Marxism is not Utopian

A common and frankly ignorant objection to Marxism is that it supposedly preaches a “communist Utopia” that cannot exist. This is commonly connected with incorrect definitions of communist society and distorted views on “human nature” (as if it is a static, unchanging idea and not a dynamic set of material interactions), which we covered here and here. For this essay, we will focus on the differences between Utopian Socialism and Marxism.

Utopian Socialism originated “as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the 18th century”, justifying the development of socialist/communist (back then they meant the same thing) society from capitalist society with rational ideas. Such socialists advocated creating a Utopia, a small ideal community that workers would flock to, encouraging capitalists to go there, expand it, and peacefully give their means of production to workers. That is absolutely stupid, for it is based on idealism.

Marxism, in contrast, is based on materialism. Marxists recognize that contradictions within material things and between them cause change, and this can be applied to society. Capitalist society has many contradictions, but the primary one is between workers and capitalists. This contradiction intensifies as capitalism develops, creating the proper conditions for revolution. Engels explains the dialectical materialist view of how socialism will come about in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes—the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialist conception as the conception of Nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitations of the working-class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose, but for this it was necessary—

to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and

to lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus-value.

It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labor is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labor power of his laborer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis, this surplus-value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and the production of capital were both explained.

These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries, Socialism became a science. [Source]

Thus, Marxism is scientific socialism. We do not support Utopian socialism, and that is why we oppose opportunist ideologies and currents, but we defend Marxist socialism.