Abstract
Engels did not reject utopian socialism in the name of scientific socialism. He took the core idea of the former and developed it into a theory of post-capitalism. Engels was more enthusiastic about utopian socialism than Marx, identifying himself with the principle of self-emancipation of working class earlier than the latter. Engels theorized the political economy of socialism, including labor-time calculation planning, as a separate discipline, distinct from the political economy of capitalism. In his later years, Engels extended the arena of post-capitalism beyond value, class, and state toward gender and ecology. Contrary to conservative or anarchist accusations, Engels belongs to the tradition of socialism from below, or democratic socialism along with Marx, envisioning post-capitalism as the free and full development of “association.” This paper demonstrates the last point by examining all the texts of Engels where the word “association” appears. This paper also discusses some important differences between Marx and Engels regarding planning, freedom, and the re-establishment of individual property in their conceptualizations of post-capitalist association.
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Notes
- 1.
Indeed, Marx himself famously argued that “writing recipes … for the cook-shops of the future” was not his job in his “Postface” to the second edition of Capital Volume I. See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (London: Penguin Books, 1976).
- 2.
Norman Levine, “Marxism and Engelsism: Two Differing Views of History,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 9, no. 3 (1973); Terrell Carver, “Marx, Engels and Scholarship,” Political Studies 32 (1984); Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
- 3.
Peter Hudis, Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
- 4.
Kojin Karatani, Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003); Teinosuke Otani, Marx’s Theory of Association (Tokyo: Sakurai Shoten, 2011); Minoru Tabata, Marx and Association (Tokyo: Shinsensha, 2015); Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism (New York: Palgrave, 2016).
- 5.
Seongjin Jeong, “Marx’s Communism as Associations of Free Individuals,” Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2015/16 (2015).
- 6.
Existing Marxist studies on association seldom appreciate or discuss Engels’s idea of association separate from Marx. Stathis Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx (London: Verso, 2003) is an exception.
- 7.
David Leopold, “Marx, Engels and Other Socialisms,” in The Cambridge Companion to The Cammunist Manifesto, eds. Terrell Carver and James Farr (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- 8.
Eric Hobsbawm, “Marx, Engels and Pre-Marxian Socialism,” in The History of Socialism, Vol. 1, Marxism in Marx’s Day, ed. Eric Hobsbawm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 9.
- 9.
Gareth Stedman Jones, “Engels and the History of Marxism,” in The History of Socialism, Vol. 1, Marxism in Marx’s Day, ed. Eric Hobsbawm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 323–324.
- 10.
Walicki, Marxism and the Leap, 152.
- 11.
Friedrich Engels, “Speeches in Elberfeld,” in MECW, Vol. 4, 252. Italics in original.
- 12.
Friedrich Engels, “Supplement to the Preface of 1870 for The Peasant War in Germany,” in MECW, Vol. 23, 630.
- 13.
Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in MECW, Vol. 24, 296, emphasis added.
- 14.
Friedrich Engels, “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy,” in MECW, Vol. 3, 434–435, emphasis added.
- 15.
Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution, 184–185.
- 16.
Engels, “Speeches,” 246–247, emphasis added.
- 17.
Friedrich Engels, “Principles of Communism,” in MECW, Vol. 6, 347, 352, emphasis added.
- 18.
Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, in MECW, Vol. 25, 139, 282, 294–295, emphasis added.
- 19.
Samuel Hollander, Friedrich Engels and Marxian Political Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 173.
- 20.
Samuel Hollander, “Economic Organization, Distribution and the Equality Issue: The Marx-Engels Perspective,” The Review of Austrian Economics 17, no. 1 (2004): 22.
- 21.
W. Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, Towards a New Socialism (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1993).
- 22.
For a recent discussion of post-capitalist labor-time calculation planning experiences, refer to Seongjin Jeong, “Soviet planning and the Labor-Time Calculation Model: Implications for 21st-Century Socialism,” in Varieties of Alternative Economic Systems, eds. Richard Westra et al. (London: Routledge, 2017).
- 23.
See Walicki, Marxism and the Leap.
- 24.
Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. 4: Critique of Other Socialisms (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 263–265.
- 25.
According to Draper, the phrase “self-emancipation of working-class” “implies that emancipation is not a form of graduation ceremony (getting the diploma from teacher for passing the exam.) but rather it is a process of struggle by people who are not yet ready for emancipation, and who can become ready for emancipation only by launching the struggle themselves, before any-one considers them ready for it.” See Hal Draper, “The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels,” Socialist Register (1971): 95.
- 26.
Karl Marx, “Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction,” in MECW, Vol. 3, 187. Italics in original.
- 27.
In fact, during 1842–1843, Marx was “preoccupied by his philosophical confrontation with the work of Bauer and Hegel, [and] he was, by his own admission, rather remote from the working-class movement, and socialist or communist theories” (Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution, 178).
- 28.
Friedrich Engels, “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent,” in MECW, Vol. 3, 407.
- 29.
Friedrich Engels, “The Condition of England: Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle,” in MECW, Vol. 3, 446.
- 30.
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England, in MECW, Vol. 4, 418, emphasis added.
- 31.
Jones, “Engels and the History of Marxism,” 316.
- 32.
Ibid., 318.
- 33.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW, Vol. 6, 495. Engels also said at “The Agreement Debates in Berlin” in 1848: “…there are no longer ‘subjects’ in Germany since the people took the liberty of emancipating themselves on the barricades” (Friedrich Engels, “The Agreement Debates in Berlin,” in MECW, Vol. 7, 54).
