By Raju Prabath Lankaloka
On 5 August 1895, aged 74, Friedrich Engels, the co-founder of the ideas of scientific socialism, along with Karl Marx, died in London, due to his deteriorating health conditions. We should take this opportunity to re-examine the legacy of this great revolutionary and the invaluable contributions he made in developing the ideas of Marxism, for which we owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.
Although Marxism bears the name of Marx, we should never forget the vital contribution made by Engels, and the organic link between the lives of these two men. Without a doubt, Engels possessed an encyclopaedic mind that encompassed a knowledge of such diverse fields as philosophy, economics, history, physics, philology and military science. His knowledge of the latter earned him the nickname ‘The General’.
All too often, Engels is seen as playing a subsidiary role to Marx. While Marx was a titan in every possible way, Engels was key in this relationship too. Always extremely modest, Engels would defer to Marx. But when we read the voluminous correspondence between the two men, Engels’ own outstanding contribution is unmissable. Together with Marx he was a political giant.
His meeting and friendship with Marx began in August 1844. This led to a lifelong political and theoretical collaboration, which was to transform the world. This collaboration was to bear fruit in a series of theoretical works, such as the German Ideology, culminating a few years later in the Communist Manifesto. In the process, the two men battled with others who held all sorts of confused ideas and notions.
As young men both Marx and Engels were followers of the great German philosopher Hegel. His teachings were without a doubt revolutionary. Hegel’s dialectical method became the cornerstone of their outlook, but they purged it of idealism and placed it on its feet. Through Feuerbach, they became materialists. Materialist philosophy explains that matter is primary, and ideas are a reflection of the material world.
They were the first to explain that socialism was not the invention of dreamers, but rooted in the development of the productive forces and the class struggle. Socialism finally became a science. “Without German philosophy,” explained Engels, “scientific socialism would never have come into being.”
Engels in particular contributed to the philosophy of Marxism in his later works, namely Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Anti-Dühring and the Dialectics of Nature.
In 1870, Engels moved to London so that he and Marx could directly participate in their joint intellectual collaboration, as well as take an active part in the work of the First International. This work was of tremendous significance in binding the advanced workers of all countries together in an organisation.
By then Marx had finished writing the first volume of Capital and was elaborating material for two further volumes. When he finished the first volume in August 1867 he wrote to Engels: “So, this volume is finished. I owe it to YOU alone that it was possible! Without your self-sacrifice for me I could not possibly have managed the immense labour demanded…”
While Marx spent most of his time on Capital, Engels engaged in other polemics, which allowed him to outline the basic concepts of Marxism. This included Anti-Dühring, which delved into philosophy, natural sciences and the social sciences.
Marx died before he could put the final touches to his vast work on political economy. Using the drafts left by Marx, Engels put his own research aside and took on the colossal task of completing Marx’s work, editing and publishing volumes two and three of Capital. Only he could decipher Marx’s unintelligible handwriting.
Engels regarded the writing of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, written a year after Marx’s death, as a “fulfilment” of “a bequest” by Marx. the “Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, in which he applied the materialist conception to the remote past of human history can be regarded as one of the fundamental works of modern socialism.
After Marx’s death, Engels became the direct and unchallenged leader of world socialism until his death twelve years later. Throughout this time, Engels took up the defence of scientific socialism, answering the distortions and misconceptions.
Engels played a colossal role in helping to guide the forces of the Second International. He attended the Third Congress of the International in Zurich. In the closing session, he addressed the delegates first in English, then in French, then in German.
Even in his last years, he was not afraid to challenge the opportunist ideas that had surfaced in the powerful German and French sections. He dropped a bombshell on the opportunists with his new introduction to Marx’s The Civil War in France. In this, he stressed that the state “is nothing more but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
Trotsky, who studied every aspect of Engels’ life and contribution, also provided a fitting assessment of Engels: “Engels is undoubtedly one of the finest, best integrated and noblest personalities in the gallery of great men. To recreate his image would be a gratifying task. It is also a historical duty…”
