ABSTRACT
According to Engels, Marx in 1847 adopted the term “communist” in preference to the term “socialist,” because socialism had by that time acquired a flavor of bourgeois respectability. However that may have been and however we choose to explain this fact if it was a fact—more than once we have seen good reason for interpreting socialism as a product of the bourgeois mentality—there cannot be any doubt that Marx and Engels themselves were typical bourgeois intellectuals. Exiles of bourgeois extraction and tradition—this formula accounts for a lot both in Marx’s thought and in the policies and political tactics he recommended. The astounding thing is the extent to which his ideas prevailed.
