Royal Road to Science — Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 2, Frederick Engels: 1838–42
Having never read a biography of Friedrich Engels (his name anglicized in this printing as “Frederick”), I mostly only know of him by a few anecdotes (fox hunter, polyglot) and of course his general reputation (romantic “wild man”, “lesser partner”, wealthy patron of Marx, editor, foundational figure in sociology, etc.) Having now completed Volumes 1 and 2 of the earliest texts and letters of Marx and Hegel, it has been very engaging to learn about these young men almost entirely through their own works with minimal secondary sources. It may not be the most “accurate” way to get a fuller historical picture, but it is fulfilling and stimulating in its own right, especially since each were voluminous writers even in young age.
As I got this second volume off the shelf, it was impossible not to notice how much older it was than my first volume. I checked inside, and this is an original first printing of 1974 ($7.50 list price, a hefty $42 with inflation today), and it smelled like it too.
This volume is organized in the following fashion, which I will use to guide my post as well:
- Preface
- Works of August 1838-December 1842
- Letters of August 1838-August 1842
- Early Literary Experiments of 1833–1837
- Notes and Indexes (and list of Illustrations)
“Engels’ outlook developed on similar lines to that of the young Marx. He had steeped himself in the progressive philosophical and political ideas of the time, and was moved by a sense of protest against the reactionary order in Germany. His ambition was to take part in the ideological and political controversies on the eve of her bourgeois revolution. Like Marx, Engels became an adherent of the Hegelian philosophy, drawing revolutionary conclusions from it and soon afterwards coming under the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach’s ideas, which helped to crystallise the materialist aspects of his thinking.
Engels, however, found it much harder than Marx to arrive at a progressive outlook. He came from the conservative and religious family of a Barmen industrialist and was forced by his father to leave school and go into business. This meant that he had to complete his education independently, to find his own way through the labyrinth of contemporary religious, philosophical, political and literary trends, and in much painful soul-searching to rise above the religious convictions nurtured in him since early childhood. It was in the main Engels’ critical analysis of religion and theology that led him to progressive philosophical ideas. Literature, too, had an important part to play in his development, particularly in his early years.
While espousing the rational elements in the views of Ludwig Borne and the writers of the Young Germany movement, and in Hegel’s philosophy and the Young Hegelians’ radical theories, Engels came to realise at each stage of his intellectual development the inconsistencies and limitations in their ideas, subjecting them to critical analysis as he carved out his own path to other views which were more profound and more radical. His attention was soon drawn to the contradictions of the society in which he lived and to the wretched conditions of the working masses…
This stage in Engels’ intellectual evolution can be broadly summed up as the emergence and rapid development of revolutionary-democratic ideas, followed in the second half of 1842, two years before he and Marx began to work closely together, by his incipient transition from idealism to materialism, and from a revolutionary-democratic outlook to communism.”
This volume predates the first actual meeting of Marx and Engels, but it does include in the preface something Engels wrote about Marx, based on his reputation:
“A swarthy chap of Trier, a marked monstrosity.
He neither hops nor skips, but moves in leaps and bounds,
Raving aloud. As if to seize and then pull down
To Earth the spacious tent of Heaven up on high”
The preface concludes by letting us know this volume is the entire extant works of the “young Engels” (though volume 3 still includes works right before their “close collaboration.”)
Works
The bulk of the volume’s works by Engels are newspaper entries, literary reviews, and opinion-oriented pamphlets — really they are polemics in various forms. The earliest entries, mostly written under pseudonym, I didn’t find that inspiring or helpful. But if Engels had become a travel writer, I think he could have been one of the all time romantic greats of the field!
From 1840’s “Landscapes”, published under the name “Friedrich Oswald”:
“To continue with the religious character of various regions, the Dutch landscapes are essentially Calvinist. The absolute prose of a distant view in Holland, the impossibility of its spiritualisation, the grey sky that is indeed the only one suited to it, all this produces the same impression on us as the infallible decisions of the Dordrecht Synod.
