By Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member.
Frederick Engels, who with Karl Marx was the founder of what is called, scientific socialism, wrote a number of key books and pamphlets that all socialists should read.
One of his best know is his pamphlet, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which is in three parts. The first, called, The Development of Utopian Socialism, describes the emergence of ‘utopian’ socialism at the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
Its chief proponent in Britain was Robert Owen (pictured), the great social reformer. Engels described Owen as a man of almost sublime, child-like simplicity and at the same time, a born leader. Like many, Owen saw the development of large factories, drawing in large numbers of propertyless labourers, to work for long hours in unsafe conditions.
Undernourished and living in squalor
The factories included women and children who were often under-nourished and living in squalor. Owen sought to bring some order out of this chaos, and he co-directed a large cotton mill in New Lanark in Scotland. He introduced a ten-and-a-half-hour day and founded a school for infants. Engels makes the point that the children enjoyed the school so much, and it contrasted so much with their home conditions, that it was hard to get them to go home. Although Owen’s competitors made their labourers work between thirteen and fourteen hours a day, his company still proved to be profitable. He even paid his workers a full wage when there was no work for four months.
‘slaves at his mercy’
However, Owen was not content with this because the two and a half thousand workers at his mill were, in his words, “slaves at his mercy”. While he remained a philanthropist, the great and good feted him. When he turned towards Communism, however, he was shunned by the establishment. Engels noted that many of the social advances made by working people were linked to Owen. He championed a law that restricted the hours of work in factories for women and children. He was also President of the first Trade Union Congress.
Owen, in common with other Utopian socialists in Europe, believed that socialism was a good idea and as an idea it was independent of time and space and of the historical development of humankind. Engels could see that this, what he called ‘utopian’ socialism, dominated the minds of most French and English socialist workers during this period and the net result was a mish-mash of socialist ideas that depended on which ‘absolute truth’, ‘reason’ and ‘justice’ that you might be inclined to support. Engels drew the conclusion that to make a science of socialism, it had first to be placed upon a concrete basis.
Chapter Two…dialectics
Most people would deny that they have a philosophy, but in fact they do, even if they are not conscious of it. Like Marx, Engels was a product of the ideas of the German philosopher, Hegel, whose thinking was dialectical, in that it saw ideas in the process of change and development and not as static forms. As an example, Engels regards Charles Darwin’s work on evolution as a triumph of dialectics, as it struck a blow against a metaphysical approach to understanding organic beings like plants, animals and even humanity. Human’s evolved, as Darwin explained, through a process of change going back millions of years. However, like the utopian socialists, Hegel’s dialectic remained in the metaphysical realm of pure ‘ideas’, removed from and external to the material world.
Engels and Marx explained that, with the exception of humanity’s most primitive stages, it had a history of class struggle and that the warring classes were a product of the mode of production that existed at any one time. The replacement of the feudal order with capitalism ushered in new classes and new class struggles. From that historical point on, the idea of socialism was not just the product of an ingenious brain, but a necessary product of historical development. The socialists of earlier times may have been critical of capitalism, but they were unable to explain its inner laws and explain the historic role of capitalism and socialism as its necessary successor. According to Engels, it was Marx who uncovered the source of exploitation under capitalism, which is the appropriation of surplus value by the purchase of labour power from propertyless proletarians; in layman’s terms, private profit.
The final chapter: Historical Materialism
This chapter seeks to explain the differences between feudal societies and capitalism. The principle difference is competition between rival capitalists and commodities sold in markets worldwide. The capitalist must develop new machines and technics to undercut rivals. This in turn creates a reserve army of labour, which is a means of keeping wages low and is only used when production reaches its highest level. The main feature of capitalist production is the sale of commodities, in a market, where no one knows how much will be bought. Engels points out that at a certain stage, generalised overproduction takes place, which results in a crisis. On the one hand, machines lay idle, but on the other, workers suffer from poverty and want. This boom/slump cycle occurs around every ten years and remains a central feature of capitalism today.
Competition results in the emergence of monopolies, joint-enterprises, trusts and even state ownership. Engels argued that under capitalism, the state intervened only in order to preserve the system. However, he also pointed out that concealed within capitalism are the very elements that offer the possibility of change by the overthrow of capitalism. He argued that it is the historic mission of the working class to seize political and economic power by expropriating the capitalists to organise production on the basis of a plan in place of a chaotic market.
State no longer essential
Engels argued that as the anarchy in production begins to vanish, and the struggle between the classes is no longer an essential part of society, so the political necessity of the state dies out and humanity will truly be free.
He concluded that in order to accomplish universal emancipation the workers movement must have a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of this momentous act of taking political and economic power into its hands. Scientific socialism, therefore, is the theoretical expression of the aspirations of the labour movement, both Britain in and Internationally.
November 28, 2020
