Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Friedrich Engels

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

By Friedrich Engels

  • Release Date: 2011-11-08
  • Genre: Social Science
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 17 Ratings

Description

Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, working in close collaboration alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research. In 1848 he produced with Marx The Communist Manifesto and later he supported Marx financially to do research and write Das Kapital. After Marx's death Engels edited the second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organized Marx's notes on the "Theories of Surplus Value" and this was later published as the "fourth volume" of Capital.
Engels is commonly known as a "ruthless party tactician", "brutal ideologue", and "master tactician" when it came to purging rivals in political organizations. However, another strand of Engels’s personality was one of a "gregarious", "bighearted", and "jovial man of outsize appetites", who was referred to by his son-in-law as "the great beheader of champagne bottles.” 
Anti-Dühring, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science is a detailed critique of the philosophical positions of Eugen Dühring, a German philosopher and critic of Marxism. In the course of replying to Dühring, Engels reviews recent advances in science and mathematics and seeks to demonstrate the way in which the concepts of dialectics apply to natural phenomena. Many of these ideas were later developed in the unfinished work, Dialectics of Nature. The last section of Anti-Dühring was later edited and published under the separate title, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
This edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.

Reviews

  • The Greatest Introduction to Socialistic Thought

    5
    By Azriel Rose
    The most common critique from the anti-socialist circles is that it is “utopian” and idealistic. Engels ruthlessly massacres this pretense. The book draws from socialism in its historical, methodological, theoretical, and scientific forms — synthesisizing them into a thorough explanation of our great project and its scientific basis in the point of view of historical materialism and dialectics. Heavily recommended first read for Socialist thought, and easy to understand.