Friedrich Engels

(1821-95), co-thinker and close political ally of Karl Marx

THE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES By KARL MARX and FREDERICK ENGELS *

(February 1938) THE CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES By KARL MARX and FREDERICK ENGELS Edited with an introduction by Richard Enmale xxv, 325 pp. New York. International Publishers. $2.50.Engels called the American Civil War “the first grand war of contemporaneous history”. Marx later hailed it as “the greatest event of the age”. Today when the nineteenth century has receded into the distance and the bourgeois power that issued out of the Civil War bestrides the world, we can realize the colossal magnitude of the conflict far better than they. The Second American Revolution stands out as the...

The Marxes: labours of love

“Most people would come away shocked at what a moderate [Marx] was … if they read what Marx actually wrote.” So says Mary Gabriel, of people who would see Marx as (unjustifiably) responsible for the atrocities of the 20th century, committed in the name of communism. Mary Gabriel places Marx during the events about and for which he wrote, including the 1848 revolutions and the Paris Commune, and tells of his irreplaceable contribution to the International Working Men’s Association, afterwards known as the First International. But Marx was constantly torn between his devotion to his primary...

The genetics of the ANC

In her criticism of my article on South Africa (“ANC and the working class”, Solidarity 263) Jayne Edwards notes that I think the ANC had no choice but to govern in the name of capital because the movement was not yet ripe, and points to the misuse of an Engels quote from 1850. I do broadly agree with her analysis, but perhaps there are nuances here. In the original version of the article, I point to the fact that it was Neville Alexander who originally used Engels quote to understand what was happening in South Africa from 1994. I accept that Jayne is absolutely correct that the key question...

ANC and the working class

I am writing to disagree with one of the arguments Martyn Hudson made in his article on the current situation in South Africa in Solidarity 262 (26 October). Martyn introduces the article with a quote from Engels in which Engels was discussing the peasant war in Germany. The quote says that “the worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the class which he represents ... what he ought to do cannot be done...he is compelled to advance the interests of an alien class.” The quote is used...

D is for democracy

“Without democracy there can be no socialism and without a socialist society, there can be no real and complete democracy.” This simple idea is central to Marxism and inseparable from the work of revolutionary socialists. But it is by no means uncontroversial. The most basic facet of a socialist society is that ownership and control of the means of production — workplaces, machines, tools and processes — will be taken out of the hands of a small group of people and be taken over by the whole of society. But if collective “ownership” is unaccountable and the control undemocratic, then by any...

Frederick Engels: His Life, His Work and His Writings

Frederick Engels, the son of a manufacturer, was born in Barmen, November 28th, 1820. His home, the Rhine Province, was the most industrially and politically developed district in Germany. Written in 1887 for the Austrian Labour Almanac The nearness of England upon the one side and of France upon the other, its position on the water-way of the Rhine, its wealth of coal and metals – all these had produced in the Rhine Province, earlier than anywhere else m Germany, a powerful capitalistic industry, a revolutionary Bourgeoisie, hostile to feudalism, and also a strong proletariat that already...

Trade unions, socialism, and working-class sectionalism (excerpts from Marx, Engels, Connolly, and Gramsci)

Marxists support, orient to, and give great importance to trade unions as basic organisations of the working class. But in most circumstances, in capitalist societies, trade unions are dominated by the better-off sections of the working class, and often follow a narrow sectionalist policy. The British labour movement was like that for all the time that Marx was politically active in Britain, and broadened out only after Marx's death and when Engels, though still alive, was an old man. None of the excerpts below is a straightforward "educational" explanation of the socialist and Marxist case...

Friedrich Engels: "On Authority"

A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely. Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is...

“No nation will put up with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of bonus-mongers”

“No nation will put up with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers”, wrote Frederick Engels over a hundred years ago. He was explaining why he considered full state control of the capitalist economy theoretically plausible but practically unlikely. If “all the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees”, then “the capitalist has no further social function than than of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange”. Today the capitalist class has devised many other ways of siphoning off...

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