attempt at a complete “revolu- tion in science”—these were what I should have to tackle. I had to treat of all and every possible subject, from the concepts of time and space to bimetallism; from the eternity of matter and motion to the perishable na- ture of moral ideas; from Darwin’s natural selection to the education of youth in a future society. Anyhow, the systematic comprehensiveness of my opponent gave me the opportunity of developing, in opposition to him, and in a more connected form than had previously been done, the views held by Marx and myself on this great variety of subjects. And that was the principal reason which made me undertake this otherwise ungrateful task. My reply was first published in a series of articles in the Leipzig Vorwärts, the chief organ of the Socialist party, and later on as a book: Herrn Eugen Dühring’s Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Mr. E. Dühring’s Revolu- tion in Science), a second edition of which appeared in Zürich, 1886. At the request of my friend, Paul Lafargue, now rep- resentative of Lille in the French Chamber of Deputies, I arranged three chapters of this book as a pamphlet, Socialist Labor Party 6 www.slp.org I NTR ODUCTI ON. which he translated and published in 1880, under the title: Socialisme utopique et Socialisme scientifique. From this French text a Polish and a Spanish edition were prepared. In 1883, our German friends brought out the pamphlet in the original language. Italian, Russian, Danish, Dutch, and Roumanian translations, based upon the German text, have since been published. Thus, with the present English edition, this little book circulates in ten languages.3 I am not aware that any other Socialist work, not even our Communist Manifesto of 1848 or Marx’s Capital, has been so often translated. In Ger- many it has had four editions of about 20,000 copies in all. The Appendix, “The Mark,” was written with the in- tention of spreading among the German Socialist party some elementary knowledge of the history and develop- ment of landed property in Germany. This seemed all the more necessary at a time when the assimilation by that party of the working people of the towns was in a fair way of completion, and when the agricultural labor- ers and peasants had to be taken in hand. This appendix has been included in the translation, as the original forms of tenure of land common to all Teutonic tribes, and the history of their decay, are even less known in England than in Germany. I have left the text as it stands in the original, without alluding to the hypothesis recently started by Maxim Kovalevsky, according to which the partition of the arable and meadow lands among the members of the Mark was preceded by their being cultivated for joint account by a large patriarchal family community embracing several generations, (as 3 [See footnote on page 3.—R.B.] Socialist Labor Party 7 www.slp.org I NTR ODUCTI ON.
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