Anti-Duhring Herr Eugen Dugring's Revolution in Science Book

This book originally was a collection of newspaper articles by F. Engels against the somewhat-socialist, somewhat-reformist, somewhat-liberal Duhring, but soon readers realized that it was an excellent summary of Engels' views on philosophy, political theory, history, economy and socialism, so all articles got melded into this book. However, the article/review composition of the script and initial purpose of the author is still evident and this makes the book really hard to read.

This work covers a variety of subjects. The first part is very important because it is one of the few early manuscripts that about marxist philosophy of science (aka "dialectical materialism") and its differences with positivism and kantian idealism. A little difficult for anyone that is not familiar with Hegel, but nothing that can not be overcame in the age of wikipedia. The second part covers a wide scope of subjects, such as history of law systems, history of the German Unification - both fine examples of the marxist philosophy of history (or "historical materialism") - and political economy, where excerpts of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital I" are provided. The final part is, to my view, the most important as far as politics are considered, because it deals with socialism, its roots (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) and its differences with branches anarchism, most notably the social central planning of the economy. Engels makes a few predictions of what thinks socialism should and will be, but most important of all, Engels states what socialism must be, as opposed to capitalism, meaning that socialism should aim to abolish the wage system, money as accumulation of wealth, the strict division of labour and the contemporary family.


This work was very influential to later communists, and notably, Lenin. Today, after the October Revolution and Soviet experiment, and the titanic effort to build a socialist state, many of Engels' claims, like the abolishment of labour division, may also seem to us "utopian", as he at his time viewed Owen. However, it remains a very important book in philosophical terms, and also gives a clear view of what is true marxism, as opposed to anarchist or socialdemocratic theories that are popular nowadays and are falsely labeled as "communist".