Frederick Engels: A short biography

155 Pages·1988·20.757 MB·English

by  Evgeniia Akimovna Stepanova

Frederick Engels · A Short Biography
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Yevgenia Stepanova
A Short
Biography
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Etchings by SERGEI YAKUTOVICH Contents
Translated from the Russian
Edited by VIC SCHNEIERSON
E. CTenanoBa I. Childhood and Adolescence 6
<PPH)lPHX 3HfEJTbC 6Y!OfPA<DH4ECKHH 04EPK II. Beginning of Engels's Political
Activity 14
III. Adoption of Materialism and
Communism 31
IV. The Partnership with Marx.
The Beginning of the Struggle
for a Proletarian Party 45
V. Engels in the Revolution of
1848-49 80
VI. Summing up the Lessons of the
Revolutions 120
VII. The Period of Reaction and the
New Rise of the Democratic
and Proletarian Movements 137
VIII. The Period of the First Interna
tional and the Paris Commune 163
IX. The Last Few Years with Marx 209
X. Adviser and Leader of Euro-
pe's Socialists 242
© J;:f3naTeJlbCTBO l10JUITH'IeCKOH JliHeparypbl, 1985 _
English translation and illustrations !f) Progress Publishers 1988 Name Index 298
C 0 I 03010000-683 6e3 o6MIBJL
0 14(01)-88
rsBN 5-0l-000444-5
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
I. Childhood and juveniles lowering the wages of men workers. 7
And, as was the case everywhere, the rise of cap
and adolescence
Childhood and
italism in the Rhineland was accompanied by the
Adolescence
ruin of the peasantry, handicraftsmen and urban
petty bourgeoisie.
The poverty and degradation which Engels wit
nessed in childhood in his native Wuppertal* made
Frederick Engels was born on November 28, an indelible impression. In his first journalistic
I 820, into the family of a Barmen textile manufac work, Letters from Wuppertal (1839), the eighteen
turer. year-old Engels vividly described the plight of
The Rhine Province of Prussia, in which Barmen handicraftsmen, artisans and especially of factory
is situated, was then the most developed industrial workers in Barmen and Elberfeld. The chief reason
region of Germany. In contrast to the remainder of for their poverty and suffering, Engels wrote, was
Germany where handicrafts and hand labour still the "reckless way" in which the factories were op
prevailed, the Rhineland had the first factories and erated.
machines. It was here that large-scale capitalist in The effects of large-scale capitalist industry were
dustry, to which England had given birth, began its felt also by the handicraftsmen and artisans. In
triumphant march across Germany. order to compete with the factories, the weavers
This is explained by the fact that the Rhineland working at home sweated day and night and de
was richly endowed with natu.ral wealth-coal nied themselves prime necessities.
and iron ore; moreover, the bourgeois revolution Wuppertal, the "German Manchester", a big
in France at the end of the eighteenth century had textile centre, was also a stronghold of pietism
had more of an impact here than in the other parts the most intolerant and philistine form of Protes
of Germany: on the left bank of the Rhine, a region tantism. Engels in an early letter wrote of it as
that was part of France in 1795-1815, feudal rela "Muckertal" (valley of bigoCs). The Bible and
tions and serfdom had been abolished and a more schnapps-these were the things with which the
progressive bourgeois legislation (Code Napoleon) pious Wuppertal factory owners sought to "bright
instituted. Capitalist industry led to the appearance en" the lives of the workers and artisans, to divert
of an industrial proletariat, and the antagonism be them from struggle and secure their submission to
tween the working class and bourgeoisie a con the existing order.
comitant of capitalist society-became more pro "Public opinion" in the town was moulded by
nounced. smooth-tongued preachers. Gatherings of believers
* Wuppertal-valley
The factory system brought with it much suffer were turned into trials of what they called here of the Wupper River,
where the towns of
ing and intensified exploitation for the workers. tics-the heretics being those who absented them
Barmen and Elberfeld.
Machinery enabled manufacturers to employ fe selves from religious gatherings, who read novels three hours' journey
from each other, were
male and child labour on an unprecedented scale, or attended concerts. School education was con merged and in 1830
formally renamed the
with the competition of the miserably paid women ducted in the same spirit. city of Wuppertal.
