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Updated: June 7, 2025
All this, of course, has been said before by Engels, part of whose argument I have already quoted. Unfortunately, no syndicalist seems to follow this reasoning or excuse what he considers the terrible crime of extending the domain of the State. Not infrequently his revolutionary philosophy begins with the abolition of the State, and often it ends there.
It is of importance, too, that the claim they make allures many Socialists of trusting and uncritical minds to follow them. Many times in his long life Marx, together with Engels, found himself engaged in a fierce war against the very things Lenine and Trotzky and their associates have been trying to do.
This led Marx to go to Paris, where he became known as a Socialist and acquired a knowledge of his French predecessors. Here in the year 1844 began his lifelong friendship with Engels, who had been hitherto in business in Manchester, where he had become acquainted with English Socialism and had in the main adopted its doctrines.
Engels' remarks appear to be more than justified by the facts of to-day, for so far from the proletarian forming a new religion representing his needs on the "ideological" field, he appears to be increasingly desirous of releasing himself from the bands of any religion whatever, and substituting in place of it practical ethics and the teachings of science.
Until that time even the most grandiose reform is merely "a Socialistically-fringed attempt to save the rule of capitalism." Other "transitional measures" mentioned by Marx and Engels in 1847, some of which had already been taken up as "Socialistically-fringed attempts to save the rule of capitalism" even before their death were: The heavily graduated income tax. The abolition of inheritance.
We invented facts and appealed to authorities whose names I mispronounced; and, finding Gabbitas shy of the higher criticism and the Germans, I used the names of Karl Marx and Engels as Bible exegetes with no little effect.
Consequently, though Alberic in 1850 may have been merely the vulgar Manchester Factory-owner portrayed by Engels, in 1876 he was well on the way towards becoming Krupp of Essen or Carnegie of Homestead.
Under the circumstances there is no reason why Engels' remarks should affect even the timorous, although it must be remembered that a very able English socialist philosopher is reputed to have damaged his chances irretrievably by an ill-judged quotation from Mr. Swinburne.
This long and profound study placed Marx and Engels in a position infinitely beyond that of their contemporaries. Possessed as they were of unusual mental powers, it was inevitable that such a training should have placed them in a position of intellectual leadership in the then rapidly forming working-class organizations of Europe.
It omits the important labor legislation for increasing efficiency, since this was unprofitable under competitive and extra-governmental capitalism, and in Marx's time had not yet appeared; e.g. the minimum wage, a shorter working day, and workingmen's insurance. There can be little doubt that Marx and Engels, in this early pronunciamento, were purposely ambiguous in their language.
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