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VII. MARLO AND CO-OPERATIVE SOCIALISM IN GERMANY IIO

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XII. LASSALLE AND THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 197

XIII. KARL MARX AND THE LATEST SOCIALISTIC THEORY 224

XIV. KARL MARX AND THE INTERNATIONAL

242

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

UTOPIAS;

OR,

SCHEMES OF SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.

CHAPTER I.

MORE'S "UTOPIA." L

WHAT is a Utopia? Strictly speaking, it means a "nowhere land," some happy island far away, where perfect social relations prevail, and human beings, living under an immaculate constitution and a faultless government, enjoy a simple and happy existence, free from the turmoil, the harassing cares, and endless worries of actual life. The world has scarcely ever been without its Utopias; there have always been the poetical thinkers and philosophical dreamers, who, when troubled by the social evils around them, or roused to indignation and pity by the crying injustice of the ruling classes, and the hopeless condition of the poor, respectively, have given vent to their feelings in those poetical fictions which, since the

B

appearance of More's "Utopia," have been called "Utopian.">

These ideal creations, "fancy-woven," it is true, are often more beautiful than practical. Still, it must be remembered that their object was more frequently to satirise existing social inconsistencies than to recommend the literal application of the social schemes which they contained. They aimed at social improvements and reforms by describing fictitious states of society, where the wide gulf which separates rich and poor is bridged over by means of equitable and equalising institutions, and where the unhappy consequences of egotism or private interest are prevented by legal enactments. What they all aim at is this to provide a competency of means for the enjoyment of all, and to exact at the same time a corresponding exertion from all members of society, so as to eliminate the superfluous luxuries of rich idlers as well as the needy indigence of the respectable poor-to remove, in short, the extremes of wealth and poverty Our labouring population are dissatisfied with their own share in the wealth of nations, and most of us at present complain of “life at high pressure," burdened as we are with the cares and anxieties attending a severe struggle for existence in this iron age of competition. Just as we chafe under this constant strain of brain and nerve, to the

great detriment of health, comfort, and restfulness, so at all ages of the world, and in every civilised community, men, often placed under less favourable circumstances than ourselves, have given vent to their dissatisfaction with existing social arrangements. Thus the leaders of thought, the poets and philosophers of the day, gave expression to this popular discontent, and mostly in the forms of Utopias, which have appeared, therefore, under varying names at given intervals, from the remotest antiquity up to

the present day. (Sometimes they look backward to

the past, a golden age, for social ideals; at other times (since the spread of Christianity) they look forward to a brighter coming era for the realisation of their hopes of social perfectibility, but at all times they agree in being dissatisfied with things as they

are.

Great social commotions are produced by political or religious movements, and social commotions in their turn produce social theories and visions of model societies, as conceived in the brains of speculative philosophers, who, by a subtile intuition, divine what goes on in the minds of the people, and give expression to popular ideals by defining more clearly the vague socialistic tendencies of the times. such times, when the minds of men are in their deepest depths by some strong

For it is at

stirred up current of

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