Left side of the road

The Great ‘Marxist-Leninist’ Theoreticians

Frederick Engels – pamphlets, books and commentaries

Virtually everything that has been published by Frederick Engels is included in the 50 volume Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

However, his contribution to the world revolutionary movement has meant that many of his most significant works have been produced as individual pamphlets/books. The intention is to post as many of those as possible on this page.

Engels spent many years of the 19th century in Manchester – and a few years ago returned to stand proudly in a public square.

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Charles Kerr, Chicago, 1908, 139 pages.

Principles of Communism, The Little Red Library, No 3, Daily Worker Publishing Company, Chicago, 1925, 32 pages.

The Peasant War in Germany, Allen and Unwin, London, 1927, 190 pages.

Germany, Revolution and Counter Revolution, Martin Lawrence, London, 1933, 155 pages.

The Housing Question, Martin Lawrence, London, ND, 1930s?, 103 pages. (Some markings.)

A Handbook of Marxism, with selections from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, International Publishers, New York, 1935, 1082 pages,

Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution In Science – Anti-Dühring, International Publishers, New York, 1939, 365 pages.

On Historical Materialism, International Publishers, New York, 1940, 30 pages. Little Marx Library.

Ten Classics of Marxism, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, International Publishers, New York, 1940, 785 pages.

Ludwig Feuerbach and the outcome of Classical German Philosophy, International Publishers, New York, ND, 1940s?, 101 pages.

The Housing Question, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1942, 100 pages. Volume Seven of The Marxist-Leninist Library.

Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1943, 149 pages. From Project Gutenberg website.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1943, 216 pages.

On Capital, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1944, 136 pages.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism, edited by LL Sharkey and S Moston, Current Book Distributors, Sydney, 1945, 152 pages.

Dialectics of Nature, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1946, 383 pages.

The Condition of the Working Class in England, Allen and Unwin, London, 1950, 300 pages.

Anti-Duhring, Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science, FLPH, Moscow, 1954, 546 pages.

Engels as Military Critic, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1959, 146 pages. Reprinted from Volunteer Journal and the Manchester Guardian of the 1860s. With an introduction by WH Chaloner and WO Henderson.

F Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence Volume 1, 1868-1886, FLPH, Moscow, 1959, 407 pages.

F Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence Volume 3, 1891-1895, FLPH, Moscow, 1959, 635 pages.

Articles from the Labour Standard (1881), Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, 53 pages. The Labour Standard was a British trade union weekly published in London from 1881 to 1885, edited by J Shipton.

The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, 16 pages.

Socialism – Utopian and Scientific, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, 74 pages.

The role of force in history, Frederick Engels, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1968, 108 pages.

Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, 61 pages.

History of Ireland (to 1014), Irish Communist Organisation, Dublin, 1970, 68 pages.

On an Article by Engels, (Dublin, ICO, 1971), 23 pages.

The Bakuninists at work – Review of the Uprising in Spain in the summer of 1873, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971, 28 pages.

Critique of the Erfurt Programme, British and Irish Communist Organisation, Glasgow, 1971, 20 pages.

On Marx’s Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, 126 pages.

Dialectics of Nature, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, 403 pages.

Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, 68 pages. Scientific Socialism Series.

Marx, Engels and Lenin on the Irish Revolution, Ralph Fox, The Cork Workers Club, Cork, 1974, 36 pages.

Marx, Engels and Lenin – On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, 41 pages.

Marxism and the Liberation of Women, Quotations from Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, VI Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung, Union of Women for Liberation, London, n.d., mid-1970s?, 64 pages. Includes a statement of aims of the Union of Women for Liberation.

Socialism – Utopian and Scientific, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, 108 pages.

The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, 25 pages.

On Marx, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, 26 pages.

The Peasant Question in France and Germany, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, 29 pages.

Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of Classical German Philosophy, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976, 185 pages. Has the same content as the two Soviet Revisionist editions on this page but also has, in addition, Plekhanov’s Forewords and Notes to the Russian Editions of the Engels pamphlet. (There’s a strange comment in the Publisher’s Note at the very beginning of the book. This states, after giving reference to the source material of Plekhanov’s Appendices, that they were included ‘with numerous and often drastic revisions and corrections where necessary’.)

On Scientific Communism, Marx, Engels and Lenin, Progress, Moscow, 1976, 537 pages.

On Dialectical Materialism, Marx, Engels and Lenin, Progress, Moscow, 1977, 422 pages.

