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Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Modern socialism is not a doctrine, Engels explains, but a working-class movement growing out of the establishment of large-scale capitalist industry and its social consequences.
86 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1880
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About the author
Friedrich Engels
1,848 books1,487 followersGerman social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on
The Communist Manifesto
in 1848 and on numerous other works.
With the help of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894).
Friedrich Engels, a philosopher, political, historian, journalist, revolutionary, and also a businessman, closest befriended his lifelong colleague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...
With the help of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894).
Friedrich Engels, a philosopher, political, historian, journalist, revolutionary, and also a businessman, closest befriended his lifelong colleague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 641 reviews
September 19, 2013
In my opinion, this is a better introduction to Marxism than the Communist Manifesto. The first chapter focuses on utopian socialist who tried to make reforms but ran up against roadblocks of the bourgeoisie, and since it was based on an unscientific view, it lead to a "mish-mash of critical statements, economic theories and pictures of future societies," none of which had the momentum to implement their ideas. Unfortunately, this still sounds like the Left today.
The second chapter, talks about the history of historical materialism in Europe as arising from Hegel. History now could be viewed as a system of processes that affect humans, rather than random acts of violence and war. This made is possible for socialist to explain HOW capitalism exploits the working class.
In the third, and honestly only essential, chapter Engels demonstrates the use of historical materialism by showing how the capitalist revolution ended the feudal system. He then goes on to explain the boom/bust cycle of capitalism. This was the most interesting section to me, given our current economic situation. Even back then, during the bust cycles the state ultimately took control of the direction of production--think of the recent bailouts. However, because "the modern state is essentially a capitalist machine," "the more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit."
Whether Engels ending theory--that by the working classes usurping power, the state will inevitably dissolve--can actually succeed in overcoming all the obstacles that Marx and Engel never foresaw, we may never know. However, I think the following quotation best summarizes the reason why these ideas are still important to study today:
"As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action--and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and it's defenders--so long as these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long as they master us."
The second chapter, talks about the history of historical materialism in Europe as arising from Hegel. History now could be viewed as a system of processes that affect humans, rather than random acts of violence and war. This made is possible for socialist to explain HOW capitalism exploits the working class.
In the third, and honestly only essential, chapter Engels demonstrates the use of historical materialism by showing how the capitalist revolution ended the feudal system. He then goes on to explain the boom/bust cycle of capitalism. This was the most interesting section to me, given our current economic situation. Even back then, during the bust cycles the state ultimately took control of the direction of production--think of the recent bailouts. However, because "the modern state is essentially a capitalist machine," "the more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more it actually becomes the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit."
Whether Engels ending theory--that by the working classes usurping power, the state will inevitably dissolve--can actually succeed in overcoming all the obstacles that Marx and Engel never foresaw, we may never know. However, I think the following quotation best summarizes the reason why these ideas are still important to study today:
"As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action--and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and it's defenders--so long as these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long as they master us."
December 30, 2023
Most accessible of the original Marxist works?
The Good:
--I read this early on, prior to reading Marx's monumental Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. Engels did his job to prepare the reader.
--“Marxism” just points to “go read Marx”; “scientific socialism” is more descriptive, but also potentially dogmatic as a label. “Historical materialism”, framed as an analytical tool/lens, seems most useful for today...
1) What drives history/social change?:
a) Production (of our daily material needs, along with distribution/reproduction, studied in political economy). This consists of the interactions between the material conditions (which can be scrutinized by natural sciences) and the corresponding social relations (class struggle/political bargaining powers). Thus, the "historical materialism" of "Scientific Socialism".
b) ...as opposed to culture/ideology/philosophy ("idealism", where the focus is on ideas driving social change; this is "Utopian Socialism" with its wide variety of creative yet sometimes fanciful ideas. Engels considers Saint Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen).
--Thus, historical materialism: knowing by our being, instead of being by our knowing.
--Of course, there are constant interactions between material conditions and ideas, thus "dialectical materialism". But materialism provides a foundational base to start our investigation, whereas starting with idealism can leave us untethered to reality:
-ex. Graeber/Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
-ex. Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
--For a spectacular modern introduction, see the "What is Politics" video series. The entire series is foundational so watch from the start, but on this particular topic see episodes:
"7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong"
"7.1 Material Conditions: Why You Can't Eliminate Sexism or Patriarchy by Changing Culture"
"8. Materialism vs. Idealism: How Social Change Happens"
2) The contradiction between:
a) increasing socialization of production (a growing working class to work together to sell to the general market i.e. for society, rather than local production for local consumption), vs.
b) continued (even decreasing in ratio, given global inequality) individual ownership of the "means of production" (machinery/technology/land etc. needed to produce our material needs).
3) The above sets up the class struggle between capitalists (owners of the "means of production") and wage labour (lacking the "means of production", thus dependent on selling our labour), where machinery/technology are the capitalists’ key weapon to replace human labour, creating the “industrial reserve army” ("structural unemployment") to enforce work discipline/prevent alternatives.
...To unpack Marx's political economy (capitalism's value system, commodity fetishism, circuit of commodity production (M-C-M'), surplus value from exploitation of wage labour, etc.), see Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
4) The further contradiction:
a) socialized production within firms (i.e. the work actually getting done is most effectively done by cooperation, i.e. "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", despite the dictatorship of capitalist management/ownership)
b) while outside the firm is the "anarchy of the market" (ruthless competition, lack of planning/coordination/cooperation for social needs, where volatility/crises are a feature not a bug).
...If we extend this globally, we get the "kicking away the ladder" double standard, where:
a) Rich capitalist countries have large "States" to buffer the effects of the anarchy of the market, to build the required public infrastructure (physical and social such as R&D, higher education, etc.)
b) while rich capitalist countries force poor countries to remove their own State protection in the name of "free trade"/"free market"/"Structural Adjustment"/"economic development", a continuation of colonial pillaging:
-The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
--On "the market", we should also consider Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (see the intro in Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails): capitalism is not just the market for real commodities which long pre-dates capitalism. Capitalism features 3 peculiar markets (labour/land/money) with "fictitious commodities", i.e. humans/nature/purchasing power are not "produced" just to buy/sell in markets.
...Indeed, setting up and perpetuating such peculiar markets requires:
i) significant violence, thus the foundational role of "the State" for capitalism.
ii) constant social dislocation from volatility/crises; finance capital can not traverse the global in nanoseconds, whereas human labour struggle to keep up. So much of our social life (neighborhood, workplace) becomes more transitory, where communities become strangers ("social dislocation").
5) The rising obsolescence of capitalists, who resort more and more to:
i) dividends (passive income from ownership of shares; "passive" in the sense of no work... remember, passive income from ownership is separate from the work of management, which is paid via wage income).
ii) gambling on the stock market (short-term speculation rather than long-term investments); after all, if the game is to maximize profits, why waste all the time/risk on long-term investments when you can pillage now and use your growing wealth to bribe ("lobby") for bailouts when the crisis erupts?
6) As mentioned above regarding the violence needed by capitalism: the role of the State under capitalism in handling the anarchy of the market. Thus, once the capitalist contradictions above are resolved via socialism (resolving the class struggle and planning for social needs), the State does not need to be abolished; it will wither away.
...Of course this is a massive topic; Lenin only scratches the surface in The State and Revolution.
The Missing:
1) More practice with synthesis/"dialectics":
--To avoid dogma and excessive sectarian debates, we should see Engels and Marx as human beings of their context testing out powerful tools/lenses of social analysis, which involves making mistakes and learning from them.
...Thus, "Scientific Socialism" sounds rather dogmatic; it's convenient to forget that proper science requires publishing all your negative results, especially in "narcissism of small difference" debates between and even within the plethora of Leftist labels. The narcissism tendency is understandable given the Left's role of deconstructive critiques (opening Pandora's box), but at some point we have to be constructive which requires synthesis and diplomacy.
--So, for my part, I still find time to dive into idealism for their creativity/social imagination; one of my early influences is anarchist/anthropologist David Graeber. These days, I start with a historical materialist foundation and then let idealists like Graeber flip everything upside down to see what emerges.
...And of course materialism can be done in too rigid a manner; ex. the application of natural science to parts of economics requires careful unpacking, as the pro-capitalist market fundamentalists have demonstrated with their (mal)practice...
