Political Studies (1983), XXXI, 284-294

Marx, Engels and ‘Anti-Duhring’

GORDON
WELTY
Wright State University, Ohio

There is no reason to suppose that Marxist scholarship should deviate from the
canons of philology. Those canons require initially the scientificestablishment of
a text. There must be a stemma of manuscripts and editions whereby variant texts
can be identified, as well as a list of conjectured readings for corrupted passages,
etc. Next, these canons require attribution of the textual passages to single
authors, to joint authors, or to some other hand. Where the composition period
was brief, the temporal order of the several passages can be indicated; where
composition or publication was more protracted, the passages can be dated as
well. A third step (whichcan be omitted for certain purposes) is the interpretation
of the established, attributed, and dated text in terms of themes, motives,
intended audiences, etc. Finally, the philological approach includes an overall
evaluation, with suggestions for further study.

I
An interesting and important topic of Marxist scholarship is the theoretical
accord or divergence of Marx’s and Engels’ thought. It has frequently been
asserted that they diverged substantially in their theoretical writings; as Shlomo
Avineri has expressed it ‘Marx’sviews cannot be squared with Engels’ theories as
described in Anti-Diihring . . .’ But these assertions have not gone unchallenged;
Stefan Angutlov among others has argued for the unity of Marx and Engels’
theoretical contributions. ‘Marx, far from being against Engels’ published
philosophical essays, entirely shared Engels’ conceptions; Marx revised Engels’
manuscript Anti-Diihring . . .’ etc.’
Since Anti-Diihring was intended to summarize and popularize the doctrines
of historical materialism, dialectics, and Marxian political economics, it has
become the focal point for much of this debate. If Marx and Engels agreed upon a
‘division of labour’ as Anguelov suggests, whereby Marx was to concentrate on
political economy while Engels concentrated on philosophical topics, then Anti-
Diihring transcended that division by incorporating sections on political
economy as well as natural philosophy.’ Thus the rather neat distinctions that

’ S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge,Cambridge University
Press, 1968). p. 69; Anguelov, ‘Reflection and Practice’ Philosophical Currents, 5 (1973). p. 76.
Anguklov follows Lenin here; see V. I. Lenin Collected Works (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1964),
Vol. 21, p. 84.
’ On this ‘divisionof labour’,see Marx’s testimonyin Herr Vogr, K. Marx and F. Engels, Collecfed
Works (New York, International Publishers, 1975 n),Vol. 17, p. 114; and Engels in K. Marx and
F. Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962). Vol. 1, p. 549.

0032-3217/83/02/028411/%03.00 0 1983 Polirical Studies

 Research Notes 285

can be drawn by attributing the authorship, say, of Capital I to Marx and

Dialectics of Nature to Engels are obscured in the case of Anti-Diihring.
Engels acknowledged in the ‘Preface’ to the second, 1886 edition of
Anti-Diihring that ‘the outlook expounded in this book was founded and
developed in far greater measure by Marx, and only in an insignificant degree by
myself and that ‘I read the whole manuscript to [Marx] before it was ~ r i n t e d ’ . ~
Terrell Carver comments on this passage that ‘there is nothing in the
Marx-Engels correspondence, in their works, or anywhere else to support this’.4
Thus Carver’s argument against the theoretical accord of Marx’s and Engels’
thought turns upon Engels’ veracity.
In cases such as the ‘Marx-Darwin correspondence’, veracity is indeed
impugned. But, in such a case, (a) credibility is questioned in terms of evidence
independent of the text in question, and (b) the ‘authority’ in question must be of
less than credible character anyhow; recall the ‘disreputable dog’, Edward
Aveling, implicated in the ‘Marx-Darwin corre~pondence’.~ Apart from these
two conditions, an argument such as Carver’s is quite problematic, involving as it
does the disordering of the canons of scholarship. Attribution of authorship
thereby turns illicitly upon the interpretation of the ‘author’s’ motives.
Before returning to Carver’s main argument, consider for an instance his
characterization of Engels’ motives. Carver avers that in Engel’s Dialectics of
Nature, ‘his views on the “general nature of dialectics” were formulated explicitly,
which was not the case in the$rst edition of Anti-Diihring’. He continues ‘Engels,
it seems, was canny enough to avoid creating disagreements with Marx’.6 After
Carver has thus impugned Engels’ intellectual honesty, one turns to the text of
Anti-Diihring and is perhaps surprised to find Engels stating that ‘dialectics,
however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and
development of nature, human society, and thought’.’ And that passage was
unchanged by Engels through the three editions of the book.8
Returning then to Carver’s main contention, he reiterates that ‘Marx said
nothing [in “the surviving Marx-Engels correspondence”] to confirm Engels’
claim that he was familiar with the lengthy text of Anti-Diihring’.’ In contrast to
much of the argument for the theoretical divergence of Marx and Engels, turning
as it does on subtle issues of emphasis and tone, Carver’s bold textual claim has
the merit that it can be addressed rather directly. Moreover, the focus on
Anti-Diihring has benefit of the scientificallyestablished text in the Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). There are several possibilities here. Marx may have
been familiar with a draft of Anti-Duhring as a result of his or Engels’ reading of

