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 asThe 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 Engelss less familiar pamphleteering, literary criticism and political commentary through detailed contextualization andcareful analysis.Friedrich Engels for the 21st Century: Perspectives and Problemsis unique in putting different intellectual and political receptions of Engelss 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 areEngels Before Marx andThe 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, Germany. He has published widely on philosophical topics relating historical materialism to classical thinkers, such as Rousseau, and to contemporary philosophers, such as Habermas.

Chapter One:Introduction.-Section 1Epistemology and Philosophy of Nature.-Chapter Two:Engels and the dialectic of nature.-Chapter Three:Engels and the Dialectics of Nature.-Chaper Four:Was Engels a dialectical materialist?.-Chapter Five:Engels and the end of philosophy.-Section 2Political Economy.-Chapter Six:Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy: the is/ought question.-Chapter Seven: The young Engels and the critique of capitalism: his influence on the young Marx.-Chapter Eight:Engels on the external market and de-industrialization.-Section 3The Condition of the Working Class.-Chapter Nine:The constitution of the proletariat: bringing together Friedrich Engels, Edward P. Thompson and Michael Vester.-Chapter Ten:The Housing Question Revisited.-Section 4 Theorizing Power.-Chapter Eleven:Engels theorizes gender hierarchy inThe Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.-Chapter Twelve:The concept of power in Engelss theory of the state.-Chapter Thirteen Re-reading Engels in the twenty-first century: state, nationalism, and internationalism.-Section 5Engels and Literature.-Chapter Fourteen:The proletariat and the people: Engels and the social prose of the 1840s.-Chapter Fifteen:Engelss philosophical mock-epic:The Triumph of Faith.-Chapter Sixteen:Engels and German literature: a political history to the present.-Section 6Emancipation Revolution Communism.-Chapter Seventeen:Engels on post-capitalist society: continuity or discontinuity with Marx.-Chapter Eighteen        Engels and the remaking of communism in the twenty-first century.-Chapter Nineteen:Afterword: whither Engels?