2) Critiquing Orthodox Marxism:
--Perhaps most importantly, we should recognize that Marxists (which itself is a massive label with numerous internal debates) do not have a monopoly on historical materialism/materialist socialism; I refer back to the materialist anarchism (which indeed is very influenced by Marx/Engels) in "What is Politics?", in particular these episodes critiquing Marxist-Leninism:
-11 - Why Every Communist Country is a One-Party Dictatorship
-11.1 Why the Russian Revolution Failed: When Rich Kids do all the Socialism
--Every time I read Marx/Engels/orthodox Marxists, I cannot help thinking (with the ungodly power of hindsight) about their optimism towards "developed" capitalists nations (Britain/Germany... later US), and how capitalists responded with:
i) Inebriating developed nations with social democracy, i.e. capitalist reformism (fueled by imperialism), where Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism only scratches the surface.
ii) For any socialism that slips through the cracks, smashing them with perpetual war. While resisting such aggressive violence, how much creation of violent hierarchies can socialists tolerate? If we bring in morality, the cycle of violence is the greatest evil perpetrated by capitalist imperialism:
-see "siege socialism" in Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
The Good:
--I read this early on, prior to reading Marx's monumental Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. Engels did his job to prepare the reader.
--“Marxism” just points to “go read Marx”; “scientific socialism” is more descriptive, but also potentially dogmatic as a label. “Historical materialism”, framed as an analytical tool/lens, seems most useful for today...
1) What drives history/social change?:
a) Production (of our daily material needs, along with distribution/reproduction, studied in political economy). This consists of the interactions between the material conditions (which can be scrutinized by natural sciences) and the corresponding social relations (class struggle/political bargaining powers). Thus, the "historical materialism" of "Scientific Socialism".
b) ...as opposed to culture/ideology/philosophy ("idealism", where the focus is on ideas driving social change; this is "Utopian Socialism" with its wide variety of creative yet sometimes fanciful ideas. Engels considers Saint Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen).
--Thus, historical materialism: knowing by our being, instead of being by our knowing.
--Of course, there are constant interactions between material conditions and ideas, thus "dialectical materialism". But materialism provides a foundational base to start our investigation, whereas starting with idealism can leave us untethered to reality:
-ex. Graeber/Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
-ex. Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
--For a spectacular modern introduction, see the "What is Politics" video series. The entire series is foundational so watch from the start, but on this particular topic see episodes:
"7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong"
"7.1 Material Conditions: Why You Can't Eliminate Sexism or Patriarchy by Changing Culture"
"8. Materialism vs. Idealism: How Social Change Happens"
2) The contradiction between:
a) increasing socialization of production (a growing working class to work together to sell to the general market i.e. for society, rather than local production for local consumption), vs.
b) continued (even decreasing in ratio, given global inequality) individual ownership of the "means of production" (machinery/technology/land etc. needed to produce our material needs).
3) The above sets up the class struggle between capitalists (owners of the "means of production") and wage labour (lacking the "means of production", thus dependent on selling our labour), where machinery/technology are the capitalists’ key weapon to replace human labour, creating the “industrial reserve army” ("structural unemployment") to enforce work discipline/prevent alternatives.
...To unpack Marx's political economy (capitalism's value system, commodity fetishism, circuit of commodity production (M-C-M'), surplus value from exploitation of wage labour, etc.), see Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
4) The further contradiction:
a) socialized production within firms (i.e. the work actually getting done is most effectively done by cooperation, i.e. "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", despite the dictatorship of capitalist management/ownership)
b) while outside the firm is the "anarchy of the market" (ruthless competition, lack of planning/coordination/cooperation for social needs, where volatility/crises are a feature not a bug).
...If we extend this globally, we get the "kicking away the ladder" double standard, where:
a) Rich capitalist countries have large "States" to buffer the effects of the anarchy of the market, to build the required public infrastructure (physical and social such as R&D, higher education, etc.)
b) while rich capitalist countries force poor countries to remove their own State protection in the name of "free trade"/"free market"/"Structural Adjustment"/"economic development", a continuation of colonial pillaging:
-The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
--On "the market", we should also consider Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (see the intro in Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails): capitalism is not just the market for real commodities which long pre-dates capitalism. Capitalism features 3 peculiar markets (labour/land/money) with "fictitious commodities", i.e. humans/nature/purchasing power are not "produced" just to buy/sell in markets.
...Indeed, setting up and perpetuating such peculiar markets requires:
i) significant violence, thus the foundational role of "the State" for capitalism.
ii) constant social dislocation from volatility/crises; finance capital can not traverse the global in nanoseconds, whereas human labour struggle to keep up. So much of our social life (neighborhood, workplace) becomes more transitory, where communities become strangers ("social dislocation").
5) The rising obsolescence of capitalists, who resort more and more to:
i) dividends (passive income from ownership of shares; "passive" in the sense of no work... remember, passive income from ownership is separate from the work of management, which is paid via wage income).
ii) gambling on the stock market (short-term speculation rather than long-term investments); after all, if the game is to maximize profits, why waste all the time/risk on long-term investments when you can pillage now and use your growing wealth to bribe ("lobby") for bailouts when the crisis erupts?
6) As mentioned above regarding the violence needed by capitalism: the role of the State under capitalism in handling the anarchy of the market. Thus, once the capitalist contradictions above are resolved via socialism (resolving the class struggle and planning for social needs), the State does not need to be abolished; it will wither away.
...Of course this is a massive topic; Lenin only scratches the surface in The State and Revolution.
The Missing:
1) More practice with synthesis/"dialectics":
--To avoid dogma and excessive sectarian debates, we should see Engels and Marx as human beings of their context testing out powerful tools/lenses of social analysis, which involves making mistakes and learning from them.
...Thus, "Scientific Socialism" sounds rather dogmatic; it's convenient to forget that proper science requires publishing all your negative results, especially in "narcissism of small difference" debates between and even within the plethora of Leftist labels. The narcissism tendency is understandable given the Left's role of deconstructive critiques (opening Pandora's box), but at some point we have to be constructive which requires synthesis and diplomacy.
--So, for my part, I still find time to dive into idealism for their creativity/social imagination; one of my early influences is anarchist/anthropologist David Graeber. These days, I start with a historical materialist foundation and then let idealists like Graeber flip everything upside down to see what emerges.
...And of course materialism can be done in too rigid a manner; ex. the application of natural science to parts of economics requires careful unpacking, as the pro-capitalist market fundamentalists have demonstrated with their (mal)practice...
2) Critiquing Orthodox Marxism:
--Perhaps most importantly, we should recognize that Marxists (which itself is a massive label with numerous internal debates) do not have a monopoly on historical materialism/materialist socialism; I refer back to the materialist anarchism (which indeed is very influenced by Marx/Engels) in "What is Politics?", in particular these episodes critiquing Marxist-Leninism:
-11 - Why Every Communist Country is a One-Party Dictatorship
-11.1 Why the Russian Revolution Failed: When Rich Kids do all the Socialism
--Every time I read Marx/Engels/orthodox Marxists, I cannot help thinking (with the ungodly power of hindsight) about their optimism towards "developed" capitalists nations (Britain/Germany... later US), and how capitalists responded with:
i) Inebriating developed nations with social democracy, i.e. capitalist reformism (fueled by imperialism), where Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism only scratches the surface.
ii) For any socialism that slips through the cracks, smashing them with perpetual war. While resisting such aggressive violence, how much creation of violent hierarchies can socialists tolerate? If we bring in morality, the cycle of violence is the greatest evil perpetrated by capitalist imperialism:
-see "siege socialism" in Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
December 15, 2020
I recently started a personal project of reading Marxist theory (something I hope to delve deeply into in 2021, despite it being a busy year for me) and Socialism : Utopian and Scientific is one of the necessary preliminary texts. Now, I didn't want to jump directly into Capital, Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production because that's undoubtedly a hard text to read and I'm more than likely to abandon it even when I've succeeded in understanding some of the fundamental Marxist terms better. Besides, Engels himself wrote this book so that it could be an accessible alternative to reading capital. While it's definitely not an alternative, it does a good job of introducing the reader to the fundamentals of Marxism.
Within the text, Engels talks about the utopian socialists - Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owens. While the three were quite ambitious in their attempts of establishing a socialist society, they failed to recognise the class struggle developing between the working class and the bourgeoisie of their times. Modern socialism, to Engels, is a recognition of class antagonisms and the anarchy inherent to production. To make a science out of socialism, Engels suggests that we first have to place it upon a real basis.
Engels tries to develop a 'scientific' socialism to replace utopian socialism, and in order to accomplish this he examines the various contradictions within capitalism. Proletariat and capitalist interests are irreconcilable with each other and capitalist appropriation and accumulation will always dominate over productive forces, thereby making it an extremely unstable system. So Engels claims that the true solution to capitalism lies within the various violent contradictions inherent to it.
I spent a really long time going through the text and doing some research of my own ( I still don't really understand dialectical materialism), and I learnt a LOT. I still have a long way to go, but this was a great starting point.