…
Rotterdam, with its shady quays, its canals and ships, is an oasis for people from small towns in the interior of Germany; one can understand here how the imagination of a Freiligrath could ply with the departing frigates to distant, more luxuriant shores. Then there are the cursed Zeeland islands, nothing but reeds and dykes, windmills and the tops of chiming church steeples, between which the steamboat winds its way for hours!
…
But then, with what a blissful feeling we leave behind the philistine dykes and tight-laced Calvinist orthodoxy and enter the realm of the free-ranging spirit! Helvoetsluys vanishes, on the right and the left the banks of the Waal sink into the rising, jubilant waves, the sandy yellow of the water changes to green, and now what is behind is forgotten, and we go forward into the dark-green transparent sea!
…
Then climb on to the rigging of the bowsprit and gaze on the waves, how, cleft by the ship’s keel, they throw the white spray high over your head, and look out, too, over the distant green surface of the sea, where the foaming crests of the waves spring up in eternal unrest, where the sun’s rays are reflected into your eyes from thousands of dancing mirrors, where the green of the sea merges with the blue of the sky and the gold of the sun to produce a wonderful colour, and all your trivial cares, all remembrance of the enemies of light and their treacherous attacks disappear, and you stand upright, proudly conscious of the free, infinite mind! I have had only one impression that could compare with this; when for the first time the divine idea of the last of the philosophers [Hegel?] this most colossal creation of the thought of the nineteenth century, dawned upon me,: I experienced the same blissful thrill, it was like a breath of fresh sea air blowing down upon me from the purest sky; the depths of speculation lay before me like the unfathomable sea from which one cannot turn one’s eyes straining to see the ground below; in God we live, move and have our being! We become conscious of that when we are on the sea; we feel that God breathes through all around us and through us ourselves; we feel such kinship with the whole of nature, the waves beckon to us so intimately, the sky stretches so lovingly over the earth, and the sun shines with such indescribable radiance that one feels one could grasp it with the hand.
The sun sinks in the north-west; on its left a shining streak rises from the sea — the Kentish coast and the southern bank of the Thames estuary. Already the twilight mist lies on the sea, only in the west is the purple of evening spread over the sky and over the water; the sky in the east is resplendent in deep blue, from which Venus already shines out brightly; in the south-west a long golden streak in the magical light along the horizon is Margate, from the windows of which the evening redness is reflected. So now wave your caps and greet free England with a joyful shout and a full glass. Good night, and a happy awakening in London!
…
You who complain of the prosaic dullness of railways without ever having seen one should try travelling on the one from London to Liverpool. If ever a land was made to be traversed by railways it is England. No dazzlingly beautiful scenery, no colossal mountain masses, but a land of ‘soft rolling hills which has a wonderful charm in the English sunlight, which is never quite clear...
Oh, there is rich poetry in the counties of Britain! It often seems as if one were still in the golden days of merry England and might see Shakespeare with his fowling-piece moving stealthily behind a hedge on a deer-poaching expedition, or you might wonder why not one of his divine comedies actually takes place on this green meadow. For wherever the scenes are supposed to occur, in Italy, France or Navarra, his baroque, uncouth rustics, his too-clever schoolmasters, and his deliciously bizarre women, all belong basically to merry England and it is remarkable that only an English sky is suited to everything that takes place…”
Engels then shows a different sort of skill for writing with his sharp wit in “Reports from Bremen” and its Theatre Publishing Festival in 1840. After dispensing with the “consensus gentium” that “there is nothing to write about from here”, Engels lets you know how he really feels about the place:
“For the rest, life here is rather monotonous and small-townish; the haute volee, i.e., the families of patricians and monied aristocrats, are spending the summer on their landed estates; the middle-class ladies even in this fine period of the year cannot tear themselves away from their tea-parties, where cards are played and tongues wag; and the merchants day after day visit the museum, the stock exchange, or their club, to talk about coffee and tobacco prices and the state of the negotiations with the Customs Union; few go to the theatre. Interest in the current literature of the Fatherland as a whole is not to be found here; it is pretty generally held that Goethe and Schiller set the coping-stones of the arch of German literature, and that in any case the romantic writers served only as later ornamentations. People subscribe to a reading-club, partly because it is the fashion, partly because a siesta can be more comfortable with a periodical; but they are interested only in scandal and anything that the papers may say about Bremen.”
