Frederick Engels published his famous Anti-Dühring, a
classic ranged with Capital, in 1878. Acceding to the demand
for a popular exposition of scientific socialism, Engels se-
lected three chapters from Anti-Dühring for publication as
a pamphlet, which was first issued in a French translation by
his friend Paul Lafargue, under the title Socialism Utopian
and Socialism Scientific. Translations in other languages fol-
lowed, with the English translation published only in 1892,
under the abbreviated title of Socialism: Utopian and Scien-
tific. To this edition Engels wrote a rather extended intro-
duction, first giving an account of how Anti-Dühring came to
be written and how Socialism: Utopian and Scientific was
extracted from it and then, proceeding with an essay on the
economic, social and political history of England. Engels
later published this essay, which made up the major portion
of the introduction, as an article in the German Socialist
monthly, Die Neue Zeit, under the title "On Historical Mate-
rialism." It is reproduced in the following pages as Engels
prepared it for Die Neue Zeit.

-3-