The Works of Marx and Engels in Ethnology Compared

Abstract

The separation of the contributions to the theory and practice of socialism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was not seriously posited during their lifetimes, but only in the following generation. The separation, as opposed to the contributions of their entire working lives, of the respective quality of thinking in either case, was a matter of which Engels was conscious, for he wrote: “Marx was a genius, we others were at best talents. Without him the theory today would be far from what it is. Therefore it rightly bears his name.” The evaluation by Engels of the relation between the two was duly repeated by their biographers. Mehring wrote: “There is no doubt that Marx was philosophically the greater of the two and that his brain was more highly trained.” Mayer compared the two: “Marx was driven by the harsh goad of genius; Engels lived under the gentler domination of his rich humanity.” Ryazanov simply posited that the collaboration of the two and their mutual support proceeded in perfect harmony, with the minor thesis of Engels's supportive role. Both Mehring and Ryazanov cited Engels's own words of modesty quoted above. Auguste Cornu has written with reference to the beginning of the collaboration: “Engels' study of the origin of communism was more on the economic and social level than on the philosophical and political plane, and portrayed it as a necessary product of the development of capitalist society. This lent definition to Marx's still theoretical and abstract conception.” Cornu, who is of the orthodox school, had reference to the articles on political economy in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844) by Engels. While he concedes nothing to the higher intellectual attainments of one over the other, he develops the theme of the power of abstraction of Marx, of concretion of Engels. That there was identity of thought and activity of Marx and Engels is the view which seeks to establish orthodoxy of the socialist doctrines of various parties; the qualitative difference of their brain power, accordingly, implies no difference in the substance of the production in either, whether in the theory or practice of socialism resp. communism.