Friedrich Engels's original ideas and intellectual partnership with Karl Marx

Friedrich Engels Biography

Friedrich Engels is described by Terrell Carver (2003) as a man involved in one of the most famous intellectual collaborations of all time (p. 1). That collaboration, as we now know, was the political ideology of socialism. This essay explores the life of Friedrich Engels, his relationship with Karl Marx, his ideas, some of which Carver suggests were actually incorporated into the thinking and work of his partner, Karl Marx, and Carter attempts to sort and separate the ideas with the man. Engels did carry the greater political clout, Carver says, through his "popularizations" of Marx's ideas. Carter says, too, that Engels had original ideas, and that is the subject of this paper. While we know that Engels popularized Marx's ideas, this paper attempts to understand Friedrich Engels as a person, and as the man of original ideas that were compatible with those espoused by Karl Marx.

This exploration begins with a brief review of Engels' early life; where did he come from, who were his influences, and other facets of a young man's life that might influence and help shape his philosophical and political ideologies. This understanding will serve as segue into the deeper and more complex thoughts of the man: economics, ecology, government, citizenship, and other facets of life and liberties about which Engels is known to have had passionate and adamant ideas about.

There is a vast wealth of writing and information from Engels, and through that we will be able to gain insight into his relationship with Karl Marx. It will, of course, be an interesting challenge to interpret the writings of Engels in relationship to Marx, and to attempt to detect what influence, if any, Engels might have had on Marx.

Young Friedrich Engels

Born November 28, 1820, Friedrich Engels entered the world during an era of change. Technology gave rise to an emerging world economy that meant massive movements in capital, foreign trade, and migration from and to various geographical locals around the world to accomplish the building of the necessary infrastructure to support the expanding financial infrastructure (Kenwood, a.G. And Lougheed, 1999: 9). For those businesses and entrepreneurs well positioned in 1820, the expansion of opportunity through world trade would serve to create massive wealth, but at the same time there remained the middle class who performed the drudgery and muscle work that drove the expansion of business and around whom new technology was developed in order to continually improve and increase productivity (9). Just as it created wealth, it had an equally reverse impact on some industries (9) a.G. Kenwood and a.L. Lougheed analyze the trends of the early 19th century, commenting this way:

Taken generally, however, technical progress in the nineteenth century tended to be pro-trade biased. Innovation was widespread, and the opportunities for trade multiplied accordingly. Before 1870, the important innovating industries were textiles (especially cotton) and iron, with steam the new source of power. After 1870 the focus of technical change began to shift, as increasing emphasis came to be placed on the production of steel, machine tools, electrical engineering products, and chemicals. Electricity emerged as a new form of energy and the internal combustion engine as the basis of a new means of transport. The outcome of all these developments was a flood of new goods, including railway equipment, steamships, steel and electrical products, plant and machinery of all kinds, and a growing variety of other manufactured products. In addition, many of the articles already traded internationally became cheaper, especially cotton cloth. The result was a rapid expansion in foreign trade in manufactures (10)."

The Engels family is described by Terrell Carver as "well-to-do" mill owners (2003:3). Wealth was a personal condition with which Engels was not comfortable, because by the time he was 18, having been published as a poet by 17, he was a journalist, but he took on a pseudonym in order that his journalistic endeavors not be overshadowed by his personal wealth (3). Carver says that Engels was an observer, and he paid close attention to his environment (3). When he put into journalistic prose that which he observed about the area of the Wuppertal, where he lived in Germany; he was very critical of manufacturers and the relationship between the wealthy and the middle class workers (3).

Engels used his own eyes and ears to good effect, and his portrayal of the physical and social circumstances of a small but intensely industrialized community was very sharp indeed. Pollution of the river Wupper by dye-works and of the inhabitants by drink set a scene of visual and cultural shabbiness: a Catholic church 'built very badly by a very inexperienced architect from a very good plan'; the columns 'Egyptian at the bottom, Doric in the middle, and Ionic at the top' that flank the ex-museum, now a casino. 'There is no trace here of the wholesome, vigorous life of the people that exists almost everywhere in Germany', Engels wrote, and the reason was factory work (4)."

