Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in just two months – beginning toward the end of March 1884 and completing it by the end of May. It focuses on early human history, following the disintegration of the primitive community and the emergence of a class society based on private property. Engels looks into the origin and essence of the state, and concludes it is bound to wither away leaving a classless society. Engels: “Along with [the classes] the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will re-organise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquity, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe.”

Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State

Frederick, Engels

Sankar Srinivasan

Alick West

Createspace

Trotskyism now steps forward with the object of dethroning Bolshevism and undermining its principles. The duty of the Party is to bury Trotskyism as a line of thought. Reprisals against the opposition and the danger of a split are spoken of. This is nonsense, comrades. Our Party is strong and powerful. It will admit of no splits. As for reprisals, I am distinctly opposed to them. We need no reprisals now, but a developed battle of ideas against the resurrection of Trotskyism. We did not desire this literary discussion, nor did we strive for it. Trotskyism forces it upon us by its anti-Leninist attacks. Well then, comrades, we are ready!

Leninism Or Trotskyism?

J. V. Stalin

Createspace Independent Pub

Dialectics of Nature is an unfinished 1883 work by Frederick Engels that applies Marxist ideas – particularly those of dialectical materialism – to science. In his 1939 preface to the work, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane states "most of the manuscript seems to have been written between 1872 and 1882, that is to say it refers to the science" of that era. "Hence it is often hard to follow if one does not know the history of the scientific practice of that time. The idea of what is now called the conservation of energy was beginning to permeate physics, chemistry and biology, but it was still very incompletely realised, and still more incompletely applied. Words such as 'force', 'motion', and 'vis viva' were used where we should now speak of energy". Some then controversial topics of Engels' day, pertaining to incomplete or faulty theories, are now settled, making some of Engels' essays dated. "Their interest lies not so much in their detailed criticism of theories, but in showing how Engels grappled with intellectual problems". One "law" proposed in the Dialectics of Nature is the "law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa". Probably the most commonly cited example of this is the change of water from a liquid to a gas, by increasing its temperature (although Engels also describes other examples from chemistry). In contemporary science, this process is known as a phase transition. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby population increases result in changes in social structure. Dialectics and its study was derived from the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who, in turn, had studied the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Heraclitus taught that everything was constantly changing and that all things consisted of two opposite elements which changed into each other as night changes into day, light into darkness, life into death etc. Engels's work develops from the comments he had made about science in Anti-Dühring. It includes the famous The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, which has also been published separately as a pamphlet. Engels argues that the hand and brain grew together, an idea supported by later fossil discoveries. Must read philosophy book, to understand about dialectical materialism.

Dialectics Of Nature

Friedrich, Engels

Independently published

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Books by Sankar Srinivasan