Karl Marx

Friedrich Engels

Samuel Moore

Edward Aveling

Hailed by Friedrich Engels as "the bible of the working class," this 1867 classic of political economics changed the course of history. Thirty years in the making, Capital, Volume I was the first installment of Karl Marx's three-part Das Kapital and the only volume published during his lifetime. Marx declared that society is evolving from crude, unbalanced economic systems toward a utopian state — specifically, communism. His critiques of private property and class struggles aroused tremendous interest and exercised an influence that resonates to this day. Marx offers a penetrating analysis of capitalism's inner workings, examining commodities, value, money, and other factors related to the system's historic origins and contemporary functions. These considerations form the framework for his conclusion: the system cannot be reformed and must be overthrown by a revolution, resulting in a socialist society in which production serves the needs of every individual rather than generating profits for the few.

A Critique of Political Economy

Capital, Volume One

2020 Reprint of the 1892 Edition. This short work was intended by Engels to be a primer on Marxian thought and especially on the distinction between utopian socialism and scientific socialism. Engels maintains that it was the latter that Marxism considers itself to embody. The book explains that whereas utopian socialism is idealistic, reflecting the personal opinions of the authors and claims that society can be adapted based on these opinions, scientific socialism derives itself from reality. It focuses on Marx's materialist conception of history, which concludes that communism naturally follows capitalism. Engels begins the book by chronicling the thought of utopian socialists, starting with Saint-Simon. He then proceeds to Fourier and Robert Owen. In Chapter Two, he summarizes dialectics, and then chronicles its evolution from from the ancient Greeks to Hegel. Chapter Three summarizes dialectics in relation to economic and social struggles, essentially echoing the words of Marx. In his biography of Marx, Isaiah Berlin described Engel's book as "the best brief autobiographical appreciation of Marxism by one of its creators" and considered that, "written in Engels's best vein", it "had a decisive influence on both Russian and German Socialism." [Berlin, I. (1963). Karl Marx, His Life and Environment (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.221]

Utopian and Scientific

Socialism

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a short book first published in 1880 by German-born socialist Friedrich Engels. The work was primarily extracted from a longer polemic work published in 1876, Anti-Dühring. It first appeared in the French language. The title Socialism: Utopian and Scientific was adopted for the first English edition in - the tenth language in which the book appeared. Intended as a popularization of Marxist ideas for a working class readership, the book was one of the fundamental publications of the international socialist movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, selling tens of thousands of copies.

Edward Aveling

Books

Your next favorite book is out there