For my AMD, I started reading Friedrich Engels’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The first chapter is composed of two different general topics: the history of the distribution of economical, and thus political, power in Germany, France, and Britain and analysis of the contributions of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen to developing Socialist thought. The pamphlet is a response to Diihring’s newly proposed Socialist theory, which potentially had the influence to divide, and thus weaken, the growing socialist position in Europe. Engels traces the origin of modern materialism to 17th century Britain, and describes the transformation in principles with the revision of Bacon by Hobbes. He describes the brief dominance of Neo-Kantianism and the subsequent revision caused by the progress of science. Maybe the primary focus of his historical analysis is the Catholic Church, what he sees to be root of feudalism, the glue that preserved the existing social order. He analyzes how different threats to the influence of the Church reshaped European society. Sam Engel