This was originally the first three chapters of a larger work- Anti-Duhring, published in 1878.

The initial idea was that Engels would write a more approachable condensed version of Marx’s larger Das Kapital, which was a difficult read.

1 The Development of Utopian Socialism

Engels outlines the development of earlier forms of socialism by Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen.

Engels writes that the 18th century French philosophers saw reason as the ultimate answer to the betterment of society. They thought that history prior to the enlightenment had been one long age of unreason, and if only universal reason were applied, the problems of humanity would disappear. Despite the promises of the enlightenment, Engels sees the actual application of these ‘inalienable rights of man’ as being nothing more than further entrenchment of the bourgeois.

None of the three utopian socialists, says Engels, represented the interests of the proletariat. They sought the emancipation of all humanity, not just workers. Their mistake was to attempt to apply enlightenment values of reason and justice, rather than deal with what Marxists saw as the real problem- class antagonisms.

Engels notes that the French revolution tried installing enlightenment values, but ended in the Reign of Terror, therefore the application of enlightenment reason to society was a failure. Engels ignores the American experiment, which has been successful, and focuses on the French revolution in order to appeal to facts that support his assertion.

There had been Utopian socialists that had tried experiments in small scale communism. Engels sees their theories as crude responses to crude conditions. Capitalistic production had not developed enough to bring about the necessary conditions for revolution, so the utopian socialists’ designs were pure fantasies.

The first was Henri de Saint-Simon, a son of the Revolution. While the revolution was a victory by the third estate (the common people), that victory soon showed itself to be essentially bourgeois in effect. The French revolution was an antagonism between the idlers (aristocracy and all those that earned without working) and workers. The idlers had lost the capacity to lead, as the revolution had proven. The new leadership would be a union between science and industry and a reformed new Christianity. But these were all lead by the bourgeois.

Second was Charles Fourier, who was a critic of modern society and wrote of the moral and material bankruptcy of the bourgeois. He contrasts the reality with the promises made by those promoting reason. He divided history into 4 stages: savagery, barbarianism, patriarchate, and civilization (which Engels says it the same as bourgeois society). He says these move in a vicious circle, constantly reproducing.

Third was Robert Owen, a Scottish cotton mill owner who had noted the conditions of the working class, and implemented humane conditions in his factory as a response. The result was a model colony. But even then Owen realized his workers were still essentially at his mercy, and he recognized that, while relatively better off, his workers were still far from being allowed rational development in their character and intellect.

While the factory had been highly profitable, he was still paying proprietors on the capital they laid out, meaning the workers were still not profiting as they should from their labor.

He drew up plans for more widespread reform in Ireland, but always based in the practical costs.  

But as his ideas developed to a more general communism; including private property, religion, and marriage, he knew that he would be socially excommunicated. His attempts at founding such a colony in America ruined him. Engels claims it was bourgeois ostracization that caused the failure. But New Harmony, Indiana, the colony he was using to implement his ideas, failed after only two years due to failed expectations, in-fighting, and commercial failure. They had lofty ideals, but couldn’t clearly address how to make the community function.

Engels says Socialist thought has largely been patterned after these utopian. To these, socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason, and justice, and only has to be discovered in order to conquer the world. But, says Engels, to make a science of socialism, it had to first be placed upon a real basis.

2 Dialectics

Engels says Hegel had the highest form of reasoning: dialectics. Aristotle had long ago analyzed the essential forms of dialectic thought1. The more modern philosophers used it, but in metaphysical mode.

The essence of dialectic thought is to consider nature, the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity. We see an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations- basically everything in its natural state of flux. Things are not static, but ever changing. We see the whole, and then the individual parts in the background. Heraclitus describe it as: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.

Engels writes that while true, this isn’t sufficient. For a long time, we needed more knowledge of the natural and historical material with which to do analysis. As we’ve enlarged our scope of knowledge, there is more to work with, but the habits we gained over time was to study things in isolation, not in connection with the whole. This habit was transferred to the metaphysical realm. Ideas were isolated, to be considered apart from each other- and they become rigid, fixed.

This seems to be common sense, but it forgets that things are constantly in motion. Even cause and effect, which is useful applied to individual cases, begins to blur in the big picture of processes. But these processes don’t enter into metaphysical reasoning.

Dialectics on the other hand comprehends the totality.

Nature is the proof of dialectics. It doesn’t move in a perpetually recurring cycle, but in a historical evolution. Darwin showed this.

An exact replication of the universe, its evolution, and its consequences for man can only be obtained through dialectics and its regard of fluidity.

The importance of Hegel is that the world and history is seen as process. Now we need to follow the march of this process and find the inner law running through it. Hegel didn’t solve the problem, but he propounded the problem. No single individual will ever be able to solve it.

The old materialism saw the world as essentially irrational and disconnected. The new materialism sees the process of evolution and seeks to discover the laws at work.

Engels goes on to assert that the facts laid out in the dialectic examination of history reveal that ALL past history was the history of class struggles. These warring classes are always the products of modes of production and exchange- or, economic conditions.  

I don’t know if Marx gave evidence of this assertion in Capital, but Engels doesn’t here, he just asserts it. In fact, this most crucial fact, underpinning nearly all Marxist thought, seems, on the face of it, to be not only not true, but not even possible.

If I were to guess at why Marx thought this, I’d guess he is only considering history from a much later date- say the middle ages on. But even now, smaller tribal groups have councils- leadership that settles disputes. Disputes arise, I would believe, because of human nature and our innate self-interest, not because of class conflict. Class conflict could never grow until society grew large enough. Marx seems to recognize that his assertion doesn’t count for prehistoric times, but even today there are conditions where tribes and individuals within them have conflicts that don’t have anything to do with class antagonisms. So this fundamental assertion of Marx seems to me on the face of it- wrong.

