During the time when Karl Marx was developing his theory about capitalist society, socialist and anarchist ideas about the coming liberated society were already widely circulating among the opposing workers and intellectuals of the time. Socialists and anarchists usually supported idealistic concepts for a future social condition without exploitation and without one person's dominance over another. Marx, who had learned his lesson from Hegel, was deeply convinced of the futility of the oppositional ideal, of the utopian images that were opposed to the harsh reality of existing society. [...]

(excerpt from the book)