ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century men with vision saw the process of decay and dehumanization behind the glamour and wealth and political power of Western society. Some of them were resigned to the necessity of such a turn toward barbarism, others stated an alternative. But whether they took the one or the other position, their criticism was based on a religioushumanistic concept of man and history. By criticizing their own society they transcended it. They were not relativists who said, as long as the society functions it is a sane and good society-and as long as the individual is adjusted to his society he is a sane and healthy individual. Whether we think of Burckhardt or Proudhon, of Tolstoy or Baudelaire, of Marx or Kropotkin, they had a concept of man which was essentially a religious and moral one. Man is the end, and must never be used as a means; material production is for man, not man for material production; the aim of life is the unfolding of man’s
principles on which explicitly and implicitly, all criticism of modern Capitalism was based.
