At the very time when economic contradictions develop themselves and new phases of anti-capitalistic literature come to the surface, we find a revolutionary anti-capitalistic literature strongly asserting itself, which demands a retrogression from the existing system of economics. Such are the writings of Adam Müller and Leopold von Haller in the first third of our century, men who would change the bases on which the modern capitalistic economy is founded by introducing the crumbled feudalistic guild system of the middle ages in place of the middle-class capitalistic system of to-day. These are indeed manifestations which have not as yet reached their end.
Besides these reactionary manifestations, there is another movement which does not want this regression to old forms, but in the same way demands an overthrow of the principles of the existing capitalistic system. But this change must be under the influence of those modern advanced ideas which, especially on the technical side, betoken that which we are accustomed to call "progress." Systems, that is, theories, they are which hold fast to an historic essence of capitalistic methods of production--that it is built upon the basis of modern production in the mass; but which, under the influence of advanced ideas, call for a new order of production and distribution in the interests of those classes of the people which under the capitalistic economy seem to come short--thus essentially in the interests of the great masses of the proletariat. The theorists who desire such a development of the capitalistic economy in the interests of the proletariat, while upholding methods of production on a large scale, are the ones whom we must call socialists in the true meaning of the word. And we have now to do with a strange species of these socialists, with those whom we are accustomed to call utopists or utopian socialists. The typical representatives of these utopian socialists are St. Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in England. Of these, the most conspicuous are the two Frenchmen; their systems are most frequently presented. Owen is less known. As I now attempt to make clear to you, through him, the essence of utopian socialism, it is because he is less known, but especially because in my opinion he is the most interesting of the three great utopists. It is he who on the one side most clearly shows to us the genesis of the modern proletarian ideal, and on the other side has been of greatest influence upon other socialistic theorists, especially upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.