Commie redirects here. For other uses, see wikt:commie.

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Communism
Concepts Marxist philosophy Marxian economics Historical materialism Surplus value Mode of production Class struggle Classless society Proletarian internationalism Workers' self-management World revolution
Aspects Communist state Communist party Communist revolution Communist symbolism Communism and religion History of communism
Variants Marxism Leninism Marxism-Leninism Trotskyism Maoism Luxemburgism Titoism Stalinism Castroism Guevarism Hoxhaism Juche Left communism Council communism Anarchist communism Religious communism Christian communism Eurocommunism World communism Stateless communism National communism Primitive communism Scientific communism List of communist parties
Internationals Communist League First International Second International Third International Fourth International
Leading individuals   Gracchus Babeuf   Karl Marx   Friedrich Engels   Peter Kropotkin   Rosa Luxemburg   Karl Liebknecht   Antonio Gramsci   Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky  Leon Trotsky   Joseph Stalin   Kim Il-Sung   Mao Zedong   Ho Chi Minh   Josip Broz Tito   Che Guevara
Related topics Anti-capitalism Anti-communism Cold War Criticisms of communism Criticisms of communist party rule Dictatorship of the proletariat Left-wing politics New Class · New Left Socialism Socialist economics "Workers of the world, unite!"
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Communism (from Latin communis - common, universal) is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order. This movement, in its Marxist-Leninist interpretations, significantly influenced the history of the 20th century, which saw intense rivalry between the "socialist world" (socialist states ruled by Communist parties) and the "western world" (countries with market economies), culminating in the Cold War between the Eastern bloc and the "Free World".^{[citation needed]}

In Marxist theory, pure communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.^[1][2] The exact definition of communism varies, and it is often mistakenly, in general political discourse, used interchangeably with socialism; however, Marxist theory contends that socialism is just a transitional stage on the road to communism. Leninism adds to Marxism the notion of a vanguard party to lead the proletarian revolution and to secure all political power after the revolution for the working class, for the development of universal class consciousness and worker participation, in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism.

Council communists and non-Marxist libertarian communists and anarcho-communists oppose the ideas of a vanguard party and a transition stage, and advocate for the construction of full communism to begin immediately upon the abolition of capitalism. There is a very wide range of theories amongst those particular communists in regards to how to build the types of institutions that would replace the various economic engines (such as food distribution, education, and hospitals) as they exist under capitalist systems—or even whether to do so at all. Some of these communists have specific plans for the types of administrative bodies that would replace the current ones, while always qualifying that these bodies would be decentralised and worker-owned, just as they currently are within the activist movements themselves. Others have no concrete set of post-revolutionary blueprints at all, claiming instead that they simply trust that the world's workers and poor will figure out proper modes of distribution and wide-scale production, and also coordination, entirely on their own, without the need for any structured "replacements" for capitalist state-based control.^{[citation needed]}

In the modern lexicon of what many sociologists and political commentators refer to as the "political mainstream", communism is often used to refer to the policies of communist states, i.e., the ones totally controlled by communist parties, regardless of the practical content of the actual economic system they may preside over. Examples of this include the policies of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam where the economic system incorporates "doi moi", the People's Republic of China (PRC) where the economic system incorporates "socialist market economy", and the economic system of the Soviet Union which was described as "state capitalist" by non-Leninist socialists and later by communists who increasingly opposed the post-Stalin era Soviet model as it progressed over the course of the 20th century (e.g., Maoists, Trotskyists and libertarian communists)—and even at one point by Vladimir Lenin himself.^[3]

Etymology and terminology[link]

Communism comes from the Latin word communis, which means "shared" or "belong to all".^[4][5]

In the schema of historical materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no division or alienation, where mankind is free from oppression and scarcity. A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions. In Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and communism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism to collective ownership.^[6] In political science, the term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form of government in which the state operates under a one-party system and declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or a derivative thereof.^{[citation needed]}

