The Young Engels’s Critique of the British Utopian Socialists

In the year and more after the young Engels arrived in England in November 1842, he displayed great theoretical enthusiasm for the works of the British utopian socialists. Not only did he read them carefully, but he also repeatedly cited and referenced their works in different texts. It can be said that through drawing on and critically sublating British utopian socialist thought, Engels quickly shifted the focus of his theoretical critique to the poverty of the English working class and the question of the legitimacy of private property behind it. Moreover, by sublating their approach of solving economic problems from an economic standpoint, he resolutely advanced toward the historical materialism based on the contradictory movement of productive forces and social relations. A correct understanding of the young Engels’s critique and transcendence of the British utopian socialists enables us to grasp more accurately that advancing toward historical materialism was the inevitable direction of the young Engels’s intellectual development, thereby drawing a clear line of demarcation from the interpretive approach of Western scholars who label Engels a positivist.

青年恩格斯在1842年11月到达英国之后的一年多时间内，对英国空想社会主义者的著作抱有很大的理论热情。他不仅认真阅读，而且还在不同的文本中多次引注过他们的著作。可以说，对英国空想社会主义思想的借鉴与扬弃，使恩格斯很快把理论批判的重点转向了英国工人阶级的贫困及其背后的私有制之合理性问题，而且还通过扬弃他们从经济的观点来解决经济问题的思路坚定地走向了基于生产力与社会关系矛盾运动的唯物史观。正确地理解青年恩格斯对英国空想社会主义者的批判与超越，可以使我们更准确地理解走向唯物史观是青年恩格斯思想发展的必然，从而与西方学者所谓的恩格斯是实证主义者的解读思路划清界限。

In “Letter from London I,” written in April–May 1843, Engels attacked the economic views that were “everywhere half-hearted and hypocritical” and steeped in Malthus’s absurd conclusions, while regretting that “the convincing economic essays of the socialists and of a section of the Chartists are contemptuously thrown aside, and find readers only among the lower classes.” This was his first mention of the British socialists, referring primarily to William Thompson, John Bray, and John Watts. In the subsequent “Letter from London III,” Engels began by frankly praising the British socialists as “more principled and more practical than the French socialists,” and he was particularly impressed by their mode of reasoning: “Everything proceeds from experience, from what can be verified or is a matter of direct observation, and yet is at the same time so principled in its exposition that it is very difficult to combat them on the ground they have chosen.” He especially commended John Watts. Watts’s representative work, *Facts and Fictions of Political Economists*, is a pamphlet notable for its strongly polemical style and empirical content; he excelled at using facts acknowledged by his opponents (i.e., mainstream economists) to expose their theoretical errors. Engels later adopted a similar method in *The Condition of the Working Class in England*: “I have always preferred to use the evidence of Liberals, so as to strike the liberal bourgeoisie with the words they themselves have spoken.” At the same time, the sources he cited in this work were all contemporary social events and current commentaries, and he skillfully deployed his own economic knowledge to oppose the various fallacies of mainstream economics.

在1843年4—5月所写的《伦敦来信一》中，恩格斯抨击了“到处是不彻底和虚伪的”、浸润着马尔萨斯荒谬结论的经济学观点，而惋惜“社会主义者以及部分宪章派的有说服力的经济论文，却被轻蔑地扔掉，这些论文只有在下层等级中才能找到读者”。这是他初次提到英国的社会主义者，主要是指威廉·汤普森、约翰·布雷和约翰·瓦茨。在不久后的《伦敦来信三》中，恩格斯开篇便毫不掩饰地称赞英国社会主义者“比法国社会主义者更有原则和更为实际”，尤其是他们采用的推理方式给恩格斯留下了深刻印象，“一切都从经验和可证实的或直观的事实出发，但同时又富有原则性的阐发，以致要想在他们选定的立足点上和他们斗争，就很困难了”，并特别赞扬了约翰·瓦茨。瓦茨的代表作是《政治经济学家的事实与臆想》，这部小册子以强烈的论战风格和实证性的思想内容见长，他擅长利用对手（也就是主流经济学家）所承认的事实反过来揭露对方的理论错误。在后来的《英国工人阶级状况》中恩格斯也采用过类似的方法，“我总是宁可利用自由党人的证据，以便用自由资产阶级亲口说出来的话来打击自由资产阶级”，同时，在此书中他所引用的都是当下发生的社会事件和时事评论，并熟练运用自己的经济学知识去反对主流经济学的种种谬见。

