Review of Marx’s General. The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristam Hunt. Metropolitan Books, 2009.
When considering intellectual biography, one must not only mind the written word—trends and narratives, histories and contentions, style and aesthetics—but temporality as well, time present in time past. Biography after all, like any other history, is bound to the imminent presence from which it speaks, that ineluctable locality of pause from which one gazes back upon the life of another. It is within this context that one should appraise Tristram Hunt’s latest text, Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent crescendo of capitalism under the guise of globalization (saturating even the likes of communist China), it is little wonder that the status of Marxism once again came into question, inciting a deluge of (re)interpretive scholarship. Hunt’s text, as part of this larger project to revisit the fundamental tenets of Marx and Marxism, seeks to reevaluate the role of Engels within this history. Marx’s General asks the fundamental question: How does Engels fit within this Marxian renaissance? Stigmatized as culpable for the misdeeds of Stalinism, accused of misinterpreting Marx’s thinking, and labeled as responsible for the official ideology of Marxism-Leninism, how does Engels—his life, work, and influence—bear upon the state of contemporary Marxist thought? Hunt’s biographical account generally vindicates Engels of these common charges, yet perhaps more significant to readers is Hunt’s generous explication of myriad histories that intersect with Engels life. Through these chiasmic histories, Marx’s General paints a portrait not only of Engels the man, but also the birth and early development of socialist thought in Europe.
As a matter of style, Marx’s General proceeds chronologically through Engel’s life, but takes multiple detours throughout this linear narrative to elaborate upon topical content. In this sense, the persona of Engels acts as the centerpiece belonging to a larger history, or set of histories; Hunt uses Engels’ travels, writings, and conflicts as the impetus for these further explorations into historical accounts of European labor struggles, Hegelian philosophy, and the multifarious characters inhabiting the political terrain of the time. Upon Engels’ arrival in Berlin and his attendance of Schelling’s lectures in 1841, for example, Hunt transitions into a discussion of Hegel’s philosophy, its challenge to the Prussian authorities, and its future influence upon Marx’s and Engel’s developing thought (48-51). When Engels meets Moses Hess for the first time, Hunt likewise chronicles (in brief) the life and work of this trailblazing communist—in addition to his tutorials that would later lead to Engels’ conversion from Hegelianism to communism (70-74). The most numerous and robust of Hunt’s detours, however, emerge from Engels’ various encounters with rival socialists. Through Engels’ biographical narrative, Hunt describes and demarcates such early socialist figures as the utopian socialists (85-92), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (134), Michael Bakunin (251), and Eugen Duhring (290). Beyond simple narrations of ideological conflicts, Hunt’s technique is valuable on several plains: by juxtaposing Marx and Engels to conflicting models, a more comprehensive understanding of the Marx/Engels stance emerges; at the same time, Hunt is able to chart the political topography surrounding early socialist thought in Europe. Within Marx’s General, the story of Engels is not just the story of a man, but the story of early socialism as well.
As intellectual biography, then, Hunt for the most part succeeds in amalgamating both linear and topical narratives of Engels’ life into the body of his text, each producing a brand of knowledge that supplements the work as a whole. The biographical significance of a scholar like Engels, for example, extends beyond the realm of linear events into the realm of his ideas. In such cases, the topical approach proves best suited to capture a biography of thought, charting an anastomosis of valences between historical events, structures of feeling, and socialist thought that resists a chronological reading. At the same time, however, by organizing this topical approach according to a loose chronology of Engels’ life, Hunt is able to emphasize not only repetitive motifs—painting a portrait of the man in broad thematic strokes—but intellectual developments as well—tracing the arc of his thought from early Romanticism to late dialectic materialism. From this linear component the reader is able to witness several of Engels’ significant ideological transitions from his early to his later life. Some of Engels’ earliest work, for instance, attacks conservatism in the name of freedom and youth (34-5), but much of his later writing attempts to explain the advances of industrial Europe as responses to shifting modes of production (283). Although Hunt’s transitions between linear and topical narratives can be temporally jarring at times, Marx’s General essentially negotiates between these two modes of address to capture the breadth of Engels’ intellectual development and life history.