After three years in Bremen, and back on the road with his travel writing, Engels goes on his romantic travel writing in “Wanderings in Lombardy”, starting “Over the Alps!” — but never finishing because the Young Hegelian weekly paper it was being published in was banned in 1841(!)
Wasting no time, Engels begins with a shot at the Methodists:
“Thank God, we have left Basle behind! Such a barren town, full of frock-coats and cocked hats, philistines and patrician and Methodists, where nothing is fresh and vigorous but the trees around the brick-red cathedral and the colours of Holbein’s Passion, which can be seen among other paintings in the library here; such a hole-and-corner town, with all the ugliness of the Middle Ages and none of their beauty, cannot appeal to a young heart whose imagination is fully engaged with the Swiss Alps and Italy.”
After a trip through the Swiss Alps, Engels continues in another issue to arrive in Italy:
“The midday meal was taken in a house which was arranged completely in Italian style and had only stone floors and thick stone walls even in the upper storeys; then the journey was continued up an almost vertical rock face. In a wooded gorge among the last trees which I saw on this side of the Alps, lay an avalanche, a broad river of snow which had rolled down from the steeper walls. It was not long before desolate gorges began where the mountain torrents thunder under a firm, vaulted cover of snow and the naked rocks are barely covered with patches of moss. The snow lay thicker and spread further. Right at the top a path had been cut out for the road on either side of which the snow was three or even four times as high as a man. I dug steps into the snow wall with my heels and clambered up. A broad, snow-white valley lay before me in the middle of which rose a grey roof, the Austrian customs-house, the first building on the Italian side of the Alps. The inspection of our luggage at this house, during which I successfully concealed my Varinas [tobacco] from the eyes of the frontier guards, gave me leisure to look around a little. On all sides bare, grey layers of rock, their summits covered with snow, a valley in which not a blade of grass was to be seen for snow, much less a bush or a tree, in short, a dreadful, forsaken desert above which Italian and German winds meet and continually drive grey clouds towards each other, a solitude more terrible than the Sahara and more prosaic than the Luneburger Heide, a region where it snows for nine months and rains for three months year in, year out — that was my first sight of Italy.”
Perhaps the most important works, or at least philosophical works, in this volume was a series that Engels wrote about Schelling. Schelling had moved on from his earlier philosophical views into a phase of “positive philosophy” (positive Philosophie.) These “positive” works, opposed to Hegel (and all previously existing philosophy for that matter), remained unpublished in Schelling’s own lifetime, only to be heard during his lectures at the University of Berlin. The short version is they were of a distinctly mystical/religious nature. Schelling began these lectures upon the invitation of Frederick William IV of Prussia, specifically to counter the intellectual force of the Young Hegelians. Engels attended these lectures during his time in Berlin receiving military training. The three extant works Engels produced countering Schelling’s new project were “Schelling on Hegel”, “Schelling and Revelation”, and “Schelling, Philosopher in Christ” (with the lengthy subtitle “Or The Transformation Of Worldly Wisdom into Divine Wisdom
For Believing Christians Who Do Not Know the Language of Philosophy”.)
Engels begins in the first essay (published in a newspaper in December 1841), “Ask anybody in Berlin today on what field the battle for dominion over German public opinion in politics and religion, that is, over Germany itself, is being fought, and if he has any idea of the power of the mind over the world he will reply that this battlefield is the University, in particular Lecture-hall №6, where Schelling is giving his lectures on the philosophy of revelation.
