Where did humanity come from? How did we arrive where we are today? Why is that even important? Because without understanding how human society, since our remotest ancestors, has been created through social labor, working people remain prisoners of the capitalist epoch in which we live. Without knowing how our labor transforms nature, how it’s the motor force along humanity’s ongoing road, we can’t see beyond the class exploitation that warps every aspect of our social relations, ideas, and values. The dictatorship of capital hasn’t always existed. It’s a few hundred years old. Like slavery and serfdom before it, capitalist rule had a beginning. . . and will have an end. Only the revolutionary conquest of state power by the working class, conscious of our class position and conditions of emancipation, can open the door to a future. One based not on dog-eat-dog capitalist exploitation, degradation of nature, subjugation of women, racism, and war. A world built on human solidarity. A socialist world. That’s what a long view of history helps us understand. Also available in Spanish (ISBN: 9781604881219), French (ISBN: 9781604881295) “As an introduction to an important but now neglected side of one of the great debates of our age, this short book genuinely deserves attention.” —Peter W. Wood, president, National Association of Scholars "Informative, thought-provoking, iconoclastic, and highly recommended." —Midwest Book Review "Essential for understanding the world in which we live. Capitalism will not disappear by itself. It must be disappeared, through the struggles of men and women to transform society." —Fernando González, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) "Books like Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity are important in the world today.......They're important for us in Cuba." —Víctor Dreke, long-time revolutionary Cuban combatant p>"George Novack's The Long View of History [now part of the new Pathfinder book] 'opened my horizons' to a materialist explanation of history." —Pedro Pablo Rodríguez, lead editor of complete works of José Martí "People can go out and fight about everyday problems. But they need to transcend these individual situations as they fight. That's exactly what this book is about." —Zuleica Romay, director of Afro-American Studies at Casa de las Américas Frederick Engles (1820–1895) was the founding leader, along with Karl Marx, of the modern revolutionary workers movement. Together with Marx he drafted the Communist Manifesto, the program of that movement. A founder of the Communist League (1848–52), Engels played a prominent role in the 1848–49 revolution in Germany. He was, with Marx, a founding leader of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association (1864–76), often called the First International. After the death of Marx in 1883, Engels led the revolutionary wing of the Second International, founded in 1880, until his own death in 1895. Writings by Engels published and distributed by Pathfinder include: Labor, Nature, and the Dawn of History (coauthor, 2021) Communist Manifesto (coauthor, 2008) Collected Works of Marx and Engels (1975–2004) "The Peasant Question in France and Germany" in Marxism and the Working Farmer (1979) Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1972) Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1972) Karl Marx (1818–1883) was the founding leader, along with Frederick Engels, of the modern revolutionary workers movement. Together with Engels he drafted the Communist Manifesto, the program of that movement. A founder of the Communist League (1848–52), Marx played a prominent role in the 1848–49 revolution in Germany. He was the founding leader of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association (1864–76), often called the First International. The writings of Marx and Engels have provided the political foundation for the actions of proletarian revolutionists worldwide for more than a century and a half. Pathfinder Press publishes The Communist Manifesto (1970) and distributes the Collected Works of Marx and Engels (1975–2004). George Novak (1905–1992) joined the communist movement in the United States in 1933 and remained a member and leader of the Socialist Workers Party until his death. As national secretary of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, Novack helped organize the 1937 International Commission of Inquiry that investigated the charges fabricated by Stalin’s Moscow trials. In the 1940s Novack was national secretary of the Civil Rights Defense Committee, which gathered support for leaders of the SWP and the Midwest Teamsters’ strikes and organizing drive who were framed up and jailed under the witch-hunting Smith Act. He played a prominent role in numerous other civil liberties and civil rights battles over subsequent decades, including the landmark lawsuit against FBI spying and disruption