In “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,” written between September 1843 and January 1844, Engels further praised the British socialists Thompson, Bray, and Watts for opposing private property from an economic standpoint: “For, as the British socialists have long since proved in practice and in theory, those who oppose private property can solve economic problems more correctly from an economic point of view.” His critique of Malthus’s population theory was clearly influenced by Watts. Malthus argued that population tends to grow faster than the means of subsistence; Watts, by contrast, held that population does not grow faster than the means of subsistence but faster than the means of employment, because “the demand sought is not natural demand… If desire were the demand sought, there could be no lack of employment; but the demand expected by our madmen is an artificial demand.” Engels expressed a similar view: “His second mistake is that he confuses means of subsistence with means of employment… The demand of which the economist speaks is not real demand; his consumption is only an artificial consumption. For the economist, only the person who can offer an equivalent for what he obtains is a real demander, a real consumer.” When discussing the enormous potential of productive forces, Engels cited Watts’s example that “the Mississippi valley has enough waste land to accommodate the whole population of Europe,” to support the argument that the immense development of productive forces driven by technological progress was sufficient to address the so-called problem of overpopulation. In the later “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent,” Engels explicitly stated that the British socialist ideological system, like the German one, was founded on the philosophical principle of freedom, but that “in matters of practice, in matters concerning the actual condition of existing society,” the British socialists far surpassed the Germans.

在1843年9月至1844年1月所写的《国民经济学批判大纲》中，恩格斯进一步称赞汤普森、布雷、瓦茨等英国社会主义者从经济学的角度来反对私有制的做法，“因为正如英国社会主义者早就在实践中和理论上证明的那样，反对私有制的人能够从经济的观点比较正确地解决经济问题”。他对马尔萨斯人口论的批判显然受到了瓦茨的影响。马尔萨斯认为人口有快于经济增长的趋势，瓦茨则认为不是人口增长快于经济增长，而是快于就业手段的增长，这是因为“所寻求的需求并不是自然需求……如果欲望就是所寻求的需求，那便不可能缺乏就业机会；但我们的狂人们所期待的需求是捏造的需求”。恩格斯对此有类似的观点，“他犯的第二个错误是把生活资料和就业手段混为一谈……经济学家所说的需求不是现实的需求，他所说的消费只是人为的消费。在经济学家看来，只有能够为自己取得的东西提供等价物的人，才是现实的需求者，现实的消费者”。在谈到生产力的巨大潜力时，恩格斯引用了瓦茨“密西西比河流域有足够的荒地可容下欧洲的全部人口”的例子，以佐证科技进步带来的生产力的巨大发展足以应对所谓的人口过剩问题。在之后的《大陆上社会改革的进展》中，恩格斯明确指出英国的社会主义思想体系和德国一样都是建立在自由之哲学原则之上，但是在“有关实践、有关影响现存社会的实际状况方面”，英国社会主义者远远超过了德国。

The British utopian socialists’ critique, grounded in the actual conditions of existing society, of the poverty and oppression suffered by workers and of the private property system behind it, enabled Engels to rapidly shift the object of his social critique from the irrationality of religion, politics, and culture to the irrationality of the private property system. Of course, once this shift in the object of his analysis was completed, the young Engels’s political stance of relying on the actual workers’ movement to promote a thoroughgoing revolution against private property led him to quickly surpass the views of the British utopian socialists in his path of critiquing private property, and drove him to develop in the direction of historical materialism. This is concretely manifested in the fact that, in this process, he also continuously criticized the relevant views of the British utopian socialists.