The Woman Question, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, International Publishers, New York, 1977, 96 pages.

Principles of Communism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1977, 28 pages.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels – Selected Letters, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1977, 133 pages.

Anti Duhring, Progress, Moscow, 1977, 519 pages.

The Housing Question, pp 317-391, Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 23, 75 pages.

The Peasant War in Germany, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, 208 pages.

The Wages System, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, 56 pages.

Marx and Engels – On Reactionary Prussianism, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow, Red Star Press, London, 1978, 48 pages. Reprint of the original from the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1943.

Condition of the working class in England, Progress, Moscow, 1980, 307 pages.

On Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, IL Andreyev, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1985, 159 pages.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan, with an introduction and notes by Eleanor Burke Leacock, International Publishers, New York, 1993, 285 pages.

The Condition of the Working Class in England, Marxist Internet Archive, 1998, 187 pages.

Socialism Utopian and Scientific, Foreign Languages Press, Paris 2020, 96 pages.

The Housing Question, Foreign Languages Press, Paris, 2021, 103 pages.

Biographies

Frederick Engels, a biography, Gustav Mayer, Knopp, New York, 1936, 344 pages.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, D Riazanov, International Publishers, New York, n.d., 1940s, 224 pages.

Frederick Engels, a biography, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, 511 pages.

Frederick Engels, a biography, Progress, Moscow, 1982, 560 pages.

Frederick Engels, a short biography, Evgeniia Akimovna Stepanova, Progress, Moscow, 1988, 302 pages.

Frederick Engels, his life, his work and his writings, Karl Kautsky, Charles Kerr, Chicago, 1899, 32 pages.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels – Writings, compilations and analyses

The Relevance of James Connolly Today

Posted on 16/12/2013 by Michael

James Connolly

The writings of James Connolly

The Relevance of James Connolly Today

Although James Connolly was murdered by the British Empire more than a hundred years ago his analysis of the situation in Ireland then is still valid today.

Ireland – The Historical Background

The ‘Troubles’ – 1968-98

The Teachings of James Connolly, with a brief outline of his life, Joseph Deasy, New Books, Dublin, 1972?, 23 pages.

Connolly was a Marxist Socialist. This truth is at the heart of his life’s work; without it his struggles and sacrifice cannot be understood.

James Connolly and Irish Freedom, a Marxist analysis, Historical reprints No 1, G Schüller, Cork Workers Club, Cork, 1974, 30 pages.

When James Connolly, Marxian Socialist and Commander-in-Chief of the Irish revolutionary army of Easter Week, 1916, was awaiting his doom at the hands of a British firing squad, his last words spoken to his daughter Nora, expressed a fear that his comrades would not understand this action. And few of them did.

The Relevance of James Connolly in Ireland To-day, George Gilmore, Dochas, Dublin, 1969, 8 pages.

If we believe that working class struggle for better conditions within the society in which we live must, to achieve a worthwhile result, be pushed ahead to the overthrow of the social system that rests on the exploitation of the working classes, and to the organisation of society on a socialist basis instead then we can consider the question of the relevance of Connolly’s teaching to the tactics of today.

The Writings of James Connolly

Posted on 02/09/2013 by Michael

James Connolly – Irish Citizen’s Army

The Relevance of James Connolly Today

The ‘Troubles’ – 1968-98

Ireland – The Historical Background

The Writings of James Connolly

James Connolly was, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest Irish Republican and Socialist leader – but he was born in Edinburgh. Not too much of a surprise when you realise that due to the conditions under which Irish workers were forced to live under the rule of the British that running away was preferable to staying and fighting. Connolly’s parents left, he returned to take the fight to the British Imperialists.

Unlike most of the leaders that preceded him, and most that have come since, he understood that the only way that the Irish would be truly free was when the working class and peasantry took control of their own country, and not allowing Irish exploiters to take the place of the British variety. His adoption of the ideas of Marxism make him stand out in Irish Republican history. He realised that national liberation for the majority meant nothing if it did not come, at the same time, with their freedom from capitalist exploitation.

He also understood that if they remained unarmed the working class would always face defeat from a ‘armed to the teeth’ occupation force. One of his most important achievements was the formation of the Irish Citizen’s Army, an armed (although initially not with fire arms) and organised group of men who defended workers in the 1913 Great Dublin Lock Out. It was from this organisation that the Irish Republican Army (the IRA) evolved – though too often without the same ideological basis.