The impressions made upon Engels in his observances of factor owners and their employees served to form the basis for Engels' early thoughts about economics, society, religion, and education all of which Engels found lacking, especially religion (4).

Carter says that many of Engels early ideas were shaped by his industrialist family, and he developed a hostility towards education early on when forced to go to school (5). Other impressions concerning the middle class and their industrialist employers were in part shaped by Engels' observations of the havoc industry wreaked on the environment (5). In the early years of industrialization there, of course, no restrictions put on manufacturers as to the release of harmful by-products discharged into the air and water systems; and the result was that, by the 1960s, the environment was responding to the lack of concern on the part of industry, succumbing to harmful by-products of the manufacturing processes. The impact of the manufacturing on the environment is something that any nature loving young man would notice and resent. Engels was critical of industrialists, and, as a result, Engels attracted his own critics (5). Here, in the exchange between Engels, industrialists and others in society and his critics is the evolution of the ideology that would emerge as compatible with Karl Marx. This is especially remarkable in the exchanges when he responded to his critics (5).

Replying in an open letter to a critic of his articles, Engels noted that he had 'throughout acknowledged competence in individual cases', but that 'in general I was unable to find any purely bright sides'. As an attack on provincial hypocrisy, obscurantism, pretentiousness and bad taste the 'Letters from Wuppertal' were extraordinarily vivid. An eyewitness account of early industrialization was firmly at the basis of Engels's view, and this turned the work into something even more interesting, and prescient (5)."

Over time, Engels became as much a political pundit as he was a journalist, and he reviewed books; but he also socialized and behaved in a way that belied his wealth. Yet he touched base with the middle and lower middle classes on a ship bound for America (p. 7). Carver cites Engels remarking on this experience.

A row of berths... where men, women and children are packed next to one another like paving stones in the street'. Here were the people, Engels remarked, 'to whom nobody raises a hat'; they made a sad spectacle. What must it be like 'when a prolonged storm throws everything into confusion (7)!'

It would not be long into the future when Engels would contemplate the plight of the lower classes would in a more mature and sophisticated way, wrapping it around his political ideology. At this point, however, we hear in Engel's remarks an immaturity in his description of the middle class as if he is himself somewhat awkward with that condition, which is, of course, because he had until at least that point led a life of privilege. Later, Carver mentions, Engels would go into debt (7). By going into debt he might have, at least to the extent that he could at that time, perceived his indebtedness as an indoctrination of sorts into the middle class.

Carver reports, too, that while attending the university from 1841-1842, Engels defended the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel; though it is not clear from Carver's discussion as to whether or not it was because Engels was himself impressed with Hegel, or because Hegel was at that time an opposite view of the university's professor of philosophy, Friedrich von Schelling (7).

While it is clear that Engels' political, economic, environmental and social observations lead him to conclusions that were reflective of at least a conscientious concern for the world around him; what Carver has written about him conveys in some sense the defiance of a child born to the elite. However, this raised conscience would remain a characteristic that defined Engels in later life, although in a more sophisticated and mature way.

Engels' Writings

Engels wrote independently and, or, collaborated with Marx on subjects like sociology, history, politics and, deferring to Marx, economics - although Marx's economics proves weak. When Engels first Marx, Marx was working on a theory of political economy (Raddatz, F., (ed), 1981: 1). If anything provides understand of these two collaborators, it is the exchange of ideas between them and others with whom they corresponded.

In a letter from Engels to Marx dated October 1844, Engels speaks of his sister's engagement to the "London Communist," Emil Blank (6). However, there is no mistaking the tone of the remark in that regard, Engels does not find camaraderie with Blank (6). Engels laments the fact that he will not be able to return to Paris for at least six months, and must "knock around Germany" for that period of time (6). Here we gain a sense of Engels' elitism, that he travels with ease and at will from place to place as the wealthy elite might do; and rightly so, because he is, after all, wealthy and elite. However, the sense of his wealth is conveyed in the manner of communicating with Marx. His remarks about Blank convey a sense not of interest in socialism or communism, but snobbery of the most reprehensibly elitist kind. The more that is understood about Engels through his own communications, the more it would seem that Engels wore his anti-establishment politics like a fashionable coat; although there was no denying that he held Marx in high esteem, and remained a life-long loyal friend to Marx (6).

