How did Engels explain the scientific approach to socialism?

Today, there are socialists who argue that rational arguments, or moral appeals, or new technologies, or localised socialistic community projects, can defeat capitalism. These ideas are not new. Unfortunately, they have all been disproven in theory and practice.

These well-meaning approaches express the yearning of billions for fundamental social change. But they are utopian: they do not take a scientific approach to examining how society works – and therefore, what is needed to change it.

Friedrich Engels came up against similar misleading ideas. His 1877 work Anti-Dühring explained why ‘scientific socialism’ – the original name for Marxism – showed the real way forward. In 1880, Engels reworked key chapters to produce his brilliant explanatory pamphlet ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’. 

How did early socialist ideas evolve? What is ‘dialectics’ – the science of change – and how did Marxism put in onto the ‘materialist’ basis of the physical sciences? And how does this approach apply to understanding the development of capitalism – and the struggle for socialism?

This episode of Socialism, part of a short series on Engels, is a re-run of one of our most popular episodes from 2019 - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

Further reading

• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Engels): http://leftbooks.co.uk/Socialism-Utopian-and-Scientific-1
• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific discussion questions and resources: http://www.socialistbooks.co.uk/socialism-utopian-and-scientific-resources/
• The renewed relevance of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/28107/17-10-2018/the-renewed-relevance-of-engels-classic-socialism-utopian-and-scientific
• The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (Trotsky): https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm
• The Masses Arise: The Great French Revolution 1789-1815: http://leftbooks.co.uk/epages/950002679.sf/en_GB/?ObjectID=2017204
• Value, Price and Profit (Marx): http://leftbooks.co.uk/epages/950002679.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/950002679/Products/MARX0004