Utopian socialism

Utopian socialism is the term coined by Friedrich Engels to reference socialist currents whose motivation for socialism was sought in abstract thought such as rationality and morality as opposed to a socialism based in material conditions, or a socialist theoretical expression based on the materialist method. To this, Engels counterposed Marxism's scientific socialism, a term they used in the context of juxtaposition to utopian socialism and movements with similar characteristics. Marx argued that utopian socialism seeks for society to have to adjust itself to these abstract ideals, whereas communism is the real movement originating from the material conditions of capitalist society and the contradictions that spring from there.

Marx elaborated on this critique in Consequences of June 13, 1849: "While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another – the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism".

Utopian socialists often, but not always, articulated specific blueprints. According to Amadeo Bordiga, "communism presents itself as the transcendence of the systems of utopian socialism which seek to eliminate the faults of social organisation by instituting complete plans for a new organisation of society whose possibility of realisation was not put in relationship to the real development of history."