Engels, Modernity, and Classical Social Theory
By Douglas Kellner
Frederick
Engels and Karl Marx were among the first to develop systematic perspectives on
modern societies and to produce a critical discourse on modernity, thus
inaugurating the problematic of modern social theory. In most of the narratives
of classical social theory, Marx alone is usually cited as one of the major
founders of the problematic, while Engels is neglected. It is Marx who is
usually credited as one of the first to develop a theory of modernity and a
critical social theory that links the rise of modern societies with the
emergence of capitalism. Yet Engels preceded Marx in focusing attention on the
differences between modern and premodern society, and then on the constitutive
role of capitalism in producing a new modern world. As I show in this study,
from the late 1830s into the 1840s, Engels played a leading role in theorizing
the distinctive features of the modern world, and he inspired Marx to see the
importance of capitalism in constructing a distinctively new modern society.
Consequently, I argue that Engels preceded Marx in his analysis of the
historical originality and novelty of modern societies and their rupture from
traditional societies. Study of the work of the early Engels and the beginning
of his collaboration with Marx thus provides fresh perspectives on their
relationship and the role of Engels in creating their shared theoretical and
political positions. This analysis will also suggest that the critical theory
of modern societies and political economy of capitalism remains a major
contribution of Marx and Engels to contemporary thought.[1]
Engels and the Search for the Modern
Engel's
father had factories in Barman and Bremen, Germany and Manchester, England, and
his son Frederick was thus able to experience the modern world in the
beginnings of industrialization in Germany. Some of Engels' initial
publications concern the new industrial society emerging in Germany and what he
saw as modern forms of industry, urbanization, architecture, culture, and
thought. In a series of "Letters From Wuppertal," published in a
German newspaper in 1839, Engels described the novel industrial conditions in
the Wuppertal valley, opening with a description of the pollution of the
Wuppertal river, caused by dyes from
"the numerous dye-works using Turkey red" (CW2 [1839], 7).[2]
Engels
then describes the town of Elberfeld and contrasts it with its neighboring
town, his own native Barmen. Engels lauds the "large, massive houses
tastefully built in modern style" which "take the place of those
mediocre Elberfeld buildings, which are neither old-fashioned nor modern"
(CW2, 8). The new stone houses appearing everywhere, the broad avenues, the
green bleaching-yards, gardens, and the Lower Barmen church were, Engels
thought, "very well constructed in the noblest Byzantine style"
(ibid). He concludes that "there is far more variety here than in
Elberfeld, for the monotony is broken by a fresh bleaching-yard here, a house
in the modern style there, a stretch of the river or a row of gardens lining
the street. All this leaves one in doubt whether to regard Barmen as a town or
a mere conglomeration of all kinds of buildings; it is, indeed, just a combination
of many small districts held together by the bond of municipal
institutions" (ibid).
Engels
thus characterizes the new modern world in terms of new modern architecture,
new industry, and new towns, bustling with variety and diversity. He also
describes inebriation in the ale-houses, with drunken individuals pouring out
of them at closing time and sleeping in the gutter. Engels blames this
situation on factory work and describes the lot of the new industrial working
class as a miserable one: "Work in low rooms where people breathe in more
coal fumes and dust than oxygen -- and in the majority of cases beginning
already at the age of six -- is bound to deprive them of all strength and joy
in life. The weavers, who have individual looms in their homes, sit bent over
them from morning till night, and desiccate their spinal marrow in front of a
hot stove. Those who do not fall prey to mysticism are ruined by
drunkenness" (CW2, 9). Likewise, the "local-born leather workers are
ruined physically and mentally after three years of work: "three out of
five die of consumption." In sum, "terrible poverty prevails among
the lower classes, particularly the factory workers in Wuppertal; syphilis and
lung diseases are so widespread as to be barely credible; in Elberfeld alone,
out of 2,500 children of school age 1,200 are deprived of education and grow up
in the factories -- merely so that the manufacturer need not pay the adults,
whose place they take, twice the wage he pays a child" (CW2, 10).
Thus,
as early as 1839, Engels deplores the horrific working and living conditions of
the working class and depicts it as a reprehensible effect of modern industrial
development. In the latter part of his "Letters," and in many other
newspaper articles written over the next few years, Engels describes in great
detail "modern" literature, culture, and thought of the present,
equating "modern" cultural tendencies with Enlightenment criticism
and the contemporary literature of the "Young Germany" movement, which
he champions against reactionary Pietistic thought and backwards German
literature. In the voluminous newspapers articles and sketches of the early
Engels, he reveals himself to be, like Marx, a great partisan of modernity, an
avatar of modern ideas, as well as a sharp critic of the impact of modern
conditions on the working class (see Engels in CW2).