F. Engels, Anti-Diihring (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), p. 14.

T. Carver, ‘Marx, Engels and Dialectics’, Polirical Studies, 28 (1980). 357.
See Lewis S. Feuer, ‘Is the Darwin-Marx Correspondence Authentic?’, Annals of Science, 32
(1979, I 1-12. See also R. Colp Jr., ‘TheContacts of Charles Darwin with Edward Aveling and Karl
Marx’, Annals of Science, 33 (1976). 387-94; also M . A. Fay, ‘Did Marx Offer to Dedicate Capiral to
Darwin?’, Journal of the History of Ideas. 39 (1978). 13346 and M . A. Fay, ‘Marx and Darwin’,
Monthly Review, 31 (1980). 4 M 7 .
‘ Carver, ‘Marx, Engels and Dialectics’, p. 361.
’ Engels, Anti-Diihring, p. 194.
K. Marx and F. Engels, Gesamtausgabe (Moscow, Man-Engels-Lenin Institute, 1935),
I. Abteilung: Anti-DiihringlDialektic der Narur (Sonderausgabe herausgegeben von V. Adoratskii).
S. 144. This is the document Carver cites in his note 12.
Carver, ‘Marx, Engels and Dialectics’, p. 360.
286 Research Notes
it; or, he may have discussed the substance of Anti-Diihring with Engels (without
necessarily having been familiar with a draft). In light of the review of Duhring’s
Critical History of National Economy which Marx contributed to
Anti-Diihring, the second possibility cannot seriously be questioned.l o The
question thus is Marx’s familiarity with draft materials of Anti-Diihring.
Marx makes an interestingreference in a letter to Wilhelm Freund which bears
upon this issue. Carver observes that ‘Anti-Diihringappeared during 1877-8 in
’
installmentsin Vorwurts, which Marx could easily have read’.’ Of course this is
quite beside the point, as many people did read the serialized Anti-Diihring; the
issue is whether and what Marx knew of the contentsprior to serialization. On 21
January 1877, Marx asked Freund to remind Dr Moritz Traube to send along
citations of Traube’s writings, because Engels is ‘laboring on a work of natural
philosophy and, as it happens, Traube’s achievements are emphasized’.’* Thus
Marx hadsome familiarityat that date with the content of Anti-Diihring. But the
chapter of Anti-Diihring which addressed the ’Traubesche Kunstzellen’ was
published in Vorwurts, Number 24, only on 25 February 1877.13
Why should Marx have asked for Traube’s citations and have known a month
before publication that Traube’s discoveries would be addressed in the serialized
Anti-Diihring, unless Marx was familiar with this material in draft. And, on
Carver’s own argument, this would not have been the most likely topic of
Anti-Diihring with which Marx would have been familiar; it was a less likely
topic, for instance, than those from the social sciences.14If it seems at all likely
that Marx was familiar with draft material of Anti-Diihring on topics of organic
chemistry, it is much more likely that he had read (or listened while Engels read
from) other draft materials as well. Be that as it may, it seems that Marx’s
correspondence, contrary to Carver’s assertions, does tend to confirm the
veracity of Engels’ claim that Marx had knowledge of some if not all of the draft
materials of Anti-Diihring.
At this juncture, attention can properly focus on motives. On the one hand,
Marx did not publicize either his familiarity with, or his contributions to
Anti-Diihring. At the personal level, this can be imputed to Marx’s modesty and
sense of propriety. At the political level, this can be imputed to Marx’s and
Engels’ perception of the issue of Marx’s ‘authority’ in the Continental working-
class movement in the 1870s.’’ On the other hand, after Marx’s death, Engels did
acknowledge his lifelong collaborator’s familiarity with, and contributions to
Anti-Diihring in the 1886 ‘Preface’. In correspondence with Franz Mehring,
Engels explains his relationship to Marx and incidentally sheds light on his
acknowledgements of 1886. ‘When one had the good fortune to work for forty
years with a man like Marx, one usually does not during his lifetime get the

