Honestly, if you're familiar with Marxist principles, or even Hegel, nothing in this text should be particularly new or surprising to you. There're crash-course touchstones on the labor theory of value, the concept of capital and wage relations, the materialist / evolutionary lens of human development, etc.
All of this is looked at from a highly materialist, highly scientific lens, the Scientific new Marxism to contrast the old idealistic Utopian socialism which was more in kind with philosophy or spiritual conjecture. He outlines the major trends within those revolutionary and counter-revolutionary elements during his time and the times preceding, and the effects capitalism has had culturally and economically on the state of human interaction in the world. Engels provides a quick rundown of how the state of capitalism evolved out of the feudal system. Though honestly if you're interested in socialist / communist literature, this is pretty basic. Overall a solid and quick little pamphlet. He founded Marxist theory together with Karl Marx. Chapter three summarizes dialectics in relation to economic and social struggles, essentially echoing the words of Marx.įriedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a German philosopher, social scientist, journalist and businessman.
In chapter two, he summarizes dialectics, and then chronicles the thought from the ancient Greeks to Hegel. He then proceeds to Fourier and Robert Owen. It focuses on the materialist conception of history, which is based on an analysis over history, and concludes that communism naturally follows capitalism.Įngels begins the text by chronicling the thought of utopian socialists, starting with Saint-Simon. Engels claims that whereas utopian socialism is idealist, reflects the personal opinions of the authors and claims that society can be adapted based on these opinions, scientific socialism derives itself from reality. In "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" (1883), Friedrich Engels explains that Marxism is scientific socialism.
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