Scientific socialism’s origins predate the nineteenth century

Evidence

Scientific socialists have become accustomed to locating the source of their observational point on the modern era in the nineteenth century. But in truth it is the scientism of the nineteenth century to which they refer. It was the political and intellectual critique of capitalism—the opposition to the alienation of labor and the ordering of social life according to the dictates and requirements of private property that could be traced to nineteenth-century sources. On the other hand, their socialism had its ideological, analytical, and theoretical beginnings in even earlier times. As such, the beginnings of modern socialism, though likewise committed to the ultimate rationalization of society, were informed by a fundamentally different conception of the project than that socialism that resulted from the ideology’s collision with German materialism industrial production, and the revolutionary events of the early nineteenth century. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 279

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century socialist historians located socialism’s origins in France — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 281