200 Years of Friedrich Engels: A Critical Assessment of His Life and Scholarship PDF
Preview 200 Years of Friedrich Engels: A Critical Assessment of His Life and Scholarship
The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences Series Editors: Jürgen G. Backhaus · Günther Chaloupek Hans A. Frambach Jürgen Georg Backhaus Günther Chaloupek Hans A. Frambach Editors 200 Years of Friedrich Engels A Critical Assessment of His Life and Scholarship The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences Volume 25 Series Editors Jürgen G. Backhaus Emeritus Professor of Krupp Chair in Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology University of Erfurt Erfurt, Germany Günther Chaloupek Former Director, Department of Economic Research Austrian Chamber of Labour Vienna, Austria Hans A. Frambach Department of Economics University of Wuppertal Wuppertal, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany The European heritage in economics and the social sciences is largely locked in languages other than English. Witness such classics as Storch’s Cours d’Economie Politique, Wicksell’s Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen and Geld, Zins und Güterpreise or Pareto’s Trattato di Sociologia Generale. Since about 1937, partly caused by the forced exodus of many scholars from the German language countries and the international reactions to this event, English has become the undisputed primary language of economics and the social sciences. For about one generation, this language shift did not result in a loss of access to the European non-English sources. However, after foreign language requirements were dropped as entry pre- requisites for receiving the PhD at major research universities, the European heritage in economics and the social sciences has become largely inaccessible to the vast majority of practicing scholars. In this series, we hope to publish works that address this problem in a threefold manner. An aspect of the European heritage in a language other than English should be critically documented and discussed, reconstructed and assessed from a modern scientific point of view, and tested with respect to its relevance for contemporary economic, social, or political discourse. We welcome submissions that fit this bill in order to make the European heritage in economics and the social sciences available to the international research community of scholars in economics and the social sciences. Jürgen Georg Backhaus Günther Chaloupek • Hans A. Frambach Editors 200 Years of Friedrich Engels A Critical Assessment of His Life and Scholarship Editors Jürgen Georg Backhaus Günther Chaloupek Emeritus Professor of Krupp Chair Former Director in Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology Department of Economic Research University of Erfurt Austrian Chamber of Labour Erfurt, Germany Vienna, Austria Hans A. Frambach Schumpeter School of Business and Economics University of Wuppertal Wuppertal, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany ISSN 1572-1744 ISSN 2197-5892 (electronic) The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences ISBN 978-3-031-10114-4 ISBN 978-3-031-10115-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10115-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Günther Chaloupek and Hans A. Frambach Friedrich Engels at 200 Revisiting His Maiden Paper “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” (1844) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Heinz D. Kurz The Internal Contradiction of Land Rent and Young Engels’ Critical Theory of Private Ownership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Tang Zhengdong Engels, Werner Sombart, and the Significance of Marx’s Economics . . . . 47 Günther Chaloupek Friedrich Engels and Positivism: An Attempt at Classification . . . . . . . . . 63 Hans A. Frambach Engels’ Conceptions of Dialectics, Nature, and Dialectics of Nature . . . . . 77 Kaan Kangal Friedrich Engels and the Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Frits van Holthoon Remarks on the Embarrassed Publishing History of Engels, Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Wilfried Nippel “Economic Facts Are Stronger Than Politics”: Friedrich Engels, American Industrialization, and Class Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 James M. Brophy Engels’ Strategic Advice to the Representatives of the Italian Labour Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Paolo Dalvit v vi Contents Friedrich Engels and Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Eberhard Illner Two Sides of Young Friedrich Engels: Private Letters and Professional Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Karl-Heinz Schmidt Introduction Günther Chaloupek and Hans A. Frambach The year 2020 marked the 200th birthday of Friedrich Engels. Although his name is often mentioned as second to that of Marx, Engels’ contribution to the theoretical understanding of capitalism and of many issues of the economic and social world was considerable. Engels certainly became best known as a communist revolution- ary and pioneer of socialism, but he was also a successful journalist, and he gained considerable attention as a philosopher, historian, and social theorist. The scion of a successful textiles dynasty, Engels was born and brought up in Barmen – today part of the city of Wuppertal, Germany – and for many years of his later life he earned his living from active work at the family’s subsidiary in Manchester. Even at a young age, however, he closely observed the working and living conditions of industrial workers and their families around him, and, in the devoutly pietistic environment in which he grew up, he began to have doubts about the spiritual and moral attitude of the regional entrepreneurs among whom his fam- ily moved. These doubts intensified when he was taken out of school against his will by his father and put into mercantile apprenticeship in the Hanseatic port of Bremen. There he found everyday business life underwhelming and even repugnant. He intensively studied literature critical of religion, immersed himself in the philoso- phy of Hegel and Feuerbach, turned away from the Christian faith, and discovered his talent as a journalist. In the famous Letters from Wuppertal (Engels 1839a), Engels vividly portrayed the social misery prevailing in the streets of Barmen, and G. Chaloupek Department of Economic Research, Austrian Chamber of Labour, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] H. A. Frambach (*) Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1 J. G. Backhaus et al. (eds.), 200 Years of Friedrich Engels, The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences 25, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10115-1_1 2 G. Chaloupek and H. A. Frambach in reviews of popular German literature, he criticized Romantic ideas and advocated the implementation of contemporary social developments (Engels 1839b). During his time as an officer cadet in the artillery division of the Royal