Within the text, Engels talks about the utopian socialists - Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owens. While the three were quite ambitious in their attempts of establishing a socialist society, they failed to recognise the class struggle developing between the working class and the bourgeoisie of their times. Modern socialism, to Engels, is a recognition of class antagonisms and the anarchy inherent to production. To make a science out of socialism, Engels suggests that we first have to place it upon a real basis.
Engels tries to develop a 'scientific' socialism to replace utopian socialism, and in order to accomplish this he examines the various contradictions within capitalism. Proletariat and capitalist interests are irreconcilable with each other and capitalist appropriation and accumulation will always dominate over productive forces, thereby making it an extremely unstable system. So Engels claims that the true solution to capitalism lies within the various violent contradictions inherent to it.
I spent a really long time going through the text and doing some research of my own ( I still don't really understand dialectical materialism), and I learnt a LOT. I still have a long way to go, but this was a great starting point.
August 5, 2016
Don't start learning about socialism by reading the Communist Manifesto, start with this. It's a small piece, covering the utopian socialist movements, the development of Hegelian dialectics, and historical materialism. The first part is a description of the utopian socialist movements, what motivated them, and what actions they took to try to usher in socialism. The second part is a short description of the development of Hegelian (idealist) dialectics, the contrast between dialectics and metaphysics of bourgeois philosophers, and the synthesis of Hegelian dialectics with materialism by Marx and Engels to finally arrive at the materialist dialectics philosophy (which forms the basis of Marxist theory). But there's no need to be familiar with materialist dialectics (or philosophy for that matter) to understand any of the content of the book; it's described to make the reader familiar with what differentiates the utopian socialists from Marxists and how. The third and final chapter is a historical materialist explanation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It also describes capitalist crises, how the increasing exploitation of capitalism itself will lead to a proletarian revolution, and has the famous passage about the withering away of the state.
One important thing to take away from this is exactly what differentiates the utopians from Marxists. The answer is, among other things, a critical understanding of how capitalism functions, understanding the historical development of private property and capitalism, and an understanding of how the transition from capitalism to socialism might happen. The utopian socialists didn't have a theory that explained these, which makes Engels say:
Unfortunately many on the left today, especially those new to socialism, still suffer from this.
One important thing to take away from this is exactly what differentiates the utopians from Marxists. The answer is, among other things, a critical understanding of how capitalism functions, understanding the historical development of private property and capitalism, and an understanding of how the transition from capitalism to socialism might happen. The utopian socialists didn't have a theory that explained these, which makes Engels say:
Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion; a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects...
Unfortunately many on the left today, especially those new to socialism, still suffer from this.
April 5, 2024
A must-read. Simple, accessible, and only 90 pages! In my opinion, this is a better introduction to the works of Marx and Engels than the Communist Manifesto.
April 27, 2011
أسلوب إنجلس سلس جدًا وواضح ومتسلسل بطريقة منطقية، الكتاب سهل جدًا إذا كان عندك معلومات عامة سطحية عن الفلسفة والماركسية
يبدو أنه أن تقرأ عن الماركسية شيء وأن تقرأ للماركسيين شيء آخر
ويبدو أيضًا أن الاتحاد السوفيتي لم يكن ماركسيًا
يبدو أنه أن تقرأ عن الماركسية شيء وأن تقرأ للماركسيين شيء آخر
ويبدو أيضًا أن الاتحاد السوفيتي لم يكن ماركسيًا
June 15, 2021
Engels, seu lindo, por que tão didático?!
Essencial na pra compreensão do socialismo científico e pra entender suas bases (óbvio) históricas e ao que ele se contrapõe. Me parece que deveria ser a primeira leitura de qualquer pessoa pra começar a estudar o materialismo histórico dialético. Assim, ó: um deleite!
Essencial na pra compreensão do socialismo científico e pra entender suas bases (óbvio) históricas e ao que ele se contrapõe. Me parece que deveria ser a primeira leitura de qualquer pessoa pra começar a estudar o materialismo histórico dialético. Assim, ó: um deleite!
March 12, 2021
A brilliant introduction to the basics of Marxist philosophy and economics. Just read it for the first time in probably 15 years. Will resolve to go back to it at least every couple of years - the explanations are so clear and the writing so powerful, it's a joy to read. Unfortunately doesn't come with a dummies' guide to actually bringing about a socialist society; maybe that's in the sequel.
September 20, 2024
Here, Engels sheds light on the theory and practice of socialism. We follow the evolution between the idea and the establishment of the system: the working class appropriates the capitalist means of production through an all-powerful state, eradicating the concept of social classes and, therefore, of State.
Looking back over the years, it is clear that this scientific socialism still lacks certain conditions for accuracy and achievement.
Looking back over the years, it is clear that this scientific socialism still lacks certain conditions for accuracy and achievement.
August 11, 2025
Engels’ Socialism moves from the boisterous salons of eighteenth-century rationalists to the smoky furnaces of modern industry with all the subtlety of a brass band playing in a library.
It begins by giving the French philosophes their due, with Hegel’s thoight about “the world standing on its head” becoming more than a metaphor when Rousseau’s Contrat Social produces both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and, as Engels notes with a grim wink, “the Reign of Terror.”
Engels parades the dreamers, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, whose utopias brimmed with “stupendously grand thoughts” and occasionally grander absurdities. The French Revolution promised “fraternity,” but commerce delivered “the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition.” Guilds vanished, small proprietors discovered that “freedom of property” meant the freedom to sell it off, and the “right of the first night” merely traded aristocratic titles for the nameplate on a factory.
The grand social transformation, still embryonic in 1800, left a proletariat capable of storming a barricade for the bourgeoisie yet incapable of retaining the spoils, which made room for the social engineers who believed, with unearned confidence, that a lone genius could re-draft society as if it were an architectural plan.
By the time Engels turns to his “scientific” socialism, the plot reads like a detective story in which the culprit, capitalism, is caught red-handed by historical materialism. The means of production have grown into “gigantic productive forces” that strain against the capitalist frame much like an overfed python eying its own cage.
Engels sketches capitalism’s evolutionary tree with Darwinian relish, where handicraft gives way to manufacture, manufacture to modern industry, and each leap sharpens the antagonism between owners and workers.
He skewers British respectability for using religion as a kind of moral chloroform to keep the “puer robustus sed malitiosus” of the working class docile, while the Continental bourgeoisie, once boastful freethinkers, grow pious out of sheer self-preservation.
Yet he leaves his reader with an unbuttoned suspense. The proletariat, slow-stepping and tradition-bound, has begun to move again, “absorbing the substance” of socialism even when shy of the name. The question is no longer whether the old order will give way, but whether it will fall with the crash of a chandelier or the quiet snap of a worn-out thread, and Engels, the cynic with a taste for historical drama, clearly hopes for fireworks.
This is a dispatch from a future that had not yet arrived, written by someone convinced he could already see the timetable. It is fantastically utopian in its faith that history would oblige, yet sharpened by a scholar’s relish for demolishing his opponents with archival artillery. As an argument it strides far ahead of its time, building its case with the confidence of an architect sketching blueprints for a city that still exists only in the clouds.
Whatever one makes of its politics, it remains an unusually engaging read, brisk in its historical demolition work, sly in its asides, and wholly unafraid to imagine the impossible as if it were the inevitable.
It begins by giving the French philosophes their due, with Hegel’s thoight about “the world standing on its head” becoming more than a metaphor when Rousseau’s Contrat Social produces both the Declaration of the Rights of Man and, as Engels notes with a grim wink, “the Reign of Terror.”
Engels parades the dreamers, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, whose utopias brimmed with “stupendously grand thoughts” and occasionally grander absurdities. The French Revolution promised “fraternity,” but commerce delivered “the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition.” Guilds vanished, small proprietors discovered that “freedom of property” meant the freedom to sell it off, and the “right of the first night” merely traded aristocratic titles for the nameplate on a factory.
The grand social transformation, still embryonic in 1800, left a proletariat capable of storming a barricade for the bourgeoisie yet incapable of retaining the spoils, which made room for the social engineers who believed, with unearned confidence, that a lone genius could re-draft society as if it were an architectural plan.
By the time Engels turns to his “scientific” socialism, the plot reads like a detective story in which the culprit, capitalism, is caught red-handed by historical materialism. The means of production have grown into “gigantic productive forces” that strain against the capitalist frame much like an overfed python eying its own cage.
Engels sketches capitalism’s evolutionary tree with Darwinian relish, where handicraft gives way to manufacture, manufacture to modern industry, and each leap sharpens the antagonism between owners and workers.
He skewers British respectability for using religion as a kind of moral chloroform to keep the “puer robustus sed malitiosus” of the working class docile, while the Continental bourgeoisie, once boastful freethinkers, grow pious out of sheer self-preservation.
