Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st Century

by Kōhei Saitō (Editor)

While the deepening structural crisis of capitalism in the 21st century has led to a revival of interest in Marx all over the world, Marx’s life-long comrade Frederick Engels has largely remained marginalized. To commemorate the bicentenary of Engels birth, this edited collection aims to rectify this gap in academic scholarship by gathering a diverse group of scholars to consider the legacy of Engels’s thought and work and critically examine his theoretical relevance in today’s world. The contributors of this volume provide new, stimulating reading of Engels’s works to revive some of Engels’s key ideas. The Legacy of Engels in the 21st Century integrates the most recent discoveries and achievements of Marxian scholarship, employing the historical-critical method developed in the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe to shed light on the forgotten aspects of Engel's critique of capitalism and vision of postcapitalism.

296 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 2022

About the author

Kohei Saito received his Ph.D. from Humboldt University in Berlin. He is currently associate professor of political economy at Osaka City University. He has published articles and reviews on Marx’s ecology, including “The Emergence of Marx’s Critique of Modern Agriculture,” and “Marx’s Ecological Notebooks,” both in Monthly Review. He is working on editing the complete works of Marx and Engels, Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Volume IV/18, which includes a number of Marx’s natural scientific notebooks.