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brennenpeterson's review against another edition
3.0
The translation was kinda bad, but another important step to learning about Socialism. I still don’t fully understand because I don’t know the history enough or the historical people talked about. Getting closer to fully understanding. Will need to read again.
aclgl's review against another edition
4.0
I listened to the free librivox audiobook, and the narrator makes it very understandable and clear
stressbuilds's review against another edition
5.0
Very well written primer for scientific socialism. I can’t wait to discuss this with friends and make my dad read it!
unionmack's review against another edition
4.0
As someone who's still intimidated by Capital, I came away from this feeling like I'd gotten the Spark Notes from a man whose name will forever be remembered alongside Marx's. Its brevity makes it a worthy recommendation for anyone interested in Marxist or socialist thought; its clarity—aside from a few passages I found somewhat muddled—makes it all the more worthwhile. Engels succinctly addresses the contributions of he and Marx's greatest influences—Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Hegel, etc—to economics, politics, and philosophy, critiquing their shortcomings and praising their ingenuities along the way. But the greatest strength of the pamphlet is his rapid-fire breakdown of historical / dialectical materialism and why socialism should not be viewed as a pie-in-the-sky hope, but a scientific necessity. Of course, since this book was written, many a socialist revolution has failed and created the exact same oppressive conditions he critiques the French Revolution for. Still, it's hard to read this and not still find these ideas compelling. Clearly, the theories enumerated here need to be reformed, as their implementation has so often led to adverse and horrific outcomes. But, at least for me, this serves as further proof they should not be discarded entirely. There's still a lot of truth here, we just have to find a better way to ensure its success in the real world.
69fungirl69's review against another edition
4.0
Hot take: Engels did a ton of shrooms before writing this. How else would he have come to conclusions such as “every moment, some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew, in a longer or shorter time, the matter of its whole completely regenerated and replaced by other molecules of matter, so that every organized being is always itself, and yet something other than itself.”
babajana's review against another edition
5.0
I started this book because of a recommendation by a professor of mine and I wasn’t disappointed. It‘s a really good and concise overview of the development of scientific socialism as well as the theory itself. It has been said before, but I also think that this is a better introduction to communism than the Communist Manifesto: its historical thesis is in line with everything I learned at university and all in all it is much less polemic, making it super accessible especially for everyone coming out of an academic context.
so444's review against another edition
2.0
Good info on scientific socialism. Probably need to give it a second read.
george_r_t_c's review against another edition
4.0
Currently ignoring my family on Christmas Eve to review this book. It's very good; I get the impression that, since Engels is writing in the final quarter of the nineteenth century (the introduction to the English translation is from 1892, after Marx had been dead for 9 years), the text has a certain coolness to it, and a certain settled quality of argumentation, compared to the fiery polemic of the manifesto. But that's a strength: it's a very clear and thoughtful history of the three important utopian socialists, none of whom are completely condemned by Engels, simply criticised in good faith, to be contrasted with Marx's accordingly more 'scientific' account of the development of the capitalist mode of production out of specifically economic conditions and class struggle.
The scientific socialism sections of the book remind me a fair bit of the argumentative movement of Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution, which covers much of the same material but in slightly more detail and with more attention to the problems that Engels doesn't have space to deal with, such as the question of reform, naturally, but also the problem of economic determinism, which Engels doesn't seem to be worried by.
There's also some very interesting and explicit material on the nature of the state which is similarly reminiscent of Lenin's coverage of the same ground but again in more detail in State and Revolution: for Engels, the state's purpose is essentially to repress. "As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, the state, is no longer necessary" (69-70). Thus he dissents from the anarchist injunction to abolish the state, believing that the wielding of the state by the proletariat (which I suppose should be called a dictatorship of the proletariat in this context) is an entirely transitory moment which immediately dissolves itself, the state withers away, and the socialised means of production no longer operate irrationally according to the needs of capital but are now systematically managed in the interests of the whole of society. it's a short book so he can't go into any more detail than that; I think it's a compelling and clear-sighted introduction to the long-range political thrust of Capital and Marxism in general, as well as to Luxemburg and Lenin.
There's some interesting earlier moments when Engels gives a quick history and defence of materialism as contrasted with a certain dominant strand of metaphysics, and then, eventually, Hegel's idealism, which, like the discussion of the Utopians, is a potted but even-handed historical account. A very interesting and revealing sentence, though, is "Nature is the proof of dialectics" (48). He's arguing here that metaphysics understands things as fixed beings, while only dialectics understands things as 'becoming,' although Engels never uses that word, preferring expressions such as "endless entanglement" and the interpenetration of opposites (45). Engels' interest in nature, in thermodynamics, is, I gather, something of a pet project which doesn't really appear so much in Lenin or Marx (I think); Engels' book Dialectics of Nature has a slightly controversial reputation, as far as I can tell, for focusing so much on the inherently dialectical nature of, like, molecules and stuff. It reminds me a little bit of chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, though, so I'm sure he's right. Regardless, he keeps that to a minimum in this book, providing just the broadest and most compelling insights of the different components of a science of socialism, or at least a scientific philosophy of socialism.
The scientific socialism sections of the book remind me a fair bit of the argumentative movement of Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution, which covers much of the same material but in slightly more detail and with more attention to the problems that Engels doesn't have space to deal with, such as the question of reform, naturally, but also the problem of economic determinism, which Engels doesn't seem to be worried by.
There's also some very interesting and explicit material on the nature of the state which is similarly reminiscent of Lenin's coverage of the same ground but again in more detail in State and Revolution: for Engels, the state's purpose is essentially to repress. "As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, the state, is no longer necessary" (69-70). Thus he dissents from the anarchist injunction to abolish the state, believing that the wielding of the state by the proletariat (which I suppose should be called a dictatorship of the proletariat in this context) is an entirely transitory moment which immediately dissolves itself, the state withers away, and the socialised means of production no longer operate irrationally according to the needs of capital but are now systematically managed in the interests of the whole of society. it's a short book so he can't go into any more detail than that; I think it's a compelling and clear-sighted introduction to the long-range political thrust of Capital and Marxism in general, as well as to Luxemburg and Lenin.
There's some interesting earlier moments when Engels gives a quick history and defence of materialism as contrasted with a certain dominant strand of metaphysics, and then, eventually, Hegel's idealism, which, like the discussion of the Utopians, is a potted but even-handed historical account. A very interesting and revealing sentence, though, is "Nature is the proof of dialectics" (48). He's arguing here that metaphysics understands things as fixed beings, while only dialectics understands things as 'becoming,' although Engels never uses that word, preferring expressions such as "endless entanglement" and the interpenetration of opposites (45). Engels' interest in nature, in thermodynamics, is, I gather, something of a pet project which doesn't really appear so much in Lenin or Marx (I think); Engels' book Dialectics of Nature has a slightly controversial reputation, as far as I can tell, for focusing so much on the inherently dialectical nature of, like, molecules and stuff. It reminds me a little bit of chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, though, so I'm sure he's right. Regardless, he keeps that to a minimum in this book, providing just the broadest and most compelling insights of the different components of a science of socialism, or at least a scientific philosophy of socialism.
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