In modern usage, the word "communism" is still often used to refer to the policies of self-declared socialist governments comprising one-party states which were single legal political party systems operating under centrally planned economies and a state ownership of the means of production, with the state, in turn, claiming that it represented the interests of the working classes. A significant sector of the modern communist movement alleges that these states never made an attempt to transition to a communist society, while others even argue that they never achieved a legitimate socialism. Most of these governments based their ideology on Marxism-Leninism, but they did not call the system they had set up "communism", nor did they even necessarily claim at all times that the ideology was the sole driving force behind their policies: Mao Zedong, for example, pursued New Democracy, and Vladimir Lenin in the early 1920s enacted war communism; later, the Vietnamese enacted doi moi, and the Chinese switched to socialism with Chinese characteristics. The governments labeled by other governments as "communist" generally claimed that they had set up a transitional socialist system. This system is sometimes referred to as state socialism or by other similar names.

The hammer and sickle and the red star are universal symbols of communism.

"Pure communism" is a term sometimes used to refer to the stage in history after socialism, although just as many communists use simply the term "communism" to refer to that stage. The classless, stateless society that is meant to characterise this communism is one where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made in the best interests of the whole of society—a sort of 'of, by, and for the working class', rather than a rich class controlling the wealth and everyone else working for them on a wage basis. In this communism the interests of every member of society is given equal weight to the next, in the practical decision-making process in both the political and economic spheres of life. Karl Marx, as well as some other communist philosophers, deliberately never provided a detailed description as to how communism would function as a social system, nor the precise ways in which the working class could or should rise up, nor any other material specifics of exactly how to get to communism from capitalism. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx does lay out a 10-point plan advising the redistribution of land and production to begin the transition to communism, but he ensured that even this was very general and all-encompassing. It has always been presumed that Marx intended these theories to read this way specifically so that later theorists in specific situations could adapt communism to their own localities and conditions.

Theory[link]

According to communist theory, the only way to abolish capitalist inequalities is to have the proletariat (working class), who collectively constitute the main producer of wealth in society, and who are perpetually exploited and marginalised by the bourgeoisie (wealthy class), to overthrow the capitalist system in a wide-ranging social revolution.^[7] The revolution, in the theory of most individuals and groups espousing communist revolution, usually involves an armed rebellion. The revolution espoused can be explained by theorists in many different ways, and usually depends on the environment in which the particular communism theory originates. For example, the Chinese Revolution involved military combat between the Chinese Red and the Chinese Nationalist Armies, while the Vietnamese Revolution was characterised by guerrilla warfare between the heavily-backed Vietnam People's Army and various Western armies, culminating in the Vietnam War which ended in 1975. Meanwhile, the Cuban Revolution was essentially a coup that did not involve intensive wide-scale military conflict between Fulgencio Batista's soldiers and those of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. In fact, Castro initially did not believe that a vanguard party was necessary in Cuba's case, a view boosted by Batista's unpopularity at the time of the actual armed conflict between the two sides. Regardless of the specific form a communist revolution takes, its aim is for the working class to replace the exploiter class as the ruling class to establish a society without class divisions, called socialism, as a prelude to attempting to achieve the final stage of communism.^[8]

History[link]

Countries of the world now (red) or previously (orange) officially structured as socialist states under communist (Marxist-Leninist) governments, often called "communist states" in the West.

According to Karl Marx:

"Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals."

— Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1845^[9]

Early communism[link]

The origins of communism are debatable, and there are various historical groups, as well as theorists, whose beliefs have been subsequently described as communist. German philosopher Karl Marx saw primitive communism as the original, hunter-gatherer state of humankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of producing surplus, did private property develop. The idea of a classless society first emerged in Ancient Greece.^[10] Plato in his The Republic described it as a state where people shared all their property, wives, and children: "The private and individual is altogether banished from life and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions."^[10]

In the history of Western thought, certain elements of the idea of a society based on common ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times. Examples include the Spartacus slave revolt in Rome.^[11] The 5th century Mazdak movement in what is now Iran has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property and for striving for an egalitarian society.^[12]

At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture.^[13] In the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and other property (see Religious and Christian communism). These groups often believed that concern with private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbour.^{[citation needed]}

Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia (1516), More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason.^{[citation needed]} In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the "Diggers" advocated the abolition of private ownership of land.^[14] Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism^[15] argued that several groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.^[16] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France.^{[citation needed]} Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine.^[17] François Noël Babeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and total economic and political equality among citizens.^{[citation needed]}

Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis.^[18] Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), and Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm (1841–47).^[18] Later in the 19th century, Karl Marx described these social reformers as "utopian socialists" to contrast them with his program of "scientific socialism" (a term coined by Friedrich Engels). Other writers described by Marx as "utopian socialists" included Saint-Simon.

