Engels, humanism and revolutionary praxis: The centrality of the dynamic analysis of historical materialism and its inherent relation to overcoming capitalist alienation

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, a debate emerged among academics of historical materialism on the apparent divergence between Engels’ and Marx’s theoretical developments. During the 20th century, those who wanted to argue that there was a dichotomy between the two authors identified Engels as responsible for historical materialism’s crises. This paper aims to demonstrate that Engels, far from distancing himself from Marx’s central positions, contributed to the formation of historical materialism as a revolutionary praxis that seeks a more rational regulation of the human metabolism with nature through overcoming the alienating conditions of the capitalist system. For this reason, the paper analyses Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, one of Engels’ most controversial texts, and exposes the correlation with the historical development of the revolutionary praxis in the Engels’ and Marx’s work. The article will be drawing on Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s Philosophy of Praxis, understood as a ‘revolutionary’ activity, and his analysis of Marx’s and Engels’ work. It is argued that one of Engels’ primary purposes, in Ludwig Feuerbach, was to show the demystification process of the Hegelian dialectical method, resulting in the formation of historical materialism as a dynamic epistemic model, that seeks to transform social reality through revolutionary praxis. The Feuerbachian ontological categories and Feuerbach’s perception of nature were the objects of the same process of demystification and critique, resulting in the characterisation of the human being in Marxism as a generic, social and historical being. Finally, it is shown that Engels demonstrates the possibilities for transformation of the human subject; for that reason, Engels’ argument is associated with the revolutionary praxis.