Engels After Marx [Paperback]

Manfred B. Steger (Editor), Terrell Carver (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1999

One hundred years after the death of Friedrich Engels, the long-time colleague of Karl Marx continues to influence the thought of socialist thinkers. This critical reappraisal of Engels addresses his relevance after both the death of Marx and the decline of Marxism, bringing Engels out from under the shadow of Marx to show the theoretical significance and historical impact of his wide-ranging criticisms for philosophy, science, political economy, history, and socialist politics.This collection of original essays seeks to determine the nature of Engels's role as an independent socialist thinker, showing how his views coincided with or diverged from those of Marx. Leading experts in political theory examine such topics as scientific socialism, Engels's understanding of the relation between internationalism and the "national question," and feminist views on Engels.The contributors offer new readings of Engels's texts, pursuing errors and omissions, uncovering his rhetorical maneuvers, and pointing to insights and conclusions in his thought that appear to have withstood the test of time. Engels after Marx attests both to the legacy of this political philosopher for contemporary left thought and to the legacy of Marxist socialism in the wake of upheavals in international Communism.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Engels After Marx is an impressive work of scholarship. It brings Engels out from under the shadow of Marx and treats him as a thinker and activist in his own right. The host of perspectives offered in this volume examines the range of Engels's influence, his achievements, his mistakes, and his legacy for progressive theory and practice. The editors have indeed made a genuine contribution to our understanding of a crucial figure in the history of modernity. --Stephen Eric Bronner, Rutgers University --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271018925
• ISBN-13: 978-0271018928
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,601,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reification of Marxism, November 30, 2001

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engels After Marx (Paperback)

Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England is one of the great studies of capitalism, and initiated the early Marx into the study of political economy. These essays tell the tale of the endgame, the fate of the vehicle created by Marx so soon frittered away in the period of Engels, in the ambiguities of Hegelianism, the dialectic as science, and the dangers or blessings of revisionism. Echoes of Norman Levine's The Tragic Deception force the question of Engels betraying the fine edge of the original theoretical Marxism, fair or not, and an egregious issue to those who find the real and deeper flaws in Marx's foundations. This version, however of the seminal Marx and the reifying Engels does not quite match the deeper difficulties, among them the obvious dangers of chaotification in making crypto-Hegelianism into the principles of a mass movement, in age also beset by the worst kind of positivist scientism.
One essay, Engels, Lukacs, and Kant's Thing in Itself, unwittingly and quite poignantly suggests the prophecy of the unstable post-Hegelian philosophic orphan spawning a dialectical tragedy that befell the whole project, in the era of Bernstein,and then Lenin.