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A review by george_r_t_c
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels
4.0
Currently ignoring my family on Christmas Eve to review this book. It's very good; I get the impression that, since Engels is writing in the final quarter of the nineteenth century (the introduction to the English translation is from 1892, after Marx had been dead for 9 years), the text has a certain coolness to it, and a certain settled quality of argumentation, compared to the fiery polemic of the manifesto. But that's a strength: it's a very clear and thoughtful history of the three important utopian socialists, none of whom are completely condemned by Engels, simply criticised in good faith, to be contrasted with Marx's accordingly more 'scientific' account of the development of the capitalist mode of production out of specifically economic conditions and class struggle.
The scientific socialism sections of the book remind me a fair bit of the argumentative movement of Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution, which covers much of the same material but in slightly more detail and with more attention to the problems that Engels doesn't have space to deal with, such as the question of reform, naturally, but also the problem of economic determinism, which Engels doesn't seem to be worried by.
There's also some very interesting and explicit material on the nature of the state which is similarly reminiscent of Lenin's coverage of the same ground but again in more detail in State and Revolution: for Engels, the state's purpose is essentially to repress. "As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, the state, is no longer necessary" (69-70). Thus he dissents from the anarchist injunction to abolish the state, believing that the wielding of the state by the proletariat (which I suppose should be called a dictatorship of the proletariat in this context) is an entirely transitory moment which immediately dissolves itself, the state withers away, and the socialised means of production no longer operate irrationally according to the needs of capital but are now systematically managed in the interests of the whole of society. it's a short book so he can't go into any more detail than that; I think it's a compelling and clear-sighted introduction to the long-range political thrust of Capital and Marxism in general, as well as to Luxemburg and Lenin.
There's some interesting earlier moments when Engels gives a quick history and defence of materialism as contrasted with a certain dominant strand of metaphysics, and then, eventually, Hegel's idealism, which, like the discussion of the Utopians, is a potted but even-handed historical account. A very interesting and revealing sentence, though, is "Nature is the proof of dialectics" (48). He's arguing here that metaphysics understands things as fixed beings, while only dialectics understands things as 'becoming,' although Engels never uses that word, preferring expressions such as "endless entanglement" and the interpenetration of opposites (45). Engels' interest in nature, in thermodynamics, is, I gather, something of a pet project which doesn't really appear so much in Lenin or Marx (I think); Engels' book Dialectics of Nature has a slightly controversial reputation, as far as I can tell, for focusing so much on the inherently dialectical nature of, like, molecules and stuff. It reminds me a little bit of chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, though, so I'm sure he's right. Regardless, he keeps that to a minimum in this book, providing just the broadest and most compelling insights of the different components of a science of socialism, or at least a scientific philosophy of socialism.
The scientific socialism sections of the book remind me a fair bit of the argumentative movement of Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution, which covers much of the same material but in slightly more detail and with more attention to the problems that Engels doesn't have space to deal with, such as the question of reform, naturally, but also the problem of economic determinism, which Engels doesn't seem to be worried by.
There's also some very interesting and explicit material on the nature of the state which is similarly reminiscent of Lenin's coverage of the same ground but again in more detail in State and Revolution: for Engels, the state's purpose is essentially to repress. "As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, the state, is no longer necessary" (69-70). Thus he dissents from the anarchist injunction to abolish the state, believing that the wielding of the state by the proletariat (which I suppose should be called a dictatorship of the proletariat in this context) is an entirely transitory moment which immediately dissolves itself, the state withers away, and the socialised means of production no longer operate irrationally according to the needs of capital but are now systematically managed in the interests of the whole of society. it's a short book so he can't go into any more detail than that; I think it's a compelling and clear-sighted introduction to the long-range political thrust of Capital and Marxism in general, as well as to Luxemburg and Lenin.
There's some interesting earlier moments when Engels gives a quick history and defence of materialism as contrasted with a certain dominant strand of metaphysics, and then, eventually, Hegel's idealism, which, like the discussion of the Utopians, is a potted but even-handed historical account. A very interesting and revealing sentence, though, is "Nature is the proof of dialectics" (48). He's arguing here that metaphysics understands things as fixed beings, while only dialectics understands things as 'becoming,' although Engels never uses that word, preferring expressions such as "endless entanglement" and the interpenetration of opposites (45). Engels' interest in nature, in thermodynamics, is, I gather, something of a pet project which doesn't really appear so much in Lenin or Marx (I think); Engels' book Dialectics of Nature has a slightly controversial reputation, as far as I can tell, for focusing so much on the inherently dialectical nature of, like, molecules and stuff. It reminds me a little bit of chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, though, so I'm sure he's right. Regardless, he keeps that to a minimum in this book, providing just the broadest and most compelling insights of the different components of a science of socialism, or at least a scientific philosophy of socialism.