Engels was sent to England in 1842 to
learn the business of industrial production in his father's factory, which was
situated in Manchester, the industrial heart of the most advanced capitalist
society of the day. While experiencing first-hand the new mode of industrial
production and way of life that accompanied it, young Engels assiduously
studied the writing of German, French, and English socialism, as well as
British political economy. In an article on "Progress of Social Reform on
the Continent," Engels describes the new communist ideas as "not the
consequence of the particular position of the English, or any other nation, but
that it is a necessary conclusion, which cannot be avoided to be drawn from the
premises given in the general facts of modern civilisation" (CW3 [1843],
392).
Indeed,
it is generally accepted that Engels preceded Marx in converting to communism,
that Moses Hess converted Engels in 1842, at a time when Marx was still
formally a radical democrat who acknowledged that he was not thoroughly
familiar with the communist ideas (see Riazanov 1973, 43 and Carver 1989, 95).
Engels, by contrast, began to write newspaper and journal articles promoting
communist ideas in early 1843 (see CW3, 379-443 and CW4, 212-265), as well as
attending meetings and making speeches.
For
Engels, it is British political economy that describes the workings of the new
capitalist economy and provides its ideological legitimation. In the autumn of
1843, Engels accordingly began writing an article on the new modern economy
theory and sent it to Marx and Ruge for publication in their forthcoming Deutsch-französische
Jahrbücher. The yearbook was intended to collect studies by the top German
and French radical theorists to help produce a new tendency that would further
progressive social change. The first -- and only -- issue contained an article
by "Friedrich Engels in Manchester" titled "Outlines of a
Critique of Political Economy."
Engels
dissected the forms of private property, competition, trade, and crisis in the
newly emerging modern industrial society. His study is fragmentary and highly
moralistic, though it contains some good insights into the modern capitalist
economy and discloses his early commitments to radical social critique and
transformation. He opens by relating the genesis of political economy with the
rise of trade and industry, and presents it as a legitimation of the new
capitalist social relations, anticipating the Marxist critique of ideology:
"political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of
trade, and with its appearance, elementary, unscientific huckstering was
replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of
enrichment" (CW3 [1843], 418).
Engels
develops his "outline" as an ideal type comparison between the
mercantile system and "modern economics" (CW3, 420). The new system
assumes "the validity of private property" (419) and develops
into a system of trade (422). Competition is the economists' "principle
category--his most beloved daughter, whom he ceaselessly caresses" (431).
But competition leads to the monopoly of property and produces an inherently
unstable economic system full of conflicts and crises. As noted, Engels'
critique of the new modern market economy is highly moralistic. Malthus' theory
of population is "the crudest, most barbarous theory that ever existed, a
system of despair which struck down all those beautiful phrases about
philanthropy and world citizenship. The premises begot and reared the factory
system and modern slavery, which yields nothing in inhumanity and cruelty to
ancient slavery" (CW3, 420). Trade is "legalised fraud" (422),
and to those apologists of the system who argue for its civilizing virtues, Engels
contemptuously replies:
You have
destroyed the small monopolies so that the one great basic monopoly,
property, may function the more freely and unrestrictedly. You have civilised
the ends of the earth to win new terrain for the deployment of your vile
avarice. You have brought about the fraternisation of the peoples--but the
fraternity is the fraternity of thieves. You have reduced the number of
wars--to earn all the bigger profits in peace, to intensify to the utmost the
enmity between individuals, the ignominious war of competition! When have you done anything out of pure
humanity, from consciousness of the futility of the opposition between the
general and the individual interest? When have you been moral without being
interested, without harbouring at the back of your mind immoral, egoistical
motives? (CW3, 423).
