Doubtless both Marx and Engels lapsed occasionally into Utopianism. We see instances of this in the illusions Marx entertained regarding the Crimean War bringing about the European Social Revolution; in the theory of the increasing misery of the proletariat; in Engels' confident prediction, in 1845, that a Socialist revolution was imminent and inevitable; and in the prediction of both that an economic cataclysm must create the conditions for a sudden and complete revolution in society. These, I say, are Utopian ideas, evidences that the founders of scientific Socialism were tinctured with the older ideas of the Utopists, and even more with their spirit. But when we speak of "Marxism," what mental picture does the word suggest, what intellectual concept is the word a name for? Is it these forecasts and guesses, and the exact mode of realizing the Socialist ideal which Marx laid down, or is it the great principle of social evolution determined by economic development? Is it his naïve and simple description of the process of capitalist concentration, in which no hint appears of the circuitous windings that carried the actual process into unforeseen channels, or the broad fact that the concentration has taken place and that monopoly has come out of competition? Is it his statement of the extent to which labor is exploited, or the _fact_ of the exploitation? If we are to judge Marx by the essential things, rather than by the incidental and non-essential things, then we must admit his claim to be reckoned with the great scientific sociologists and economists.
After all, what constitutes scientific method? Is it not the recognition of the law of causation, putting exact knowledge of facts above tradition or sentiment; accumulating facts patiently until sufficient have been gathered to make possible the formulation of generalizations and laws enabling us to connect the present with the past, and in some measure to foretell the outcome of the present, as Marx foretold the culmination of competition in monopoly? Is it not to see past, present, and future as one whole, a growth, a constant process, so that instead of vainly fashioning plans for millennial Utopias, we seek in the facts of to-day the stream of tendencies, and so learn the direction of the immediate flow of progress? If this is a true concept of scientific method, and the scientific spirit, then Karl Marx was a scientist, and modern Socialism is aptly named Scientific Socialism.