The Game of Contradictions

What is the nature of the 'laws' that Marx and Engels sought to formulate for the development of capitalism? How to understand and judge Engels's attempt to formulate a general philosophy and worldview? These are the questions highlighted in this magnificent work that situates Marx and Engels’s writing against the background of the entire nineteenth-century world of scientific problems, from physics to historiography.

One of the major contributions to scholarship on Marx, Engels and nineteenth-century science, Liedman's work is here presented in English translation and with a new preface by the author.

Publication date: December 22, 2023

Preface to the English Translation
The Game of Contradictions

Foreword

Introduction

Part One
1 Back to Hegel

2 The Rational Method

3 Engels on Marx and Hegel

4 The Encounter with the Natural Sciences

Part Two
5 The Return of the Systems

6 Conservation of Energy, and Systems

7 Darwinism: Hypothesis or Worldview?

8 The Human Sciences

9 Facts and Laws about Humanity

10 Texts, Structures and Systems

Part Three
11 Engels’s Four Periods

12 The Literary Sources

13 The Direct Inspirations

14 Theory and Empiricism: The Three Tendencies

15 Inorganic Nature

16 Biology and Human Science

Part Four
17 Ideology and Science

18 The Debates on Darwinism and Socialism

19 Engels and Ideology

Sources and Literature
Index of Subjects