…
“Let Schelling see whether he can muster a school. Many only join him now because like him they are opposed to Hegel and accept with gratitude anybody who attacks him, be it Leo or Schubarth. But for these, I think, Schelling is far too good. Whether he will find any other adherents remains to be seen. I do not yet believe so, although some of his hearers are making progress and have already got as far as indifference.”
The second piece is much more aggressive. First it mocks:
“How the valiant heroes of the Evangelische and the Allgemeine Berliner Kirchenzeitung, of the Literarischer Anzeiger and Fichte’s magazines drew back modestly to make room for the St. George who was to slay the dreadful dragon of Hegelianism, which breathed the fire of godlessness and the smoke of obscuration! Was there not a silence in the land as if the Holy Ghost was about to descend, as if God Himself wished to speak out of the clouds?”
Then it attacks:
“So far Schelling has communicated to us the content of his negative philosophy, and these outlines are perfectly sufficient to recognise the fantastic, illogical character of his mode of thinking. He is no longer capable of moving in pure thinking even for a short time; every moment the most fabulous, most bizarre phantoms cross his path, so that the great horses drawing his carriage of thought rear and shy and he himself abandons his goal to chase after these phantoms. That the three powers, when reduced to their naked thought content, are nothing but the three elements of the Hegelian course of development through negation, only , fixed in their separateness and dressed up by torn apart ‘philosophy which is conscious of its purpose’ in accordance with that purpose, can be seen at first glance. It is a sad spectacle to watch Schelling drag thought down — from its lofty, pure ether into the region of sensory perception, strike from its head the true golden crown and make it stagger about, drunk with the fog and mist of the unaccustomed, romantic atmosphere, in a crown of gilded paper, to be the laughing-stock of the street urchins.”
Engels was not going unnoticed, despite his first anti-Schelling work being published anonymously. Arnold Ruge learned that the pamphlet was his, and invited “Doctor Engels” to contribute to his Hegelian journal (Engels replied “I am not a Doctor and cannot ever become one. I am only a merchant and a Royal Prussian artillerist, so kindly spare me that title.”)
Later in 1842, Engels contributed more works to Marx’s Rheinische Zeitung, like his “Diary of a Guest Student.” This begins to show Engels’ interest in a historical framework, specifically here aimed at Prussia. Engels claims it is clear “that Prussia’s salvation lies solely in theory, in science, in development through the intellect”, these years after their pre-Jena past was swept away by Napoleonic invasion. Proposing (I would say not accurately or too idealistically at least), the idea of Prussia as some form of a possible progressive “creed state”, Engels says “Or to see it from another angle, Prussia is no ‘natural’ state, but one which has come into being through politics, through purposeful action, through the intellect. From the French side the attempt has recently been made to represent this as our state’s greatest weakness; on the contrary, this circumstance is our main strength, provided that it is rightly used.” What I found most interesting in this essay though isn’t Engels own words, but his quotation of an older pupil of Hegel, Professor von Henning, who spoke of economics as well as the state in very compelling and lucid terms:
“Prussia stands out among all other states by having a financial system based entirely on the modem science of political economy, and having had the hitherto unique courage to apply in practice the ‘theoretical results of Adam Smith and his followers. England, for instance, where the modern theories originated, is still up to the eyes in the old system of monopoly and prohibition, France almost more so, and neither Huskisson in the former country nor Duchatel in the latter has been able to overcome private interests by his more reasonable views, to say nothing of Austria and Russia; whereas Prussia has firmly recognised the principle of free trade and free industry and has abolished an monopolies and prohibitive customs duties. This aspect of our political system, therefore, places us high above states which in another respect, the development of political freedom, are far ahead of us. If our government’s achievement in respect of finance has been so extraordinary, it must also be admitted, on the other hand, that peculiarly favourable conditions existed for such a reform. The disaster of 1806 [defeat at Jena] cleared the ground on which the new edifice could be erected; the government’s hands were not tied by a representative system, enabling the particular interests to assert themselves. But unfortunately there are still old gentlemen whose narrow-mindedness and peevishness make them carp at what is new and accuse it of being an unhistorical, unpractical, forcibly imposed construction evolved from abstract theory; as if history had stopped in 1806 and it were wrong for practice to conform with theory, with science; as if the essence of history were stagnation or movement in a circle, and not progress, as if there could really he practice devoid of all theory.”