Yet he leaves his reader with an unbuttoned suspense. The proletariat, slow-stepping and tradition-bound, has begun to move again, “absorbing the substance” of socialism even when shy of the name. The question is no longer whether the old order will give way, but whether it will fall with the crash of a chandelier or the quiet snap of a worn-out thread, and Engels, the cynic with a taste for historical drama, clearly hopes for fireworks.
This is a dispatch from a future that had not yet arrived, written by someone convinced he could already see the timetable. It is fantastically utopian in its faith that history would oblige, yet sharpened by a scholar’s relish for demolishing his opponents with archival artillery. As an argument it strides far ahead of its time, building its case with the confidence of an architect sketching blueprints for a city that still exists only in the clouds.
Whatever one makes of its politics, it remains an unusually engaging read, brisk in its historical demolition work, sly in its asides, and wholly unafraid to imagine the impossible as if it were the inevitable.
October 30, 2023
It's socio-economic philosophy, not a science.
I'm not a socialist or Marxist and don't wholesale subscribe to the political-economic theory and model of socialism or communism. Having said that, there is tons of value in reading Marxists texts from Marx and Engels and others because they contain a lot of very accurate observations about capitalism that were prescient and relevant today. I'm certainly no expert on any of this, but I'm going to go ahead and act like an armchair expert for the next few paragraphs.
Here's the value of Marx and Engels critique: they accurately describe the fundamental problems with capitalistic systems and they did it quite a while ago. I definitely believe that there are only two main classes, the bourgeoise and the proletariat and the majority of culture wars and actual wars can often find their origins in the tension and opposition between these two classes. The bourgeoise appropriates the fruits of labor, surplus capital, and then concentrates that capital into political and social power creating the condition of anarcho-capitalism. The state only exists with the consent of the bourgeoisie and for the purpose of supporting the inexorable boom and bust of perpetually unstable markets caused by the exploitations of labor which, like dominos falling, results in the exhaustion of consumption and unused product which spoils the economy and workforce. All of this was true in Engels day, all of this is true today and it's even amplified with the opaque world of financial products. Not even a self-proclaimed capitalist can deny this cycle. What a self-proclaimed capitalist can claim is that it is state failure (or too much state interference depending on their mood) that doesn't let the magic of free markets ever work. What they fail to understand is that it is the state and the capitalists that collude and run the whole show together. There is no magical free market. It doesn't exist and can't exist because the problem with competitions is that someone always wins them and seizes power and changes the rules.
What I don't really agree with, likely because I don't fully understand, is Engels acting like Marxist theories like historical dialectics is a verifiable scientific phenomenon like evolution. A lot of Marxism is believing that there is a natural evolution from feudal economic arrangements to capitalists to then socialism where the state will naturally "wither away". Engels here more than suggests that socialism is a natural next step in human society where laborers value will stay with them, dictating needs and supply, and the state will no longer be needed to contain anarcho-capitalism. I just don't really buy this not only because I have the hindsight of history on my side but I also don't think the theory rests on a "scientific" basis as it claims. It's all just philosophy and a model which don't always have true bearing on reality.
I don't really get the worship of dialectics. It's a great theory, the ying and yang or push and pull and natural contradictions bare new age of human development and on and on, ect. It's a great model, really, but I'm not about to say its the driving force that explains the progress of human evolution. This weird smoke screen happens when leftists talk about dialectics. They talk about how brilliant and true it is and then make an enormous leap in logic to the virtues and inevitability of Marxist theory. It's just a thought model, let's not be hasty and take it too far.
And that, in a sense, is what has made implementing socialism a historic disaster in my opinion. I'm not going to sit here and extol the virtues of capitalism but I'm certainly not going to praise the implementation of socialism or communism. Leftists like to point out, "Hey look how great China is doing now! Or look at healthcare in Cuba!" Okay. That is some ripe cherry picking and a complete white washing of the immoral authoritarian, single party, rule that arrived at these meager results. Furthermore, any success in a supposed modern communist country is almost entirely dependent on a globalized capitalistic world order led by American economic hegemony. The gains in China are simply accelerated industrialization fueled by a hype financed government and American consumption. It ain't the "communism." And yes, I'm well aware of the 80 year sabotaging of the American industrialized complex on the world of communism, also something very important to consider.
At any rate, socialism and communism are theories, not a "scientific" inevitability like Engels seems to imply here with the all the rigors of other sciences. Engels transmutes scientific rigor to socialism with a sleight of hand which becomes dogma for some people and then gospel. This is all socio-economic theory and speculation which does have great merit but probably shouldn't be used as the vanguard ideology of a revolution. That doesn't go very well...
I'm not a socialist or Marxist and don't wholesale subscribe to the political-economic theory and model of socialism or communism. Having said that, there is tons of value in reading Marxists texts from Marx and Engels and others because they contain a lot of very accurate observations about capitalism that were prescient and relevant today. I'm certainly no expert on any of this, but I'm going to go ahead and act like an armchair expert for the next few paragraphs.
Here's the value of Marx and Engels critique: they accurately describe the fundamental problems with capitalistic systems and they did it quite a while ago. I definitely believe that there are only two main classes, the bourgeoise and the proletariat and the majority of culture wars and actual wars can often find their origins in the tension and opposition between these two classes. The bourgeoise appropriates the fruits of labor, surplus capital, and then concentrates that capital into political and social power creating the condition of anarcho-capitalism. The state only exists with the consent of the bourgeoisie and for the purpose of supporting the inexorable boom and bust of perpetually unstable markets caused by the exploitations of labor which, like dominos falling, results in the exhaustion of consumption and unused product which spoils the economy and workforce. All of this was true in Engels day, all of this is true today and it's even amplified with the opaque world of financial products. Not even a self-proclaimed capitalist can deny this cycle. What a self-proclaimed capitalist can claim is that it is state failure (or too much state interference depending on their mood) that doesn't let the magic of free markets ever work. What they fail to understand is that it is the state and the capitalists that collude and run the whole show together. There is no magical free market. It doesn't exist and can't exist because the problem with competitions is that someone always wins them and seizes power and changes the rules.
What I don't really agree with, likely because I don't fully understand, is Engels acting like Marxist theories like historical dialectics is a verifiable scientific phenomenon like evolution. A lot of Marxism is believing that there is a natural evolution from feudal economic arrangements to capitalists to then socialism where the state will naturally "wither away". Engels here more than suggests that socialism is a natural next step in human society where laborers value will stay with them, dictating needs and supply, and the state will no longer be needed to contain anarcho-capitalism. I just don't really buy this not only because I have the hindsight of history on my side but I also don't think the theory rests on a "scientific" basis as it claims. It's all just philosophy and a model which don't always have true bearing on reality.
I don't really get the worship of dialectics. It's a great theory, the ying and yang or push and pull and natural contradictions bare new age of human development and on and on, ect. It's a great model, really, but I'm not about to say its the driving force that explains the progress of human evolution. This weird smoke screen happens when leftists talk about dialectics. They talk about how brilliant and true it is and then make an enormous leap in logic to the virtues and inevitability of Marxist theory. It's just a thought model, let's not be hasty and take it too far.
And that, in a sense, is what has made implementing socialism a historic disaster in my opinion. I'm not going to sit here and extol the virtues of capitalism but I'm certainly not going to praise the implementation of socialism or communism. Leftists like to point out, "Hey look how great China is doing now! Or look at healthcare in Cuba!" Okay. That is some ripe cherry picking and a complete white washing of the immoral authoritarian, single party, rule that arrived at these meager results. Furthermore, any success in a supposed modern communist country is almost entirely dependent on a globalized capitalistic world order led by American economic hegemony. The gains in China are simply accelerated industrialization fueled by a hype financed government and American consumption. It ain't the "communism." And yes, I'm well aware of the 80 year sabotaging of the American industrialized complex on the world of communism, also something very important to consider.
At any rate, socialism and communism are theories, not a "scientific" inevitability like Engels seems to imply here with the all the rigors of other sciences. Engels transmutes scientific rigor to socialism with a sleight of hand which becomes dogma for some people and then gospel. This is all socio-economic theory and speculation which does have great merit but probably shouldn't be used as the vanguard ideology of a revolution. That doesn't go very well...
May 24, 2025
Very dry and while it is relevant, I don't think I took anything from it.
August 22, 2020
This work is very much "Marxism 101", and, like the Manifesto, it seems like it would make for a good entry point.
Engels lays out his and Marx's intellectual predecessors from the early French materialists to Saint Simon, Fourier, and Owen. He explains their "utopian" socialisms quite well, and contextualizes then as outcomes of, or reactions to, the transition from feudalism to capitalism. I found his brief history of that transition enjoyable, interesting, and pretty convincing.