英国空想社会主义者立足于现存社会的实际状况而展开的对工人所遭受的贫困和压迫及其背后的私有制度的批判，使恩格斯在社会批判理论的对象上很快完成了从宗教、政治及文化上的不合理性，向私有制度的不合理性的转变。当然，自完成解读对象上的这种转变之后，青年恩格斯立足于现实工人运动来推动对私有制的彻底革命的政治立场，使其在对私有制的批判路径上很快超越了英国空想社会主义者的观点，并驱动他朝着唯物史观的方向发展，具体表现在他在这一过程中也不断地批评英国空想社会主义者的相关观点。

For instance, in his “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,” Engels’s denial of the so-called axiom that “everyone has the right to the product of their own labor” was in fact a critique of Thompson’s advocacy of the view that “the worker ought to enjoy the entire product of labor,” because this axiom “excludes the obligation to raise children” and does not transcend the category of private property. Engels’s interest in the British socialists lay primarily in how they used principled economic arguments to attack private property as the origin of poverty and crime, and in the impact of such attacks on the workers’ movement and on raising the ideological consciousness of the proletariat. This theoretical standpoint of his fundamentally surpassed the utopian character of British socialist thought at the time. In fact, Engels maintained a generally cautious attitude toward British socialist thought: “I have always considered that the establishment of a ‘harmonious’ organization is merely an experiment… Your communes will not… place humanity under an ‘iron despotism’; they must be shown that true freedom and true equality are possible only under the commune system.” [1]1 This passage is from Engels’s letter to the British socialist John Francis Bray, written around 1845. The “iron despotism” refers to a criticism made by the Chartist James Bairstow against the socialist John Watts, accusing Watts’s reform proposals of leading to a new form of tyranny. The “iron despotism” was a charge leveled by the Chartist Bairstow against Watts; this accusation indeed exposed the compromise in Watts’s anti-poverty program, which placed its hopes for social reform on the government, expecting it to raise property taxes to curb capital accumulation and use the tax revenue to help the proletariat acquire labor capital. Engels’s view struck at the weak point of the British socialists: their illusions about the bourgeoisie prevented them from recognizing that the commune system could guarantee genuine equality and freedom. Regarding Owen’s cooperatives, Engels defined them as experiments demonstrating the superiority of socialism to the bourgeoisie, but not as social ideals that could be immediately realized. In *The Condition of the Working Class in England*, Engels pointed out unequivocally that the ahistorical character of British socialist theory led it, in concrete anti-poverty strategies, to rely only on moral exhortation. Contrary to his earlier assessment of the characteristics of British socialism, Engels here clearly saw that “they recognize only psychological development,” which was a telling critique. Since William Godwin, British utopian socialists had emphasized the use of reason to drive social progress, holding that the cause of human evil lay in ignorance and lack of knowledge. Owen sought to use reason to persuade the bourgeoisie to support his commune plan; Thompson wanted to use reason to encourage the ruling class to sacrifice small interests and accept his plan for equal distribution in order to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number; Bray hoped to use the power of reason to eliminate class and exploitation within his envisioned joint-stock companies, thereby persuading the government to peacefully transfer power. For them, the proletariat was merely a suffering底层 class (Bray was an exception, as he emphasized that social reform must be completed by an awakened working class, though he opposed violent struggle and political reform). Although their understanding of the proletariat had already diverged significantly from the Christian view that “the poor are blessed,” the fragility of their political stance prevented them from seeing the historical mission of the proletariat, and thus, at the theoretical level, they could not fundamentally escape the predicament of abstract humanism.

