Frederick Engels · A Short Biography ·- . \ ,· r ,\, .: • ;~ Yevgenia Stepanova A Short Biography I 1 1 Etchings by SERGEI YAKUTOVICH Contents Translated from the Russian Edited by VIC SCHNEIERSON E. CTenanoBa I. Childhood and Adolescence 6 <PPH)lPHX 3HfEJTbC 6Y!OfPA<DH4ECKHH 04EPK II. Beginning of Engels's Political Activity 14 III. Adoption of Materialism and Communism 31 IV. The Partnership with Marx. The Beginning of the Struggle for a Proletarian Party 45 V. Engels in the Revolution of 1848-49 80 VI. Summing up the Lessons of the Revolutions 120 VII. The Period of Reaction and the New Rise of the Democratic and Proletarian Movements 137 VIII. The Period of the First Interna tional and the Paris Commune 163 IX. The Last Few Years with Marx 209 X. Adviser and Leader of Euro- pe's Socialists 242 © J;:f3naTeJlbCTBO l10JUITH'IeCKOH JliHeparypbl, 1985 _ English translation and illustrations !f) Progress Publishers 1988 Name Index 298 C 0 I 03010000-683 6e3 o6MIBJL 0 14(01)-88 rsBN 5-0l-000444-5 Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics I. Childhood and juveniles lowering the wages of men workers. 7 And, as was the case everywhere, the rise of cap and adolescence Childhood and italism in the Rhineland was accompanied by the Adolescence ruin of the peasantry, handicraftsmen and urban petty bourgeoisie. The poverty and degradation which Engels wit nessed in childhood in his native Wuppertal* made Frederick Engels was born on November 28, an indelible impression. In his first journalistic I 820, into the family of a Barmen textile manufac work, Letters from Wuppertal (1839), the eighteen turer. year-old Engels vividly described the plight of The Rhine Province of Prussia, in which Barmen handicraftsmen, artisans and especially of factory is situated, was then the most developed industrial workers in Barmen and Elberfeld. The chief reason region of Germany. In contrast to the remainder of for their poverty and suffering, Engels wrote, was Germany where handicrafts and hand labour still the "reckless way" in which the factories were op prevailed, the Rhineland had the first factories and erated. machines. It was here that large-scale capitalist in The effects of large-scale capitalist industry were dustry, to which England had given birth, began its felt also by the handicraftsmen and artisans. In triumphant march across Germany. order to compete with the factories, the weavers This is explained by the fact that the Rhineland working at home sweated day and night and de was richly endowed with natu.ral wealth-coal nied themselves prime necessities. and iron ore; moreover, the bourgeois revolution Wuppertal, the "German Manchester", a big in France at the end of the eighteenth century had textile centre, was also a stronghold of pietism had more of an impact here than in the other parts the most intolerant and philistine form of Protes of Germany: on the left bank of the Rhine, a region tantism. Engels in an early letter wrote of it as that was part of France in 1795-1815, feudal rela "Muckertal" (valley of bigoCs). The Bible and tions and serfdom had been abolished and a more schnapps-these were the things with which the progressive bourgeois legislation (Code Napoleon) pious Wuppertal factory owners sought to "bright instituted. Capitalist industry led to the appearance en" the lives of the workers and artisans, to divert of an industrial proletariat, and the antagonism be them from struggle and secure their submission to tween the working class and bourgeoisie a con the existing order. comitant of capitalist society-became more pro "Public opinion" in the town was moulded by nounced. smooth-tongued preachers. Gatherings of believers * Wuppertal-valley The factory system brought with it much suffer were turned into trials of what they called here of the Wupper River, where the towns of ing and intensified exploitation for the workers. tics-the heretics being those who absented them Barmen and Elberfeld. Machinery enabled manufacturers to employ fe selves from religious gatherings, who read novels three hours' journey from each other, were male and child labour on an unprecedented scale, or attended concerts. School education was con merged and in 1830 formally renamed the with the competition of the miserably paid women ducted in the same spirit. city of Wuppertal. Such was the social environment in which the Engels planned to enter unive.rsity, but in Sep 8 impressionable and observant boy grew up. tember 1837, on the insistence ofhis father, left the Childhood and Nor was his home life much better. Engels's