Friedrich Engels for the 21st Century

‘This impressively internationalist collection is an essential read for those interested in Engels. All contributions present fresh perspectives based on the latest research. They do full justice to the many areas in which Engels displayed his prodigious talents.’

– David McLellan, Professor Emeritus of Political Theory, University of Kent, UK

‘This book contributes to the liberation of Engels from the entrenched image that he is the man who distorted and dogmatized Marx's theory. This will allow us to appreciate Engels as an independent theorist and to understand his great achievements as they really are.’

– Ryuji Sasaki, Associate Professor of Economics, Rikkyo University, Japan

This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary and international revaluation of Friedrich Engels as much more than “junior partner” to Karl Marx or “second fiddle” in the Marxist orchestra. The nineteen critical essays in this collection are the work of scholars from Germany, USA, UK, Italy, China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. Together they present and evaluate archival material and scholarly commentary that covers epistemology, political economy, political theory, gender studies, cultural studies, political geography, philosophy of social science and sociological studies of class-conflict. Students, activists and specialists will find fresh consideration of familiar works, such as The Condition of the Working Class in England, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and The Dialectics of Nature. They will also be able to explore Engels’s less familiar pamphleteering, literary criticism and political commentary through detailed contextualization and careful analysis. Friedrich Engels for the 21st Century: Perspectives and Problems is unique in putting different intellectual and political receptions of Engels’s work into productive conversation, particularly from non-Anglophone scholars, translated here into English. Readers will appreciate why Engels has been so widely celebrated some two hundred years after his birth.  

Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK. He is co-general editor of the series “Marx, Engels, and Marxisms”. His most recent books are Engels Before Marx, and The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, 30th Anniversary Edition, both from Palgrave Macmillan (2020).

Smail Rapic is Professor of Philosophy at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. He has published widely on philosophical topics relating historical materialism to classical thinkers, such as Rousseau, and to contemporary philosophers, such as Habermas.