Quiz: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

All 44 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Which two great discoveries does Engels say turned socialism into a science, and whom does he credit?

   The materialist conception of history and surplus-value, both owed to Marx Class struggle and utopia, owed to Saint-Simon Dialectics and evolution, owed to Hegel and Darwin The labour theory of value and the theory of rent, both owed to David Ricardo
2. 2. What does Engels call “the proof of dialectics”?

   Logic Nature Mathematics History
3. 3. From what proposition does the materialist conception of history start?

   That great men, by their genius and will, are the real makers of every social order That history moves in cycles, so every social order must repeat those before it That production, and next to it exchange, is the basis of every social order That ideas of justice and reason, as they develop, are the basis of every social order
4. 4. Why were the utopians’ theories crude, according to Engels?

   They ignored history entirely and borrowed their plans from ancient utopias They matched the crude state of capitalist production and of classes They were written for the aristocracy, whose patronage the utopians sought They were the work of poorly educated men with no training in philosophy
5. 5. What was the epoch-making merit of the Hegelian system, according to Engels?

   It solved, once and for all, the problem of the laws governing the development of history It first represented the whole world as a process of constant motion and development It placed the material conditions of life, not ideas, at the basis of all historical change It founded the science of political economy on a dialectical analysis of commodities
6. 6. What term does Engels propose for the conception of history in the book, rather than “historical agnosticism”?

   Historical evolutionism Historical dialecticism Historical materialism Evolutionary positivism
7. 7. What does Engels say the eighteenth-century philosophers’ “kingdom of reason” really was?

   A religious utopia An enlightened despotism The idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie The kingdom of the workers
8. 8. Where did the second great bourgeois upheaval take place, with Calvinism as its doctrine?

   Holland Switzerland Scotland England
9. 9. How many great, decisive battles does Engels say the bourgeoisie’s long fight against feudalism culminated in?

   Two Five One Three
10. 10. Which great cotton mill did Owen direct from 1800 to 1829?

    Cromford, in Derbyshire New Lanark, in Scotland Saltaire, in Yorkshire Quarry Bank, near Manchester
11. 11. Whose sudden conversion to socialism prompted the larger book from which this pamphlet was taken?

    Ferdinand Lassalle, the agitator Albert Schäffle, a Württemberg economist Eugen Dühring, a Berlin lecturer Karl Rodbertus, a Pomeranian landowner
12. 12. How do social forces act until we understand them, according to Engels?

    Rationally and predictably Like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively Not at all According to the will of the ruling class, which directs them
13. 13. What three stages does Engels’s summary of historical evolution set out?

    Primitive communism, private property, the modern state Ancient slavery, mediaeval serfdom, modern wage-labour Savagery, barbarism and civilisation Mediaeval society, capitalist revolution, proletarian revolution
14. 14. What does Engels say happens to the state when the proletariat takes the means of production into social ownership?

    It is not abolished; it dies out It is abolished by decree It becomes a world state It becomes stronger than ever
15. 15. What did socialism need first in order to become a science, according to Engels?

    To be placed upon a real basis A charismatic leader A detailed plan of the future society A political party
16. 16. How does the metaphysician see things and ideas, according to Engels?

    As processes in constant motion As isolated, fixed and rigid objects, given once for all As mere appearances, behind which lie unknowable things-in-themselves As products of history
17. 17. What does Engels’s summary call the growing displacement of labourers by machinery?

    The industrial reserve-army The lumpenproletariat The army of labour The surplus class
18. 18. Where is the necessity for state ownership felt first, according to Engels?

    In retail shops In the post office, the telegraphs and the railways In the banks, the insurance companies and the stock exchange In agriculture
19. 19. Who are the three great utopians Engels discusses?

    More, Campanella and Bacon Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen Proudhon, Louis Blanc and Weitling Babeuf, Cabet and Blanqui
20. 20. How does Engels describe the change when society takes over the means of production?

    The ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom The return of mankind to the lost golden age of primitive tribal communism The end of all human labour, now that machines do the work of man The final victory of human reason over religion and superstition
21. 21. What did the Continental bourgeoisie do with their freethought once their workers became socialist, according to Engels?

    Quietly dropped it and turned pious, as the British middle class had done Spread it among the workers, hoping to wean them from socialism by enlightenment Took it into exile in England, where freethought was protected by law Held to it more firmly, as the surest weapon against the clerical aristocracy
22. 22. What does Engels call agnosticism, using a Lancashire term?