A spent three days in Cologne and was amazed at the colossal propaganda we have made there. The people are very active, but the lack of a proper support is nevertheless very perceptible. Until the principles have been logically and historically developed from the previous way of looking at things and from past history and portrayed as their necessary continuation in some essays, everything is bound to be a sort of day-dreaming and, for most people, a blind groping about. Afterwards I was in Dusseldorf, where we also have a few good chaps (Raddatz: 6)."

However, Engels remarks to Marx that in the police commission, Barmen, he finds a "communist," and it is conveyed that Barmen is a person with whom Engels is able to experience some level of camaraderie. He identifies, too, a former school friend, Gustav Wurm, as a communist, too, but it is clear that Engels is not impressed with either of these men in the way that he stands in awe of Marx. Rather, it is easy to read the letter and come away with the sense that Barmen and Wurm should stand in awe of Engels. Engels mentions to Marx, too, that they must be careful of what they discuss or risk being "picked up (7)." However, Engels assures Marx, so long as they keep quiet, that risk is minimal - and you have to wonder if there was a risk at all since by this time everyone would have been well versed in Engels' anti-establishment sentiments and communist thinking. In the letter, Engels remarks on what he perceives as Wuppertal's progress at a social and political level, remarking:

Since my departure the Wuppertal has made more progress in every respect than in the last fifty years. The social tone has become more civilized, participation in politics and the making of opposition is universal, industry has made headlong progress, new parts of the town have been built, whole forests have been exterminated, and the whole lot now stands above rather than below the level of German civilization, whereas a mere four years ago it stood far below -- in short, a splendid soil is being prepared here for our principle, and the moment we can set our wild hot-blooded dyers and bleachers into action the Wuppertal will surprise you yet. The workers in any event have for a few years past arrived at the final stage of the old civilization; they are protesting against the old social organization through a rapid increase in crime, robberies and murders. The streets are most unsafe in the evening, the bourgeoisie gets beaten up and stabbed with knives and robbed; and if the proletarians here develop along the same lines as the English ones they will soon realize that this manner of protest against the social order as individuals and by violence is useless, and they will protest as human beings in their general capacity through communism. If only one could show the fellows the way! But that is impossible (7)."

That Engels sees progress on the political and social fronts is less a product of the people's acceptance of communism as a political ideology, and, looking at the global debt crisis timeline in Appendix One, more a concern and unease with the economy, which, as pertained to Germany at that time, was impacted by foreign investment and prosperity or lack thereof (see Appendix One). The timeline indicates that during the year in which Engels' letter to Marx was penned, no less than twelve countries comprising twenty-two percent of the world's foreign debt, were in default on their world loans (Suter, C., 1992: 195).

From Paris, March, 1847 Engels writes Marx again, imploring him to leave Brussels and to come to Paris. Here, again, Engels displays the "bourgeois" attitude that he and Marx, according to the doctrine of Communism, would not expect to display.

If it is at all possible do come over here in April. By 7 April I'm moving out -- I don't know yet where to -- and shall also have some money about that time. We might spend some time boozing together very merrily. As the police are now rather unpleasant (apart from the Saxon I wrote to you about, my old opponent Eisermann has also been harassed -- both have remained here, see K. Grun in Klner Zeitung), it will therefore be best to follow Brnstein's advice. Try the French Envoy about getting a passport for your emigration; if this doesn't work we'll see what can be done here -- there's bound to be some conservative Deputy who might be mobilized sixth-hand. You've got quite simply to leave that annoying Brussels and come to Paris, and I'm also longing to have a few drinks with you. Either a dissolute character or a schoolmaster -that's all one can be here; a dissolute character among dissolute rascals, and that's a very bad role if you've got no money, or a schoolmaster of Ewerbeck, Bernays and associates. Or else allow the chiefs of the French Radicals to give you wise advice which you must subsequently defend against the other asses so they don't strut about too proudly in their woolly Germanity. If only I had an income of 5,000 fr. I'd do nothing but work and have fun with the women till I was finished. If there weren't any Frenchwomen life wouldn't be worth living at all but so long as there are grisettes -bah! This does not mean that one doesn't enjoy now and again discussing some proper subject or enjoying life with a little refinement, but neither is possible with the gang of my acquaintances. You've got to come here (Raddatz, 1981: 14)."