- 34.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “To August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others (Circular Letter),” in MECW, Vol. 45, 403.
- 35.
Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in MECW, Vol. 26, 398.
- 36.
Friedrich Engels, “Preface to the 1888 English Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in MECW, Vol. 26, 517.
- 37.
Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution, 220.
- 38.
“I am indebted to Tabata’s Marx and Association, for locating Engels’ texts containing the word, ‘Assoziation’.”
- 39.
All emphasis of the word “association” in the following quotes is by the author.
- 40.
Engels, “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent,” 395, 403.
- 41.
Friedrich Engels, “The Condition of England II,” in MECW, Vol. 3, 476, 505.
- 42.
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. The Holy Family, in MECW, Vol. 4, 52–53.
- 43.
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England, in MECW, Vol. 4, 376, 420, 503–504.
- 44.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, in MECW, Vol. 5, 78, 80, 88.
- 45.
Friedrich Engels, “Principles of Communism,” 348, 353–354. In 1847 in Brussels, Engels formed a Democratic Association and took on the vice presidency. See Terrell Carver, “Engels and Democracy,” in Engels Today: A Centenary Appreciation, ed. Christopher Arthur (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), 18.
- 46.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW, Vol. 6, 493, 496, 505–506.
- 47.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Address of the Central Authority to the League,” in MECW, Vol. 10, 281, 285.
- 48.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Great Men of the Exile,” in MECW, Vol. 11, 250.
- 49.
Friedrich Engels, “The Housing Question,” in MECW, Vol. 23, 370, 388–389.
- 50.
Friedrich Engels, “On Social Relations in Russia,” in MECW, Vol. 24, 43–44.
- 51.
Engels, Anti-Dühring, 266–267.
- 52.
Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in MECW, Vol. 26, 216, 272.
- 53.
Friedrich Engels, “On the Association of the Future,” in MECW, Vol. 26, 553.
- 54.
Friedrich Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France,” in MECW, Vol. 27, 187–188.
- 55.
Kouvelakis, Philosophy and Revolution, 221.
- 56.
Karl Marx, Johann Most: Kapital und Arbeit: Ein popularer Auszug aus “Das Kapital” von Karl Marx, in MEGA, II/8 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1989).
- 57.
On the problems of Engels’s editing of Marx’s Capital, refer to Christopher Arthur, “Engels as Interpreter of Marx’s Economics,” in Engels Today: A Centenary Appreciation, ed. Christopher Arthur (London: Macmillan Press, 1996) and Regina Roth, “Editing the Legacy: Friedrich Engels and Marx’s Capital,” in Marx’s Capital: An Unfinishable Project?, eds. Marcel van der Linden and Gerald Hubmann (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
- 58.
According to Karatani, Transcritique 179, “Engels’s interpolation is almost criminal.”
- 59.
Karl Marx, Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1864–1865 (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
- 60.
Karl Marx, Ӧkonomische Manuskripte 1863–1867, in MEGA, II/4.2 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1992).
- 61.
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3 (London: Penguin Books, 1981).
- 62.
Karatani, Transcritique, 306, linked “associirter Verstand” to Kant’s “transcendental apperception X,” which functions to coordinate the “association of associations” as a “centerless center.”
- 63.
Marx, Capital, Vol. 3.
- 64.
Walicki, Marxism and the Leap, 174–175.
- 65.
Engels, Anti-Dühring, 105–106. Italics in original. See Paul Thomas, Marxism and Scientific Socialism (London: Routledge, 2008), 44. Engels’s specific understanding of freedom implies an authoritarian tendency, because the “control over the nature” for freedom could lead to or justify the control over human beings.
- 66.
Otani, Marx’s Theory of Association, 157, 163.
- 67.
Friedrich Engels, “American Food and the Land Question,” in MECW, Vol. 24, 399.
- 68.
Friedrich Engels, “Engels to August Bebel,” in MECW, Vol. 47, 389.
- 69.
Friedrich Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France,” in MECW, Vol. 27, 188.
- 70.
For discussions of Engels’s feminism and ecology, refer to Lise Vogel, “Engels’s Origin: Legacy, Burden and Vision,” in Engels Today: A Centenary Appreciation, ed. Christopher Arthur (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Frigga Haug, “Problematical Aspects of Engels’s View of the Woman Question,” Science & Society 62, no. 1 (1998); Kohei Saito, “The Intellectual Relationship Revisited from an Ecological Perspective,” in Marx’s Capital After 150 Years: Critique and Alternative to Capitalism, ed. Marcello Musto (London: Routledge, 2019).
- 71.
Norman Levine, “Marxism and Engelsism: Two Differing Views of History,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 9, no. 3 (1973): 92.
- 72.
See, Karatani, Transcritique, 179. Karatani argues that “from Engels sprang the idea of communism qua state centrism.”
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Acknowledgements
Earlier version was presented at the conference, “Friedrich Engels: Die Aktualität eines Klassikers: The Timeliness of a Historic Figure” (February 21, 2020, Wuppertal). I am thankful to Timm Graßmann, Peter Hudis, Kaan Kangal, Jean Quétier, Smail Rapic, Kohei Saito, Greg Sharzer, and Michael Vester for helpful comments and suggestions. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A3A2075204).
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Jeong, S. (2021). Engels’s Concept of Alternatives to Capitalism. In: Saito, K. (eds) Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st Century. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55211-4_7
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