The end of history, already rearing its ugly head!
In these first two volumes, we have returned to Frederick William IV, King of Prussia several times. Engels was willing to write directly about him in a newspaper piece titled of the King’s name. “Among the European sovereigns whose personality attracts attention also outside their own country there are four of special interest: Nicholas of Russia, because of the directness and unconcealed frankness with which he strives towards despotism; Louis Philippe, who can he regarded as the Machiavelli of our time; Victoria of England, the perfect model of a constitutional queen; and Frederick William IV, whose frame of mind, which has been unmistakably and clearly revealed during the two years of his reign, is to be the subject of closer examination here.” I am not enough of an expert to say how honest Engels is being in his arguments in this entry (to avoid censorship?), but his conclusion goes out of its way to say what a good man the King is, but that he seems simply “unable” to put his ideal system into place. But clearly Engels sympathies at this point were already, like Marx’s, growing against censorship, against privileges for the nobility, for a representative parliament, for a constitution, and against the “cold system of control” of a bureaucratic Prussian state. Like my question about Marx, I am not sure how much pragmatic self-censorship Engels was engaging in at this point and how much he had not more developed his radical thinking.
The last few works in the section are of Engels in England, and are the most exciting.
The Condition of the Working Class in England is an early materialist entry, with a published on Christmas in 1842 (a Dickensian sounding affair, though published exactly one year before A Christmas Carol.) The piece in Rheinische Zeitung is so short and important, I think you should just read it now. After a brief survey of the positives and negatives of their conditions, by way of comparison and in context of global trade, Engels proclaims: “What all this boils down to is that England with her industry has burdened herself not only with a large class of the unpropertied, but among these always a considerable class of paupers which she cannot get rid of. These people have to rough it on their own; the state abandons them, even pushes them away. Who can blame them, if the men have recourse to robbery or burglary, the women to theft and prostitution? But the state does not care whether starvation is bitter or sweet; it locks these people up in prison or sends them to penal settlements, and when it releases them it has the satisfaction of having converted people without work into people without morals. And the curious thing about the whole story is that the sagacious Whig and the “radical” are still unable to understand where Chartism comes from with the country in such a state, and how the Chartists can possibly imagine they have even the slightest chance in England.”
Engels also mentions the Chartism movement in “The Position of the Political Parties” (60 years before the Labour Party was formed) and of Landlords and Tenant-Farmers and trade law in “The Corn Laws” (a conflict between between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed gentry that did not end until the law was repealed in 1846.) [Here I will note “The Corn Laws” must have more end notes explaining what they are than any other single topic in the MECW — edited this note as reading volume 8 that it has at least 30 end note citations already.]
The brief movement of the action from Prussia to England and its workers was a nice change of pace after so many hundreds of pages on Prussian parlor Hegelianism. You can start to feel the movement towards something bigger even as Engels hears from the English populace why a revolution is not likely there: “Is a revolution in England possible or even probable? This is the question on which the future of England depends. Put it to an Englishman and he will give you a thousand excellent reasons to prove that there can be no question at all of a revolution. He will tell you that at the moment certainly England is in a critical situation, but thanks to her wealth, her industry and her institutions, she has the ways and means to extricate herself without violent upheavals., that her constitution is sufficiently flexible to withstand the heaviest blows caused by the struggle over principles and can, without danger to its foundations, submit to all the changes forced on it by circumstances.”
Engels carefully understood this English view but he had his own take: “but in view of England’s position described above there cannot fail to be a general lack of food among the workers before long, and then fear of death from starvation will be stronger than fear of the law. This revolution is inevitable for England, but as in everything that happens there, it will be interests and not principles that will begin and carry through the revolution; principles can develop only from interests, that is to say, the revolution will be social, not political.”
