7 Key excerpts on "Friedrich Engels"

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  Key Thinkers on Development

  • David Simon, David Simon(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  KARL MARX (1818–1883)

  Karl Marx was a revolutionary political and economic philosopher who, together with Friedrich Engels, produced a materialist theory of the evolution of societies. The theory was powerful enough that it influenced both social theory and the geopolitical reality that theory tries to understand. Marx was born in Trier and educated in philosophy at several German universities. He served briefly as editor of the Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung in 1842 and 1843 but was forced to resign because of his radicalism and left for Paris, and then Brussels, where he wrote The German Ideology in 1847 (Marx 1970, 1981), his first sustained statement of an overall philosophy. Marx and Engels also organised a network of revolutionary groups into the Communist League, for which they wrote a statement of principles called Manifesto of the Communist Party (1969 [1847–1848]). After being arrested and banished, Marx finally settled in London in 1849, where he was active in the First International Workingmen’s Association formed in 1864. A series of works, including A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1969b [1859]), Wages, Price and Profit (1969a [1865]), and the first volume of Das Kapital (1867, translated into English as Capital volume 1, 1887 (1976), formed the core of Marx’s economic writings. Volumes 2 and 3 of Capital , edited by Friedrich Engels, were published posthumously in 1885 and 1894, and translated in 1907–1909. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy is regarded as Marx’s mature statement on capitalist development.

  Marx and Engels were Enlightenment modernists, who believed in social progress and the perfectibility of humankind. They were optimists in the sense of trust in the transformative potential of science and the material plenitude made possible by technological advance. Yet they were also highly critical of the particular social and political form taken by modernism – that is, capitalism. They saw capitalist development as a process of human emancipation but also as alienation from nature, as a process of human self-creation, but one directed by a few powerful people, as progress in material life, but progress motivated by socially and environmentally irrational drives, like competition. Marxian analysis thus became not the scholastic pursuit of truth for its own sake, and certainly not legitimisation theory for the rich and famous, but a theoretical guide to radical political practice aimed at completely changing society. Development, they thought, should meet the needs of the working class and should be socially and democratically directed. Marx and Engels came to liberate modernism, not to praise it.

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  Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought (set)

  • Gregory Claeys(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  Rheinische Zeitung in October 1842. When the two met in Cologne a month later, Marx associated Engels with the radical Young Hegelians in Berlin from whom Marx now wished to dissociate himself. The first meeting, then, was not auspicious; however, a year later, Marx read Engels’s “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” and was greatly impressed. For Marx, Engels had provided just what the Young Hegelians most lacked—an understanding of political economy from a philosophical perspective. He could also write well and incisively and had a knowledge of social conditions in England. He next met Marx in Paris in the summer of 1844 when returning to Germany after nearly two years in England. This time, his reception was much warmer, and so their collaboration began. Together they produced the foundation texts of what became known as Marxism, a label that implicitly designates Engels as the junior partner. However, his contribution was substantial. Engels became Marx’s closest friend and intellectual collaborator. It was Engels who first directed Marx to the study of economics, who first acquainted him with factory conditions in industrial England, who advocated and popularized their shared beliefs, and who was Marx’s major source of financial support during thirty-four years as a refugee in London. For more than half of these years, Engels continued his work in the Manchester branch of the family firm, leading a strange dual existence as businessman and revolutionary. He was outwardly the very picture of respectability, for he attended the concerts of the Hallé orchestra, rode with the Cheshire Hunt, and became Chairman of the prestigious Schiller Institute. Simultaneously, however, he corresponded regularly with Marx in pursuit of their revolutionary aims, and away from the city center maintained a second home where he lived with Mary Burns, a working-class Irish woman. She died in 1863, and Engels was happy to be able to retire in 1869 at the age of forty-nine. A year later, he joined Marx in London where he lived until his death in 1895.

