

It is also an attempt to put it into practice.Īs he explained in the introduction to the first English edition (published in 1892), historical materialism "seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another."ĮNGELS APPLIES this perspective to explaining the origins of socialism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.


It was originally part of a much longer work that Engels, Karl Marx's lifelong friend and collaborator, published in 1878: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (often known as the Anti-Dühring)-a polemical response to the confused ideas of a German academic whose views were having a negative influence on the socialist movement in that country.ĭühring's theories have long since disappeared into the dustbin of history, but they gave Engels the opportunity to write a detailed exposition of Marxist philosophy. FREDERICK ENGELS' pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is-alongside The Communist Manifesto-the best short introduction to Marxism.