As
a Left-Hegelian, Engels is concerned to delineate the series of contradictions
between competition and monopoly, supply and demand, wealth and poverty, and
the general and particular interest that will eventually lead the system to
crisis: "The economist comes along with his lovely theory of demand and
supply, proves to you that 'one can never produce too much,' and practice
replies with trade crises, which reappear as regularly as the comets, and of
which we have now on the average one every five to seven years. For the last
eighty years these trade crises have arrived just as regularly as the great
plagues did in the past--and they have brought in their train more misery and
more immorality than the latter" (CW3, 433). Yet although Engels sees the
emerging industrial society as inherently unstable and crisis-prone, he does
not grasp any mechanism or tendencies which will lead to a progressive social
transformation, beyond the pronouncement that:
But as long as
you continue to produce in the present unconscious, thoughtless manner, at the
mercy of chance--for just so long trade crises will remain; and each successive
crisis is bound to become more universal and therefore worse than the preceding
one; is bound to impoverish a larger body of small capitalists, and to augment
in increasing proportion the numbers of the class who live by labour alone,
thus considerably enlarging the mass of labour to be employed (the major
problem of our economists) and finally causing a social revolution such as has
never been dreamt of in the philosophy of the economists (CW3, 434).
During
1843, Engels also composed a review of Thomas Carlyle's Past and Present,
which like Engels' work of the period, developed a contrast between modern and
premodern society. It shows Engels at work in researching the contemporary
factory system and exploring the development of industrial society. Studies of
England -- "The Eighteenth Century" and "The English
Constitution" -- disclose that Engels was also inquiring into the
structure and conditions of the modern economy and state, as they emerged in
England (CW3, 444-514). In addition to studying industrial production and the
political constitution of modern society, Engels explored the new working class
life in England, compiling materials for a book that he published in 1845, The
Condition of the Working Class in England. In this ground-breaking work,
Engels argued that the history of the proletariat was bound up with the
invention of the steam-engine and "machinery for working cotton" in
the second half of the 17th century (CW4, [1845], 307]). These instruments gave
rise to the industrial revolution which produced new instruments of labor, new
industries, a new social structure, and new living and working conditions.[3]
Engels
claimed that: "The industrial revolution is of the same importance for
England as the political revolution for France, and the philosophical
revolution for Germany; and the difference between England in 1760 and in 1844
is at least as great as that between France under the ancien regime and
during the revolution of July. But the mightiest result of this industrial
transformation is the English proletariat" (CW4, 320). Engels' account
begins with a sketch of the living conditions of weavers in pre-industrial
England, thus setting up a model for distinguishing between premodern and
modern societies in the mode adopted by later classical social theory. He
describes the "passably comfortable existence" of weavers who worked
in their home, owned their means of production, had a stable family structure,
and "leisure for healthful work in garden or field," as well as
sports and recreations (CW4, 308f.) Yet Engels does not idealize the previous
conditions of the English workers, calling attention to their lack of
education, political awareness, intellectual life, and the possibility of a
better life.[4] Previously,
the workers
were comfortable
in their silent vegetation, but for the industrial revolution they would never
have emerged from this existence, which cosily romantic as it was, was
nevertheless not worthy of human beings. In truth, they were not human beings;
they were merely toiling machines in the service of the few aristocrats who had
guided history down to that time. The industrial revolution has simply carried
this out to its logical end by making the workers machines pure and simple,
taking from them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing them to
think and demand a position worthy of men. As in France politics, so in England
manufacture and the movement of civil society in general drew into the whirl of
history the last classes which had remained sunk in apathetic indifference to
the universal interests of mankind (CW4, 309).
Note
that Engels adopts the same attitude toward the industrial revolution that he
and Marx were later to espouse toward the rise of capitalism and the
bourgeoisie in the "Communist Manifesto" and their writings on
imperialism. The industrial revolution destroyed the "romantic"
conditions of traditional society and violently forced the proletariat into the
conditions of modern industrial society. By bringing them into "the whirl
of history," the industrial revolution brought them the possibility of
achieving human emancipation, of developing their human potentials and
faculties to the fullest. This dialectical vision that affirmed both
destructive effects and emancipatory possibilities would characterize the work
of Marx and Engels throughout their career.
Engels'
humanism is also striking and indeed a sharp focus of both the early Marx and
Engels is their critique of capitalist modernity for what it did to human
beings, for its demoralizing, dehumanizing, and oppressive aspects. The first
result of the industrial revolution is thus a class structure, divided into the
bourgeoisie and proletariat. Engels writes:
It
has already been suggested that manufacture centralises property in the hands
of the few. It requires large capital with which to erect the colossal
establishments that ruin the petty trading bourgeoisie and with which to press
into its service the forces of Nature, so driving the hand-labour of the
independent workman out of the market. The division of labor, the application
of water and especially steam, and the application of machinery, are the three
great levers with which manufacture, since the middle of the last century, has
been busy putting the world out of joint (CW4, 325).
