Episode 2: Marx and Engels: An Intellectual Partnership

The Rise of Communism from Marx to Lenin

Dr Vejas Gabriel Liulevius (2019)

Film Review

Liulevius begins this lecture by reading from the report of a Prussian spy sent to London to spy on Marx in 1853. According to the report he, his wife and their six children lived in two shabby rooms, in which everything was tattered, broken and thick with dust. It describes Marx as “fond” of yelling and alcohol and often idle – with occasional sprees of intense work.

One of Marx’s major intellectual concerns was where the French Revolution went wrong, ending in a reign of terror (1793-94), in which many revolutionary leaders were executed and replaced with more conservatives ones.*

Socialism Before Marx

The aftermath of the French Revolution made socialism extremely popular across Europe and the US. It led to the formation of egalitarian intentional communities, such as the model factories of Robert Owen** and New Harmony and other utopian colonies (including the Shakers and the Amish) in the US.

Early pre-Marx socialists included Henri de St-Simon (who advocated owing all land and tools in common), utopian socialist Charles Fourier,*** and Fourier disciple Pierre-Joseph Proudon (who denounced centralized political control in favor of loosely linked communes).

Marx and Engels condemned all these movements “utopian.” They believed that the advent of industrialization enabled a new form of revolution led by the new industrial working class.

An Intellectual Partnership

Born in 1818 to a middle class family (his father was a lawyer) who converted to Christianity to avoid antisemitic persecution, Marx had a reputation for drinking and brawling while attending the University of Bonn. In 1842 he earned a doctorate in ancient Greek philosophy and married the daughter of a baroness Jenny von Westphalen.

His atheism and radicalism prevented him from obtaining an academic position. Instead he became a journalist for a radical newspaper in Cologne until the government shut it down. In 1843, he and his wife emigrated to France and in 1849 to London.

Engels was born in the Rhineland to wealthy family of factory owners. His father was a fundamentalist Christian. He also attended the University of Berlin, where he became a socialist. Handsome, attractive and generous, he was a marked contract to Marx, who tended to be quite abrasive. Although he never married, he had a long term relationship with a working class Irish woman and (following her death) her sister. In 1845 he moved to Manchester to work in his father’s factory. He and Marx published the Communist Manifesto in 1847.

The latter asserts that all history is the history of class society. It describes the earliest societies as practicing primitive communism (with communal land ownership). This was followed by what Marx and Engels refer to as the Asiatic mode (where the state enslaves its members), followed by private slavery, followed by feudalism, followed by capitalism.

Marx and Engels asserted that true socialism could only come about from the forceful overthrow of existing social relations.They believed that under capitalism the bourgeoisie (merchant and trader class) tended to shrink while the proletariat increased. They predicted once it grew large enough, revolution would be inevitable.

They were very disparaging towards farmers (who they referred to as “sacks of potatoes”) asserting that they weren’t a genuine class. They also denounced Russia and small countries as unsuitable for communist revolution because their industrial working class was too small.

*The late economist Lyndon Larouche and his followers have written at length about the role of British intelligence in stoking the reign of terror that derailed the French revolution. See https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2002/eirv29n02-20020118/eirv29n02-20020118_044-why_france_did_not_have_an_ameri.pdf

**Welsh manufacturer and social reformer

*** Between 1840 and 1860 there were 30 utopian Fourist colonies in the US. The US formed 178 socialist communities in the 19th century.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/11239598/11239602