    “Mealy-mouthed” scepticism Disguised religion “Shamefaced” materialism Scientific idealism
23. 23. How does Engels describe Fourier, besides being a critic?

    A religious prophet of a new church A political revolutionary in the Jacobin tradition A dull systematiser of utopian plans One of the greatest satirists
24. 24. What does Engels call the task of scientific socialism, in the closing paragraph?

    To give the proletariat full knowledge of the conditions and meaning of its historical act To design in detail the ideal society the proletariat must establish To win parliamentary majorities by spreading socialist ideas among all classes of voters To reconcile the classes by showing the bourgeoisie that its true interest lies in reform
25. 25. Why was Owen still not content with New Lanark?

    The workers were idle and drunken and would not keep his rules of conduct “The people were slaves at my mercy”; their wealth went to the owners It made no profit, and his partners refused to fund any further reforms It was too small a mill to serve as a model for all of English industry
26. 26. Who arranged for three chapters of the larger book to be published as a French pamphlet in 1880?

    Charles Longuet Édouard Vaillant Gabriel Deville Paul Lafargue
27. 27. How often does Engels say the economic bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie recurs?

    Every ten years Only once in a century Regularly every twenty years Regularly every year
28. 28. What form did the antagonism between the third estate and the privileged classes take for Saint-Simon?

    An antagonism between church and state An antagonism between “workers” and “idlers” An antagonism between the town and the country An antagonism between “producers” and “consumers”
29. 29. Who, according to Engels, dealt the metaphysical conception of nature its heaviest blow?

    Darwin Linnaeus Laplace Lyell
30. 30. Which contradiction does Engels say “contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of to-day”?

    Socialised production and capitalist appropriation Supply and demand Mental labour and manual labour, under the division of labour Town and country
31. 31. Into which four stages does Fourier divide the history of society?

    Ancient, medieval, modern, future Hunting, herding, farming, trade Savagery, barbarism, the patriarchate, civilisation Slavery, serfdom, wage-labour and cooperative association
32. 32. What happened to Owen when he advanced towards communism?

    He became Prime Minister He won a seat in Parliament and the backing of the Whigs He was made a peer He lost the applause of society and was ostracised
33. 33. On whose cooperation does Engels say the triumph of the European working class depends?

    Germany alone At least England, France and Germany England alone The workers of America
34. 34. What did Saint-Simon proclaim in 1814, right after the allies entered Paris?

    An alliance of France with England, and of both with Germany A socialist republic A republic for all France, and war against the allied powers The restoration of the monarchy
35. 35. In what year does Engels date the first general crisis?

    1857 1848 1873 1825
36. 36. Which country does Engels call the original home of all modern materialism?

    France Germany England Holland
37. 37. Does conversion into joint-stock companies or state property abolish the capitalist nature of the productive forces?

    Only in part: it removes the capitalist but leaves exploitation in agriculture No: the state is the ideal personification of the total national capital Yes, provided the state is a democratic republic elected by universal suffrage Yes: once the state owns the means of production, capitalism is abolished
38. 38. What does Engels call the greatest merit of the new German philosophy culminating in Hegel?

    Founding natural science Defending the Prussian state Reviving dialectics Replacing faith with a rational proof of the existence of God
39. 39. What does Engels call the Chartists?

    The first working-men’s party of modern times A radical wing of the Liberal party in Parliament A branch of the Anti-Corn Law League A secret society of Irish and English insurgents
40. 40. Which materialist teaching did Robert Owen adopt?

    That man is born good, and is corrupted only by private property That each man forms his own character by will That character is fixed by God That man’s character is the product of heredity and environment
41. 41. What did Calvin’s doctrine of predestination express, according to Engels?

    That kings rule by divine right and must be obeyed by their subjects even when they are unjust That the church should hold all its property in common, as the apostles had done in their own times That in commercial competition success or failure depends on circumstances beyond one’s control That the poor deserve their poverty and should be left without complaint to the mercy of the market
42. 42. Which proverb does Engels use against the agnostic’s doubt about our senses?

    “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” “What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over” “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other” “Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth”
43. 43. What event, according to Engels, “sounded the knell of English insular exclusiveness”?

    The Reform Act of 1832 The repeal of the Corn Laws The Crimean War The exhibition of 1851
44. 44. Whose dialectical method does Engels say Fourier used as masterfully as his contemporary?

    Hegel’s Kant’s Fichte’s Schelling’s