In his elucidation of his and Marx's "scientific" socialism, he seems to compare it to the natural sciences of someone like Darwin. His diagnosis of the current systems workings, contradictions, shortcomings, and processes were, again, interesting and convincing.
I'm very on board with historical materialism and with the Marxist lens as a tool to analyze and understand the past and present. It's with the political prescriptions that come out of it that I'm less comfortable- even if I do definitely lean that way. I sympathize with Engels' stated goal to help bring about "the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom". However, the way he and Marx viewed their philosophy as almost scientific fact meant that they imbued their ideas with a kind of inevitability. If you believe in that wholeheartedly it is easy to justify forcing a society through rapid transitions, like Stalin did for example, to reach the end goal of a communist society. The inevitable "withering away" of the state, while explained a bit better in this work, is also not very convincing to me.
Nonetheless, I don't think there's authoritarianism INHERENT in this school of thought. I was actually surprised to see Engels' analysis of the state as a repressive tool that is only a product of class exploitation.
Anyways, this is long winded. If you've read this far, just give the book a read!
Engels lays out his and Marx's intellectual predecessors from the early French materialists to Saint Simon, Fourier, and Owen. He explains their "utopian" socialisms quite well, and contextualizes then as outcomes of, or reactions to, the transition from feudalism to capitalism. I found his brief history of that transition enjoyable, interesting, and pretty convincing.
In his elucidation of his and Marx's "scientific" socialism, he seems to compare it to the natural sciences of someone like Darwin. His diagnosis of the current systems workings, contradictions, shortcomings, and processes were, again, interesting and convincing.
I'm very on board with historical materialism and with the Marxist lens as a tool to analyze and understand the past and present. It's with the political prescriptions that come out of it that I'm less comfortable- even if I do definitely lean that way. I sympathize with Engels' stated goal to help bring about "the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom". However, the way he and Marx viewed their philosophy as almost scientific fact meant that they imbued their ideas with a kind of inevitability. If you believe in that wholeheartedly it is easy to justify forcing a society through rapid transitions, like Stalin did for example, to reach the end goal of a communist society. The inevitable "withering away" of the state, while explained a bit better in this work, is also not very convincing to me.
Nonetheless, I don't think there's authoritarianism INHERENT in this school of thought. I was actually surprised to see Engels' analysis of the state as a repressive tool that is only a product of class exploitation.
Anyways, this is long winded. If you've read this far, just give the book a read!
June 26, 2017
you should read this.
everyone should read this.
dialectics for the cool kids.
historical materialism for the pals.
I've not read a more concrete explanation of D & HM particularly, but the whole piece is a wonderful exploration of where the lads were at the end of the 19th century and to a lesser extent in practical terms, where we are now.
you have the right to the value your labour creates.
everyone should read this.
dialectics for the cool kids.
historical materialism for the pals.
I've not read a more concrete explanation of D & HM particularly, but the whole piece is a wonderful exploration of where the lads were at the end of the 19th century and to a lesser extent in practical terms, where we are now.
you have the right to the value your labour creates.
April 17, 2021
I like how this book explains dialectics and think it’s a better explanation of things than the manifesto. I’m gonna re-read later probably.
January 29, 2021
Turns out that, between the two, Engels is the better explainer of Marx’s ideas. I’ll be recommending this little piece to newcomers to Marx going forward. Engels manages to distill the key points of both Historical Materialism and Dialectical thinking in a concise and straightforward way whereas Marx avoids explicit discussion of his method (there are exceptions), preferring to show or demonstrate its application and let it speak for itself.
The intro is like an open letter to the British intelligentsia pre-emptively defending “historical materialism” against what he assumes is a British anti-materialist prejudice. For one thing, materialism has its roots in British philosophy (Duns Scotus and Bacon started it, Hobbes systematized it, Locke proved it). For another, the ‘agnosticism’ fashionable in Britain at the time reduces itself, in the last analysis, to an irrational idealism or an implicitly materialist perspective anyway. So then Engels provides a wonderfully concise summary of the main features of Historical Materialism as a view of history which:
- Seeks the ultimate cause and moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society
- In the changes in the modes of production
- In the division of society into classes
- And in the struggle between these classes
He then applies this method using the example of Feudalism’s transition to Capitalism with an emphasis on three key “battles” in the Bourgeois fight against feudalism: The Reformation, The English Civil War, and the French Revolution. The one criticism I have here is I think his attempt to explain the role of religion in the transition to bourgeois society is unclear and a little convoluted.
Part I of the essay proper covers the early development of socialist thought through the three paragons of the tradition: Saint Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Engels is willing to give credit where it’s due heaping praise on Saint Simon for his “comprehensive breadth of view”, Fourier for his “genuinely thorough”, “witty”, and “French” criticism of the existing conditions of society, and Owen to whom “every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself”. However, they are also all united in their “Utopian” shortcomings for having treated socialism as the “expression of absolute truth, reason, and justice…independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man.” This Utopian project based on empty abstractions inevitably devolves into a “kind of eclectic average Socialism” or a mere “mish-mash” of theories instead of a single “scientific socialism.”
Part II develops the idea of this “scientific socialism” which can effectively guide the modern proletariat in its historical mission of universal emancipation. Firstly, he introduces the idea of “dialectics”, explaining it by contrast to “metaphysical” (commonsensical) thinking. Briefly: metaphysics thinks of reality in terms of “things” which are “fixed, rigid, given once and for all” while dialectical thinking thinks of reality in terms of “processes” which are constantly changing, always becoming new things, and fundamentally constituted as a unity of opposites.
Moving dialectically and employing the historical materialist method he introduced before, Engels looks at the capitalist mode of production as a process with a beginning and an end—one which will be the result of the contradictions of capitalism itself. Contradictions like social production vs private appropriation of goods, the forces vs the relations of production, the centralization of firms vs the anarchy of the market, etc. Engels also touches on the business cycle and crises of overproduction, the role of the state, and the post-capitalist communism to be established after the revolution.
The intro is like an open letter to the British intelligentsia pre-emptively defending “historical materialism” against what he assumes is a British anti-materialist prejudice. For one thing, materialism has its roots in British philosophy (Duns Scotus and Bacon started it, Hobbes systematized it, Locke proved it). For another, the ‘agnosticism’ fashionable in Britain at the time reduces itself, in the last analysis, to an irrational idealism or an implicitly materialist perspective anyway. So then Engels provides a wonderfully concise summary of the main features of Historical Materialism as a view of history which:
- Seeks the ultimate cause and moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society
- In the changes in the modes of production
- In the division of society into classes
- And in the struggle between these classes
He then applies this method using the example of Feudalism’s transition to Capitalism with an emphasis on three key “battles” in the Bourgeois fight against feudalism: The Reformation, The English Civil War, and the French Revolution. The one criticism I have here is I think his attempt to explain the role of religion in the transition to bourgeois society is unclear and a little convoluted.
Part I of the essay proper covers the early development of socialist thought through the three paragons of the tradition: Saint Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Engels is willing to give credit where it’s due heaping praise on Saint Simon for his “comprehensive breadth of view”, Fourier for his “genuinely thorough”, “witty”, and “French” criticism of the existing conditions of society, and Owen to whom “every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself”. However, they are also all united in their “Utopian” shortcomings for having treated socialism as the “expression of absolute truth, reason, and justice…independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man.” This Utopian project based on empty abstractions inevitably devolves into a “kind of eclectic average Socialism” or a mere “mish-mash” of theories instead of a single “scientific socialism.”
Part II develops the idea of this “scientific socialism” which can effectively guide the modern proletariat in its historical mission of universal emancipation. Firstly, he introduces the idea of “dialectics”, explaining it by contrast to “metaphysical” (commonsensical) thinking. Briefly: metaphysics thinks of reality in terms of “things” which are “fixed, rigid, given once and for all” while dialectical thinking thinks of reality in terms of “processes” which are constantly changing, always becoming new things, and fundamentally constituted as a unity of opposites.
Moving dialectically and employing the historical materialist method he introduced before, Engels looks at the capitalist mode of production as a process with a beginning and an end—one which will be the result of the contradictions of capitalism itself. Contradictions like social production vs private appropriation of goods, the forces vs the relations of production, the centralization of firms vs the anarchy of the market, etc. Engels also touches on the business cycle and crises of overproduction, the role of the state, and the post-capitalist communism to be established after the revolution.