I ” Engels. Anti-Diihring, p. 312ff also Gesamtausgabe, I Abteilung, S . 341-71; cf. Engels,

Anti-Daring, pp. 14, 22.
I I Carver, ‘Marx, Engels and Dialectics’, p. 360.
“ S e e Marx’s letter to Wm. Freund, 21 January 1877; K. Marx and F. Engels, Werke (Berlin,
Dietz Verlag, 1956ft-), Bd. 34, S.245-6.
’
I Marx-Engels, Gesamtausgabe I. Abteilung: Anti-Diihring, S. 85.
l 4 Carver, ‘Marx, Engels and Dialectics’, p. 361.
I s See Engels’ letter to E. Bernstein, 25 October 1881; K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected
Correspondence (Moscow, ProgressPublishers, 1975), p. 324. See also the symptomaticdiscussion of
Wilhelm Liebknecht during the 1850s and 1860s in Herr Vogr, Marx and Engels, Collected Works,
Vol. 17, p. 113.
 Research Notes 287

recognition one thinks one deserves. Then, when the greater man dies, the lesser
easily gets overrated and this seems to me to be just my case at present.’16 Thus
the ‘Preface’ of 1886 can be imputed to Engels’ own well-known modesty and
sense of propriety.

I1
The resolution of these issues permits the consideration of another point that also
involves the rather careful reading of the text of Anti-Diihring. Engels defines the
subject matter of political economy at the beginning of Part I1 as ‘the science of
the laws governing the production and exchange of the material means of
’
subsistence in human society’.’ Turning from subject matter t o the method of
political economy, he continues ‘it must first investigate the special laws of each
individual stage in the evolution of production and exchange, and only when it
has completed this investigation will it be able to establish the few quite general
laws which hold good for production and exchange in general’. Engels concludes
with the proviso that ‘the laws which are valid for definite modes of production
and forms of exchange hold good for all historical periods in which these modes
of production and forms of exchange prevail’.’’ This is surely a concise and
intriguing formulation of the subject matter and method of political economy.
On the one hand, it suggests that the object of Marx’s and Engels’ political
economic studies was not limited to bourgeois society. ’
On the other hand, it has been proposed that Engels’ characterization of
political economy differs substantially from Marx’s own. Lucio Colletti, for
instance, holds that the views of Engels and that of Marx represent ‘two
profoundly different ways of seeing things’.’’ Indicting Engels among others for
a ‘total lack of understanding of the relationship between the logical process and
the process of reality’, Colletti charges that the logical categories of Capital I,
namely commodities, money, capital, etc., have been applied historically (and
thereby illicitly) to a ‘succession of the various forms of society’.’’
Were these charges true, of course, they would evidence a serious mis-
specification on Engels’ part. When we turn t o Engels’ text, however, we find
quite another set of categories than those of Capital I applied to the historical
cases.22 For instance: communal property in land corresponds to fairly equal
distribution of the labour product, while the dissolution of community
corresponds t o considerable inequality of distribution. (Indeed Marx had
addressed with great brevity this inverse relationship of communal property and
impoverishment, in his notebooks dating from the late 1 8 5 0 ~ ) Consider
.~~ an