fa gymnasium before finishing the last class. His fa Adolescence ther held conservative views, was deeply religious, ther, who had decided that his eldest son should be and a despot. The entire family including the a merchant, wanted him to learn commerce. For mother, an intelligent and affectionate woman, a year he worked in his father's office, after which trembled before him. Besides Frederick, the couple he was sent to a big trading firm in Bremen. had three sons and four daughters. Frederick's The young Engels, however, could not confine brothers followed their father into the textile busi himself to office work. The prospect of becoming ness, and his sisters married men of a similar a merchant did not appeal to him in the least. He milieu. Frederick was the only one to choose "so devoted his free time chiefly to reading, displaying entirely different a path", as Eleanor, Karl Marx's an amazing capacity for work and an ability to youngest daughter, wrote later. "Frederick must make full use of his time. have been considered by his family as the 'ugly In Bremen, an important seaport, Engels read duckling':·* Eager and self-willed, Frederick early English, Dutch, French and other foreign newspa displayed his keen, penetrating intellect and inde pers. Books which were then outlawed in Germany pendent character. The fifteen-year-old boy's up-. fell into his hands, and he sent them on to his bringing alarmed the father so much that in a letter friends in Barmen. The books and newspapers to his wife we find the following: enabled him to fill the gaps in his education and "As you know, he has become more polite, out broadened his outlook. Reading foreign literature wardly, but in spite of the severe chastisements he also helped him master a number of languages. In received earlier, not even the fear of punishment a letter to his sister Marie, he wrote that he could seems to teach him unconditional obedience. Thus read in 25 languages. Sometimes he wrote "pol today I was again distressed to find in his desk yglot" letters to his friends, in which German a greasy book which he had borrowed from the alternated with Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, lending library, a story about knights in the 13th Portuguese, French, English, Dutch and other century .... May God watch over his disposition, languages. I am often fearful for this otherwise excellent Knowledge of foreign languages enabled Engels boy."** to read extensively, and he gradually became a Endowed with rare ability, Frederick displayed brilliant judge of literature. a keen interest in history, literature, art, music and In Bremen he showed a flair for poetry. He • Reminiscences Foo·f languages. He wrote schoolboyish verses and drew dreamed of following in the footsteps of Ferdinand Marx and Engels, reign Languages Publi quite appealing cartoons. Gay and happy by na Freiligrath, a Barmen office-worker who had al shing House, Moscow. ture, Engels was endowed with good health, and an ready earned esteem as a poet. 1956, p. 183. ** Marx, Engels, athletic constitution. He loved riding and fencing, After the dull atmosphere in Wuppertal, Engels Collecled Works. VoL 2. Progress Publi and was an excellent swimmer. His liking for sports eagerly visited theatres and coneert halls; he was shers, Moscow, 1975, and physical exercise was lifelong. fond of singing and music, especially Beethoven's p. 582. symphonies. The Sinfonia Eroica and Fifth Sym under the influence of David Strauss's The Life of 13 phony were his favourites. As hitherto, he also Jesus, which appeared in 18 35-36 and which dem Childhood and found time for swimming, fencing and riding. onstrated that the gospels contained legend and Adolescence In Bremen, as in Wuppertal, the young man myth handed down by the early Christian com turned his attention to the life of the workers, deep munities. In a letter to Wilhelm Graeber, dated Oc ly sympathised with the needs of the working peo tober 8, 1839, Engels told him that he had become ple who had nothing, but who were "the best any an "enthusiastic Straussian", that thanks to king can have in his realm".* Strauss faith turned out to be "as full of holes as a sponge".