Both Marx and Utopian Socialists talked about the perfect world, a kind of paradise where all the people would be equal. Their ideas were quite similar because they all were up for peace and equally. However, what they differed in were the means of building this perfect world or, to be more exact, getting there. What Karl Marx offered was more of a science for he gave exact directions of how paradise could be achieved and what exactly it could be characterized by: no government, no religion, and no private ownership. The ideas of the Utopian socialists, in contrast, were not supported by anything concrete. They simply “wanted the world changed” (Heilbroner 115); they drew a picture of this perfect world where everybody adhered to the socialist ethic and where no one was exploited and excluded. However, these were only ideas that were not supported by a detailed plan of how to create such a world. At this, they saw no difficulties in creating this world, while Marx has accounted for many of such difficulties and offered ways to cope with them. Thus, Marx taught not only that a happy ending was good, but gave guidelines on the kind of work that had to be done to achieve it, while Utopian Socialists only informed people about the possibility of a happy ending.
The chapter on Marx totally supported what I have learned about this person before. However, this little traveling in his life helped me to learn some new things. These things hardly have anything to deal with the ideas that Marx advanced – he never concealed those. Instead, the chapter fortified my belief that genius people come from poor families and their success (though often not intravital) has a direct relation to intolerable conditions in which they had to live, as well as psychological drama they experienced. Marx was extremely devoted to his family, but the absence of sufficient stable income did not allow him to support it financially: “…he pawned what was left to his name, all the family silver and valuables having been sold long ago” (Heilbroner 150). This explains why Marx had ideas close to the Utopian ones, the ideas according to which there would be no poverty which he and his family had to live in. This chapter helped me to discover a new Marx, a Marx that was a rioter faithful to his ideas (he contradicted the will of his father and chose philosophy instead of law), a holder of radical views, and a genius who lacked funds for implementing his ideas into life.
Veblen’s ideas were different from those that the majority of the established economists advanced. Unlike Smith who stated that wealth was the main motivation for the human activity, Ricardo with his optimistic ideas about the economic plight of the workers and unpromising future for capitalism, Malthus with his predictions regarding the economic depressions, and Marx with his ideas about the free market and perfect competition in the capitalistic world, Veblen explored the nature of economics deeper. All these economists saw people as driven by competition and self-interest, while Veblen chose to explore the roots of leisure and its influence on the production of wealth. His ability to prove that it was not desire for leisure that was characteristic for humans, but their pride in work resulted in new economic reasoning after Marx.