Ib See Engels’ letter to F. Mehring, 14 July 1893; Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence,
p. 433.
I’ Engels, Anti-Diihring, p. 203.
I8 Engels, Anti-Diihring, p. 204.
cf. also G . Welty, ‘The Materialist Science of Culture and the Critique of Ideology’, Quarterly
Journal of Ideology, 5 ( 198 I).
l o L. Colletti, Marxism and Hegel (London, NLB, 1973). p. 132.
‘ I Colletti, Marxism and Hegel, p. 13Off.
” Engels, Anti-Diihring, pp. 2 0 4 5 .
” K. Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York, International Publishers, 1965),
p. 83.
288 Research Notes

historical example. As the Israelite patriarchal communal form was dissolving

during the ninth and eighth centuries, the prophets reacted strongly to the ever
increasing inequality among the populace. In Ephraim, Amos condemned the
extreme inequality manifested in debt-slavery(Amos 2: 6) and foretold alienation
of the land, i.e. the complete dissolution of communal or redemptive property in
land (Amos 7: 17); in Judah, Micah likewise condemned debt-slavery
(Micah 2: 2) and also anticipated alienation of the land (Micah 2: 4). For another
instance: agriculture on a large scale corresponds to a class-antagonistic social
structure, while agriculture on a small scale corresponds to the absence of such
class antagonisms. (Later, Kautsky and Lenin were to address the relationship of
the scale of agricultural production and class antagonism; both Arthur
Stinchcombe and Jeffrey Paige have recently made extensive studies of this
relation~hip.)~~ As Engels continues, it becomes evident that the categories he
utilizes in his general political economy not only are not simply those of
‘commodities, money, capital’, Engels’ are instead more general categories of
forms of property, forms of appropriation of the labour product, forms of social
antagonism, etc.
These categories may subsume those categories of Capital I; for example,
‘capital’ is subsumed under the more general ‘property’ or the category ‘social
antagonism’. (Similarly, Marx’s categories of Capital I subsume those of Capital
IZI; for example, ‘finance capital’, ‘industrial capital’, and ‘landed capital’ are
subsumed under the more general category ‘capital’.) But Engels cannot be
convicted on this evidence of having confounded these several sets of categories.
These more general categories give rise to ‘laws’ of their own which may be
nomothetically less satisfying than the laws of Capital (say that treating the
tendency of the rate of profit to decline). But Engels admits as much: ‘political
economy in this wider sense has still to be brought into being. Such economic
science as we possess up to the present is limited almost exclusively to the genesis
and development of the capitalist mode of prod~ction.’~’
Thus Engels’ categories in Anti-Duhring are not vulgar misappropriations of
those of Capital I; even so, the question remains whether Engels’ and Marx’s
understandings of the subject matter and method of political economy accord.
This issue can be addressed rather directly, as Marx too has prepared a draft
discussion of the topic. In the ‘Introduction’ to the Critique ofPolitical Economy,
Marx has three major sections.26The first section addresses ‘Production’and the
second, the Interrelationship of Production, Distribution, Exchange, and
Consumption. These sections indicate the subject matter of political economy.
The third section addresses ‘The Method of Political Economy’. These three
sections comprise a whole; the understanding of any single section depends upon
the comprehension of the whole.
Marx’s argument in the first section establishes that material production is

’‘ K. Kautsky, La Question Agraire (Paris, Maspero, 1970); V. 1. Lenin, The Deselopment of

Capitalism in Russia (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1964), esp. ch. 11; also A. Rochester, Lenin on the
Agrarian Question (New York, International Publishers, 1942), esp. chs. I and 111;
A. L. Stinchcombe, ‘Agricultural Enterprise and Rural Class Relations’, American Journal of
Sociology. 67 (1961); J. M. Paige, Agrarian Revolution (New York, Free Press, 1975). ch 2.
’’ Engels, Anti-Diihring, pp. 207-8.
26 K. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow, Progress Publishers,
1970). app., pp. 188-214.
 Research Notes 289

