ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with certain criticisms that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels make of utopian socialism. The label 'utopian socialism' is one that Marx and Engels use explicitly, and it is easy to list the individuals that they typically classify and criticize under it. That catalogue is dominated by the three writers and activists that they plausibly portray as constituting the founding generation of utopian socialism, namely Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Henri de Saint-Simon. Marx and Engels associate utopian socialism with communitarian socialism, and communitarian socialism with non-violence. The historical impact of the Manifesto is widely recognized, but Engels's pamphlet quickly assumed a parallel status as an accessible and definitive statement of Marxian views. Marx and Engels insist that there are historical conditions for the establishment of a socialist society. Marx and Engels associate politics with various kinds of activity, and opposition to politics is associated with abstention from those activities.