  Early Writings: Economics and Revolution

  One way of understanding Marxism is as an economics-based explanation of history. It was Engels’s 1844 article on “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” that led Marx to focus on the study of economics. Much that was to become familiar is already present here: the denunciation of the system of economic competition, the assertion that the gulf between capitalists and workers is antagonistic and bound to deepen and that social polarization will occur, the tendency of competition toward economic monopoly, and the belief that regular trade crises are endemic in a system that will reach its destined end in a social revolution. There is also the scathing denunciation of Thomas Malthus that, like much else in this article, was later to find fuller expression two decades later in Marx’s Capital.

  From a treatise on economic theory, Engels turned to actual social investigation. His The Condition of the Working Class in England

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  Feminist Political Theory

  • Valerie Bryson(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  3 THE CONTRIBUTION OF MARX AND ENGELS

  It is at first sight odd to include a chapter on classic Marxism in a work on feminist political theory, because Karl Marx was not a feminist. This does not mean that he was deliberately hostile to female liberation but simply that, unlike Mill or Thompson, he did not see issues of sexual oppression as interesting or important in their own right, and he never made them the subject of detailed empirical or theoretical investigation. Marx’s theory did, however, claim to enable a comprehensive analysis of human history and society, and he provided a radically new way of seeing the world that inspired many later feminists, influencing both theoretical understanding and ‘real world’ feminist politics. His close friend Friedrich Engels applied Marx’s ideas to feminist issues, and from the late nineteenth century other writers and activists in the United States, Germany and Russia attempted to develop a Marxist analysis of ‘the woman question’ (see Chapters5 and 6 ). Marxist feminism was also a key strand of ‘second wave’ feminism from the 1960s that remains important today. This means that to understand much feminist history and recent feminist debate, it is necessary to have some knowledge of Marx’s original theory; it is to a brief account of this that we therefore now turn.

  Classic Marxist theory

  The ideas that Marx and Engels developed were extremely complex, and they have been interpreted in very many different ways. However, at their core was a view of history and society that saw the world as constantly changing and progressing, and that insisted that liberal ideas of individual rights, justice and human nature were not universal principles, but the product of a particular period of human history. The key to understanding the process of historical development lay, they argued, not in the ideas that people hold, but in their physical productive activity: it was the first cooperative act of production that formed the basis of the earliest primitive society and the beginnings of human history, for

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  Political Thought in the Age of Revolution 1776-1848

  Burke to Marx

  • Michael Levin(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Rheinische Zeitung in October 1842, and when the two met in Cologne a month later, Marx associated Engels with the Berlin radical Young Hegelians from whom he then wished to dissociate himself. So the first meeting was not auspicious, but a year later, Marx read an article by Engels entitled ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’. The effect on him was fundamental. Engels had provided just what the Young Hegelians most lacked, an understanding of political economy from a philosophical perspective. Engels also had the advantage of outstanding journalistic skills and a knowledge of social conditions in England. He next met Marx in Paris in the summer of 1844 when returning to Germany after nearly 2 years in England. This time, his reception was much warmer and so their collaboration began, producing the foundation texts of what became known as Marxism, a label that implicitly designates Engels as the junior partner. However, his contribution was substantial. For the moment, we can note that it was Engels who first directed Marx to the study of economics, who led to his first acquaintance with factory conditions in industrial England, became his closest friend and intellectual collaborator, the advocate and populariser of their joint beliefs and also Marx’s major source of financial support during 34 years as a refugee in London. For more than half of these years, Engels continued his work in the Manchester branch of the family firm, Ermen and Engels, leading a strange dual existence as businessman and revolutionary. He was outwardly the very picture of respectability, for he attended the concerts of the Hallé orchestra, rode with the Cheshire Hunt and became Chairman of the prestigious Schiller Institute. Simultaneously, however, he corresponded regularly with Marx in pursuit of their revolutionary aims and, away from the city centre, maintained a second home where he lived with Mary Burns, a working-class Irish woman. She died in 1863, and Engels was happy to be able to retire in 1869 at the age of 49. A year later, he joined Marx in London, where he lived until his death in 1895.