April 17, 2021
Aquest senyor és tremendo i feia exposicions claríssimes dels fonaments de la societat de classes. És un text molt esclaridor, m'agradaria haver-lo llegit abans. Considero que diu exposa les idees principals del marxisme envers l'evolució històrica de la societat de classes i la contradicció principal producció social - apropiació individual de manera excelsa. M'han agradat molt les comparatives constants entre món natural i món social (no parava de flexejar de coneixement científic), encara que m'ha semblat que de vegades queia en cert mecanicisme, considerant com moment absolut de la relació dialèctica objecte-subjecte la part objectiva i menytenint el subjecte. Sinó, li donaria cinc estrelles. Li donaria quatre i mitja si es pogués.
October 16, 2022
This books provides a very short introduction to "scientific socialism" aka dialectical materialism aka Marxism. The writing is clear, at least to the extent that that is possible given how nebulous some of the ideas underlying Marxism are. Many Marxists feel that this book is the best introduction to Marxist thought. Although there has been some debate as to whether or not Engels writings can be taken to 100% accurately reflect Marx's thought the truth is that Engels was Marx's life long patron and was, essentially, familiar with all of his writings and many believe that when you read Engels are you are, effectively, reading Marx. Engels’ writing style is less caustic than Marx's which will, presumably, be looked at favorably by some Marxists and unfavorably by others.
Part I of the book starts off by Engels giving his overview of Enlightenment thinking leading into the French Revolution and the disappointments that followed. Along the way we learn who Engels’ heroes during this period were: for instance Fourier for his ability to critique society. As will come as a surprise to nobody, Engels feels that the French Revolution's failures were ultimately due to it being a bourgeois revolution. Engels then briefly discusses early, "pre scientific" or utopian socialist thought and shows a particular admiration for Robert Owen. Although a great admirer of Owen, Engels feels that Utopian Socialism ultimately was limited in its implementation by not having a scientific foundation and, thus, was subject to the idiosyncrasies of particular individuals who tried to implement it. Scientific socialism, he claims, gets rid of this problem.
Part II of the book deals with "dialectics" which Engels believes was the way to get socialism onto a scientific footing. The most interesting thing to learn here is how, despite striving for a scientific footing, the dialectic is a very nebulous thing without a clear definition. It has something to do with "contradictions". In the case of the dialectic, however, the definition of "contradiction" is different than what it is in science. In logic and, hence, science a contradiction is something which simply cannot be true, and, hence, simply cannot exist because it is violation of the laws of logic. In the dialectic, however, contradictions do exist, and the dialectic is an historical force which works to resolve them and move evolution forward. For example, capitalism's enormous productivity increases providing the ability to provide abundantly for all, but fails to do so. Naturally Engels mentions Darwin's discovery of evolution as demonstrating the truth of the dialectic.
One of the most important things to learn from Engels' discussion of the dialectic is that it is something that advocates believe exists above science. In this way, Marxists philosophers and other academics in the humanities, even to the present day, see themselves as being above physical scientists.
Another part of the too-loose-to-be-scientific non-definition of the dialectic is that it has something to do with how truth is not really a crisp set of "true" and "false" binaries or even definite concepts or objects. Engels gives the example of the fact that what constitutes the atoms in your body is constantly changing and, eventually, completely replaced over time. Are you then the same person? This fuzziness is an idea that has greatly influence Marxists and post-modernist philosophy right up to the present day. If we look at modern day science, however, it is pretty clear that at the most fundamental level, physics, all the reasoning is done with logic which is quite binary. In contrast to the dialectic, there are crisp opposites and non-fuzzy sets: for example fermions and bosons. It did not take new laws of logic invented after Engels to get science on a crisp foundation. Indeed it has always been like that. Thus, here Engels shows that despite feeling the dialectic puts Marxists above physical scientists they actually do not seem to have a scientific mindset at all. Indeed, it is rather anti-scientific. Again a trend which continues with their philosophers to the present day.
What the dialectic does entail, however, is the belief that through scientific study in which scientific socialists use the dialectic to resolve "contradictions" the economy and society can be run in a manner superior to the "anarchy" of capitalism.
In the final part, Engels discusses his view of capitalism. The main claim here is that capitalism is fatally flawed because it is trying to apply a notion of ownership of the results of labor production that was valid in the middle ages but no longer is. A contradiction has emerged and the dialectic will work it out. In the middle ages the final product of labor was due almost entirely to you and as such you owned it. Occasionally laborers would be hired by others but only occasionally so wage labor was not a problem. Most people owned most of their own land and, hence, kept most of the output of their labor. Engels believes that capitalism changed all that. Now labor was spread out among many people, it became a social instead of an individual phenomena, and none of the workers end up owing the final output of their labor. This allowed capitalists to take away as much of that labor value as possible to increase their wealth to ridiculous extremes, which Engels claims even they recognized, while the proletariat received barely enough to get by as their numbers and conditions worsened over time.
Engels cites machinery and the productivity booms it enabled as primarily responsible for the misery of capitalism. Since machinery was continuously evolving and able to displace workers and since competition was fierce to sell goods at the lowest price misery increased over time and, to the benefit of capitalists, an increasing army of reserve labor was created. Engels also criticizes capitalism for expanding infinitely including into other countries across the globe as part of its insatiable appetite for new markets to sell into.
True to the dialectic, Engels points out how capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. First, it creates a cycle of booms and busts that become increasingly intolerable. To alleviate this, temporary, capitalists create monopolies and trusts (think Standard Oil). That, however, is too blatantly exploitive so the next step it to control the modern state which Engels insists exists to protect the bourgeoisie from the proletariat and, occasionally, other capitalists so bad that even most capitalists feel have gone too far. That too becomes intolerable, however, and Engels sees the proletariat then rising up to seize political power and the means of production.
Exceeding even his vagueness in discussing what the dialectic is, Engels is particularly vague in describing how things would work once the proletariat seized political power and the means of production. All social ills would be resolved through scientific application of dialectical reasoning. Productive forces which capitalism held back would be unleashed such that everyone's needs were met and they could now live at a level above animals. In a truly bizarre sentence and, unintentionally, demonstrating an actual contradiction, Engels contends that by working out how to administer everything in a scientific way class and the need for the state would then vanish. Truly the modern state only continues to exist to help the bourgeois exploit the proletariat!
Deciding how to rate a book like this is interesting. Certainly it is does indeed give an excellent overview of Marxism. It is short. It is cheap: 99 cents for the kindle edition. Most can probably read it in a day or two. (I am a very slow and like to take notes so it took me four sittings.) Triangulating with Thomas Sowell's Marxism: Philosophy and Economics I could not find any inconsistencies, this suggesting that both Engels and Sowell knew Marx's work well. Thus the book is an invaluable introduction to Marxism and seems a must read for that reason.
On the other hand, Engels approach is completely unscientific and, indeed, even anti-scientific. Engels seems to ignore the fact that at the time he wrote the book, in 1892, the predictions of Marxism just were not coming true. There were not getting to be more proletariat. Their conditions were improving. Yes, there were still booms and busts in the capitalist economic cycles, which continues even now 130 years later, but they were not bringing western societies closer to a communist revolution. Engels was aware of all these things, having corresponded with Marx about them, but fails to mention the problems he realized in this overview. That is certainly not a very scientific approach! Real scientists make a point of highlighting the limitations of their theories. To Engles it is all roses.
As a final note, having read Sowell, I was expecting there to be more discussion of how naive Marx thought Utopian socialists were. How he ridiculed the idea that everyone would be paid the same flat rate multiplied by how many hours they clocked in. How Utopians foresaw the free market going away where, by contrast, Marx thought there would always be a need for one to some degree. Finally, although alienation was a central theme of Marx's work, Engels only spends a couple of sentences discussing it. Due to all the flaws I can only rate the book 3 out of 5 stars. Despite this everyone who wants to understand classical Marxism, which should be everyone these days, should read it.
Part I of the book starts off by Engels giving his overview of Enlightenment thinking leading into the French Revolution and the disappointments that followed. Along the way we learn who Engels’ heroes during this period were: for instance Fourier for his ability to critique society. As will come as a surprise to nobody, Engels feels that the French Revolution's failures were ultimately due to it being a bourgeois revolution. Engels then briefly discusses early, "pre scientific" or utopian socialist thought and shows a particular admiration for Robert Owen. Although a great admirer of Owen, Engels feels that Utopian Socialism ultimately was limited in its implementation by not having a scientific foundation and, thus, was subject to the idiosyncrasies of particular individuals who tried to implement it. Scientific socialism, he claims, gets rid of this problem.
Part II of the book deals with "dialectics" which Engels believes was the way to get socialism onto a scientific footing. The most interesting thing to learn here is how, despite striving for a scientific footing, the dialectic is a very nebulous thing without a clear definition. It has something to do with "contradictions". In the case of the dialectic, however, the definition of "contradiction" is different than what it is in science. In logic and, hence, science a contradiction is something which simply cannot be true, and, hence, simply cannot exist because it is violation of the laws of logic. In the dialectic, however, contradictions do exist, and the dialectic is an historical force which works to resolve them and move evolution forward. For example, capitalism's enormous productivity increases providing the ability to provide abundantly for all, but fails to do so. Naturally Engels mentions Darwin's discovery of evolution as demonstrating the truth of the dialectic.
