Should Engels get more credit then Marx

[Ultimateman]

im kind of new to the left, i have finally came to see what capitalism is all about, so im kind of new, breaching, entering a new philosophy, so help me out the best i can

but from what i have heard is that Frederick Engels should get more credit then Karl Marx... people have said Engels came up with most of the ideas.. and Marx sort of followed Engels ideas.. im sure this has been debated in the past, but is it true

should Engels get more credit then Marx

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I am not an expert on either individuals but I do know that Engels provided some financial aid while Marx did the actual writing.Both collaborated and helped each other but I think it would be disingenuous to say either did more than the other.

[Manic Impressive]

no.

Engels should get more credit than he does but not more than Marx. I've never heard anyone say that before. But I assume that it may have come from Engels occasionally writing a few newspaper articles for Marx while Marx was ill and unable to work.

[Art Vandelay]

Engels himself stated that Marx was the true genius. Personally I think that they both were and undoubtedly Marx does get most of the credit. However what I think is often overlooked is that Marx would not have been able to produce the amount of work that he did without the financial aid from Engels. All volumes of capital after vol.1 were also pretty much pieced together by Fred after Karl's death. They were the best of friends and I really doubt Marx would have wanted to be known as the genius of the two, although that is certainly the view that Engels advanced.

[Tablo]

Both were brilliant. It is somewhat depressing that Engels is seen as little more than an extension of Marx by some.

[piet11111]

Marx never would have been as insightful if he didn't have Engels to bounce his ideas off of and have fred critiquing his work.

If those two never worked together i doubt we would ever have even heard of them.

[human strike]

I don't think Engels should get more of the credit, but I do think he should get much more of the blame. Sometimes Marx and Engels had very different ideas.

[Bronco]

I don't think Engels should get more of the credit, but I do think he should get much more of the blame. Sometimes Marx and Engels had very different ideas.

More of the blame for what?

[Omsk]

Both Marx and Engels done a lot of intellectual work,and both should be remembered as the creators of the idea we follow.Marx is the definatly the thinker of the millennium.Engels supported Marx financially and with his knowledge,he is responsible for a lot of work in the Kapital 4.and of course,his work about the family.

[Red Rosa]

The fact that Engels financed Marx doesn't give him more credit. It's understood that Marx would probably die of hunger and wouldn't been able to write his texts, especially Kapital, but financial assistance doesn't give you credit. Financial abundance is incomparable to intelectual ability. We are talking theoretical legacy here.
In short, Engels was extremly inteligent, deep in thought, perceptive and educated man for his time, and Marx was all that but ahead of it's time.

[Omsk]

The fact that Engels financed Marx doesn't give him more credit. It's understood that Marx would probably die of hunger and wouldn't been able to write his texts, especially Kapital, but financial assistance doesn't give you credit. Financial abundance is incomparable to intelectual ability. We are talking theoretical legacy here.
In short, Engels was extremly inteligent, deep in thought, perceptive and educated man for his time, and Marx was all that but ahead of it's time.


Who mentioned that the financial support is the element of their cooperation that should give Engels more credit,or any at all,it was just listed as a fact,information,about their work.


More of the blame for what?

You as an anarchist should know what he is talking about.

[Red Rosa]

It was someone above who made his financial support sound like a credit.

Seriously, more of the blame for what?

[Bronco]

You as an anarchist should know what he is talking about.

Why? I don't really blame him for believing in a State, and was Engels actually a bigger proponent of this than Marx was? Besides we're more talking about whether he should get more credit in terms of his contribution to the development of Communist thought

[Omsk]

I think right wingers and anarchists attack him because many people think he completely changed Marxs ideas and writings,and commented on them too much,adding his own opinions.

Marx and Engels were talking about dictatorships of the proletariat,here is quote of Engels: "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"

They sure weren't for states that exist today.

Engels on the state : As, therefore, the State is only a transitional institution, which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a “free people’s State”; so long as the proletariat still needs the State, it does not need it in the interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries, and, as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the State, as such, ceases to exist.
— Engels

[Red Rosa]

And that's what Marx thought too (about Paris Commune). As far as I know, Englels' comments on Marx's works weren't twisting his words.

[Bronco]

I think right wingers and anarchists attack him because many people think he completely changed Marxs ideas and writings,and commented on them too much,adding his own opinions.

Marx and Engels were talking about dictatorships of the proletariat,here is quote of Engels: "Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"

They sure weren't for states that exist today.