  The Historical Process

  The Marxist system is the major example of the more general theory of progress that was widely accepted in our period. We have already seen variants of it with Paine, Hegel and Tocqueville. Like Tocqueville, Marx believed that modern society was destined to become more equal; like Hegel, indeed from Hegel, he accepted the idea that development is a product of differences between opposing tendencies. For Hegel, like Plato long before him, the conflict was one of argument and counter-argument at the level of ideas. Marx took up this general structure but gave it a new content. For him, the dynamic behind the historical process was provided not by philosophical argument but by actual clashes between social classes with opposed vested interests; that is, between those, on the one hand, who own the wealth on which productivity depends and those, on the other, who have nothing apart from their ability to labour. In applying this analysis throughout history, Marx and Engels claimed to understand how conflict within feudal society had generated what they called bourgeois or capitalist society. Furthermore, they claimed that this method enabled them to predict how structured antagonism within bourgeois society would inevitably lead to the achievement of communism.

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  Philosophy: The Classics

  • Nigel Warburton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  change it.’ It is not good enough simply to recognise that capitalism traps many people in a life of meaningless work and impoverished home life. What is needed is a revolution: a complete overturning of the status quo. No one can deny that Marx and Engels succeeded in their aim of changing the world. Unlike many of the writers discussed so far, these two managed to have a profound effect not just on academics, but on the world at large. Almost miraculously, their writings inspired successful revolutions, the after-effects of which are still being felt today.

  Historical Materialism

  Marx and Engels’ theory of historical materialism, or ‘the materialist conception of history’, as they prefer to call it, is the theory that your material circumstances shape what you are. ‘Materialism’ has several uses in philosophy. In the philosophy of mind, for instance, it is the view that the mind can be explained in purely physical terms. This is not how Marx and Engels use it. Rather for them ‘materialism’ refers to our relationship with materials of production: at its most basic, this amounts to the labour that we have to do in order to feed and clothe ourselves and our dependants. In more complex societies it takes in the property that we may or may not own and our relationship to the means of producing wealth.

  Materialism in this sense is directly opposed to the kind of philosophy that forgets the nature of real human life and hovers in a world of abstract generalisations. It concentrates on the harsh realities of most human life, which perhaps explains its wide appeal. This materialism is historical in the sense that it recognises that material circumstances change over time, and that, for example, the impact of a new technology can completely transform a society, and thus the individuals who compose it. For instance, the abolition of slavery was made possible by the invention of the steam engine, a machine which could work harder and longer than a hundred slaves.

  Division of Labour

  As soon as human beings begin to produce what they need to survive, they set themselves apart from animals. The particular demands of what they produce and how they produce it shape their lives. As societies grow, so the social relations necessary for successful production become more complex; the more developed a society, the greater division of labour that occurs.

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  Marxism-Leninism and the Theory of International Relations

  • V. Kubalkova, A. Cruickshank(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  31

  A further criticism levelled at these neo-leninist writers has dealt with the fact that in order to salvage Lenin's thesis the definition of imperialism has had to be so broadened as to comprehend virtually any relation among unequals.32 (In the context of broadening one cannot refrain from remarking that in order to permit an accommodation between Soviet marxism and the narrowness of Marx's too orthodox concepts, Soviet marxism also has been obliged to engage in a considerable 'liberalisation' of Marx's definitions.) And, finally, it has been argued that Arghiri Emmanuel's theory of unequal exchange – regarded by most structural dependence theorists as a central proposition – offers too tenuous a link to Marx's labour theory of value on which it claims to be based.

