Guide to Further Reading
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Guide to Further Reading The 'classic' biography of Engels is Gustav Mayer's Friedrich Engels (vol. 1, J. Springer, Berlin, 1920; vol. 1, 2nd edn, with vol. 2, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1934; repr. Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Cologne, 1971). There is an abridged English version in one volume, translated by Gilbert and Helen Highet and edited by R. H. S. Crossman (Chapman and Hall, London, 1936; repr. H. Fertig, New York, 1969). Mayer's work is inspirational, as he was a historian of the German workers' movement and biographer of Lassalle, but his strong identification with his subject, and with his subject's version of events, makes his work somewhat uncritical. Textual scholarship on Engels and Marx and their relationship has in any case advanced an enormous amount in the half-century or so since the biography was first published complete. W. 0. Henderson's two-volume biography in English, The Life of Fried rich Engels (Frank Cass, London, 1976) contains an enormous amount of factual detail about Engels and his associates, and it surveys the collected correspondence and memoirs at considerable length. But the author is out of his depth with the intellectual background and political theory required to make sense of Engels's writings. Engels's youthful experiences get short shrift, and his later activities and works are never put into an appropriate context in terms of his lifetime ambitions and achievements as a politician and theorist. The 'official' biography published under the auspices of the East German Institute of Marxism-Leninism is translated into English as Frederick Engels: A Biography (ed. Heinrich Gemkow et al., Verlag Zeit im Bild, Dresden, 1972). Whilst the work is largely uncritical of Engels's thought and virtually hagiographical on his life, it still presents a large amount of well-attested information about him and his associates. David McLellan's Engels ('Fontana Modern Masters', Fontana/Collins, Glasgow, 1977) and my own Engels ('Past Masters', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981) provide very brief surveys of Engels's life and works, using modern scholarship on sources and an analytical approach to his thought. Both books reflect the reassessment of Marx and Marxism that has occurred in the west since the 1960s, and both authors provide a critical treatment of the historical and theoretical issues that arise. McLel lan is particularly good in using material from memoirs, and I pay detailed attention to the way that Engels interpreted Marx. Maximilien Rubel, Marx's first bibliographer and leading textual scholar, has indicated the necessity for a re-examination of Engels's role in interpreting Marx and has sketched the issues involved, albeit very briefly. His essay, which provoked stern objections from East German and Soviet participants at a Wuppertal conference on Engels in 1970, is reprinted as 'The "Marx Legend", or Engels, Founder of Marxism', in Rubel on Karl Marx (ed. Joseph O'Malley and Keith Algozin, Cambridge University Press, New York and Cambridge, 1981, pp. 15-25). That issue - Engels's interpretation of Marx- is central to my study Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (Wheatsheaf, Brighton, 1983), 261 262 Guide to Further Reading which also develops the outlook of the early Engels before he met Marx, and the outlook of the late Engels after Marx had died. In that way an accurate context for their works of theory is developed, and similarities and differences between the two are discussed in terms of their views on science and method. Whilst their theoretical writings are of course considered in relation to contemporary politics, a sequel, Marx and Engels: The Political Relationship, will move beyond the canonical works of social theory to analyse the journalism and other materials relevant to their political activities. Norman Levine has published two studies of the Marx-Engels rela tionship, The Tragic Deception: Marx contra Engels (Clio Press, Santa Barbara and Oxford, 1975), and Dialogue within the Dialectic (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1984). There are many points of agreement between us, but Levine's avowed purpose of 'Hegelianizing' Marx creates obscurities in his analysis. The first book presents a somewhat dramatized account of Engels's thought, treated thematically, in 'tragic' opposition to Marx's. Levine's second book contains an interesting start to an evaluation of Engels's role as editor of Marx's manuscripts, and a thoughtful attempt to relate the theoretical issues that arise in considering the Marx-Engels relationship to later developments in Marxist thought and politics. Within the Marxist camp there have been rigorous debates about some aspects of the Marx-Engels relationship, particularly on the compatibility of a 'dialectics of nature' with a conception of science that can reliably be imputed to Marx. Donald Clark Hodges in 'Engels' Contribution to Marxism', The Socialist Register (1965) pp. 297-310, and Richard Gunn in 'Is Nature Dialectical?', Marxism Today, vol. 21, no. 2 (February 1977) pp. 45- 52, have been critical of Engels's views on general grounds and