Anti-Dühring (1878)

This is an article about a book that is currently available in our library.

Anti-Dühring is a 1878 work by Friedrich Engels critiquing the idealist views of Eugen Dühring, a German university professor whose views was gradually influencing the German social-democrats at the time. The book is split into three sections, dealing respectively with philosophy, political economy and socialism. The first part Engels contrasts idealist with materialist philosophy and demonstrates the advantage of the latter. The second part is an examination of the mode of production through the lens of political economy. The last part deals with the development of the theory of scientific socialism.

The importance of the book lies not in the polemic with Dühring, but in the thorough explanation of Marxist thought. Vladimir Lenin called this book, along with Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy and the Manifesto of the communist party "handbooks for every class-conscious worker".