Engels on the state : As, therefore, the State is only a transitional institution, which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a “free people’s State”; so long as the proletariat still needs the State, it does not need it in the interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries, and, as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the State, as such, ceases to exist.
— Engels

I never said he did believe in it in the same way it exists today, but he did think some form of a State would be necessary and that there would need to be a "very strong government", I'm not sure his thinking here really departed from that of Marx to any large extent though

[Omsk]

I never said he did believe in it in the same way it exists today, but he did think some form of a State would be necessary and that there would need to be a "very strong government", I'm not sure his thinking here really departed from that of Marx to any large extent though

Maybe you don't,but there are people in the thread who think they did.
The communist people did need a state,especially after the revolution.(during the civil war the need for an state became evident,as the hordes of imperialist Germany,the Tsarist backward leftovers and counter revolutionary elements tried to destroy the revolution in it's birth place,Russia,to prevent it from spreading.

As Marx said: When the workers replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, by their revolutionary dictatorship*.*.*. to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie... the workers invest the state with a revolutionary and transitional form.
—Marx

However,the USSR was not an Dictatorship of the proletariat,or at least it ceased to be on,as Nikita At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) declared an end to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the establishment of the All People's Government.


Lenin on the DOTP: A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from democracy.

[ClearlyChrist]

Certainly More Than He Is Given As It Stands, But In My Eyes They Were Equals.

[ZeroNowhere]

He should definitely get more credit than he currently does from many Marxologists, who use him as pretty much just a convenient scapegoat when trying to defend Marx from his own positions. On the other hand, Marx's manuscripts of 1844 and the like generally do show a very developed conception of Marxism, and while Engels doubtless contributed to Marx's views, I think that ultimately it is probably Marx who was the main catalyst for the development of their ideas. Nonetheless, Engels did grasp them, and illuminate them, as well as applying them to different fields while Marx was busy with his work on political economy, which Engels ultimately translated (generally, attacks on his translation come from the aforementioned sort of Marxologists.) Should he get credit for originating their ideas and the basic framework of Marxism? Probably not as much as Marx. Should he get credit as a thinker and a Marxist, who applied this basic framework to various new fields? Definitely.

[Jose Gracchus]

However,the USSR was not an Dictatorship of the proletariat,or at least it ceased to be on,as Nikita At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) declared an end to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the establishment of the All People's Government.

Lenin on the DOTP: A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from democracy.

Too bad it was actually Uncle Joe who abolished the constitutional structures and institutions (though to be fair, the Bolsheviks had long evacuated them of proletarian content) of workers' rule, reinstating the voting rights of the "whole people", claimed the USSR was based on the "non-antagonistic classes" which were the only ones remaining (i.e., the USSR was therefore a state of the whole people), and replaced the soviet structure with a bunch of bourgeois parliaments and city councils that were labeled "soviets".

Your Marx and Lenin quotes are hopelessly divorced from context and substance, and cannot be used to establish the point you are making.

[human strike]

At the risk of derailing the thread, I will try to explain what I meant by granting Engels more of the blame.

In my humble opinion, it was not primarily Marx who invented 'Marxism', but Engels. Marxism, as we typically understand it, is probably most defined by Engels' Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. It is this pamphlet that really sets out the tradition that develops into 'Scientific Socialism'. I'm not going to claim that contradictions, determinism and 'scientificism' do not exist in Marx's work, they do, but Engels really goes to town with it. The tradition which Engels represents continues to provide the unspoken and unquestioned assumptions upon which a great deal of Marxist discussion is based - assumptions that I feel should in fact be both spoken and questioned. What Engels really represents is the forgetting of Marx's concept of fetishism that is so central to properly understanding Marx's ideas, that science is negative, not positive. Revolutionary struggle became a question of who knows best, of who has the correct understanding of the historical process, the correct line, correct and false consciousness. John Holloway explains this a lot better than I do: http://libcom.org/library/chapter-7-tradition-scientific-marxism

Basically, Engels made traditional Marxism the clusterfuck it is today (and really always has been).

[Kornilios Sunshine]

Engels was more like the philosopher guy while Marx intended to look into politics. No one should take more credit than the other they were both brilliant.

[Tim Finnegan]

Engels was more like the philosopher guy while Marx intended to look into politics. No one should take more credit than the other they were both brilliant.
That tends to depend on how you understand Marxist philosophy, though, doesn't it? Engels certainly contributed more to the philosophy of the Second International, but there's a strong case that Marx's work is better understood through the lens of his earlier philosophical work.

