In the three sections of the pamphlet, Engels' explains the three components of Marxist thought: French Socialism, German Philosophy, a nd English Economics. In the first part of the pamphlet Engels explains that Socialism of the past had been utopian — holding the belief that as soon as everyone in a society understood Socialism and believed in it, a Socialist society would appear. Engels wrote, "... the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments."

Engels then explains the slow historical development of the dialectical philosophy over thousands of years; knowledge that culminated into what allowed Marx to see and explain the materialist conception of history, which Engels goes onto explain in the third part of this pamphlet.