ABSTRACT
The inference from the foregoing arguments is that scientific socialism, in the Marxist sense of a socialism irrefutably grounded upon knowledge of the past and a foreknowledge of necessary happenings, is impossible. “Scientific socialism” is as absurd as “scientific love”. Socialism is not a product of science. In every socialist theory, therefore, a place must be found, side by side with the causal science of the movement, for the teleology of socialism, that is to say for the theory of the objectives which must be envisaged in virtue of an ethical imperative. A socialist doctrine of the trade-union movement must, unless it is to remain a lifeless dogma, possess a psychological foundation, and must motivate, even its economic theories with voluntarism. The economic position of every American industrial worker and every American farmer may be affected by the success or failure of the pacifist aspirations of European socialists.