In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who laboured under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.^[18] Engels, who lived in Manchester, observed the organization of the Chartist movement (see History of British socialism), while Marx departed from his university comrades to meet the proletariat in France and Germany.^{[citation needed]}

Growth of modern communism[link]

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Vladimir Lenin after his return to Petrograd.

In the late 19th century, Russian Marxism developed a distinct character. The first major figure of Russian Marxism was Georgi Plekhanov. Underlying the work of Plekhanov was the assumption that Russia, less urbanized and industrialized than Western Europe, had many years to go before society would be ready for proletarian revolution to occur, and a transitional period of a bourgeois democratic regime would be required to replace Tsarism with a socialist and later communist society. (EB)^{[citation needed]}

In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshevik Party, seized state power. The assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeoisie capitalism.^[19] Other socialists also believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the West.

The moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, bread, and land" which tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the Soviets.^[20]

The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to Communist Party and installed a single party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Leninism.^{[citation needed]} The Second International had dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate national parties that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the war, instead generally supporting their respective nation's role. Lenin thus created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919 and sent the Twenty-one Conditions, which included democratic centralism, to all European socialist parties willing to adhere. In France, for example, the majority of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC).^{[citation needed]} Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, if their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state.^{[citation needed]}

Socialist countries within the Marxist-Leninist definition in 1980. Color-coding indicates political alignment, with either the Soviet Union (red) or the People's Republic of China (yellow), or non-alignment (black).

During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized all productive property and imposed a policy of war communism, which put factories and railroads under strict government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of industry. After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks, in 1922, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.

Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.^[21]

Following World War II, Communists consolidated power in Central and Eastern Europe, and in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC), led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China, which would follow its own ideological path of Communist development following the Sino-Soviet split. Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique were among the other countries in the Third World that adopted or imposed a Communist government at some point. By the early 1980s almost one-third of the world's population lived in Communist states, including the former Soviet Union and PRC.^{[citation needed]}

Communist states such as the Soviet Union and PRC succeeded in becoming industrial and technological powers, challenging the capitalists' powers in the arms race and space race.

Cold War years[link]

USSR postage stamp depicting the communist state launching the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1.

By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the Second World War in 1945, the Red Army occupied nations not only in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in East Asia; consequently, communism as a movement spread to many new countries. This expansion of communism both in Europe and Asia gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism.^[22]

Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Central and Eastern Europe. Governments modelled on Soviet Communism took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Communist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern. Titoism, a new branch in the world Communist movement, was labelled "deviationist". Albania also became an independent Communist nation after World War II.^[23]

By 1950, the Chinese Communists held all of Mainland China, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases led to actual fighting through conventional and guerrilla warfare include the Korean War, Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and notably succeeded in the case of the Vietnam War against the military power of the United States and its allies. With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against what they saw as Western imperialism in these poor countries.

Red Scare[link]

A 1947 propaganda book published by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society warning of the dangers of a communist revolution.

With the exception of the contribution in World War II by the Soviet Union, China, and the Italian resistance movement, communism was seen as a rival, and a threat to western democracies and capitalism for most of the 20th century.^[24] This rivalry peaked during the Cold War, as the world's two remaining superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, polarized most of the world into two camps of nations. This was characterized in the West as The Free World vs. Behind the Iron Curtain.^{[citation needed]} It supported the spread of their respective economic and political systems (capitalism and communism) and strengthened their military powers. As a result, the camps developed new weapon systems, stockpiled nuclear weapons, and competed in space exploration.

Near the beginning of the Cold War, on February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin accused 205 Americans working in the State Department of being "card-carrying communists".^[25] The fear of communism in the U.S. spurred McCarthyism, aggressive investigations and the red-baiting, blacklisting, jailing and deportation of persons suspected of following communist or other left-wing ideologies. Many famous actors and writers were placed on a blacklist from 1950 to 1954, which meant they would not be hired and would be subject to public disdain.^[24]

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union[link]

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved.

