Friedrich Engels: the Che Guevara of his day
Engels: A
Revolutionary Life
By
John Green
Artery
Publications
Paperback
2008
347
pages, £10
Most
people know that Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was the lifelong friend and
collaborator of Karl Marx, and for most people the image of Engels that springs
most readily to mind is of a heavily bearded, earnest old Victorian gentleman
(most likely standing in the background of a group consisting of Marx and his
family).
In
this excellent and inspiring biography, John Green sets out to “remove much of
the historical dust, in order to reveal the man of flesh and blood hidden
beneath, someone we can readily identify with and who comes alive through his
passionate historical intervention”.
Throughout
the book Green time and again returns to comparisons between the younger Engels
and Che Guevara: both rejected their comfortable backgrounds and the privileges
that went along with them in order to espouse the interests of the poor and
oppressed: “In his twenties, like Che Guevara, Engels penned radical poetry and
dreamed of transforming the world; he also fought with a small band of
revolutionary ‘guerrilleros’ in the wooded hills of southern Germany against
the might of the Prussian state, was placed top of its most wanted list,
charged with high treason, and he was harassed and spied upon.”
Like
Che, Engels had a practical as well as theoretical interest in military matters
(so much so that he was nicknamed ``The General” by the Marx family). Indeed,
the young Engels bears a remarkable physical resemblance to Che, and the front
cover of Green’s biography carries a photograph of Engels in his early twenties
that bears a striking resemblance to Alberto Korda’s famous photograph of Che.
Usually,
historical biographies are written in the past tense, but Green has chosen to
write this biography in the present tense in order to “communicate the
immediacy of his life and the revolutionary events that accompanied it in a
more intimate way than the distancing past tense could have done”. Green does
this very successfully, and the picture that emerges is indeed of a “principled
and passionate man whose every action was taken on behalf of his fellow human
beings”. The man of flesh and blood emerges too: we hear how after the failure
of the 1848 European revolutions the 28 year-old Engels walks the 500 kilometre
from Paris to Switzerland, how he reacts to being called a “bloody foreigner”
by a man in a Manchester pub by hitting him over the head with an umbrella, of
his relationship with the near-illiterate Irish factory girl Mary Burns and –
following Mary’s death – with her sister Lizzie.
Contribution to modern socialism
In
addition to providing a compelling portrait of Engels the man, Green also sets
the record straight on the contribution Engels made to the birth and
development of modern socialism. It is common nowadays to hear Engels
characterised as a crude simplifier, or perhaps even a falsifier, of Marx’s
views. Green counters this by reminding us that not only did Engels take on the
gargantuan task of turning the mass of near illegible notes left by Marx after
his death into the second and third volumes of Capital, he was also responsible for pointing Marx in the direction
of political economy in the first place.
Green
explains the pivotal importance in the development of Marx’s own thinking of
Engels’ 1844 essay “Outlines of a Critique of National Economy” and his 1845
book The Condition of the Working Class
in England: the latter is described by Karl Kautsky as “the beginning of
theoretical socialism” and “even in the area where Marx achieves his greatest
fulfilment – political economy – it is Engels who, certainly to begin with, is
very much the feeder. It is undoubtedly he also who pushes Marx in the
direction of investigating the role of private property and the contradiction
between the humane phraseology of capitalism’s apologists and the inhumane
practice of the free market system. It is Engels who explains to him how
economic crises occur and the minutiae of capital accumulation and
concentration.” Indeed, Marx himself says to Engels in a letter from the
mid-1860s that “I am always following in your footsteps”.
In
addition to the intellectual contribution Engels made to the development of
Marx’s thought, Green reminds us that for 20 years Engels held down a desk job
that he hated in order to finance not only Marx and his family, but a number of
other socialists and socialist organisations.
Errors
Unfortunately,
in what is an otherwise admirable book, there are a few inaccurate details and
occasional lapses: it is to be hoped that these might be corrected in some
future edition. For example, on page 59, it is claimed that Engels read and
admired the work of the novelist George Eliot in the early 1840s. Green must
have the dates wrong here: Eliot’s first work of fiction wasn’t published until
1857. On page 117, Green has Marx and Engels elaborating historical and dialectical materialism in the mid-1840s:
again, in the case of the latter variant of materialism this is surely at best
premature. On page 168 the notion of “permanent revolution”, as characterised
by Engels in 1850 and developed by Trotsky in the 20th century, is
implausibly run together with Mao’s “Cultural Revolution”.
On
pages 208-9, Engels’ characterisation of an independent proletarian party in
his 1865 brochure The Prussian Military
Question and the German Workers’ Party is described as “the blueprint for
all the world’s communist parties that will be established in future decades”.
If, as is usual, “communist” refers specifically to the parties of the Third
International, this description seems highly unlikely and surely also
underplays the relevance of Lenin’s thinking on party organisation. On the
other hand, if “communist” here doesn’t refer to the parties of the Third
International, then Green’s claim is simply misleading.
Indeed,
on page 321 Green seems to contradict these earlier statements when he notes
how Engels’ thoughts on party organisation depart from those later adopted by
the Third International. On page 211, in outlining some of Engels’ original
thinking on military matters, Green writes: “Although many of his ideas have
since been overtaken by developments, he certainly provided some ground rules
for Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, the young Che Guevara and other guerrilla leaders when
seeking inspiration in his military writings”. But it is surely misleading to
speak of Lenin as a “guerrilla leader” (and the same may also go for Trotsky).
Finally,
on the last page of the book, Green applies to Engels I.F. Stone’s assessment
of the forces driving Che as “deep humanity marred by an element of
ruthlessness”. Putting on one side the question of whether or not this is
accurately said of Che, it is surprising to hear Green say it of Engels, since
nothing in the book suggests that Engels was in any way marred by
“ruthlessness”.
However,
these worries aside, this is an excellent book, clearly written and an
enjoyable read. Green brings Engels and his work vividly to life, and in doing
so he has done the labour movement an enormous service. This book deserves a
wide readership and a place on any socialist’s bookshelves.
[Engels: A Revolutionary Life is available from www.arterypublications.co.uk.]