One of the most important things to learn from Engels' discussion of the dialectic is that it is something that advocates believe exists above science. In this way, Marxists philosophers and other academics in the humanities, even to the present day, see themselves as being above physical scientists.
Another part of the too-loose-to-be-scientific non-definition of the dialectic is that it has something to do with how truth is not really a crisp set of "true" and "false" binaries or even definite concepts or objects. Engels gives the example of the fact that what constitutes the atoms in your body is constantly changing and, eventually, completely replaced over time. Are you then the same person? This fuzziness is an idea that has greatly influence Marxists and post-modernist philosophy right up to the present day. If we look at modern day science, however, it is pretty clear that at the most fundamental level, physics, all the reasoning is done with logic which is quite binary. In contrast to the dialectic, there are crisp opposites and non-fuzzy sets: for example fermions and bosons. It did not take new laws of logic invented after Engels to get science on a crisp foundation. Indeed it has always been like that. Thus, here Engels shows that despite feeling the dialectic puts Marxists above physical scientists they actually do not seem to have a scientific mindset at all. Indeed, it is rather anti-scientific. Again a trend which continues with their philosophers to the present day.
What the dialectic does entail, however, is the belief that through scientific study in which scientific socialists use the dialectic to resolve "contradictions" the economy and society can be run in a manner superior to the "anarchy" of capitalism.
In the final part, Engels discusses his view of capitalism. The main claim here is that capitalism is fatally flawed because it is trying to apply a notion of ownership of the results of labor production that was valid in the middle ages but no longer is. A contradiction has emerged and the dialectic will work it out. In the middle ages the final product of labor was due almost entirely to you and as such you owned it. Occasionally laborers would be hired by others but only occasionally so wage labor was not a problem. Most people owned most of their own land and, hence, kept most of the output of their labor. Engels believes that capitalism changed all that. Now labor was spread out among many people, it became a social instead of an individual phenomena, and none of the workers end up owing the final output of their labor. This allowed capitalists to take away as much of that labor value as possible to increase their wealth to ridiculous extremes, which Engels claims even they recognized, while the proletariat received barely enough to get by as their numbers and conditions worsened over time.
Engels cites machinery and the productivity booms it enabled as primarily responsible for the misery of capitalism. Since machinery was continuously evolving and able to displace workers and since competition was fierce to sell goods at the lowest price misery increased over time and, to the benefit of capitalists, an increasing army of reserve labor was created. Engels also criticizes capitalism for expanding infinitely including into other countries across the globe as part of its insatiable appetite for new markets to sell into.
True to the dialectic, Engels points out how capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. First, it creates a cycle of booms and busts that become increasingly intolerable. To alleviate this, temporary, capitalists create monopolies and trusts (think Standard Oil). That, however, is too blatantly exploitive so the next step it to control the modern state which Engels insists exists to protect the bourgeoisie from the proletariat and, occasionally, other capitalists so bad that even most capitalists feel have gone too far. That too becomes intolerable, however, and Engels sees the proletariat then rising up to seize political power and the means of production.
Exceeding even his vagueness in discussing what the dialectic is, Engels is particularly vague in describing how things would work once the proletariat seized political power and the means of production. All social ills would be resolved through scientific application of dialectical reasoning. Productive forces which capitalism held back would be unleashed such that everyone's needs were met and they could now live at a level above animals. In a truly bizarre sentence and, unintentionally, demonstrating an actual contradiction, Engels contends that by working out how to administer everything in a scientific way class and the need for the state would then vanish. Truly the modern state only continues to exist to help the bourgeois exploit the proletariat!
Deciding how to rate a book like this is interesting. Certainly it is does indeed give an excellent overview of Marxism. It is short. It is cheap: 99 cents for the kindle edition. Most can probably read it in a day or two. (I am a very slow and like to take notes so it took me four sittings.) Triangulating with Thomas Sowell's Marxism: Philosophy and Economics I could not find any inconsistencies, this suggesting that both Engels and Sowell knew Marx's work well. Thus the book is an invaluable introduction to Marxism and seems a must read for that reason.
On the other hand, Engels approach is completely unscientific and, indeed, even anti-scientific. Engels seems to ignore the fact that at the time he wrote the book, in 1892, the predictions of Marxism just were not coming true. There were not getting to be more proletariat. Their conditions were improving. Yes, there were still booms and busts in the capitalist economic cycles, which continues even now 130 years later, but they were not bringing western societies closer to a communist revolution. Engels was aware of all these things, having corresponded with Marx about them, but fails to mention the problems he realized in this overview. That is certainly not a very scientific approach! Real scientists make a point of highlighting the limitations of their theories. To Engles it is all roses.
As a final note, having read Sowell, I was expecting there to be more discussion of how naive Marx thought Utopian socialists were. How he ridiculed the idea that everyone would be paid the same flat rate multiplied by how many hours they clocked in. How Utopians foresaw the free market going away where, by contrast, Marx thought there would always be a need for one to some degree. Finally, although alienation was a central theme of Marx's work, Engels only spends a couple of sentences discussing it. Due to all the flaws I can only rate the book 3 out of 5 stars. Despite this everyone who wants to understand classical Marxism, which should be everyone these days, should read it.
March 8, 2023
read this in a massive old house in the french countryside with 30 parisian socialists…. cannot imagine a better setting to do so………. except maybe one where i understood more than half of our post-reading discussion.. anyway…..
this was good, but i disagree with a review i saw that said it was a better intro to socialism than the communist manifesto. that text is far more accessible and covers far more ground. maybe i’m just a hater because i can’t stand philosophy for the most part, i tried to adjust my star-rating for that fact. this did honestly inspire me to learn more about dialectics and materialism, but i think i need an attention-span guarding youtube video or wikipedia clickhole to keep me engaged before i move on to more 19th century writing lol. i’m a mess
“In like manner, every organized being is every moment the same and not the same; every moment, it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment, some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time, the matter of its body is completely renewed”
this was good, but i disagree with a review i saw that said it was a better intro to socialism than the communist manifesto. that text is far more accessible and covers far more ground. maybe i’m just a hater because i can’t stand philosophy for the most part, i tried to adjust my star-rating for that fact. this did honestly inspire me to learn more about dialectics and materialism, but i think i need an attention-span guarding youtube video or wikipedia clickhole to keep me engaged before i move on to more 19th century writing lol. i’m a mess
“In like manner, every organized being is every moment the same and not the same; every moment, it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment, some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time, the matter of its body is completely renewed”
August 18, 2023
This book was such a fun short ride. Engles had a powerful voice even in his written words. In this work,he analysed the rise of the bourgeoisie, french revolution, materialist philosophy, Hegelian idealism,dialectics and what not. Only Engles could have written such a powerful analysis of socialism and the contradictory nature of capitalism. And this book makes so many difficult phenomena of Marxist thought accesible. Of course,there are points to disagree with Engles. But this Marxist book is for everyone who wants to start studying Marxist theory.
May 8, 2024
very accessible. it took a few pages to get into it but then i understood most things
May 16, 2020
Reading this today, with some sense of the internal contradictions that Soviet positivism unleashed (following Ilyenkov), it is easy to be critical with Engels, for many. Lukacs is admittedly too critical, for while Engels is in practice a bit reductionistic and schematic (his analogy between the sciences of nature, which he knew only as a beginner, contrasted with the science of society, which he studied in depth, definitely posed serious difficulties for those who came after), he is in essence a brilliant Hegelian. Engels makes more explicit than Marx how their method can be applied outside of the realm of capital and class struggle, and as this task was so massive, he can easily be forgiven. Engels synthesized so many realms of knowledge he showed, in practice, the power of thought (in a Hegelian sense) as applied to material conditions. His work shows the extremely rich possibilities of the intellect, released from bourgeois immediacy, in application to the many realms of thought which artificially remain separate in capitalist modes of thought. When the tools Hegel used to make sense of the inadequacy of our thinking apparatus-mathematical, lacking the concretion and dynamism of reality-was applied to that reality itself, history itself became a conscious process, or at least we’ve seen the possibilities therewith.
What Engels sacrifices in method (he plays down abstraction, which Marx showed in Capital, for intelligibility), however, he makes up for in his brilliant pedagogical exposition of socialism. The problem with Engels is that he must be critiqued, as he and Marx did with Hegel, but all of these thinkers require years to really adequately come to terms with their own contradictions. Bourgeois academics, taking pieces here and there, lacking in an overall unified sense of socialism, can dismiss Engels as “scientism” without changing the reality of his depth, and the importance of his work for changing our societies.
