| Friedrich Engels is a neglected political thinker who contributed in a significant way to the evolution of Marxism. While many scholars view him simply as an appendage to Marx, he developed many important theoretical notions of his own. His early intellectual evolution represents a turbulent struggle with Pietism which began a process of emotional and theoretical searching and ultimately led to a political resolution of his inner doubts. His journey to communism and eventual collaboration with Karl Marx carried him through various intellectual currents, particularly Young Germany and Young Hegelianism. The development of his early thought prior to his active partnership with Marx comprises a major portion of this study. By analyzing the origins of his own independent evolution, one can establish the continuity of his thought, particularly in terms of his notions of nature, labor and revolution which carried through to his mature ideas. In this way, the existing gap in the scholarly literature which stresses the "late" Engels can be filled and a new approach for a comparison of Marx and Engels can be established on the basis of Engels' early assumptions.;Marx and Engels are compared through an investigation of four areas of concern: the notions of human nature, theory of history, dialectics and science. While Marx and Engels achieve their greatest affinity for one another as thinkers in the area of "the materialist conception of history," their different modes of argumentation and conceptualization in this area carried divisive implications. In addition, more obvious differences of thought in other critical areas developed, allowing a separate Engelsian position to grow. After Marx's death a process of Engelsian revision--which began during Marx's lifetime--came to a climax and changed the meaning of Marxism to include dialectics of nature, a metaphysic which endowed matter with an independence unknown to Marx.;The study concludes by stressing the continuity of Engels' own thought and arguing that his early development and independent evolution colored his mature thought as well as his later "interpretations" of Marx's ideas. This perspective provides a measure of analytic coherence to Engels' thought, which previously has been analyzed primarily in terms of Marx. The conclusion also provides an overview of the various "prisms" through which Engels' legacy has passed, including both twentieth century orthodox Marxists and Neo-Marxist revisionists.;This study argues that Engels is not simply a "determinist" or "mechanistic materialist" as many scholars claim, but rather an "interpreter" who transformed many of Marx's ideas in a unique way, based on Engels' own early assumptions. Engels sought to pose questions and answers to the new and changing historical circumstances as well as the scientific discoveries of his time. His theoretical formulations at the end of the nineteenth century tended to multiply the ambiguities of Marxism rather than to achieve the intended goal of greater clarity. Engels therefore created a number of new revisions as a result of his historical significance as the one who expounded and expanded the doctrine under growing political pressures. |