The
expression "out of joint" articulates the rupture produced by modern
conditions and Engels also emphasizes the impact of technology, science, and
industry on the production of modern societies.[5]
He provides an account of how the spinning jenny created a new division of
labor and new factories for the spinning of cotton, flax, wool, and silk.
Invention of the steam-engine produced new sources of power and the beginning
of a manufacture and factory system. The factory system mechanized agriculture
and created the possibilities of new large-scale farming which displaced small
farmers who were forced to seek their livelihood in the newly emergent factory
towns.
Throughout
the book, Engels describes the novel forms of manufacture, the innovative
division of labor, and the new social differentiation produced by the industrial
revolution and capitalism. The production of raw materials and of fuel for
manufacture produced new mining industries and generated coal mining and iron
smelting. The iron industry created new forms of construction like bridges and
new products like nails and screws. New industries like ocean trade boomed and
new forms of transportation and communication emerged such as roads, bridges,
canals, and railroads. But Engels' focus is on the towns which were a
distinctive feature of the new industrial revolution and the new social
structure appearing in the urban centers.
After
briefly describing London and other "great towns," Engels zeros in on
his own Manchester, the second largest city in England and the capital of the
industrial world.[6] Engels maps
out the structure of the city, the class division that cleaves it, and the
deplorable working and living conditions of the working classes. For Engels,
class division and conflict "is the completest expression of the battle of
all against all which rules in modern bourgeois society" (CW4, 375). This
battle is fought not only between the different classes, but "also between
the individual members of these classes. Each is in the way of the other, and
each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put himself in their
place" (ibid). In a later passage, Engels describes the class war typical
of modern societies, thus delineating the new forms of division and conflict:
"In this country, social war is under full headway, every one stands for
himself, and fights for himself against all comers, and whether or not he shall
injure all the others who are his declared foes, depends upon a cynical
calculation as to what is most advantageous for himself. It no longer occurs to
any one to come to a peaceful understanding with his fellow-man; all
differences are settled by threats, violence, or in a law-court. In short,
every one sees in his neighbor an enemy to be got out of the way, or, at best,
a tool to be used for his own advantage.... The enemies are dividing gradually
into two great camps -- the bourgeoisie on one hand, the workers on the
other" (CW4, 427; Note the anticipation of the class analysis of "The
Communist Manifesto" in this passage).
Yet
Engels describes the associations that the working class strives to put in the
place of competition and is optimistic concerning the revolutionary potential
of the proletariat. Throughout the book he describes the cycles of capitalist
crisis which he believes makes the collapse of the system inevitable.
Anticipating the classical Marxian vision of revolution, Engels claims that if
the present trends continue,
commercial crises
would continue, and grow more violent, more terrible, with the extension of
industry and the multiplication of the proletariat. The proletariat would
increase in geometrical proportion, in consequence of the progressive ruin of
the lower middle-class and the giant strides with which capital is
concentrating itself in the hands of the few; and the proletariat would soon
embrace the whole nation, with the exception of a few millionaires. But in this
development there comes a stage at which the proletariat perceives how easily
the existing power may be overthrown, and then follows a revolution (CW4, 580).
Marx
and Engels arrived at the conclusion that the proletariat was the revolutionary
class at approximately the same time, but Marx had a much more extravagant
Hegelian concept of the proletariat as revolutionary subject at this time than
Engels' more modest sociological and political concept (Compare Marx CW3,
175ff. with Engels' Condition of the Working Class). Engels is
completely confident that a "revolution will follow with which none
hitherto known can be compared.... These are all inferences which may be drawn
with the greatest certainty.... The revolution must come; it is already too
late to bring about a peaceful solution" (CW4, 581). Later, Engels would
chide this excessive optimism, but in fact a similar vision of the certainty of
the coming revolution would permeate Marx and Engels' works.
Engels
thus emerges as one of the first social theorists to attempt to grasp the
structure of modern societies, to delineate their fundamental conflicts, and to
predict their eventual demise. One is struck by the confidence with which he
attempts to delineate the entire situation of the working class in England,
attempting to map out comprehensively its working and living conditions, and to
lay bare the class structure of modern societies. Moreover, Engels' analysis is
a dynamic one, showing the classes in conflict, struggling for control of
society. Marcus (1974, 177ff.) claims that in Engels' study of the English
working class, one sees a particularly modern mode of thought emerge: the
ability of thought to grasp the essential features of a phenomenon, and to
distinguish between appearance and reality in producing a comprehensive and
systematic analysis of the contemporary social structure.