socially determined production by individuals; this implicates production at a

definite stage of social development. Marx explicitly considers and rejects
defining this stage in an historical account or by taking the stage in isolation.
Both these analyses are based on the unreflective standpoint of the individual.
Instead, he points out that each stage includes the moment common to several
stages of production in general as well as the moment of specific differences of
production between stages. By way of illustration, the stage of finance capitalism
is understood to incorporate the moment of capitalist relations (i.e. the capitalist
appropriation of surplus value) common to any bourgeois society, with the
moment of imperialist relations (that is the metropolitan appropriation of super-
profits) specific to this stage. This likewise suggests that Marx’s political
economic study was not to be restricted to bourgeois society. Further, each stage
includes the moment ofparticularproductivesectors as well as that of the totality
of production, the conjuncture of the set of particular sectors. Finally, these
moments organically presuppose ‘a definite social corpus’ or social ~ u b j e c t . ~ ’
Marx’s argument thus moves from the abstract, the general moment, through the
ever more specific moments, to the concrete, the social corpus. It moreover moves
from the inchoate terms of individualism or an ahistorical analysis to the
articulated terms of the dialectic. (The logical form of this argument is explicated
in the third section of Marx’s ‘Introduction’.) In sum, it is thus the social corpus
that is the object of analysis rather than the process or mode of production which
is a characteristic (albeit a crucial characteristic) of the social form.

Marx’s argument in the second section of the ‘Introduction’ establishes the

interrelationship of production (in the ‘narrower sense’), consumption, distribu-
tion, circulation and material exchange. Analysed superficially, Marx says, these
are related as a syllogism: production is the general term, consumption is the
individual term, distribution is the proportional middle term, and material
exchange is the particular middle term. This superficial analysis restricts itself to
the distribution of the product.28
More profoundly analysed, production is the presupposition of the moments
of consumption and distribution of the products. Production, consumption, and
distribution of the means of production are related as content and form (or
production, in the ‘wider sense’).29 Finally, circulation is but a moment of
material exchange; both are determined by the moments of distribution and
c o n s ~ m p t i o nHence,
. ~ ~ all these moments are related organically, comprising a
concrete unity (again the ‘social corpus’), with the mode of production
determining the processes or modes of consumption, distribution, etc. Notice
how the argument moves even more strikingly from the abstract formulation to
the concrete. and from the inchoate t o the dialectical.

” Marx, ‘Introduction’, pp. 188-91.

’* Marx, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1 9 3 4 cf. also G . Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being, Pt. I, iv
(London, Merlin Press, 1978). pp. 59-60.
2 y This distinction anticipates that of Departments I and I1 in Capital 11. Cf. also Lukacs. The
Ontology of Social Being, pp. 60-7.
’’ Marx, ‘Introduction’,pp. 195-204.
290 Research Notes

Engels too had discussed the interrelationships of production, distribution,

and exchange in Part I1 of Anti-Duhring. Amplifying upon his definition of the
subject matter of political economy, that is ‘the science of the laws governing
production and exchange’, he argues that exchange (to the extent it has emerged
in a particular society) presupposes produ~tion.~’ This of course accords with
Marx’s characterization, especially where he holds that ‘the intensity of
exchange, its extent and nature, are determined by the development and structure
of prod~ction’.~’ It likewise accords with Marx and Engels’ earlier formulation
in the German Ideology where they had argued that a mode of production is
always combined with a mode of co-operation or co-ordination, a ‘materialist
connection of humans with one another’.33Moreover, Engels argues that modes
of production and exchange determine the mode of distribution of the product,
while the mode of distribution (in the wider sense) determines the modes of
production and exchange. All this accords with Marx’s analysis. Only the
category of consumption is omitted from Engels’ discussion here, perhaps
because that category implicates that of the Person.34

IV
Two points follow from this accord of Marx’s and Engels’ understanding of the
subject matter of political economy. These points can be illustrated in the
writings of Jurgen Habermas at the one extreme and John Weeks at the other.
The present context permits little more than mention of these points.
Habermas, as is well known, has faulted ‘historical materialism’ for its
‘instrumentalist’ (or ‘technologistic’)bias, its oversight of the symbolic moment
of communicative action. He identifies in this regard particularly Engels, Georgi
Plekhanov, and Josef Stalin.35 On the one hand, the specifics of Marx and
Engels’ understanding of the subject matter of political economy give Habermas’
critique the appearance of being a mis-specification. ‘Exchange’is indeed ‘social
intercourse’(Verkehr) which encom asses both moments of ‘material’ exchange
and ‘ideal’ forms of intera~tion.~ 2 On the other hand, Habermas’ account
differentiating human social intercourse from communication is warranted only
by Habermas’ history of the species. He differentiates anthropoids from
hominids, not in terms of hominid symbolic behaviour but in terms of hominid
development of the ‘hunting mode of produ~tion’.~’In evidentiary terms,
Habermas’ notion of the proto-human as hunter has been rejected by Engels as

” Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 203.