譬如，恩格斯在《国民经济学批判大纲》中对“人人都有享受自己的劳动产品的权利”这一所谓公理的否认，实际上是批判了汤普森鼓吹的“劳动者应当享有全部的劳动产品”的观点，因为这一公理“排除了抚育儿童的义务”，没有跳出私有制的范畴。恩格斯对英国社会主义者的兴趣主要在于他们是如何用富有原则性的经济学观点去抨击作为贫困和罪恶起源的私有制的，以及这种抨击对于工人运动和提高无产阶级思想觉悟的影响。他的这种理论立足点在根本上超越了当时英国社会主义思想的空想性。事实上，恩格斯对英国社会主义思想总体上持谨慎态度，“我一向认为，建立‘和谐’组织只是一种实验……你们的公社不致……会把人类置于‘铁的专制制度’之下，要向他们表明，真正的自由和真正的平等只有在公社制度下才可能实现”。“铁的专制制度”是宪章主义者贝尔斯托对于瓦茨的责难，这种指责的确暴露了瓦茨的反贫困方案的妥协性，瓦茨将社会改革寄希望于政府，希望后者提高财产税来抑制资本积累，并用税收来帮助无产阶级拥有劳动资本。恩格斯的观点切中了英国社会主义者的软肋，对于资产阶级的幻想使他们无法认同公社制度可以保证真正的平等自由。关于欧文的合作社，恩格斯把它界定为是一种向资产阶级展示社会主义优越性的实验，但不是能够立刻实现的社会理想。在《英国工人阶级状况》中，恩格斯旗帜鲜明地指出，英国社会主义理论上的非历史性，导致其在具体的反贫困策略上只能寄希望于道德说教。同此前他对于英国社会主义特征的评价相反，在这里恩格斯已经很清楚地看到“他们只承认心理的发展”，这显然是切中要害的。自威廉·葛德文以来，英国空想社会主义者就强调用理性来推动社会进步，人类罪恶的原因在于愚昧和知识匮乏，欧文想用理性来感化资产阶级支持他的公社计划，汤普森想用理性鼓励统治阶级牺牲小利，接受他的平等分配计划以获得全社会最大多数人的最大幸福，布雷则希望用理性的力量在他设想的股份公司中消除阶级和剥削，从而感化政府将权力进行和平移交。对他们来说，无产阶级只是受难的底层人民（布雷是个例外，他强调社会改革必须由觉醒的工人阶级来完成，不过他反对暴力斗争和政治改革），他们关于无产阶级的理解虽然与基督教的“贫穷者是有福的”观点已经有了很大的不同，但政治立场上的脆弱性使他们无法看到无产阶级的历史使命，从而在理论层次上无法根本摆脱抽象人本主义的困扰。

From this perspective, it was no accident that Engels, together with Marx, was able to complete the construction of the basic principles of historical materialism in *The German Ideology*; it was the inevitable result of the development of both their thoughts. In the *Manifesto of the Communist Party*, Marx and Engels clearly pointed out that the compromise of the utopian socialists on the issue of workers’ poverty and the utopian character of their visions of a future society corresponded to the underdeveloped state of class struggle and the proletariat at that time. However, the critical elements in these utopian socialist writings “provided the most valuable materials for enlightening the workers.” The future visions they described were essentially demands for the elimination of class antagonisms, and the utopian character of these visions corresponded to a situation in which class antagonisms had only just been established in an early form. At this point, Engels had completely transcended British socialist thought from the standpoint of historical materialism.

从这一角度看，恩格斯与马克思一起在《德意志意识形态》中能够完成唯物史观基本原理的建构不是一件偶然的事情，而是他们两人思想发展的必然。在《共产党宣言》中，马克思恩格斯明确指出了空想社会主义者在工人贫困问题上的妥协性和对未来社会图景的空想性，是与阶级斗争和无产阶级还不很发展的社会状况相适应的，但这些空想社会主义著作中的批判成分则“提供了启发工人觉悟的极宝贵的材料”，他们所描述的未来图景本质上是要求消除阶级对立，而这种图景的空想性是同阶级对立刚以某种早期的形式确立起来的状况相适应的。至此，恩格斯从唯物史观的角度彻底完成了对英国社会主义思想的超越。

(The authors are a doctoral student at the School of Philosophy, Nanjing University, and a professor at the School of Philosophy, Nanjing University.)

（作者系南京大学哲学学院博士研究生；南京大学哲学学院教授）

Online editor: Tongxin

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