  The reader will decide which of these 'marxist' elements outlined above is to be deemed attributable to Marx. What does seem to us to be beyond dispute is that Marx, with considerable assistance by Engels and Lenin, laid the solid foundations of a system of thinking which, despite its shortcomings, is still unique in the world today. It is the only system which provides a set of co-ordinates that enables one to locate and to define a thought in any sphere whatsoever. In this closely knit system of thought the singling out of one particular aspect (such as international relations) is practically impossible without repeated reference to the rest of the system: and this to our mind is another main characteristic of Marx's theory of international relations. In terms of structure it would be difficult to point to anything that is 'left out', and for every problem there is a 'marxist' answer – at least at first glance. Lenin's famous doctrine of the reflection of existence in consciousness, for example (a detailed answer from Marx on the subject is missing), says nothing as to how reality is reflected, and insistence on the conclusion that there are differences among perceptions and commitments according to class alignment, or, in Marxist-Leninist terms of reference, whether a theoretician operates from the so-called classless society or whether he is 'armed' with the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism is very difficult to verify, to say the least. The Marxist-Leninist would of course contend that apart from minor errors Marxism-Leninism is right in the long run – a fact which is increasingly confirmed as time goes on. The onset of each global economic depression, every single thrust towards polarisation – including those that take place behind the 'coexistence screen' drawn across the world by a technological (nuclear arms) factòr – makes that ideology the 'conscience of the century', a conscience quite impregnable to attempts to discover flaws on the part of a 'dying' antagonist.

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  Modern Criticism and Theory

  A Reader

  • Nigel Wood, David Lodge(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

  DOI: 10.4324/9781315835488-1

  Introductory note

  Marx (1818–1883) and Engels (1820–1895) first met in Cologne in 1842, but their most productive working period was in Britain from 1845 on, in both Manchester and London. These extracts from The German Ideology (written, 1845–46; published, 1932) illustrate what they regarded as a materialist view of history in their first large-scale attempt to formulate the bases of their disagreement with the ideas of G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) and his imitators, the young Hegelians. Principally in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel had conceived of the historical process as the working out of a dialectic whereby meaning and truth are never fixed entities, but are rather staging posts in a progress towards a basic unity or Geist (‘Spirit’) when there would be an absolute knowledge that the world was really an emanation of spiritual understanding or contemplation. Reason is an important tool in this, but it is only that: Geist is the highest form of enlightenment, and its attainment is the goal of all historical striving, a process of periodic Aufhebung, or upheaval/cancellation that introduces emergent social forms amidst residual practices – but the motive force is thought guided by reason.

  This reassuring sense of history, that it is a record of gradual improvement as Man develops an awareness of others, reflected well on much of the nineteenth-century’s rapid material progress, yet Marx and Engels were more struck by the unequal distribution of its benefits, and that history seemed to provide more of an account of material struggle and occasional decline. The theory of history they favoured is most clearly expressed in the Preface to Marx’s A Critique of Political Economy (1858–59), where a consideration of ‘material conditions of life’ is a way of understanding many abstract and apparently separate beliefs: ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.’ Furthermore, in order to be socially and materially productive (in ‘the social production of their life’), Man enters into ‘definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will’ (Karl Marx: selected writings, ed. David McLellan [1977], p. 389) The basic – and systemic – economy of life, how one produces and under what conditions, is the prime motive force, refracted within superstructural prohibitions and supposed freedoms allowed by legal and educational systems as well as religious codes. The Base determines human behaviour in ways that are often hidden from individuals by superstructural forces that give the impression that they are open to change and evolution; if they are, then their effect will not be significantly different so long as the capitalist system prevails. In many of the writings collected together in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (first pub. in 1932; trans. 1959), it is clear that Marx was struck by the alienation that the working classes experienced, a desperation so deep that it created a hopelessness about any changes to their condition. Appropriating the work of Ludwig Feuerbach, most consistently his views in The Essence of Christianity (1841), Marx and Engels drew a clear line between their investigations and the Enlightenment faith in rational self-improvement, noted in Rousseau and Condorcet as well as Feuerbach. The object of philosophy is to have a material effect on the conditions of life, not to accustom men and women to their lot. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) and Capital

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