” Marx, ‘Introduction’,p. 204.
33 K. Marxand F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 43. J. Weeks argues that this passage was the
source of the differences he finds between Marx and Engels; cf. his Capital and Exploitation
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 198 I), pp. 61-2.
34 cf‘. K. Marx and F. Engels, Gesamtausgabe (Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1976). 11. Abteilung, Bd. I,
Teil I, S. 26.
” J. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston, Beacon Press, 1979), chs. 3
and 4, esp. p. 145; also his Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston, Beacon Press, 1971), chs. 2 and
3. See T. McCarthy, The Critical Theory ofJurgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1978),
chs. 1. 2 and 3. 5.
’ 6 Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5 , p. 32.
37 Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, p. 135.
 Research Notes 29 1

well as current anthropologist^.^^ In theoretical terms, Habermas’ notion that

anthropoid behaviour was ‘based on symbolically mediated interaction in
[George Herbert] Mead’s sense’ must similarly be rejected.39 Thus Habermas’
account of the emergence of the human mode of life (Lebensweise) essentially
mis-specifies the problem. The proto-human was a gatherer who occasionally
‘hunted’, thus at one with the anthropoids; the proto-human was accultured, a
symbol and tool user, hence distinct from the anthropoids. When human social
intercourse is acknowledged to incorporate communication, Habermas’ critique
of historical materialism must in large part be set aside.
Weeks, by contrast, has faulted Engels for his ‘circulationist’ bias as well as
overlooking the role of force in societal transformations. Following Colletti,
Weeks holds that Marx and Engels’ ‘views on fundamental issues differed
diametri~ally’.~’ But Weeks faults Engels precisely for what Habermas considers
to be a virtue.
On the one hand, the ‘circulationist’ theory of economic crises holds either
inadequate aggregate demand or else the ‘profit squeeze’ generate the ~ r i s i s . In
~’
either case the understanding is that the crisis is located within the sphere of
circulation; by contrast, the Marxian understanding is that it is located in the
sphere of production. In Anti-Diihring, Engels explicitly defines and analyses
crises in terms of the overproduction of means of production, hence he cannot be
characterized on this evidence as an ‘underc~nsumptionist’.~~ He likewise holds
that the proletarian standard of living is determined by the division of labour
under the regime of capital, hence Engels cannot be accused of supposing that the
distribution of ‘factor income’ to wage fund (‘labour’s share’) and profits is in
some sense exogenous to the sphere of p r o d ~ c t i o nThus
. ~ ~ Engels subscribed to
neither an underconsumption theory nor a ‘profit squeeze’ hypothesis; hence he