In addition to the dynamic nature of Engels’ thought, Hunt’s account also portrays certain leitmotifs that resonate throughout Engels’ life: most notably the characterization of Engels as a figure of blatant contradiction. Born into a bourgeois family yet incessantly identifying with the proletariat, Engels would spend a great deal of his life negotiating between conflicting worlds or engaging in seemingly incongruous behaviors. During his early years in Bremen, for example, Engels was quick to duel but also a patron of the fine arts (27). Upon first arriving in Manchester, he worked for the family firm but lived within the working-class community (84). Funded by the exploitative labor practices of capitalism, Engels would go on to coauthor The Communist Manifesto and vehemently defend the core tenets of his life-long friend, Karl Marx. Even his romantic life was fractured to a degree; although dedicated to Mary Burns, an Irish proletariat and his first great love, Engels would hide their relationship to maintain his status within Manchester’s high society (201). While at times perplexed by such contradictions, Hunt generally depicts Engels as a willing chameleon—thriving in his freedom to navigating between bourgeois high society and the proletariat, his public and private lives (202).
Despite all of these notes on biographical style and narrative approach—Engels’ life as both topical and linear—perhaps most at stake within this intellectual biography is the status of Engels within the greater oeuvre of Marxist thought. According to Hunt, the first of Engels’ great contributions is The Condition of the Working Class in England, a seminal communist text whose notions of class division and industrial capitalism would later be taken-up by Marx (112). Between 1850 and 1870, his research and experience in commerce would become his second contribution; it would constitute much of the informational foundation for Das Kapital (198). If anything, these two contributions are pertinent not only to early Marxism but to contemporary scholarship as well: each instance reminds us that the backbone of any social critique is real, lived practices. After all, The Condition was written from first-hand accounts of Manchester laborers, and Das Capital would draw generously from Engels’ personal experience working within the textile industry—both testaments to ‘the material’ behind materialism, the lived-practices behind real social relations. Like most objective historians, Hunt avoids directly transposing this materialism of Engels, Marx, or Marxism upon present conditions, yet one cannot avoid that such a reengagement with Engels is also a reengagement with socialism. In this sense, the immanent temporality of Marx’s General, its moment of pause, is not only the resurgence of global capital within the last two decades, but the financial crisis of 2008 as well. As markets crumble, stocks plummet, and unemployment rises, Hunt’s text tacitly invites us to rethink socialism through Engels, from inchoate beginnings to the misdeeds and excesses of Marxism/Leninism. In doing so, Marx’s General challenge us not only rethink what may have gone wrong with socialism, but also to ruminate upon what could still go right.
J. Scott Killen is a Ph.D. student in the Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University.
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Engels Revisited
Review of Marx’s General. The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristam Hunt. Metropolitan Books, 2009.
When considering intellectual biography, one must not only mind the written word—trends and narratives, histories and contentions, style and aesthetics—but temporality as well, time present in time past. Biography after all, like any other history, is bound to the imminent presence from which it speaks, that ineluctable locality of pause from which one gazes back upon the life of another. It is within this context that one should appraise Tristram Hunt’s latest text, Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent crescendo of capitalism under the guise of globalization (saturating even the likes of communist China), it is little wonder that the status of Marxism once again came into question, inciting a deluge of (re)interpretive scholarship. Hunt’s text, as part of this larger project to revisit the fundamental tenets of Marx and Marxism, seeks to reevaluate the role of Engels within this history. Marx’s General asks the fundamental question: How does Engels fit within this Marxian renaissance? Stigmatized as culpable for the misdeeds of Stalinism, accused of misinterpreting Marx’s thinking, and labeled as responsible for the official ideology of Marxism-Leninism, how does Engels—his life, work, and influence—bear upon the state of contemporary Marxist thought? Hunt’s biographical account generally vindicates Engels of these common charges, yet perhaps more significant to readers is Hunt’s generous explication of myriad histories that intersect with Engels life. Through these chiasmic histories, Marx’s General paints a portrait not only of Engels the man, but also the birth and early development of socialist thought in Europe.
As a matter of style, Marx’s General proceeds chronologically through Engel’s life, but takes multiple detours throughout this linear narrative to elaborate upon topical content. In this sense, the persona of Engels acts as the centerpiece belonging to a larger history, or set of histories; Hunt uses Engels’ travels, writings, and conflicts as the impetus for these further explorations into historical accounts of European labor struggles, Hegelian philosophy, and the multifarious characters inhabiting the political terrain of the time. Upon Engels’ arrival in Berlin and his attendance of Schelling’s lectures in 1841, for example, Hunt transitions into a discussion of Hegel’s philosophy, its challenge to the Prussian authorities, and its future influence upon Marx’s and Engel’s developing thought (48-51). When Engels meets Moses Hess for the first time, Hunt likewise chronicles (in brief) the life and work of this trailblazing communist—in addition to his tutorials that would later lead to Engels’ conversion from Hegelianism to communism (70-74). The most numerous and robust of Hunt’s detours, however, emerge from Engels’ various encounters with rival socialists. Through Engels’ biographical narrative, Hunt describes and demarcates such early socialist figures as the utopian socialists (85-92), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (134), Michael Bakunin (251), and Eugen Duhring (290). Beyond simple narrations of ideological conflicts, Hunt’s technique is valuable on several plains: by juxtaposing Marx and Engels to conflicting models, a more comprehensive understanding of the Marx/Engels stance emerges; at the same time, Hunt is able to chart the political topography surrounding early socialist thought in Europe. Within Marx’s General, the story of Engels is not just the story of a man, but the story of early socialism as well.
