The real industrial working-class, at that time, was small, comprising independent handicraft workers, and, as witnessed in the mobilisations such as at Peterloo, they were a subsidiary to the movement of the urban bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, in their pursuit of bourgeois-democracy, and the vote for that bourgeoisie. As Engels describes, that movement culminated in the 1832 Reform Act, which gave the bourgeoisie, as a whole, the vote, but, as capital expanded, and so the size of the working-class grew considerably the industrial capitalists could only assert themselves over the other sections of the bourgeoisie by allying with the workers, seen in The Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Revolutions of 1848.
“Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class.” (p 116)
But, in the beginning, the proletariat is small, and not constituted as a class for itself. The productive forces and relations are also undeveloped. Communist ideas are, then, themselves moralistic and utopian, because there is no scientific basis for hypothesising the evolution of capitalism into socialism, as a consequence of those changed material conditions. That only becomes possible when capital expands to such an extent as to create large-scale, socialised capital, in the latter half of the 19th century. As Engels himself comments, he and Marx were also guilty of a degree of utopianism in their expectation of socialist revolution, arising out of the bourgeois revolutions of 1848. because, at that time, it was only in Britain that a sizeable working-class existed.
Engels points out, in a note to Capital, that Marx had explained that Owen was differentiated from the other utopians, like Saint-Simon and Fourier, by the fact that, coming later, when larger-scale industry and an industrial working-class had arisen, he could stand on the shoulders of this development to see further into the future. The other utopians, dealing with a condition where workers were still comprised, largely, of self-employed artisans, could see no means of them combining voluntarily to create a cooperative commonwealth.
Owen had no such problem, because he could see its basis in front of him, and he could realise it in his New Lanark mills, but, also, in putting it forward, as a model, which other workers could adopt, no longer as an appeal to benevolent capitalists to gift to them, but which they could strive to establish by their own collective effort, and organisation. Owen not only put forward such proposals, but also promoted the development of trades unions to that effect, such as the GNCTU. In this, Marx notes, he was not only differentiated from the earlier utopians, but also from his disciples.
“But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.” (p 117)
Seeing “in poverty nothing but poverty” was the attribute of Sismondi, and also of the Narodniks, as Lenin described. It is a hallmark of petty-bourgeois socialism, and of catastrophism.
Proudhon sees the good side of bourgeois production as presented by the economists, and the bad side as those features elaborated by the socialists. But, where the socialists see that bad side as the revolutionary side, the potential for the new society, Proudhon can only see poverty, a bad side to be removed. He wants to see bourgeois relations as natural and eternal, but not the attendant consequences of those relations.
“Thus it is that M. Proudhon flatters himself on having given a criticism of both political economy and communism: he is beneath them both. Beneath the economists, since, as a philosopher who has at his elbow a magic formula, he thought he could dispense with going into purely economic details; beneath the socialists, because he has neither courage enough nor insight enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon.” (p 117-8)
Proudhon's view, therefore, vacillates between that of the bourgeois and the worker, and so appears as merely the ideology of the petty-bourgeois.
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