Engels says: Now that history is understood dialectically, and a materialistic understanding of history is granted; it was understood that man knows by being, rather than being by his knowing.  

From here, socialism is the necessary outcome of the struggle between the two historically developed classes.  

Again, Marx and Engels assert that these things are true. They claim they are rigidly scientific in their analysis, and therefore, they can’t be wrong about the hypothesis. But oddly enough, while their dialectical approach should lead to more nuanced understanding, they seem exceptionally narrow and rigid in their conclusions. They took Darwin’s early work and accepted that a materialistic understanding of history was granted. But the scientific method itself should have taught them they can never attain absolute certainty. One must always be open to later facts that would shed further light on the subject.

And even accepting this, it’s laughable now to read that socialism was thought to be the necessary outcome of the class antagonisms they saw. Clearly, 170 years later, it hasn’t come close to materializing. Yet they were religiously certain in their conclusions.

Engels finishes the section by noting the old utopian socialism condemned capitalism as bad, but couldn’t explain it. The new socialism understands capitalism and its exploitation, and by the discovery of surplus value, shows us exactly where that exploitation occurs, and how to end it. With these discoveries, socialism became a science. The next thing was to work out all its details and relations.

3 Historical Materialism

Engels says the materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that production and exchange are the basis of all social structure. The final causes of all social changes are due to changes in modes of production, not in better insights into truth and justice. The perception that social institutions are unreasonable and unjust are due to changes in production and exchange.

Again, no evidence is given for these assertions, but I’m inclined to accept some of them, since they seem at face value to be true. I’m not sure if all social changes are due to changes in modes of production. It seems to me that war and conquest were probably a bigger factor in this than modes of production. Though I suppose since war was an acceptable way of increasing wealth, its consequences could be termed a change in the mode of production….

In the middle ages, the instruments of labor were the instruments of individual workmen. So the labor and output belonged to the producer himself.

One of capitalism’s mechanisms was to transform this individual labor of an entire product, into a series of tasks, each done by different workers. This increased production, but it meant the end product no longer belonged to any one workman. Engels says, instead, the capitalist appropriates the end product.

And his appropriated product is always exclusively derived from the labor of others.  

This new mode of production is where the entirety of social antagonism lies. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifests itself in the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.

Certainly, this could lead to antagonisms. But is it necessarily so, as the Marxists assert? I don’t think so.

Yes the capitalist sells the commodity produced by labor. But while Marxists term this appropriation, the capitalist pays the workers for their labor. It isn’t just taken from them. Marx seems to make a huge deal out of the fact that workers now work on a specialized part of a shoe, rather than one individual making them entirely from scratch. But so what? I’ve been a freelance worker, and it can be very hard to survive all on your own. Whereas if you work in a larger entity, the entity carries all the responsibility and pays you for your work whether the product sells or not. Again, these are basic assumptions of Marxism that seem wildly misplaced.

Engels writes: In medieval society, production was directed towards satisfying the needs of the individual. Only when a family began to produce more than it needed, would the produce become a commodity. But production of commodities on this scale was restricted, narrow, stable and local.

As production of commodities increased, the producers became wage laborers. Whenever the capitalist organization of labor took place in an industry, it displaced all others. Modern capitalism, at a global scale, has made the antagonism between bourgeois and proletariat a universal struggle.

Engels believed this antagonism was innate in capitalism and it was unable to do anything else. Capitalists would be forced by the demands of the market to continually use better machinery until finally the workers themselves would be displaced. Machinery is the ultimate tool that would tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the working class. The machine then is the tool of subjugation.

This ultimately will lead to the consumption of the masses and the destruction of the home market.

The working class rises up in the demand that they be treated as a social production force.

This assertion that capitalism would inevitably end up in disaster clearly proved to be wrong. The arguments would seem to be sound, especially in Marx’s day, but complex systems rarely prove to be so easily read. In fact, some law of mitigating factors meant that continual adjustments were made until capitalism avoided the dire predictions Marx made. Did the Marxists then use Hegelian dialectic to readjust their models with continually more nuanced understandings? Nope. They have religiously held on to these pronouncements long after they’ve proven false. They continue to read Marx as if his writings were holy writ, incapable of being wrong.  

Engels says these active social forces, once understood, can be harnessed for the good. Recognizing the real nature of productive forces, it can be turned to the good of the community when the proletariat seizes power and turns the means of production into state property. The proletariat then also abolishes class distinctions and ultimately even the state itself, since the state is only an institution to protect the bourgeois. When the state becomes the real representative of all of society, not just the bourgeois, then it is no longer necessary. When economic antagonisms are removed, there is no longer anything to repress. Government gives way to administration.

Engels believed that the time was now (1877) that the capitalist system was finally breaking. It couldn’t happen before capitalism reached the necessary state of development, but once that happened, its demise was imminent.

As socialism took root, the means of production would be used for the betterment of the community, not just the wealthy, and even waste and devastation of productive forces would be eliminated. As production is turned towards the systematic good through definite organization, the struggle for existence disappears. Finally man emerges from subsistence into truly human existence. All of the conditions of life that ruled over man, are now subject to man.  

Footnotes:

1. Socrates Dialectic method was to show argument by a conversation between Socrates and others. Positions would be defined, countered, and refined. Hegel thought the older dialectical method resulted in either a position being null, or skeptical, which can only approximate truths, but falls short of genuine science. But Hegel thought reason necessarily generated contradictions. In his epistemology, opposing sides are different definitions of consciousness and of the object that consciousness is aware of or claims to know. The dialectic process should lead from simpler understandings to more sophisticated.