In his early remarks, Raddatz mentions that little attention has been paid to the numerous letters of exchange between Marx and Engels, citing the volume of them as tedious to sort through (1). It might be suggested, however, that Raddatz stated the point as to why the letters have been "disregarded" in the sentences preceding that remark, which are written as follows:

The letters reveal the most extraordinary details -- such as Marx's incessant financial difficulties which gave rise to his almost peremptory demands to Engels -- who supported him throughout his life -- to send him money. Whether concerned with emigre gossip, love affairs or adulturous liaisons; whether dealing with deliberate political intrigues, designed to destroy Bakunin, isolate Lassalle or ridicule Liebknecht; whether obsessed with their own domestic troubles -- Engels, after all, though unmarried, for a time lived with two women, a circumstance which Marx's very bourgeois-minded wife strongly repudiated; or whether revealing Marx's quite gigantic appetite for reading and his capacity for work, even though most of the time plagued by sickness to the very limits of endurance: there exists no better biographical document of the two men than their letters (1)."

In fact, as previously stated, the letters show Engels as lazy, complaining about working in his father's factor (6). They cast Engels in a more human way, in a less ideological perspective, and except for what he describes as "communist" meetings, which from the description sound more like literary works discussions - not at all limited to the communist ideology - it begins to raise questions as to how Engels and Marx ever managed to build momentum behind what is their legacy: historical materialism.

Also, looking at the exhibit in Appendix One, we see that in 1947, when Engels is looking forward to getting drunk with Marx and spending leisure time together, the world economy is still shaky, though perhaps slightly less so than in the previously cited period.

Marx's letters are, as Raddatz noted, mostly complaining about being poor, and asking Engels for money (15). There is, too, the sense that Marx is equally unsuited to finding and keeping gainful employment, even though Marx has completed his doctoral degree (15).

What becomes apparent in these letters is that the real impetus behind these men's complaints about the democratic politics, and their support for communism was not about bringing about equality and eliminating the classes. It was about a redistribution of wealth, and installing a new elite to take on the power seats that might not otherwise be vacated for decades. Their early letters of exchange establish characteristically who Engels and Marx are as men and citizens.

Howard L. Parsons points out that Marx and Engels have been criticized for their ecological positions (1997:35). This criticism is valid, as we gain insight from their writings that neither of these two men held other than an opinion. Their ecological ideas demonstrate their lack of knowledge and ecological understanding.

Three criticisms are cited against Engels and Marx: pitting man against nature, as opposed to putting man in harmony with nature (35).

Marx and Engels shared the attitude toward nature held by contemporary men of industry and commerce and by the millions of settlers migrating to new lands to struggle with the hardships of the frontier. Whereas eighteenth-century Europeans, for example, viewed America as a utopian garden of abundance, freedom, and harmony, the nineteenth-century immigrants saw the wilderness as an obstacle to be conquered and as a reservoir of potential wealth to be subdued and transformed by the labors of man (36)."

Engels' philosophy on property and marriage, if applied, would have taken civilization back to primitive tribal times (McCann, C., 2004:151). In an effort to make community property all things, including children, Engels sounds even more absurd than ever before. Charles McCann explains Engels' philosophy, which is discerned from Engels' own writings, this way:

First, both the institution of private property and the institution of marriage are essential to the maintenance of society: marriage equates with reproduction, property with nutrition, "and no society could exist without both." Thus Sumner can conclude that both are institutions "in exactly the same sense and in exactly the same degree" (Sumner 1888, p. 2).