By the beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and informally North Korea. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in many countries. President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus is a member of the Progressive Party of Working People, but the country is not run under single-party rule. The South African Communist Party is a partner in the African National Congress-led government. In India, communists lead the governments of three states, with a combined population of more than 115 million. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the parliament.^[26] The Communist Party of Brazil is a part of the parliamentary coalition led by the ruling democratic socialist Workers' Party and is represented in the executive cabinet of Dilma Rousseff.

The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; it, along with Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree Cuba, has reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Chinese economic reforms started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping; since then, China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 6% in 2001.^[27] The People's Republic of China runs Special Economic Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government control. Several other communist states have also attempted to implement market-based reforms, including Vietnam.

A tableau in a communist rally in Kerala, India, of a young farmer and worker.

A Communist demonstration in Red Square, Moscow, July 2009.

Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Central and Eastern Europe was not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own interests. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics of the Soviet Union, most notably Trotsky, referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "degenerated" or "deformed workers' states", arguing that the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal and he claimed the working class was politically dispossessed. The ruling stratum of the Soviet Union was held to be a bureaucratic caste, but not a new ruling class, despite their political control. Anarchists who adhere to Participatory economics claim that the Soviet Union became dominated by powerful intellectual elites who in a capitalist system crown the proletariat's labour on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled by a communist party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existing nation-states. In the social sciences, societies ruled by communist parties are distinct for their single party control and their socialist economic bases. While some social and political scientists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, others identified possibilities for independent political activity within them,^[28][29] and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Central Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

Marxist schools[link]

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Variations to the communist movement have developed, each based upon the ideas of different political theorists, usually as additions or interpretations of various forms of Marxism, the collective philosophies of the German philosophers Karl Marx.^[30] Marxism-Leninism is the synthesis of Vladimir Lenin's contributions to Marxism, such as how a revolutionary party should be organised;^[31] Trotskyism is Leon Trotsky's conception of Marxism, influenced by Lenin, and meanwhile, Maoism is Mao Zedong's interpretation of Marxism to suit the conditions of China at that time, and is fairly heavy on the need for agrarian worker support as the engine for the revolution, rather than workers in the urban areas, which were still very small at that point.

Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, council communism, Luxemburgism, anarchist communism, Christian communism, and various currents of left communism. However, the offshoots of the Marxist-Leninist interpretations of Marxism are the best-known of these and had been a driving force in international relations during the last quarter of the 19th century and most of the 20th century up to around 1989 and what historians refer to as "the collapse of communism."^[32] However, other forms of communism worldwide continue to exist in the ideologies of various individual labor movement trade unions worldwide, particularly in Europe and the Third World, and also in communist parties that continue to espouse the ultimate need for communist revolution.

Most communists today tend to agree that the remaining communist states, such as China, Vietnam and especially North Korea (which has replaced Marxism-Leninism with Juche as its official ideology), have nothing to do with communism, whether as practised currently within leftist resistance movements and parties, or in terms of the ideologies and programmes held by those movements.^{[33][34][35][36]}

A diverse range of theories persist amongst prominent globally known people such as Slavoj Zizek, Michael Parenti, Alain Badiou and other radical left thinkers who proclaim themselves communists; they and others like them are examples of present-day well-known figures in the modern communist movement.

Marxism[link]

The Communist Manifesto

Like other socialists, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels sought an end to capitalism and the systems which they perceived to be responsible for the exploitation of workers. Whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only path to socialism and communism.

According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom.^[37] Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with content.^[38] According to Marx, communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people; the obstacles are class divisions, economic inequalities, unequal life-chances, and false consciousness; and the goal is the fulfilment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product.^[39][40]

They believed that communism allowed people to do what they want, but also put humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to exploit, or have any need to. Whereas for Hegel the unfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material forces, particularly the development of the means of production.^[38]

Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the establishment of a communist society in which private property and ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community. (Private property and ownership, in this context, means ownerships of the means of production, not private possessions).^[41] Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that it entails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake.^{[citation needed]} In the popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which each gave according to their abilities, and received according to their needs. The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist future:

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."