As
Marcus points out (1974, 192) Engels also provides the first full-scale attempt
at representing the "culture of poverty." In order to grasp the
macrostructure of the new industrial cities, Engels maps out the various
connections of neighborhoods to each other, describing and mapping the
structure of the city in what can be seen as the first work of urban sociology.
Penetrating into the heart of darkness of modern industrial society, Engels
plunges into the labyrinth of squalid working and living conditions, attempting
to make order out of chaos. Using his eyes, nose, ears, and feet, he attempts
to map and comprehend the horrific situation of the working class in England,
which he takes, as did Marx later in Capital, as the model of the modern
industrial societies of the future. In mapping this immense complexity, Engels
makes use of Hegelian dialectical thought, relating the parts to each other and
to the whole social system. For Engels, dialectics is making connections and he
confidently maps out the essential structures of the emerging industrial
society. His thought is thoroughly systematic, conceptualizing the parts in
terms of whole, and showing how the parts are components of a new modern
industrial society.
Yet
Engels also maintains a critical posture, describing the horrendous living and
working conditions of the proletariat in astonishing detail. His critique is
generally moralistic and lacks the concepts of alienation and human nature with
which Marx carries out his analysis of the alienation of labor in the Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (see Marx in CW4). Engels condemns
the greed and callousness of the bourgeoisie, recounting in one telling
vignette, how he described the wretched lot of the workers to a bourgeois
associate, who nodded and then said: "And yet there is money to be made.
Good day, sir" (CW4, xx). Typically, Engels sees retribution coming in the
future revolution, an event for which he and Marx dedicated their lives.
Marx, Engels, and Modernity
Although
thinkers like Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Condorcet, Adam Smith,
Comte, Saint-Simon, and Hegel all distinguished between modern and premodern
times, it was Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels who produced the
first systematic social theory of modernity, thus initiating the mode of
thought associated with classical social theory. Although previous theorists
developed distinctions between modern and ancient societies, sketched
historical stages that described the transition to a new modern society, and
delineated some of its key distinguishing features, it was Marx and Engels who
provided the first rigorous and comprehensive historical analysis of the
rupture that produced modernity and the first systematic analysis of the
distinctive structures, processes, conflicts, and potentials for progressive
transformation of modern societies. Combining detailed historical and empirical
analysis of capitalist social formations, systematic theoretical
conceptualization, radical social critique, and a call for fundamental social
transformation, Marx and Engels formulated with particular analytical rigor and
historical grounding the new forms of social differentiation, conflict, and
fragmentation, as well as the modes of social cooperation and association
produced by social modernity.
Moreover,
it was Marx and Engels who initiated a distinctive emancipatory tradition in
social theory that critically addressed the structures of modern society from a
standpoint of its higher historical possibilities and developmental tendencies.
In the Marxian vision, the destructive and oppressive features of modernity
would be overcome in a superior stage of societal development that would fully
realize the potentials of modernity. Thus, whereas Enlightenment thinkers and
positivist-technocratic social theorists like Comte and Saint-Simon embraced
modernity and postulated a utopian future ruled by a technocratic elite who
would solve all social problems and promote social progress, the Marxian theory
addressed the forms of societal crisis and oppression that modernity produced,
but saw the solution to its problems and its potentials for more progressive
societal development to be imminent features of modern societies, rather than
simply a normative ideal to be imposed from without.
In
the Marxian theory, the motor of modernity was the capitalist mode of
production with economic development shaping the forms of social, political,
and cultural life, and consequently generating a new modern social formation.
For classical Marxism, the capitalist mode of production thus produced an
entirely new modern world which decisively broke with the feudal world. For the
Marxian theory, the concept of modernity is thus constituted by the theory of
capitalism as the fate of the new modern world, as the motor and demiurge of
modernity.
In
this study, I have shown that Engels preceded Marx in developing an ideal type
analysis of the distinction between modern and premodern society, in sketching
the outlines of a critique of political economy, and in developing a critique
of capitalist society with the intention of overthrowing it for a socialist society.
