ABSTRACT
The false belief in a Marxian social science obscured the deeper meaning of the distinction between utopian and scientific socialism. According to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the proper form of socialism is not utopian but scientific. The socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. Many generations of socialists and communists dedicated their lives to the political work of the day completely certain that socialism would arrive inevitably because the Marxian science had established the necessary replacement of capitalism by socialism. When the Bolsheviks, for instance, came to power in Russia in 1917, they had only the vaguest idea of the socialism they set out to construct. They were certain that a socialist society would be one where the state owned all means of production. The process of building socialism must be frankly experimental.