As intellectual biography, then, Hunt for the most part succeeds in amalgamating both linear and topical narratives of Engels’ life into the body of his text, each producing a brand of knowledge that supplements the work as a whole. The biographical significance of a scholar like Engels, for example, extends beyond the realm of linear events into the realm of his ideas. In such cases, the topical approach proves best suited to capture a biography of thought, charting an anastomosis of valences between historical events, structures of feeling, and socialist thought that resists a chronological reading. At the same time, however, by organizing this topical approach according to a loose chronology of Engels’ life, Hunt is able to emphasize not only repetitive motifs—painting a portrait of the man in broad thematic strokes—but intellectual developments as well—tracing the arc of his thought from early Romanticism to late dialectic materialism. From this linear component the reader is able to witness several of Engels’ significant ideological transitions from his early to his later life. Some of Engels’ earliest work, for instance, attacks conservatism in the name of freedom and youth (34-5), but much of his later writing attempts to explain the advances of industrial Europe as responses to shifting modes of production (283). Although Hunt’s transitions between linear and topical narratives can be temporally jarring at times, Marx’s General essentially negotiates between these two modes of address to capture the breadth of Engels’ intellectual development and life history.
In addition to the dynamic nature of Engels’ thought, Hunt’s account also portrays certain leitmotifs that resonate throughout Engels’ life: most notably the characterization of Engels as a figure of blatant contradiction. Born into a bourgeois family yet incessantly identifying with the proletariat, Engels would spend a great deal of his life negotiating between conflicting worlds or engaging in seemingly incongruous behaviors. During his early years in Bremen, for example, Engels was quick to duel but also a patron of the fine arts (27). Upon first arriving in Manchester, he worked for the family firm but lived within the working-class community (84). Funded by the exploitative labor practices of capitalism, Engels would go on to coauthor The Communist Manifesto and vehemently defend the core tenets of his life-long friend, Karl Marx. Even his romantic life was fractured to a degree; although dedicated to Mary Burns, an Irish proletariat and his first great love, Engels would hide their relationship to maintain his status within Manchester’s high society (201). While at times perplexed by such contradictions, Hunt generally depicts Engels as a willing chameleon—thriving in his freedom to navigating between bourgeois high society and the proletariat, his public and private lives (202).
Despite all of these notes on biographical style and narrative approach—Engels’ life as both topical and linear—perhaps most at stake within this intellectual biography is the status of Engels within the greater oeuvre of Marxist thought. According to Hunt, the first of Engels’ great contributions is The Condition of the Working Class in England, a seminal communist text whose notions of class division and industrial capitalism would later be taken-up by Marx (112). Between 1850 and 1870, his research and experience in commerce would become his second contribution; it would constitute much of the informational foundation for Das Kapital (198). If anything, these two contributions are pertinent not only to early Marxism but to contemporary scholarship as well: each instance reminds us that the backbone of any social critique is real, lived practices. After all, The Condition was written from first-hand accounts of Manchester laborers, and Das Capital would draw generously from Engels’ personal experience working within the textile industry—both testaments to ‘the material’ behind materialism, the lived-practices behind real social relations. Like most objective historians, Hunt avoids directly transposing this materialism of Engels, Marx, or Marxism upon present conditions, yet one cannot avoid that such a reengagement with Engels is also a reengagement with socialism. In this sense, the immanent temporality of Marx’s General, its moment of pause, is not only the resurgence of global capital within the last two decades, but the financial crisis of 2008 as well. As markets crumble, stocks plummet, and unemployment rises, Hunt’s text tacitly invites us to rethink socialism through Engels, from inchoate beginnings to the misdeeds and excesses of Marxism/Leninism. In doing so, Marx’s General challenge us not only rethink what may have gone wrong with socialism, but also to ruminate upon what could still go right.
J. Scott Killen is a Ph.D. student in the Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University.