‘Radical intellectuals’ who wish to rob Marxism of its role as a guide to revolutionary practice have always found it difficult to obtain a hearing amongst socialists by attacking Marx directly. One way round this problem for them is to re-interpret Marx by rejecting everything that offends them in his theory as due to the perversion of his work by Engels. David McLellan has undertaken a variant of this project, and has proved himself to be just such a reactionary in his latest book on Engels.
This slim volume is divided quite arbitrarily into five chapters on: his life, his writings on history, on politics, on philosophy and his relationship with Marx, as if one can be understood out of context of the others. The section on his life is particularly shallow, as this description of the events of 1848 indicates: ‘The Communist League was dissolved as being unnecessary under the newly granted freedom of association and speech, and the two friends turned their attention to journalism.’ At this point the book makes no attempt to consider the theoretical basis of Marx’s and Engels’ actions — after all, that is politics which comes in the next chapter.
When we do get to this next chapter, there is a lot of consideration given to the position, adopted in the Communist Manifesto, that a stagist strategy should be used, first supporting the liberal bourgeoisie against the feudalists, and only after the feudal state is smashed should the workers press on to Socialism. McLellan gives no consideration at all to the reassessment that was made, in the light of the events of 1848, in the address of the central committee to the Communist League (March 1850). Here the need for independent working class political action at every stage of the revolution was stressed and the idea of the revolution in permanence was first formulated. Obviously Marx’s stress on working class political action, independent of the liberal bourgeoisie, is too much for Mr McLellan, and he follows the best Stalinist commentators on this.
The shortest chapter is that on philosophy — a mere eight pages, which ends up with the gem: ‘But it is difficult to believe that Engels’ view contains much of lasting value either to science or to philosophy. However as the basis for what came to be known as dialectical materialism they were undoubtedly of immense influence.’ Assuming that McLellan is not contradicting himself in the space of two sentences, one can therefore assume that he considers dialectical materialism is not of lasting value. This is indeed more than obvious from the rest of the book, but one marvels that he should put it so boldly in a book which attempts to give itself a gloss of sympathy for Marxism.
However the really serious part of the book comes when the relationship between Engels and the SPD is gone into. The old assertion that Engels thoroughly approved of the reformism of German Social Democracy is resurrected again. It is grudgingly admitted, for example, that the leaders of the SPD censored the revolutionary passages from Engels’ Preface to the Class Struggles in France for publication in Germany, but this, and Engels’ indignant rejection of being presented as a ‘peace at any price gradualist’, is given no weight. The German revisionists successfully justified their reformism by selectively misquoting Engels — 80 years later, Mr McLellan is trying to pull the teeth of Marxism by repeating the trick. Again the Marxist law of historical repetition appears to operate with all its accustomed vigour.
In conclusion it must be asked, while Engels did most to popularise Marxist philosophy in the mass socialist movement, he didn’t ‘really’ understand what Marx meant. Therefore the whole subsequent development through Lenin and the rest is unmarxist. Frankly such an assertion, based on the intellectual short change of this book, tells us more about Mr McLellan than about Engels.
With so little written about the contribution made by Engels to the Communist movement, it is a pity that the field has been left open to a prolific but nondescript Marxologist like this. However, the ‘Life & Works of Friedrich Engels‘ by Zelda Kahan Coates written in 1920 has just been reprinted, and in as slim a volume gives a much clearer, correct and serious appreciation of Engels. I doubt very much if anyone will think of reprinting McLellan in 57 years time.
*Gustav Mayer’s Biography has been out of print since the 30s and the current Moscow and East Berlin volumes are turgid Stalinist ‘orthodoxy’.