Such was the social environment in which the Engels planned to enter unive.rsity, but in Sep
8
impressionable and observant boy grew up. tember 1837, on the insistence ofhis father, left the
Childhood and Nor was his home life much better. Engels's fa gymnasium before finishing the last class. His fa
Adolescence
ther held conservative views, was deeply religious, ther, who had decided that his eldest son should be
and a despot. The entire family including the a merchant, wanted him to learn commerce. For
mother, an intelligent and affectionate woman, a year he worked in his father's office, after which
trembled before him. Besides Frederick, the couple he was sent to a big trading firm in Bremen.
had three sons and four daughters. Frederick's The young Engels, however, could not confine
brothers followed their father into the textile busi himself to office work. The prospect of becoming
ness, and his sisters married men of a similar a merchant did not appeal to him in the least. He
milieu. Frederick was the only one to choose "so devoted his free time chiefly to reading, displaying
entirely different a path", as Eleanor, Karl Marx's an amazing capacity for work and an ability to
youngest daughter, wrote later. "Frederick must make full use of his time.
have been considered by his family as the 'ugly In Bremen, an important seaport, Engels read
duckling':·* Eager and self-willed, Frederick early English, Dutch, French and other foreign newspa
displayed his keen, penetrating intellect and inde pers. Books which were then outlawed in Germany
pendent character. The fifteen-year-old boy's up-. fell into his hands, and he sent them on to his
bringing alarmed the father so much that in a letter friends in Barmen. The books and newspapers
to his wife we find the following: enabled him to fill the gaps in his education and
"As you know, he has become more polite, out broadened his outlook. Reading foreign literature
wardly, but in spite of the severe chastisements he also helped him master a number of languages. In
received earlier, not even the fear of punishment a letter to his sister Marie, he wrote that he could
seems to teach him unconditional obedience. Thus read in 25 languages. Sometimes he wrote "pol
today I was again distressed to find in his desk yglot" letters to his friends, in which German
a greasy book which he had borrowed from the alternated with Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish,
lending library, a story about knights in the 13th Portuguese, French, English, Dutch and other
century .... May God watch over his disposition, languages.
I am often fearful for this otherwise excellent Knowledge of foreign languages enabled Engels
boy."** to read extensively, and he gradually became a
Endowed with rare ability, Frederick displayed brilliant judge of literature.
a keen interest in history, literature, art, music and In Bremen he showed a flair for poetry. He
• Reminiscences Foo·f languages. He wrote schoolboyish verses and drew dreamed of following in the footsteps of Ferdinand
Marx and Engels,
reign Languages Publi quite appealing cartoons. Gay and happy by na Freiligrath, a Barmen office-worker who had al
shing House, Moscow.
ture, Engels was endowed with good health, and an ready earned esteem as a poet.
1956, p. 183.
** Marx, Engels, athletic constitution. He loved riding and fencing, After the dull atmosphere in Wuppertal, Engels
Collecled Works.
VoL 2. Progress Publi and was an excellent swimmer. His liking for sports eagerly visited theatres and coneert halls; he was
shers, Moscow, 1975,
and physical exercise was lifelong. fond of singing and music, especially Beethoven's
p. 582.

symphonies. The Sinfonia Eroica and Fifth Sym under the influence of David Strauss's The Life of 13
phony were his favourites. As hitherto, he also Jesus, which appeared in 18 35-36 and which dem
Childhood and
found time for swimming, fencing and riding. onstrated that the gospels contained legend and Adolescence
In Bremen, as in Wuppertal, the young man myth handed down by the early Christian com
turned his attention to the life of the workers, deep munities. In a letter to Wilhelm Graeber, dated Oc
ly sympathised with the needs of the working peo tober 8, 1839, Engels told him that he had become
ple who had nothing, but who were "the best any an "enthusiastic Straussian", that thanks to
king can have in his realm".* Strauss faith turned out to be "as full of holes as
a sponge".***
Engels's keen interest in the life of the people
and his inborn humanism sharpened his critical at Engels began to give more thought to social and
titude towards the world into which he had been political matters. The situation in Germany and in
born, towards the views and prejudices of the busi the neighbouring countries at that time, shortly be
ness and clerical community in which he had been fore the revolutions of the mid-century, supplied
brought up. ample food for thought and did much to mould the
His father, worried about his son's spiritual de views of the young Engels.
velopment, arranged for him to stay with a Bremen
pastor. But it was while under the pastor's roof
that Frederick was assailed by grave doubts and
forever abandoned the faith of his fathers.