What Engels sacrifices in method (he plays down abstraction, which Marx showed in Capital, for intelligibility), however, he makes up for in his brilliant pedagogical exposition of socialism. The problem with Engels is that he must be critiqued, as he and Marx did with Hegel, but all of these thinkers require years to really adequately come to terms with their own contradictions. Bourgeois academics, taking pieces here and there, lacking in an overall unified sense of socialism, can dismiss Engels as “scientism” without changing the reality of his depth, and the importance of his work for changing our societies.
October 17, 2020
يلخص انجلز تاريخ النظم الاجتماعية والسياسية بناء على تاريخ تطور النظم الاقتصادية اى تطور وسائل الانتاج وعلاقاته . وهذا ما يعتبر تطبيقا مبسطا للمنهج التاريخى الديالكتيكى او المادية التاريخية . فالاشتراكية العلمية ليست نمطية وانما هى تفسر التطور بصورة علمية ولا تعتقد بافكار دوجماطيقية او مثالية مجردة ولكن بجدلية واقعية للتناقضات التى تتصارع فى عالمنا طالما بقيت عشوائية وغير منظمة اى غير علمية والتى كان على الاشتراكية العلمية الماركسية ان تدرس اصل التناقضات فى النظام الاجتماعى القائم وهو النظام الرأسمالى ونشأتهما التاريخية ومآلهما المستقبلى .
ويبرز انجلز الهوة الشاسعة الفاصلة بين الاشتراكية اليوتوبية لدى السابقين على ماركس وبين الاشتراكية العلمية الماركسية ويوضح ان اساس هذا الفارق هو مادى كذلك فهو اما تاريخى لدى السابقين نظرا لعدم النمو الكافى فى هذه المرحلة المبكرة للانتاج الراسمالى وبالتالى تأخر الوعى البروليتارى او طفولته والتى كانت قد نضجت على زمن ماركس ونجد هذه الامثلة لدى أوين وسان سيمون وفورييه . واما ان يكون الفارق بين الاشتراكيتين اقتصاديا نابعا من الرغبة البرجوازية فى تشويش مفهوم الاشتراكية لدى الجمهور باستخدام مُنَظّرين ماجورين تحت لوائها - كما عند برودون المعاصر لماركس فى فرنسا والاشتراكيين الديمقراطيين الالمان - بحيث يشوهونها ويحدون من افقها . الا ان العلم الحقيقى للاقتصاد السياسى الذى وضعه ماركس فى كتاب رأس المال اصبح هو القاعدة الاساسية للاشتراكية الحديثة والذى يحد من تخيل وجود انواع متعددة للاشتراكية فليس ثمة سوى واحدة وهى بالتأكيد علمية تتأسس على الواقع وتعبر عنه وتسعى الى تحسينه بالوسائل المادية المتاحة . لا مجرد فكرة يدرسها العقل بصورة يوتوبية بمعزل عن الوقائع ولا تكون الحلول فيها عملية فتظل سادرة فى عقمها وتخرج عن النطاق الثورى الساعى لتغيير واقع استغلال الانسان للانسان .
ويبرز انجلز الهوة الشاسعة الفاصلة بين الاشتراكية اليوتوبية لدى السابقين على ماركس وبين الاشتراكية العلمية الماركسية ويوضح ان اساس هذا الفارق هو مادى كذلك فهو اما تاريخى لدى السابقين نظرا لعدم النمو الكافى فى هذه المرحلة المبكرة للانتاج الراسمالى وبالتالى تأخر الوعى البروليتارى او طفولته والتى كانت قد نضجت على زمن ماركس ونجد هذه الامثلة لدى أوين وسان سيمون وفورييه . واما ان يكون الفارق بين الاشتراكيتين اقتصاديا نابعا من الرغبة البرجوازية فى تشويش مفهوم الاشتراكية لدى الجمهور باستخدام مُنَظّرين ماجورين تحت لوائها - كما عند برودون المعاصر لماركس فى فرنسا والاشتراكيين الديمقراطيين الالمان - بحيث يشوهونها ويحدون من افقها . الا ان العلم الحقيقى للاقتصاد السياسى الذى وضعه ماركس فى كتاب رأس المال اصبح هو القاعدة الاساسية للاشتراكية الحديثة والذى يحد من تخيل وجود انواع متعددة للاشتراكية فليس ثمة سوى واحدة وهى بالتأكيد علمية تتأسس على الواقع وتعبر عنه وتسعى الى تحسينه بالوسائل المادية المتاحة . لا مجرد فكرة يدرسها العقل بصورة يوتوبية بمعزل عن الوقائع ولا تكون الحلول فيها عملية فتظل سادرة فى عقمها وتخرج عن النطاق الثورى الساعى لتغيير واقع استغلال الانسان للانسان .
April 13, 2018
This was diffrent than the marxists I have read till now. It was in a sense a more coherent exposition of marxism, it was a much more bourgeois style (attempt at irony). I really doubt that the more famous marxists after Marx and Engels understood the theory they were supporting; and this doubt of mine extends to all the current legions of wanna be marxists from the universities.
Engels grounds marxism in the materialism philosophy of that time (witch is quite extreme), he explains in a coherent way the relationship (and divergent points) with Hegelianism. Yet there is quite a lot of logical leaps of faith from the materialist world view to the tennents of marxism. He serriously lacks a methodology, you can not just transmute laws of physics from one domain of inquiry to another... His conclusions are not ultimate truths... They must be debated and contested, errors eliminated, new conclusions made and tester and so on. Yet marxism went on to become a dogma... a final truth, the counter arguments and ways to view the world are dismissed.
Marxism is scientific utopianism, it is a salvation myth.
Engels grounds marxism in the materialism philosophy of that time (witch is quite extreme), he explains in a coherent way the relationship (and divergent points) with Hegelianism. Yet there is quite a lot of logical leaps of faith from the materialist world view to the tennents of marxism. He serriously lacks a methodology, you can not just transmute laws of physics from one domain of inquiry to another... His conclusions are not ultimate truths... They must be debated and contested, errors eliminated, new conclusions made and tester and so on. Yet marxism went on to become a dogma... a final truth, the counter arguments and ways to view the world are dismissed.
Marxism is scientific utopianism, it is a salvation myth.
August 31, 2015
على الرغم من المقدمة الطويلة (ثلث الكتاب)من غير داع! الا أن هذا الكتاب يعد مرجعاهاما يشرح رؤية انجلز خاصة و الماركسية عموما تجاه نوع الاشتراكية التي تنظر لها،فالاشتراكية التي هي المرحلة السابقة للشيوعية حسب انجلز لا يمكن التوصل اليها الا عبر التطور المادي للتاريخ المتمثل بهبوط الرأسمالية بعد ارتقاءها قبل انقضاض البروليتاريا على السلطة عبر الثورة.
على الرغم من عدم تحقق هذه الاشتراكية الافتراضية على ارض الواقع في حياة ماركس و انجلز الا ان انجلز يعدها اشتراكية علمية،فيما يعد اشتراكية روبرت اوين "المتحققة فعليا" اشتراكية طوباوية،و يمكن فهم هذا في سياق محدودية مجتمع التطبيق و عدم تمكن اوين او سان سيمون او فورييه من الوصول الى ايجاد مجتمع اشتراكي موسع كما تسعى الاشتراكية العلمية التي ينظر لها انجلز هنا.
على الرغم من عدم تحقق هذه الاشتراكية الافتراضية على ارض الواقع في حياة ماركس و انجلز الا ان انجلز يعدها اشتراكية علمية،فيما يعد اشتراكية روبرت اوين "المتحققة فعليا" اشتراكية طوباوية،و يمكن فهم هذا في سياق محدودية مجتمع التطبيق و عدم تمكن اوين او سان سيمون او فورييه من الوصول الى ايجاد مجتمع اشتراكي موسع كما تسعى الاشتراكية العلمية التي ينظر لها انجلز هنا.
July 2, 2024
It's pretty awesome, must be said... 5 stars because it clarified very simply a lot of points I'd heard socialists throw back and forth but never quite understood why. Probably a good pre-read to Marx's Capital series.
May 18, 2020
Salad oil
August 10, 2023
Despite Hegel's part is bad, I prefer this one over the original book, the Anti-Dühring, cause here Engels goes straight to the point
February 2, 2022
i fucking hate dialectics
June 7, 2022
I’m not sure if it’s just the translations, but I don’t understand a word he’s saying. I’ll just stick to Marx who is clear and concise.
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