—^[42]

Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way towards communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about.^[38]

In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels argued that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but would pass through a "first phase" in which most productive property was owned in common, but with some class differences remaining. The "first phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class differences were eliminated, and a state was no longer needed. Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to Marx and Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term "communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase" of communism.^[43]

These later aspects, particularly as developed by Vladimir Lenin, provided the underpinning for the mobilizing features of 20th century communist parties.

Marxism-Leninism[link]

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Leninism is the political movement developed by Vladimir Lenin, which has become the foundation for the organizational structure of most major communist parties. Leninists advocate the creation of a vanguard party led by dedicated revolutionaries in order to lead the working class revolution to victory. Leninists believe that socialism will not arise spontaneously through the natural decay of capitalism and that workers are unable to organize and develop socialist consciousness without the guidance of the Vanguard party. After taking power, Vanguard parties seek to create a socialist state continually led by the Vanguard party in order to direct social development and defend against counterrevolutionary insurrection. The mode of industrial organization championed by Leninism and Marxism-Leninism is the capitalist model of scientific management pioneered by Fredrick Taylor.

Marxism-Leninism is a version of Leninism merged with classical Marxism adopted by the Soviet Union and most communist parties across the world today. It shaped the Soviet Union and influenced communist parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and collectivisation. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the 'Eastern Bloc' (meaning communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe), many communist parties of the world today still lay claim to uphold the Marxist-Leninist banner. Marxism-Leninism expands on Marxist thoughts by bringing the theories to what Lenin and other Communists considered, the age of capitalist imperialism, and a renewed focus on party building, the development of a socialist state, and democratic centralism as an organisational principle.

Lenin's pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), proposed that the (urban) proletariat can successfully achieve revolutionary consciousness only under the leadership of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries—who can achieve aims only with internal democratic centralism in the party; tactical and ideological policy decisions are agreed via democracy, and every member must support and promote the agreed party policy.

To wit, capitalism can be overthrown only with revolution—because attempts to reform capitalism from within (Fabianism) and from without (social democracy) will fail because of its inherent contradictions. The purpose of a Leninist revolutionary vanguard party is the forceful deposition of the incumbent government; assume power (as agent of the proletariat) and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Moreover, as the government, the vanguard party must educate the proletariat—to dispel the societal false consciousness of religion and nationalism that are culturally instilled by the bourgeoisie in facilitating exploitation, and to instil the material scientific outlook of the world and the sense of proletarian internationalism. The dictatorship of the proletariat is governed with a de-centralized direct democracy practised via soviets (councils) where the workers exercise political power (cf. soviet democracy); the fifth chapter of State & Revolution, describes it:

".... the dictatorship of the proletariat—i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. . . . An immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich: . . . and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."

—^[44]

The post-revolutionary Bolshevik government was hostile to nationalism, especially to Russian nationalism, the "Great Russian chauvinism", which was seen as an obstacle to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.^[45] However, under the regime of Joseph Stalin, after the Allied victory in the Great Patriotic War, Russian nationalism became upheld as a force in shaping both the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet Union.^[46]

The primary elements unique to Marxism-Leninism are: the revolutionary vanguard party, revolution as a means to overthrow capitalism, and democratic centralism.

Stalinism[link]

Joseph Stalin

Stalinism was the political system of the Soviet Union and the countries within the Soviet sphere of influence during the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term usually defines the style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology was officially Marxism-Leninism theory, reflecting that Stalin himself was not a theoretician, in contrast to Marx and Lenin, and prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of their ideas, and a certain political regime claiming to apply those ideas in ways fitting the changing needs of Soviet society, as with the transition from "socialism at a snail's pace" in the mid-twenties to the rapid industrialization of the Five-Year Plans.

The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were:

• The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question,^[47] praised by Lenin.
• Socialism in One Country, stating that communists should attain socialism in their own country as a prelude to internationalising.
• The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.

