Marxism Scientific Socialism

Providing a vivid intellectual history of Marxist and socialist thought, this book explores the development of the idea of scientific socialism through the nineteenth and twentieth century from its origins in Engels to its last manifestation in the work of Althusser.

Engels declared at Marx’s funeral in Highgate Cemetery that "just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history". Scientific socialism was the term Engels used to describe Marx's socio-economic philosophy and many later theorists sought to reinforce Marxist theory with a supposedly scientific basis. This book explains the development of the idea of scientific socialism through the 19th and 20th century from its origins in Engels to its last manifestation in the work of Althusser. It provides a detailed analysis of Engel's own conceptualisation, the impact of Darwin, the relationship to the 'official' historical materialism of the Soviet states and later reformulations by Althusser and others. In so doing it provides a vivid intellectual history of Marxist and socialist thought, exploring its significant insights as well its manifest failures. Marxism and Scientific Socialism will be of particular interest to those with an interest in the development of Marxism and socialism, political ideologies and the history of Western political thought.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a short book first published in 1880 by German-born socialist Friedrich Engels. The work was primarily extracted from a longer polemic work published in 1876, Anti-Dühring. It first appeared in the French language. The book has been an enormously popular book, and enjoys a level of prestige that ranks it alongside The Communist Manifesto. It explores the difference between early socialists (considered utopian) and the modern scientific socialists embodied in Karl Marx. The book explains the differences between utopian socialism and scientific socialism, which Marxism considers itself to embody. The book explains 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. It focuses on the materialist conception of history, which is based on an analysis over history, and concludes that communism naturally follows capitalism.

Reproduction of the original: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels

2020 Reprint of the 1892 Edition. This short work was intended by Engels to be a primer on Marxian thought and especially on the distinction between utopian socialism and scientific socialism. Engels maintains that it was the latter that Marxism considers itself to embody. The book explains that whereas utopian socialism is idealistic, reflecting the personal opinions of the authors and claims that society can be adapted based on these opinions, scientific socialism derives itself from reality. It focuses on Marx's materialist conception of history, which concludes that communism naturally follows capitalism. Engels begins the book by chronicling the thought of utopian socialists, starting with Saint-Simon. He then proceeds to Fourier and Robert Owen. In Chapter Two, he summarizes dialectics, and then chronicles its evolution from from the ancient Greeks to Hegel. Chapter Three summarizes dialectics in relation to economic and social struggles, essentially echoing the words of Marx. In his biography of Marx, Isaiah Berlin described Engel's book as "the best brief autobiographical appreciation of Marxism by one of its creators" and considered that, "written in Engels's best vein", it "had a decisive influence on both Russian and German Socialism." [Berlin, I. (1963). Karl Marx, His Life and Environment (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.221]

Among the best explainations of Marxism made by Marx and Engels, Engels wrote this pamphlet from portions of Anti-Duhring, with the intention of providing workers with a straight-forward exposition to Marxist thought. In the three sections of the pamphlet, Engels' explains the three components of Marxist thought: French Socialism, German Philosophy, and English Economics. In the first part of the pamphlet Engels explains that Socialism of the past had been utopian - holding the belief that as soon as everyone in a society understood Socialism and believed in it, a Socialist society would appear. Engels wrote, ..". the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these were the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments." Engels then explains the slow historical development of the dialectical philosophy over thousands of years; knowledge that culminated into what allowed Marx to see and explain the materialist conception of history, which Engels goes onto explain in the third part of this pamphlet.

The achievements of science and technology during the past century are unparalleled in history. They provide the potential for the solution to all the problems faced by the planet, and equally for its total destruction. Allegedly scientific theories are being used to "prove" that criminality is caused, not by social conditions, but by a "criminal gene". Black people are alleged to be disadvantaged, not because of discrimination, but because of their genetic make-up. Of course, such "science" is highly convenient to right-wing politicians intent on ruthlessly cutting welfare. In the field of theoretical physics and cosmology there is a growing tendency towards mysticism. The "Big Bang" theory of the origin of the universe is being used to justify the existence of a Creator, as in the book of Genesis . For the first time in centuries, science appears to lend credence to religious obscurantism. Yet this is only one side of the story.