the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle
between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois
and Proletarians).

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as
well as the action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form
of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them
the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any
independent political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with
the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find
it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a
new social science, after new social laws, that are to create
these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive
action, historically created conditions of emancipation to
fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation
of the proletariat to the organisation of society specially
contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in
their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of
their social plans.

In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring
chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most
suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most
suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.