These two articles found as PDFs below, commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895).
Originally they were written to commemorate the centenary of the death of Engels. In the meantime, some of the papers of ISML are still of interest, and I believe of value. They were printed in the first issue of the journal for the organisation which adopted the name International Struggle Marxist-Leninist (ISML). This was formed at conference in Ischia Italy in 1995. The theme of that conference was ‘The Relevance of Engels for Today.’ While the history of the ISML is still to be written, I fully acknowledge that it failed in its task over the ensuing years of uniting elements of the Marxist-Leninist left – from Maoist to Hoxhaite. With that in mind, I believe that task will be completed in the future. Actually, I do not think there is an option otherwise. Admittedly, how that will occur is beyond my own sight at this time.
The first is an article by W.B. Bland for the Communist League. It describes who some key elements of Engels thought, were constructed independently of Marx, and earlier than him. The conventional revisionist picture of him as a minor figure – and not a great thinker as well – is false. The second, by Hari Kumar, focuses upon Engels’s view of dialectics and science. Here again, the revisionists distort the picture, saying that Engels in contrast to Marx was a superficial and mechanical thinker.
This denigration became a repetitive accusation. Despite Lenin’s condemnation of it – for example in Materialism and Empirocriticism – it took full flight after Lenin’s death. It became one of the vehicles by which to attack J.V.Stalin and was an extension of the attack on Engels. It was alleged for example, that the famous chapter on dialectical materialism by Stalin, was simplistic distortion.
Although the charge was led by Georgy Lukacs, it became the hallmark of what came to be known as the ‘Western School of Marxism.’ Nowadays it finds new adherents, such as the currently fashionable Michael Heinrich. It is certainly true that a certain section of the left intellectuals, such as those of the Monthly Review organisation in the USA. For example, John Bellamy Foster has written an interesting book which was awarded the ‘Deutscher Prize’ this year.[1] His shorter article on Engels specifically relates to ecology. [2] Indeed, the re-discovery by Trotskyism of both Engels, but also of Joseph Needham and J.B.S. Haldane – two great scientific proponents of the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) – is entirely welcome. In this Foster travels the previously carefully nuanced praise of Engels by Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins [3] and Stephen Jay Gould,[4] or later by Helena Sheehan. [5]
Yet all these rehabilitations of Engels, are very carefully isolated off from any link with Stalin – and the rise of modern revisionism in the CPSU(B) and the world communist parties. In general, these rehabilitators, exalt dialectics in nature but reject it in genetics. Thus even in nature, they appear to claim arbitrary limits to what can be ‘dialectical.’ To trace the path from Lukacs to Heinrich, a new book is currently nearing completion entitled provisionally, Historical Materialism and The Revisionist Denigration of Frederick Engels: A Re-examination of the Views of Marx and Engels Upon Early Human Society.
In the meantime, perhaps these two essays give a flavour that adds to how to resist revisionist attempts to ‘denigrate Engels.’
Read/Download “Engels – Centenary of Death” (ISML, 1996)
Read/Download “Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England“ (Bill Bland, 1995)
[1] John Bellamy Foster, ‘The Return of Nature’; New York, 2020.
[2] John Bellamy foster, ‘Engels’s Dialectics of Nature in the Anthropocene‘; Monthly Review, November 1, 2020.
[3] Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, The Dialectical Biologist; 1985 Harvard.
[4] Stephen Jay Gould; “Posture Maketh the Man,” from Ever Since Darwin, 1977; pp. 207-214
[5] Helena Sheehan, Marxism and The Philosophy of Science. A Critical Theory New Jersey, 1993; London 1985 .