In their collaborative texts of the 1840s, Marx and Engels worked together on
this project. When Marx was expelled from Paris in 1845 for publishing in a
radical emigre newspaper, he moved to Brussels where he began his collaboration
with Engels. Together they travelled to England to observe the new factories
and industrial living and working conditions. Upon their return, they began
developing their sketch of the genesis of the modern world and
historical-materialist perspectives in The German Ideology (CW5) written
in 1845-6 and never published in their lifetime. The text is important for it
articulates some of their first formulations of the differentiated structure of
modern societies, as well as theorizing the new modes of association and
cooperation. Marx and Engels (CW4) also published a joint attack, The Holy
Family (1845), on Bruno Bauer and their former young Hegelian associates,
who they now considered pseudo-radical and idealist. Marx published in addition
(CW6, 105ff) an attack on the economics of Proudhon in The Poverty of
Philosophy (1846), declaring the French writer to be trapped in the
idealist verbiage of Hegel, thus mystifying the concrete economic phenomena
which Marx and Engels were attempting to analyze.
Marx
and Engels's vision of history from this period was presented in "The
Communist Manifesto," which sketches in dramatic narrative form their view
of the origins and trajectory of modernity (CW6 [1848], 477ff). It appeared in
early 1848, anticipating the sequence of revolutions that broke out throughout
Europe shortly after its publication. Marx and Engels sketch out a contrast
between precapitalist societies and the new modern society where: "All
that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last
compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind" (CW6: 487).
The
standard English translations (other than Carver's 1996 version for Cambridge
University Press) obscure the important point in German that all previous
classes and social groups, Stande, dissolve as well as "all that is
solid" ("Alles Ständische und Stehende verdampft"). The point is
especially important because it distinguishes Marx and Engel's analysis from
Hegel's. Hegel believed that the Stände would play an important part in
integrating individuals into modern society, but Marx and Engels are arguing
that these institutions are disintegrating. Hegel thus ultimately developed a
political theory that would unify modern and premodern institutions and
conceptions, while Marx and Engels developed a concept of a thoroughly modern
society.[7]
The passage thus points to the dissolution of the old hierarchical order of
society and of previous classes, leaving workers facing the bourgeoisie without
intervening classes. The first section of the "Communist Manifesto"
is titled "bourgeois and proletarians" and one of the first important
points is that during the present era class antagonisms have been simplified
and "society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great
hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeois and
proletariat" (CW6, 485). This two class vision was that of Engels in The
Condition of the Working Class in England (CW4) and it would periodically
appear in key junctures in their thought, though in some texts they would
utilize a more differentiated class analysis. Indeed, much of the vision of the
"Communist Manifesto" was delineated in Engels' early writings,
although Marx is usually given credit for drafting its especially expressive
prose and dramatic historical narrative (see Berman 1982 who interprets the
"Manifesto" as a founding document of social modernity and an example
of modernist writing; Carver 1983 argues that much of the historical writing is
more like Engel's earlier works than Marx's).
When
solid ties of dependence melt in the air, individuals become free to compete
with each other and engage in exchange. This produces a wholly disharmonious
and conflicted social order, precisely as Engels sketched out in his early
writings. Indeed, modern capitalist societies for Engels and Marx were torn by
inequalities, class conflicts, and crisis tendencies which produced an
inherently unstable modern social order riven with conflict and subject to
crisis and overthrow. Following the hopes of the Enlightenment for a higher
stage of civilization, Marx and Engels held that class conflicts between the
ruling bourgeois class and the oppressed proletariat would be resolved through
victories of the working class which would create an egalitarian, just, and
democratic social order which would realize the ideals of the Enlightenment,
the French Revolution, and the emergent socialist traditions, driving modernity
to a higher stage of civilization. Marxism thus very much shared the optimistic
Enlightenment belief that modern society was on a trajectory of historical
progress and that humanity was bound to overcome its limitations and solve its
problems en route to a higher stage of human history.
By
addressing capitalism in its most advanced setting of British society, Marx and
Engels were ideally situated to describe the inner dynamics of the new modern
order and to be prescient about changes that came later in other nations. They
experienced first-hand the second industrial revolution (with its
mechanization, big industry, intensified incorporation of science and
technology into the labor process, intensified imperialist competition, and
modern state) -- a revolution which began in England and quickly spread to the
continent and the new world of the Americas. Marx and Engels also experienced
the rise of the working class movement which increasingly called for sweeping
political and egalitarian social reconstruction, and themselves became leaders
of the movement.
