ABSTRACT
In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels credited Charles Fourier, the great French Utopian socialist, with being the "first to declare that in any given society the degree of woman's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation" (Marx and Engels 1972:406). This statement as well as others in the writings of Marx and Engels is evidence that they regarded the emancipation of women as a fundamental goal of socialism and a criterion by which social progress could be measured.