K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962).
Vol. 11, p. 186; also K. Marx, The Ethnological Norebooks of Karl Marx (Assen, VanGorcum, 1972),
p. 99. SeeS. Slocum, ‘Woman theGatherer’inR. R. Reiter (ed.), Towardan AnthropologyofWomen
(New York, Monthly Review Press, 1975). pp. 3650; N. Tanner and A. Zihlman, ‘Women in
Evolution’, Signs, Vol. 1 (1976) and Vol. 4 (1978); E. Leacock, ‘Women’s Status in Egalitarian
Society’, Current Anthropology, 19 (1978). See also Charles Woolfson, The Labor Theory ofCulture
(London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).
39G.H.Mead, Philosophy of rhe Act (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1938), pp. 109-10: ‘It
is only man who has entered into a social relation with his environment . . .’.
40 Weeks, Capital and Exploitation, chs. 1 and 2 [with appendix], esp. p. 51. Weeks’ inability in
general to give an intelligible reading of Engels is beyond the scope of this article. One illustration
must suffice for now. Weeks supposes that Geisr, when used by Werner Sombart, meant ‘a mental
construct’ @. 14). In fact, this is precisely the opposite of what Sombart (or Engels) meant by the term;
see Sombart’s Die drei Nationulokonomien (Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot, 1930) or Engels, ‘Law of
Value and Rate of Profit’, Capital I l l , appendix. Weeks’ discussion is thereafter a hopeless morass of
the views of Conrad Schmidt, Marx and Engels, and a half dozen other writers.
4 ’ Weeks, Capiral and Exploitation. p. 9.
4 2 Engels, Anti-Duhring, pp. 393-4. See also Michael Bleaney, Underconsumption Theories: A
Historical and Crirical Analysis (New York, International Publishers, 1976) for an extensive
discussion.
43 Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 376. This ‘profit-squeeze’hypothesis can be traced at least as far back
as Pareto; see V. Pareto, Treatise on General Sociology (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1935)
2203-36. It is associated in Great Britain with Andrew Glyn and B. Sutcliffe, British Capitalism,
Workers andthe Profit Squeeze (London, Penguin Books, 1972)and in the United States with Raford
Boddy and J. Crotty, ‘Class Conflict and Macro-Policy’, Review of Radical Polirical Economics, 7
(1975).
292 Research Notes

cannot be identified with Paul Sweezy, Michael Kalecki, Samir Amin et al. as
‘circulationists’.
On the other hand, Weeks makes much out of Engels’ statement in
Anti-Diihring that ‘the whole process [of the development of capitalism] can be
explained by purely economic causes; at no point whatever are robbery, force,
the state or political interference of any kind nece~sary’.~~ Weeks simply treats
this passage apart from its context. In the nineteenth (and even in the twentieth)
century, some social theorists held that society was politically conflictual in
essence. (These were not necessarily social Darwinists). Eugen Duhring was an
important member of this tradition; Engels took pains to dissociate his and
Marx’s writings from this traditi~n.~’ Engels, with considerable dialectical skill,
showed in the Origin of the Family, Pritjate Property and the State how the
earliest fundamental (or generic) transformation of human society, that of the
‘world-historic overthrow of mother-right’ was to be explained without
presupposing the existence of conflict and force, i.e. without begging the question
of the emergence of the several institutions listed in the book‘s title.46Likewise,
he shows in Anti-Duhring how subsequent generic transformations of society
such as the rise of the state apparatus or the emergence of domestic and chattel
slavery were to be explained without begging the q~estion.~’
When he turns to the capitalist transformation, it is thus not surprising that
Engels proceeds similarly. In Anti-Duhring he shows, dialectically (and in this
instance echoing Capital 0,that the necessity which underlay the earlier
transformations of society was present in the development of capitalism as
well.48 This is not to say that chance has no significance in societal
transformation, but that it is a determinate significance. Plekhanov, in reviewing
just this issue, pointed out that ‘conquests, confiscations and monopolies’ have
occurred throughout recorded history. But, he continued, all these ‘political’
events, ‘far from determining the direction of economic development were, on
the contrary, themselves determined by it in their forms and subsequent social
effects’.49Hence the appropriateness of Engels’ explanation of the development
of capitalism in economic terms.
Moreover, Weeks’ blatant confounding of the ‘logical process’ of the
accumulation of capital presented in Part VII of Capital I with the ‘processes of
reality’ such as those of primitive accumulation described in Part VIII is precisely
the ‘total lack of understanding’ castigated by Colletti. Marx himself indicates at
the beginning of Part VII that ‘an exact analysis of the process [of accumulation]
demands that we . . . disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner

44 Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 226; see also Weeks, Capital and Exploitation, p. 20, p. 57.
45 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 34, note ‘b’;also Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 41
(added in the 1882 edition: Socialism: Uiopian and Scientific).
46 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 11, p. 217; again Engels follows Lewis H. Morgan, and
Marx, The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, pp. 119-21. This line of discussion renders quite
suspect Habermas’ notion that the nuclear family initiated human society;cf. his Communication and
the Euolution of Society, p. 136. In support of Habermas, see C. 0. Lovejoy, ‘The Origin of Man’,
Science, Vol. 21 I (1981).
‘’ Engels, Anti-Diihring, pp. 241-8 on the State; pp. 248-9 on slavery.
48 Engels, Anti-Diihring, pp. 225-6; earlier Engels noted that without an understanding of this
inevitability of capitalism, the previous forms of socialism were moralistic and utopian (p. 42).
49 G . Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1980). Vol. IV.
pp. 89-90.
 Research Notes 293

mechanism’, while he describes Part VIII of Capital I as ‘actual h i ~ t o r y ’ . ~But

