These utopians tower above the likes of Duhring, and yet, as with his attitude to all those scientists, philosophers and economists that preceded him, he looks down on them with contempt. That contempt, Engels notes, is based on his “frightful ignorance” of their works. He quotes Duhring's comment in relation to Saint-Simon.
“his basic idea was essentially correct, and apart from some one-sided aspects, provides the directing impulse towards real changes even today”. (p 340)
But, nowhere does Duhring say what this “basic idea” is. The same had been true in relation to Duhring's treatment of Quesnay.
“... in the end we have to allow ourselves to be put off with the phrase
“that imagination and philanthropic fervour ... together with the extravagant fantasy that goes with it dominated the whole of Saint-Simon's intellectual horizon”. (p 340)
Similarly, Duhring focuses on Fourier's futurist fantasies, the better to criticise him, whilst minimising his role in acidly critiquing the nature of capitalist society. The same with Duhring's treatment of Owen, for which he relied on “the miserable biography of the philistine Sargant, who likewise did not know Owen’s most important works — on marriage and the communist system.” (p 340)
Engels refers to Owen's “Book of The New Moral World”, in which can be found, “not only the most clear-cut communism, with equal obligation to labour and equal rights in the product — equal according to age, as Owen always adds — but also the complete elaboration of the architecture of the future communist community, with its plan, elevation and bird's-eye view.” (p 341)
Engels notes that Owen put these ideas into practice in the Harmony Hall Colony, in Hampshire, during the late 1830's, and early 40's.
“I myself was acquainted with several former members of this communist model experiment. But Sargant knew absolutely nothing of all this, or of any of Owen's activities between 1836 and 1850, and so Herr Dühring's “more profound historical work”, too, is left in pitch-black ignorance. Herr Dühring calls Owen “in every respect a veritable monster of importunate philanthropy”. (p 341)
The failure of these experiments was not only a consequence of the utopian nature of creating islands of socialism in a sea of capitalism, which also blights the notion of creating Socialism In One Country. It was, also, a consequence of the immature development of industrial capitalism at that time.
“They necessarily had to construct the elements of a new society out of their own heads, because these elements were not as yet generally apparent within the old society; for the basic plan of the new edifice they could only appeal to reason, just because they could not as yet appeal to contemporary history.” (p 341-2)
Later, Engels was to write in support of the development of German worker cooperatives that, as part of the SPD's programme, they should be developed within the existing structure, and not as some separate development.
“The matter has nothing to do with either Schulze-Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both propagated small cooperatives, the one with, the other without state help; however, in both cases the cooperatives were not meant to come under the ownership of already existing means of production, but create alongside the existing capitalist production a new cooperative one. My suggestion requires the entry of the cooperatives into the existing production. One should give them land which otherwise would be exploited by capitalist means: as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale. It must only be so organised that society, initially the state, retains the ownership of the means of production so that the private interests of the cooperative vis-a-vis society as a whole cannot establish themselves.”
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