Letters
Most of the letters of Engels are to his family, the plurality to his sister, Marie (often, he complains, at the request of his mother scolding him for not writing to his sister more.) I will put some little snippets here:
These young Engels letters give you some (auto)biographical background, such as Engels promotions within the military, as well as a glimpse into his amusing relationship with his sister and a little bit about how his politics here (e.g. still blatantly sexist) hadn’t more fully evolved/ruptured into their radicals realms yet — but I don’t recommend them as any sort of essential reading for a Marxist. They are fairly amusing though.
Early Literary Experiments
The literary experiments of Engels I found even less compelling than Marx’s, which I also didn’t take to. Of the five in the book, his A Pirate Tale is the only one even I remember, even just a few days later. Personally, I was sad to learn his adventure work relating to Greek independence called Odysseus Redivivius was lost in time, like tears in the rain. “The Pirate Tale” has similar Greek themes at least. To be fair, these are juvenilia, written before everything else in Volume 2.
Notes and Indexes and Conclusion
The last section of the book, like Marx’s in Volume 1, include Engels’ academic references. If anything, Friedrich was even more highly recommended as a well rounded student than Karl. In Latin, he “finds no difficulty” in Livius, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. In Greek, he had a “satisfactory” knowledge of morphology and syntax, and could translate Homer and Euripides and grasp and render Platonic dialogue with skill. His German recommendation included a “commendable interest in the history of German national literature” [something I did not share and therefore didn’t write much about in this post], and he translate French classics with skill and with a good knowledge of grammar. He knew the basic doctrines of the Evangelical Church and the history of the Christian Church and had sufficient lucid knowledge of history and geography. In mathematics, he had greater power of understanding than Marx I surmise. And in “physics and philosophical propaedeutic” he followed lectures with interest and success. His recommendation concludes “May the Lord bless and guide him!”
Understanding the young Marx and Hegel’s education via formal schooling in the Western Canon and their experiences made the first couple of volumes of the MECW well worth the effort, despite the rough patches.
The name and subject reference at the back remains invaluable. If you are already familiar with every notable Lutheran minister, Germanic folklore dwarf, ancient Greek historian, Swabian poet, Prussian prince, textile magnet family, and 19th century politician in Baden— then you will not need it.
Previously in this post, I had mentioned a letter from Engels to Ruge about the title of “Doctor”. There was one other letter from Engels to Ruge that will be the final conclusion here: “This time I am writing to inform you that I shall not be sending you anything. I have decided to abandon all literary work for a while in order to devote more time to studying. The reasons for this are fairly plain. I am young and self-taught in philosophy. I have learnt enough to form my own viewpoint and, when necessary, to defend it, but not enough to be able to work for it with success and in the proper way. All the greater demands will be made on me because I am a ‘travelling agent’ in philosophy and have not earned the right to philosophise by getting a doctor’s degree. I hope to be able to satisfy these demands once I start writing again — and under my own name. In addition I must not try to do too many things now, as I shall soon be again more fully occupied with business matters. Regarded subjectively, my literary activities have so far been mere experiments from the outcome of which I was to be able to learn whether my natural capacities were such as to enable me to work fruitfully and effectively for progress and to participate actively in the movement of the century. I can be satisfied with the results and now regard it as my duty to acquire by study, which I now continue with redoubled zest, also more and more of that which one is not born with.”
Next entry: the third volume of MECW includes some of the major entries of the “Young Marx”, like “On the Jewish Question”, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, and the famous “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”. It also has includes some more reporting from Engels including on French and German communists, plus Marx’s letters to Feuerbach. Unlike the first two volumes, these were hotly debated within Western Marxism (and beyond) after their publications, and this runs nearly 700 pages, so it may be quite a while before I write the next entry so I can give them the care I’d like to.