James Connolly also stands as one of the few who realised that the war of the capitalists, that sent millions to the slaughter fields of the First World War, was yet another ‘game’ of capitalism and imperialism and which true working class leaders should shun like the plague. Although the so-called working class leaders and parties of the Second Socialist International, had declared that they would not call upon their respective working classes to fight in an imperialist war (in The Stuttgart Resolution of 1907 and The Balse Manifesto of 1912) they almost all adopted nationalistic and jingoistic stances once war was declared in 1914 – including the British Labour Party. The two international leaders who stood on principal at this moment of decision were Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (who later led the Russian working class and peasantry to victory in the 1917 October Revolution) and James Connolly.

Despite this seeming understanding of revolutionary reality of the early part of the 20th century Connolly ended up in the futile and doomed to failure Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Whereas Lenin had learnt from the past Connolly still had aspects of Blanqui‘s (the 19th century French revolutionary) ‘small group who will stir the rest of the population’ mentality. They were isolated by the much more organised British Imperialist forces, even at a time when they were involved in the biggest war (at that time) in world history on the other side of the English Channel. In less than a week the uprising was crushed and 12 days later Connolly was shot by firing squad by the vengeful British.

In a chair!

Connolly had been wounded in the ankle and was unable to stand so the arrogant British provided him with a seat so he wouldn’t be inconvenienced. This attitude that the British displayed in Ireland, that they had displayed another part of the world before and since, angered the Irish working class and although the Rising was not the most astute of political moves it did result in a realisation that the British had only total contempt for the Irish and their sensibilities.

This was immortalised in a verse of the 1957 song by Dominic Behan, the Patriot Game

They told me how Connolly was shot in his chair,
His wounds from the fighting all bloody and bare.
His fine body twisted, all battered and lame
They soon made me part of the patriot game.

It’s unfortunate that revolutionary movements around the world have since made similar mistakes in ensuring the success of a proletarian revolution, perhaps most notably the idea of the ‘foco’ followed by Che Guevara in Bolivia in the late 1960s.

Nonetheless Connolly left a legacy in his writings that could be useful for revolutionaries in Ireland and other parts of the world. For that reason as many as possible are reproduced here.

Erin’s Hope – the end and the means, and The New Evangel, with an introduction by Joseph Deasy, New Book Publications, Dublin, 1968, 44 pages.

Erin’s Hope is Connolly’s first published pamphlet and is a strong exposition of the Socialist case published in 1897.

The New Evangel is a collection of short essays published in 1901.

The axe to the root and Old Wine in New Bottles, Repsol pamphlet No. 14, Republican Education Publications, Dublin, 1973?, 52 pages.

The Axe to the Root and Old Wine in New Bottles are two articles where Connolly stresses the need for solidarity, militancy and organisation in the work of Trade Unions in the class struggle.

Labour in Irish History, New Books Publications, Dublin, 1967, 180 pages.

Labour in Irish History is not an academic tract but is based upon well researched facts. Here Connolly passionately argues that for the Irish working class to know where they are going in the future they should be aware of their past.

Socialism Made Easy, Labour party Publications, Dublin, 1972, 64 pages.

Contains two articles:

Workshop Talks takes the form of statements made by a typical sceptical worker and Connolly’s refutations.

In Political Action of Labour argues for the necessity of industrial and political unity in any trade union or class struggle.

The Re-Conquest of Ireland, New Books Publications, Dublin, 1968, 92 pages.

The Re-Conquest of Ireland develops the ideas of Labour in Irish History showing that the domination of Ireland by imperialism was political, economic and social.

Workshop Talks, The Meaning of Socialism, Repsol pamphlet No. 1, Republican Education Publications, Dublin, 1973?, 32 pages.

Workshop Talks takes the form of statements made by a typical sceptical worker and Connolly’s refutations.

Revolutionary Warfare, New Books Publications, Dublin, 1968, 44 pages.

In Revolutionary Warfare Connolly analyses insurrections, revolutions and uprisings in the previous 150 years, or so, with the argument that the Irish Citizen’s Army should develop from a defensive to an offensive force of the working class.

Labour Nationality and Religion, New Books Publications, Dublin, 1969, 68 pages.

Being a discussion of the Lenten Discourses against Socialism delivered by Father Kane, S.J., in Gardiner Street Church, Dublin, 1910.

The James Connolly Songbook, Cork Workers’ Club, Cork, 1973?, 38 pages.

‘No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for aspirations, the fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle.’ James Connolly.