ABSTRACT
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contrasted the historically informed vision of socialism with the alternative socialisms of their time. The “true socialism” of Karl Grun and others in Germany sought to overcome class conflict and realize a “true socialist society.” Likewise, Marx and Engels saw the petty-bourgeois socialism of Jean Sismondi, who attempted to preserve a society of small producers within a system of competitive markets and free trade, as doomed to failure. Marx and Engels made a related but somewhat different argument against the utopian socialisms of Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Marx and Engels were convinced that working-class conquest of power could only grow out of a mass class-conscious struggle of the working class. Written as a platform for the Communist League, a largely German revolutionary organization, the Manifesto has become a classic statement of the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels.