*** Engels's keen interest in the life of the people and his inborn humanism sharpened his critical at Engels began to give more thought to social and titude towards the world into which he had been political matters. The situation in Germany and in born, towards the views and prejudices of the busi the neighbouring countries at that time, shortly be ness and clerical community in which he had been fore the revolutions of the mid-century, supplied brought up. ample food for thought and did much to mould the His father, worried about his son's spiritual de views of the young Engels. velopment, arranged for him to stay with a Bremen pastor. But it was while under the pastor's roof that Frederick was assailed by grave doubts and forever abandoned the faith of his fathers. His deep inner struggle was vividly reflected in letters to his classmates, the Graeber brothers, Wil helm and Friedrich. Having reached the conclusion that the Bible contained insoluble contradictions and that it was impossible to reconcile science and religion, Engels resolutely renounced the traditions and outlook of his family and friends. "I know," he wrote to Friedrich Graeber on June 15, 1839, "that I am going to get into the greatest unpleasantnesses through this, but what forces itself on me so convincingly, I cannot drive away, no matter how much I might like to .... When it is a matter of defending the freedom of reason, then I protest against all compulsion."** Tremendous will-power and unswerving com mitment to principle stood out in the letters of the * Marx, Engels, Collected Works, young Engels to his friends. Vol. 2, p. ll6. ** Ibid., p. 456. Engels's final break with religion came about ''** Ibid., p. 471. II. Beginning of Engels's signs of political disaffection. It seemed that a gra veyard peace again settled over Gennany. But only Political Activity in appearance. The police was no longer able to stem the flood-tide of discontent. The second half of the 1830s and the early 1840s saw an invigora tion of public life and the birth of various opposi Engels's youth and the evolution of his polit tion trends among the bourgeoisie and intelligen ical views coincided with a period of acute class tsia. This opposition, strongest in the Rhine Pro struggle in a number of West-European countries. vince, was directed against the autocratic Prussian The July revolution of 1830 in France was a monarchy, the feudal lords, and the police. The turning point. Although its immediate result was opposition, not yet strong enough to organise polit the replacement of a semi-feudal monarchy by ical parties, formed circles which criticised society a monarchy supported by the big financiers and and its rulers in literary and philosophical works. stock-exchange speculators, its thunder reverberat The Left wing of the Hegelian school-the ed throughout Europe. It was followed by upris Young (or Left) Hegelians belonged to this op ings in Belgium, Poland, Italy and Spain. In position. France, the bourgeois revolution of 1830 in which The great service of Hegel, that prominent figure the working class played a decisive role on the bar in Gennany's classical philosophy, was that he re ricades, was followed by the first independent class garded all phenomena in the world dialectically, in battles of the proletariat (the uprisings of the the context of their rise, development and extinc Lyons weavers in 1831 and 1834). In England, too, tion. The dialectical method was progressive as the class struggle gained in intensity. The Parlia compared with the metaphysical method which mentary Refonn of 1832 paved the way to power conceived the world as immovable, immutable, for the industrial bourgeoisie, a development and eternal. By his dialectical method, Hegel which accentuated the antagonisms between the sought to pinpoint the inner laws of development latter and the proletariat. The workers, who had in nature and in human society, and to show the taken an active part in the fight for the parliamen struggle of opposites which ·underlies all develop tary reform and who had backed the political de ment. mands of the bourgeoisie, saw their betrayal and However, for all his encyclopaedic knowledge responded to it with an independent working-class and progressive method, Hegel failed to carry out movement, Chartism. his self-imposed task. His philosophical system had The news of the July revolution in France gave a vital defect: he was an idealist, and his dialectics rise to popular discontent in some parts of the eco was likewise idealistic. He believed that develop nomically backward, and politically dismembered ment in nature and society was governed by an Gennany. But the Gennan governments quickly "absolute idea", which had existed somewhere recovered from their momentary panic and set even before the world took shape. Hegel's "abso about with redoubled ferocity to crush the slightest lute idea", which he portrayed as the creator of na-