critical of him as an interpreter of Marx, as has Lucio Colletti in Marxism and Hegel (trans. Lawrence Garner, New Left Books, London, 1973). Colletti also discusses Engels as an interpreter of Hegel. Engels's views on a dialectic of nature, and his 'materialistic' and 'scientific' interpretation of Marx's work, have been sympathetically treated by John Hoffman and Sebastiano Timpanaro. Hoffman's defence of the application of the dialectic to nature is outlined in his Marxism and the Theory of Praxis (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1975) and 'The Dialectics of Nature: "The Natural-Historical Foundation of our Out look'", Marxism Today, vol. 21, no. 1 (January 1977) pp. 11-18. Tirnpanaro defends the 'decisive primacy' of biology and the physical sciences in his On Materialism (trans. Lawrence Garner, New Left Books, London, 1975). In his articles Gareth Stedman Jones has attempted to link the intellec tual development of the early Engels as a Young Hegelian with the views and concerns of his subsequent career as a 'dialectician' and 'scientific socialist', though Jones's treatment of the biographical and theoretical issues involved -especially with respect to Marx- is necessarily very brief: 'Engels and the End of Classical German Philosophy', New Left Review, no. 79 (1973) pp. 17-36; 'Engels and the Genesis of Marxism', New Left Review, no. 106 (1977) pp. 79-104; and 'Engels and the History of Marxism', in The History of Marxism, vol. 1 (ed. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Harvester Press, Brighton, 1982) pp. 290-326. Guide to Further Reading 263 George Lichtheim's Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (2nd edn, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1964) covers the intellectual back ground to the careers of Marx and Engels and discusses the way that later Marxists used - and abused - their works. This is still an excellent and reliable study, despite its age, as Lichtheim had a gift for raising questions clearly, using relevant sources and suggesting pertinent answers. By contrast Richard N. Hunt's two-volume work The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels (Macmillan, London, 1975 and 1984) seems to squeeze the texts cited into a predetermined thesis on various 'theories of the state' that Marx primarily - and Engels somewhat secondarily - are alleged to have held. Engels appears conspicuously in David McLellan's Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (Macmillan, London, 1973), and in the two-volume Eleanor Marx by Yvonne Kapp (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1972 and 1976). The classic collection of memoirs is Reminiscences of Marx and Engels (Progress Publishers, Moscow, n.d.). For the German reader there is Friedrich Engels: Dokumente seines Lebens (ed. Manfred Kliem, Roderberg Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1977), which features a comprehensive collection of photographs and facsimiles, especially items connected with the Engels clan and local history in the Wuppertal. There is also the collection of memoirs and other materials Gespriiche mit Marx und Engels in two volumes (ed. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1973). There are three German studies of the young Engels, but none convin cingly links his early experience with his later career and thought: Reinhart Seeger, Friedrich Engels: Die religiose Entwicklung des Spiitpietisten und Friihsozialisten (Akademischer Verlag, Halle, 1935); Karl Kupisch, Vom Pietismus zum Kommunismus (Lettner-Verlag, Berlin, 1953); and Horst Ullrich's two-volume study Der junge Engels (Deutscher Verlag der Wis senschaften, Berlin, 1961 and 1966). Engels's book The Condition of the Working Class in England is discussed appreciatively and at length in Steven Marcus's Engels, Manchester and the Working Class (Random House, New York, 1974), but the context is that of literary criticism - with excursions into psychology - rather than that of Engels's career in politics. There is a brief critical treatment of Engels's work in Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1968) pp. 88-138. Quite a number of studies have now been overtaken by developments in textual scholarship and historical analysis, including David Riazanov's Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (trans. Joshua Kunitz, International Pub lishers, New York, 1927; intro. Dirk Struik, repr. Monthly Review Press, New York, 1973); Grace Carlton, Friedrich Engels: The Shadow Prophet (Pall Mall Press, London, 1965); Fritz Nova, Friedrich Engels: His Contributions to Political Theory (Vision Press, London, 1968); and Alvin Gouldner's The Two Marxisms (Macmillan, London, 1980). The English edition of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1975 etc.) is nearly complete with respect to Engels. The introductory material and comments in the notes accord uncritically with Engels's own framework for interpreting Marx's life and thought, though occasionally certain 'errors' are ascribed to the 'junior partner'. 264 Guide to Further Reading Despite the interpretive weaknesses, the edition is extremely useful for the historical and biographical material collected in the references, the index ing, textual scholarship and illustrations.