Three chapters were selected and arranged by Engels and translated into French by Paul Lafargue. Rather than a wholly new work, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific was an extract from a larger polemic work written in 1876, Herrn Eugen Dühring's Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science), commonly known as Anti-Dühring.

One of a handful of surviving copies of the 1900 second Socialist Labor Party edition of Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science. Nevertheless, the necessity for popularization of Marx's frequently turgid prose remained - a need finally addressed by Engels with the publication of the short work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific more than a decade later. Marx concurred with Engels' assessment, suggesting 'it would be a very good thing if you yourself wrote a small popular explanatory pamphlet.' Engels went on to prepare a short summary of the central points of Das Kapital, but the pamphlet was never published. 'If it is not written, some Moses or other will come along and do it and botch it up,' Engels warned. Marx's lengthy and ponderous volume was extremely difficult for the average reader to penetrate, however, leading Engels to suggest to Marx in a letter of Septemthat a short popularized version of Das Kapital for a working class audience was urgently needed. Throughout the decade of the 1860s, Karl Marx, close personal friend and political associate of Friedrich Engels, dedicated himself to the study of economics, culminating in the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867. 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 and books. The title Socialism: Utopian and Scientific was adopted for the first English edition - the tenth language in which the book appeared. It first appeared in the French language.

The work was primarily extracted from a longer polemic work published in 1878, Anti-Dühring. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a short book first published in 1880 by German-born socialist Friedrich Engels. Title page of the first English-language edition, published in London by Swan Sonnenschein & Co.

Socialism by Friedrich Engels