”
this focuses attention on the method of political economy.
In sum, where Habermas tries to differentiate Marx from Engels by alleging
that the latter tended especially towards single-factor technologism, Weeks tries
to differentiate the two by alleging that Engels tended towards a circulationist (or
even a ‘revisionist’) dualism while it was Marx who was the monist. But Weeks’
discussion withstands close scrutiny no better than does Habermas’.

V
Thus it can be concluded that, in terms of their conceptions of the subject matter
of political economy, Engels’ and Marx’s views hardly represent ‘profoundly
different ways of seeing things’. What of their conceptions of method? Marx’s
argument in the third section of the ‘Introduction’ to the Critique of Political
Economy establishes the method of political e c ~ n o m y . The
~ ’ social corpus is the
starting point, say twentieth century English society. Through the process of
analysis of the immediate concept into its constituent genera and differentiae,
increasingly abstract concepts such as class, wage-labour, price, etc. are reached.
Given the most simple terms, those terms and other terms subsumed within them
articulate so as to represent the social corpus as an organic synthesis, a concrete
unity. On the one hand it will not d o to dispense with analysis and take society as
it is experienced (the ‘process of reality’). As Georg Lukacs has commented on
this section, ‘knowledge that is oriented in this way towards the immediately
given reality always ends up with merely notational ideas. These therefore have
to be more exactly defined with the aid of isolating abstraction^.'^^ On the other
hand, it will no more d o to begin with abstract terms and undertake a ‘logical
process’ of synthesis. Lukacs continues ‘inference by deduction from categorial
ideas easily leads to unsupported speculative conception^'.^^ In either case one
has inchoate terms and relationships, abstractly empiricist or abstractly rational
as the case may be, and in neither case can the terms and relations be assimilated
to the concrete whole.
A few pages before his characterization in Anri-Diihring of the subject matter
and method of political economy, Engels had discussed dialectic^'.^^ This
passage illustrates his understanding of the method of political economy. Engels
recounted that Marx examined the historical processes, the ‘processes of reality’
in Colletti’s terms, which characterize both the social corpus of mercantile
capitalism and that of capitalismper se. These were analysed in terms of forms of
property. Capitalistic private property sublates individual private property. But
an expanding and deepening class struggle attends capitalistic production to the
point where capitalistic property itself is sublated in social revolution. Hence the
synthesis: it is the negation of the negation.55Through this ‘logical process’ (in
Colletti’s terms), through the workings of this ‘dialectical law in history’ (in

50 Marx, Cupital (Moscow,Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954). Vol. I, pp. 565, 714.
5’ Marx, ‘Introduction’, p. 205ff.
s 2 Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being, p. 27.
5 3 Lukics, The Ontology of Social Being, p. 29.
5 4 Engels, Anti-Diihring, pp. 182-5.
5 5 Engels, Anti-Diihring, p. 185; cf. also pp. 389-91.
294 Research Notes

Carver’s terms), the concrete unity of capitalism is concisely revealed in its

organic complexity and potentiality.
Thus it appears that Engels’ and Marx’s conceptions of the method of political
economy are in accord no less than their conceptions of its subject matter. Of
course this is not difficult to comprehend if Marx was familiar with the drafts of
Anti-Diihring.
It would be the height of presumption to suggest that a topic so complex and
rich as Marx and Engels’ theoretical accord could be definitively addressed in this
brief statement. More modestly, it can be proposed that future discussions of this
topic be obliged to be couched in scientificrather than doctrinaire terms. This is a
timely proposal. On the one hand, the completion of the Gesamfausgabe
(MEGA) and the English translation of the Collecred Works of Marx and Engels
have scientificallyestablished the texts in the former and have made them readily
accessible in the latter. On the other hand, the ever widening recognition of the
scientific stature of historical materialism demands no less.