[citizen of industry]

Marx discovered the labor theory of value and therefore scientific socialism. He was able to get to the root of the production process and thus give us a correct analysis of economics and society. Engels is a better writer, has better prose. I think it would be a mistake to separate the two, if we are speaking of "Marxism," because Engels was vital both in supporting Marx financially and in editing and getting Marx's works published, especially after his (Marx's) death. Engels was a great writer and his works should be read and not overlooked. The Origins of Family Private Property and the State and The Conditions of the Working Class in England come to mind.But to give him more "credit" than Marx would be absurd. The two are inseperable ingrediants to the "whole."

[Tim Finnegan]

Marx discovered the labor theory of value...
Marx derived his theory of value from Ricardo. :confused:

[Solar Storm]

This controversial book was written by political theorist Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It's controversial because it stated that communism or socialism would over throw capitalism.

I'm not quite sure who wrote much of the stuff but i think Marxs is more famous that Engels : Because he fixed and edited Engels already done work.

But the best think to do is to say: Engels and Marxs You ROCK!!

[citizen of industry]

Marx derived his theory of value from Ricardo. :confused:

Haven't you read Grundrisse and Capital?:confused:

[Tim Finnegan]

Haven't you read Grundrisse and Capital?:confused:
I didn't say that he didn't develop the labour theory of value, I said that he didn't discover it. It goes back centuries before Marx.

[citizen of industry]

I didn't say that he didn't develop the labour theory of value, I said that he didn't discover it. It goes back centuries before Marx.

What, that labor creates value? You can trace it back to A.Smith, barely a century before. But the discovery of surplus value, surplus labor, tendency of the rate of profit to fall, overproduction, accumulation, crisis, etc. is all Marx.

[Rooster]

What, that labor creates value?

You can trace it back to Aristotle.

[Hit The North]

Engels was more like the philosopher guy while Marx intended to look into politics.

This is wrong. Engles' work is as diverse as Marx's own. While Marx was still going through his philosophical phase, Engels was conducting the first serious empirical study of the condition of the English working class (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/index.htm)(1845) and also wrote the Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm) (1843), that "brilliant essay" which so impressed and influenced Marx.

He also wrote one of the outstanding examples of historical materialist analysis in his The Peasant War in Germany (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/index.htm) (1850); as well as admired commentaries on military reform and military tactics.

Besides his writing, he was active in the International and took up arms in the 1848 revolutions.

After Marx's death, alongside his famous work on philosophy, he remained a political force and played a role in the development of German social democracy.

Here is Marx's own assessment of Engels input. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/04.htm)

Here is Lenin's. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1895/misc/engels-bio.htm)

[citizen of industry]

At the risk of derailing the thread, I will try to explain what I meant by granting Engels more of the blame.

In my humble opinion, it was not primarily Marx who invented 'Marxism', but Engels. Marxism, as we typically understand it, is probably most defined by Engels' Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. It is this pamphlet that really sets out the tradition that develops into 'Scientific Socialism'. I'm not going to claim that contradictions, determinism and 'scientificism' do not exist in Marx's work, they do, but Engels really goes to town with it. The tradition which Engels represents continues to provide the unspoken and unquestioned assumptions upon which a great deal of Marxist discussion is based - assumptions that I feel should in fact be both spoken and questioned. What Engels really represents is the forgetting of Marx's concept of fetishism that is so central to properly understanding Marx's ideas, that science is negative, not positive. Revolutionary struggle became a question of who knows best, of who has the correct understanding of the historical process, the correct line, correct and false consciousness. John Holloway explains this a lot better than I do: http://libcom.org/library/chapter-7-tradition-scientific-marxism

Basically, Engels made traditional Marxism the clusterfuck it is today (and really always has been).

Basically, I skimmed the article, and the foundation that Marxism is scientific, which is based on economics, is completely lacking in the article. It relates everything to philosophy and then takes quotes made by individual revolutionaries which were based on Marxian economics and pits them against each other to fit a conclusion pre-determined by the author. I just about fell asleep halfway through it, because nothing in it had anything to do with economics, theory, or practice, and was essentially the largest waste of time I've ever spent in my life.

[citizen of industry]

You can trace it back to Aristotle.

But Aristotle didn't get to the bottom of it as we know it today, did he? And how could he have, given the mode of production? If we are simply going for an exercise in time, why don't we trace it all the way back to the opposable thumb and primates? I swear I read some Marx or Engels somewhere on the uniqueness of the human hand.