Second, consider the family as it existed in primitive, tribal societies. In these early communities, the family unit (we are told) is comprised of the mother and her children, the father having the responsibility not for the welfare of his family but, along with the other males in the society, for the welfare of the tribe. (Sumner also allows that, in many cases, the father was actually "a man of another tribe," someone literally from outside the group (Sumner 1888, p. 2).) in terms of the group as a whole, the organization "is that of the hordes which possess property in common" (p. 2), with property to be defined in the broadest possible terms. The males of the tribe are responsible for its protection and survival; the females are responsible for the care of the children, with the understanding that the children, as with the property, are common assets of the tribe. Such an explanation is quite at one with that of Friedrich Engels. In Engel's explication of the anthropological record, in the most primitive state, the division of labor was sexual: males provided food for the family as well as protection for the community, while females cared for the household; each held control of the implements of their respective domains of specialization, while sharing as common property that which was the result of common production (Engels 1884, p. 259). Thus we have a primitive communism, or communalism, a system ideally suited to the time, place, and circumstance of its creation (McCann, Jr., 2004:151)."

As the absurdity of the philosophy of Engels and Marx is revealed through their writings - and especially Marx's Holy Family, which was originally intended as joke - that communism as a social and political change, as an applied political science, was destined to fail. What Marx and Engels hit upon were difficult economic times not just in Germany and France, but around the world (see Appendix One). The technology that technology and industry and the cost of manufacturing did not have a sustainable equilibrium, and an equilibrium could not be achieved by bringing those processes into the state ownership and mandate; as was demonstrated in the fall of the Soviet Union, and by the fact that China has not begun to pursue a course of pseudo capitalism. Communism failed not because it did not have the natural or industrial resources to sustain it, but because the very notion of the system was the invention of men who wanted the "leisure of freedom," and who complained bitterly about having to sustain themselves in a material world. The personal exchanges through letters, taken into perspective with his political writings, reveal Engels to be immature and to probably have suffered his entire life with issues related to his domineering and overbearing father.

What communism found that revolutionized it, was might be referred to as the Marie Antoinette syndrome; that is, the starving masses responded to their hunger, not to their senses, and their resentment towards the privileged who, as Marie Antoinette suggested, might eat cake if they had no bread, manifested itself in violence and upheaval. What it did was redistribute wealth to the governing elite, who missed not a mea, slept in warm beds and found a leisure freedom through government that meant they would not have to sustain themselves with labor. We see this in Engels' the Peasant War in Germany (Engels, F., 1926).

Engels wrote:

THE German people are by no means lacking in revolutionary tradition. There were times when Germany produced characters that could match the best men in the revolutions of other countries; when the German people manifested an endurance and energy which, in a centralised nation, would have brought the most magnificent results; when the German peasants and plebeians were pregnant with ideas and plans which often made their descendants shudder (33)."

Reading this thought, we find a very well articulated fantastic thought; but come away asking: what does this mean. This was the problem cited by each of the authors in this essay; they found Engels, and often times Marx, to be unintelligent, lacking substantive meaning in the ideas they expressed. The problem that we see in the remarks above is that Engels has fallen victim to narcissism; that is, he has become so enamored with his own written eloquence that he has failed to edit substantive meaning or gainful thought into the prose.

He does, however, make some very real, albeit simple, observations about industry, which he knows well through his family heritage, and because he spent no small amount of time in his life avoiding it.

That Engels had such a profound impact on history can only leave the scholar grasping for further understanding. It is perhaps to make some sense out of the ridiculous - which is how Engels might be perceived in his expressions of social philosophy, and in his letters to Karl Marx - that historians have attempted to build some semblance of philosophical significance around the man and his legacy: historical materialism.

Appendix One

Appendix: Time Series of Data on Global Debt Crises, 1823-1893

Number of Countries in Defaulta

Share of De- faulted Debtf

Reschedulingsa

Interestb

Totalc

Int.d

Tot.e

N.h

Suter, C., 1992: 195.