A REPLY TO HAECKEL 125 



by the Socialists themselves, nearly thirty 

 years before his criticism was made. 



"Absurd equalitarian notions," granted ; but 

 they were not even the sole property of the 

 Utopian Socialists. They borrowed them from 

 the bourgeois revolutionists of 1789. It was 

 they who boasted of the equality they would 

 set up. That equality, which, as Engels says, 

 only "materialized in bourgeois equality be- 

 fore the law." — "The equality before the law 

 of all commodity-owners." It was this 

 struggling bourgeoisie that adopted as its 

 catch-words, "liberty, fraternity, equality," 

 and applied them to a typical bourgeois use 

 when they inscribed them above the entrances 

 to French prisons. 



A significant clause in the second sentence 

 of Haeckers criticism is, "in human societies 

 as in animal societies," the duties, etc., of the 

 members cannot be "equal." The only pos- 

 sible point this could have as a criticism of 

 Socialism, would be its use to deny the pos- 

 sibility of abolishing social class divisions. 

 There is nothing to show whether Haeckel in- 

 tended it to have such a specific application, 

 but as any other application it might have 

 could be in no way opposed to the Socialist 

 position, I need only show its failure in that 

 regard. 