His deep inner struggle was vividly reflected in
letters to his classmates, the Graeber brothers, Wil
helm and Friedrich. Having reached the conclusion
that the Bible contained insoluble contradictions
and that it was impossible to reconcile science and
religion, Engels resolutely renounced the traditions
and outlook of his family and friends.
"I know," he wrote to Friedrich Graeber on
June 15, 1839, "that I am going to get into the
greatest unpleasantnesses through this, but what
forces itself on me so convincingly, I cannot drive
away, no matter how much I might like to .... When
it is a matter of defending the freedom of reason,
then I protest against all compulsion."**
Tremendous will-power and unswerving com
mitment to principle stood out in the letters of the * Marx, Engels,
Collected Works,
young Engels to his friends. Vol. 2, p. ll6.
** Ibid., p. 456.
Engels's final break with religion came about ''** Ibid., p. 471.
II. Beginning of Engels's signs of political disaffection. It seemed that a gra
veyard peace again settled over Gennany. But only
Political Activity
in appearance. The police was no longer able to
stem the flood-tide of discontent. The second half
of the 1830s and the early 1840s saw an invigora
tion of public life and the birth of various opposi
Engels's youth and the evolution of his polit tion trends among the bourgeoisie and intelligen
ical views coincided with a period of acute class tsia. This opposition, strongest in the Rhine Pro
struggle in a number of West-European countries. vince, was directed against the autocratic Prussian
The July revolution of 1830 in France was a monarchy, the feudal lords, and the police. The
turning point. Although its immediate result was opposition, not yet strong enough to organise polit
the replacement of a semi-feudal monarchy by ical parties, formed circles which criticised society
a monarchy supported by the big financiers and and its rulers in literary and philosophical works.
stock-exchange speculators, its thunder reverberat The Left wing of the Hegelian school-the
ed throughout Europe. It was followed by upris Young (or Left) Hegelians belonged to this op
ings in Belgium, Poland, Italy and Spain. In position.
France, the bourgeois revolution of 1830 in which The great service of Hegel, that prominent figure
the working class played a decisive role on the bar in Gennany's classical philosophy, was that he re
ricades, was followed by the first independent class garded all phenomena in the world dialectically, in
battles of the proletariat (the uprisings of the the context of their rise, development and extinc
Lyons weavers in 1831 and 1834). In England, too, tion. The dialectical method was progressive as
the class struggle gained in intensity. The Parlia compared with the metaphysical method which
mentary Refonn of 1832 paved the way to power conceived the world as immovable, immutable,
for the industrial bourgeoisie, a development and eternal. By his dialectical method, Hegel
which accentuated the antagonisms between the sought to pinpoint the inner laws of development
latter and the proletariat. The workers, who had in nature and in human society, and to show the
taken an active part in the fight for the parliamen struggle of opposites which ·underlies all develop
tary reform and who had backed the political de ment.
mands of the bourgeoisie, saw their betrayal and However, for all his encyclopaedic knowledge
responded to it with an independent working-class and progressive method, Hegel failed to carry out
movement, Chartism. his self-imposed task. His philosophical system had
The news of the July revolution in France gave a vital defect: he was an idealist, and his dialectics
rise to popular discontent in some parts of the eco was likewise idealistic. He believed that develop
nomically backward, and politically dismembered ment in nature and society was governed by an
Gennany. But the Gennan governments quickly "absolute idea", which had existed somewhere
recovered from their momentary panic and set even before the world took shape. Hegel's "abso
about with redoubled ferocity to crush the slightest lute idea", which he portrayed as the creator of na-