Marxian
theory thus bears distinctly modern hopes for progress, freedom, democracy, and
socio-economic and individual development. To some extent, both the strengths
and limitations of classical Marxism are connected with its extremely ambitious
hopes concerning the progressive features of the era, which they believed would
terminate in creation of a democratic and socialist society that would realize
the promises of modernity. The Marxian analysis of the contrast between
precapitalist and capitalist societies provides the basis of Engels' and Marx's
concept of modernity and they present the transition from capitalism to
socialism as a process taking place within modernity that would fully develop
its potential and produce a higher stage of civilization. The mode of
historical, systematic analysis of modern societies developed by Marx and
Engels provides the model for classical social theory and the enduring
contributions of the Marxian theory consist in its mode of historical and
social analysis and its insights into the structures, conflicts, and potentials
of modern societies.
Of
course, it was in their mature writings that Marx and Engels developed their
most articulated perspectives on modern society. But this study of the early
Engels and the beginning of his collaboration with Marx reveals that Engels
should receive more credit for being one of the founders of classical social
theory and contributing decisively to the development of the Marxian vision.
Important differences would emerge between Marx and Engels regarding their
respective uses of the Hegelian dialectical method and the methods of modern
science, and their epistemological and methodological differences have been
explored in the literature and are the topic of several other papers in this
volume. By contrast, I have argued that before the development of classical
Marxism, Engels was a key partner and should receive more credit for his
important contributions to developing the theoretical and political
perspectives on modern society associated with classical Marxism.
Notes
[1]. Many interpretations of the relationships between Marx and Engels stress the differences between them, by emphasizing the scientistic writings of the later Engels which are contrasted with the more philosophical works of Marx. But both Marx and Engels were engaged in theorizing modernity and shared important perspectives on the modern world, despite some later differences in emphasis in theory and method. It is one of the merits of Gouldner (1980: 250ff, passim) to stress the importance of Engels in developing the Marxian theory and to defend Engels against attacks that he was but a crude simplifier of Marx's ideas. Mazlish (1989) and Hamilton (1991) also appreciate the importance of the contribution of Engels, while Levine (1975 and 1984) and many others sharply distinguish between Marx and Engels, attacking Engels as a vulgar debaser of Marx's ideas. While important epistemological differences between their work would eventually emerge, it is a mistake to downplay the important initial contribution of Engels and his significance in shaping Marx's vision of modernity. On Engels' life and times, see Marcus 1974; Carver 1989; Hunley 1991; and Rigby 1992.
[2]. Engels was 19 when he published these revealing analyses of the novel conditions of the emerging modern industrial society. Self-taught and a voracious reader with evident literary ambitions, Engels spent much of the time during his apprenticeship in Bremen and later during his military service in Berlin engaged in study and writing. Many of his early writings are collected in CW2 and I will draw upon these texts in this study. I use the convention of citing the volume number of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975ff.) with the abbreviation CW followed by the volume number and page reference; I also include original date of publication in brackets.
[3]. David Riazanov claims that "The term 'Industrial Revolution' belongs to Engels" (1973, 14). But Dirk J. Struick in notes on the republication of Riazanov's classic study of Marx and Engels argues that: "The term 'Industrial Revolution' was used in France at least as early as the 1820s, in analogy to what was known as 'The Revolution,' the one of 1789. Friedrich Engels, using the term in 1844 and 1845, may well have met it in the French literature and have used it for the first time in the German language. Strangely enough, the term has not been noticed in English before 1884, when the economist Arnold Toynbee used it. Toynbee knew Marx's Capital, which uses the term in German" (1973, 223).
[4]. Standard criticism of the text claims that Engels "painted a one-sided picture of the conditions of the English working classes at the time, overemphasizing the well-being of the workers before industrialization and the subsequent impact of the machine upon them" (Hunley 1991: 16). But the following passage and my discussion raise questions concerning the extent to which Engels did romanticize previous conditions and I suggest rather that he utilized the sort of dialectical model of the gains and losses from the industrial revolution that he and Marx were to develop in "The Communist Manifesto" and their other writings.
[5]. Throughout his early writings, Engels presents highly favorable pictures of the progressive effects of science and industry; see, for example, Engels CW3, 427-8, 440, and 478.
[6]. For an excellent study of the city of Manchester and Engels book on it, see Marcus 1974.
[7]. Carver's 1996 version for Cambridge University Press reads, "Everything fixed and feudal goes up in smoke" (Marx and Engels 1996: xx), though one might suggest "all fixed feudal conditions and social groupings evaporate."