Socialism: Utopian and Scientific – Frederick Engels

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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. This book describes better then the Communist Manifesto, Marxist ideas the book was one of the fundamental publications of the international socialist movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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.

Friedrich Engels, anglicised as Frederick Engels (1820 – 1895), was a German philosopher, merchant, economist, historian, political theorist and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman, journalist and political activist, whose father was an owner of large textile factories in Salford (Lancashire, England) and Wuppertal, Germany).