Prussian Guards in 1841/1842, Engels’ passion for warfare awakened. Here he laid the foun- dation for his career as an expert in military technology and in particular artillery. In Berlin, he also joined a group of intellectuals with radical views, the so-called Freethinkers, and attended philosophy lectures as a guest student at the Friedrich Wilhelm University. In order to involve his son more closely in the family business, and at the same time dissuade him from his supposedly misguided political views and activities, Engels’ father sent him in November 1842 to Ermen and Engels’ cot- ton mill in Manchester. On his way to England, he visited the office of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, where he met its new editor-in-chief, Karl Marx, for the first time. After arriving in England, Engels intensively followed political and economic developments there. He meticulously collected information about living and work- ing conditions in the industrial areas, closely observed the English socialist work- ers’ movement, and participated in many of its events. Already in December 1842, he wrote an article in the Rheinische Zeitung (Nos. 343 and 344) titled “The Internal Crises” posing what he saw as the crucial question for England’s future: “Is revolu- tion possible or even probable in England?” (Engels 1842a, 439) And in the short article “Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England” (“The Condition of the Working- Class in England,” Rheinische Zeitung, No. 359), he dealt forcefully with the lot of the workers in Manchester and the ignorance of the state (Engels 1842b, 447) which, by its inactivity, “turns people without bread into people without morals.” Industry creates a class of absolute poor that cannot be abolished because it is excluded from the acquisition of stable property. The humanitarian catastrophe will inevitably lead to social upheaval, a revolution, which, however, must be preceded by the formation of an awareness in this social class of their own situation, signifi- cance, and power. Engels’ great talent for sociological analysis is already evident from his descrip- tion of conditions in Manchester as expressed in his two early writings “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” (1844) and The Condition of the Working-Class in England (1845).1 In terms of the critique of private property and competition, the unstable nature of industrial capitalism, the critique of political economy as an ide- ology of the bourgeoisie, the importance of technological progress, and the neces- sity of socialist revolution, both works reveal essential elements of Marx and Engels’ later “scientific socialism,” combining a critique of existing conditions with hints of what was to come. Engels’ draft of a theoretical communism in these early writings 1 Friedrich Engels, “Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie,” in: Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher 1844, ed. by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx, Paris 1844, pp. 86–114, in: MEGA2 I/3, pp. 467–494 (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, in: MECW vol. 3, pp. 418–443); Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England. Nach eigner Anschauung und authentischen Quellen, Leipzig 1845: Verlag Otto Wiegand, in: MEGA1 I/4, pp. 5–286 (The Condition of the Working- Class in England, in: MECW vol. 4, pp. 295–596) Introduction 3 gained an empirical basis from his activities in the everyday life of the family enter- prise, accompanied by sympathetic observation of the Manchester working classes and attendance at many activities of the workers’ movement. To this must be added a considerable body of acquired knowledge in the field of social, political, and eco- nomic theory. In particular, Engels intensively studied the French representatives of socialism and their observations and analyses of the increasing impoverishment and proletarianization of large parts of the population. He drew, for example, on Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842), Louis Blanc (1813–1882), and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), from the last named of whom he took he famous statement that “property is theft” (Engels 1843, 503). Much of Engels’ critique of contemporary political economy and capitalist prac- tice was inspired by the French philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837), with whom, for example, he shared the view that free trade is a mechanism of “liberal lies” and a “robber economy” organized and legitimized under the mask of law (Fourier 1846, 10–14). Engels adopted many critical positions of political economy from the socialist orator John Watts (1818–1887), a thinker in the tradition of Robert Owen (1771–1858). Years later, when the materialist conception of history and its scientific foundation of social and economic change on the basis of production and exchange had been more fully formulated, Engels distanced himself from the attempts of the earlier (“prescientific”) socialists, without, however, failing to acknowledge their merits. Thus in 1882, he wrote, “The immaturity of capitalist production, the immaturity of the class situation, was met by an immaturity of the- ory. […] These new socialist systems were doomed from the start as Utopias, and the further they developed in detail, the more they were bound to end in pure fan- tasy” (Engels 1882, 593). Engels left the family company at the end of June 1869. The severance pay and a fortune acquired on the stock exchange made it possible for him to live as a rent- ier. In summer 1870, he moved to London with his partner Lizzy Burns and was elected to the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association (the so-called Internationale), founded in 1864, where he supported the proletarian struggle with all his means and abilities and at the same time devoted himself to the intensive study of scientific writings. In Herr Eugen Dühring’s Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (“Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science,” generally known as Anti-Dühring; Engels 1878) and various scientific statements and notes of the Dialectics of Nature (1873–1882), Engels explained and interpreted the materialis- tic idea of historical processes laid down by Marx in the sense of generalizing pro- cesses governed by natural law. It was his great concern to show that changes in nature and in society proceed according to the same dialectical law of motion: “It is, therefore, from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two stages of historical development, as well as of thought itself” (Engels 1873–1882, 175). After Marx’s death in March 1883, Engels undertook to systematize, develop, and disseminate his friend’s intellectual legacy. He continued to support Marx’s family financially in a generous way. The importance of Marxism as a political philosophy is certainly due in large degree to Engels’ work.
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