[Tim Finnegan]

Nobody's saying that Marx didn't develop the theory signficantly, simply that his was not the first version of it. It's the same way that you can deny that Einstein discovered gravity while still acknowledging that he made crucial contributions to its understanding.

[citizen of industry]

The first version of what? That labor creates value? I'll go back to my opposable thumbs. I didn't say Marx created it, I said he discovered it, and elucitated it. Discovered the laws that regulate society, that neither philosophy nor classical economy were able to do, neither Aristotle, nor Smith, nor Ricardo. Again, surplus value. Find me that in classical economy.

[Tim Finnegan]

Now you're just being pedantic.

[Dave B]

After having read both extensively, and I think people can grant me that, I am firmly of the opinion the Fred was superior and ahead of Karl in every respect.

Young Fred was writing reasonable stuff on economics whilst Karl was still puzzling about the implications of the rights of people to collect firewood eg the following from 1843.

The concept in it of capital being stored labour or as it became ‘dead labour’ was a fundamental part of das capital 30 years later.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm

That article actually caught Karl’s attention and he responded to it positively.

Fred wrote something much better a year later I think .

He continued to make a contribution to Das capital which is falsely credited almost totally to Karl.

It is on the record in the archive in a letter, that Fred worked out the problems that they had over merchant capital, which is one of the more complicated areas I think.

Karl also had screwed up by leaving out fixed capital in the calculation of the rate of profit and Fred had to fix the problem in the excellent chapter that he wrote in Volume III.

Doubly excellent in its ambitious attempt to avoid making Karl look like a dolt for scoffing a Malthus in volume one, the origin of the mistake.

There was a division of labour between the two and Fred had to work, after a fashion, to support Karl in his essential activity of data mining in the British Library to back up theory etc.

This idea that Fred was more of a statist than Karl is a myth, it was Fred that came out with the more categorical statements against the idea of the state. Which were ironically used by by Stalin and Lenin eg;


The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm


Fred was too modest; however their relationship was described in that respect accurately by Fred himself;


As a consequence of the division of labour that existed between Marx and myself, it fell to me to present our opinions in the periodical press, that is to say, particularly in the fight against opposing views, in order that Marx should have time for the elaboration of his great basic work. Thus it became my task to present our views, for the most part in a polemical form, in opposition to other kinds of views.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/preface.htm


It was Benjamin Franklin of all people who really put the labour theory of value on the 19th century map


Thus;

Karl Marx: Critique of Political Economy A. Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities





It is a man of the New World – where bourgeois relations of production imported together with their representatives sprouted rapidly in a soil in which the superabundance of humus made up for the lack of historical tradition – who for the first time deliberately and clearly (so clearly as to be almost trite) reduces exchange-value to labour-time. This man was Benjamin Franklin, who formulated the basic law of modern political economy in an early work, which was written in 1729 and published in 1731. [7] He declares it necessary to seek another measure of value than the precious metals, and that this measure is labour.


"By labour may the value of silver be measured as well as other things. As, suppose one man is employed to raise corn, while another is digging and refining silver; at the year’s end, or at any other period of time, the complete produce of corn, and that of silver, are the natural price of each other; and if one be twenty bushels, and the other twenty ounces, then an ounce of that silver is worth the labour of raising a bushel of that corn. Now if by the discovery of some nearer, more easy or plentiful mines, a man may get forty ounces of silver as easily as formerly he did twenty, and the same labour is still required to raise twenty bushels of corn, then two ounces of silver will be worth no more than the same labour of raising one bushel of corn, and that bushel of corn will be as cheap at two ounces, as it was before at one, caeteris paribus [other things being equal]. Thus the riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labour its inhabitants are able to purchase" (op. cit., p. 265).


From the outset Franklin regards labour-time from a restricted economic standpoint as the measure of value. The transformation of actual products into exchange-values is taken for granted, and it is therefore only a question of discovering a measure of their value.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01a.htm

Although the idea pre-dated that, with William Petty and another English anonymous article even before that again cited in das capital.

[robbo203]

What, that labor creates value? You can trace it back to A.Smith, barely a century before. But the discovery of surplus value, surplus labor, tendency of the rate of profit to fall, overproduction, accumulation, crisis, etc. is all Marx.


Smith's labour theory of value is somewhat different from Marx's and Ricardo's as I understand it. The latter talked of labour in terms of embodied labour time - the amount of labour embodied in the commodity - whereas, for Smith, the value of labour represented the "toil and trouble" to the labourer. It was a kind of subjective labour theory of value emphasising the "disutility" of labour as the marginalist economists would later put it