The legitimacy of Stalin's claim to the roll of leadership in the Soviet Union (and thus the international communist movement as a whole) is a matter of some debate. Advocates of Stalinism cite both Lenin's praising of the early works of Stalin and the economic successes of the Five-Year Plans. Opponents, however, point out that certain aspects of Stalinism (socialism in one country, "revolutionary patriotism", etc.) are not found in Leninism, and argue that some aspects are even contradictory to Marxism-Leninism. Also, in Lenin's Testament, a document written by Vladimir Lenin in the last weeks of 1922 and the first week of 1923 outlining his proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies, Lenin suggested "that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from [the Secretary-General] post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc." Both sides of this debate identify as being ideologically orthodox to Leninism and criticise the other as being "revisionist."

Trotskyism[link]

Trotskyism is the branch of Marxism that was developed by Leon Trotsky. It supports the theory of permanent revolution and world revolution instead of the two stage theory and socialism in one country. It supported proletarian internationalism and another Communist revolution in the Soviet Union, which, under the leadership of Stalin, Trotsky claimed had become a degenerated worker's state, rather than the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which class relations had re-emerged in a new form.

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the Left Opposition and their platform became known as Trotskyism. Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. During Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured into two distinct branches: Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism.^[8] Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938.

Trotskyist ideas have continually found a modest echo among political movements in some countries in Latin America and Asia, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Sri Lanka. Many Trotskyist organizations are also active in more stable, developed countries in North America and Western Europe. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution (rather than socialism in one country) and unwavering support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles.

However, as a whole, Trotsky's theories and attitudes were never accepted in worldwide mainstream Communist circles after Trotsky's expulsion, either within or outside of the Soviet bloc. This remained the case even after the Secret Speech and subsequent events which critics claim exposed the fallibility of Stalin.

Maoism[link]

Portrait of Mao Zedong at the Tiananmen Gate

Maoism is the Marxist-Leninist trend of Communism associated with Mao Zedong and was mostly practiced within China. Nikolai Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly apparent in the 1960s. Parties and groups that supported the Communist Party of China (CPC) in their criticism against the new Soviet leadership proclaimed themselves as 'anti-revisionist' and denounced the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the parties aligned with it as revisionist "capitalist-roaders." The Sino-Soviet Split resulted in divisions amongst communist parties around the world. Notably, the Party of Labour of Albania sided with the People's Republic of China. Effectively, the CPC under Mao's leadership became the rallying forces of a parallel international Communist tendency.

Definitions of Maoism vary. Within the Chinese context, Maoism can refer to Mao's belief in the mobilization of the masses, particularly in large-scale political movements; it can also refer to the egalitarianism that was seen during Mao's era as opposed to the free-market ideology of Deng Xiaoping; some scholars additionally define personality cults and political sloganeering as "Maoist" practices. Contemporary Maoists in China criticize the social inequalities created by a capitalist and 'revisionist' Communist party.

Prachanda, giving a speech at Pokhara, Nepal

Prachanda Path[link]

Prachanda Path refers to the ideological line of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal. This thought is an extension of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, totally based on home-ground politics of Nepal. The doctrine came into existence after it was realized that the ideology of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism could not be practiced completely as it was done in the past. And an ideology suitable, based on the ground reality of Nepalese politics was adopted by the party.

Others[link]

Hoxhaism[link]

Another variant of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism appeared after the ideological row between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania in 1978. The Albanians rallied a new separate international tendency, which would demarcate itself by a strict defence of the legacy of Joseph Stalin and fierce criticism of virtually all other Communist groupings as revisionism. Critical of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, Enver Hoxha declared the latter two to be social-imperialist and condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia by withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact in response. Hoxha declared Albania to be the world's only Marxist-Leninist state after 1978. The Albanians were able to win over a large share of the Maoists, mainly in Latin America such as the Popular Liberation Army, but also had a significant international following in general. This tendency has occasionally been labelled as 'Hoxhaism' after him.

After the fall of the Communist government in Albania, the pro-Albanian parties are grouped around an international conference and the publication 'Unity and Struggle'.

Titoism[link]

Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During Tito's era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) the policies of the Soviet Union. The term was originally meant as a pejorative, and was labelled by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia known as the Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.

Unlike the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, which fell under Stalin's influence post–World War II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong leadership of Marshal Josip Broz Tito and the fact that the Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia with only limited help from the Red Army, remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country in the Balkans to resist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" until the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from Russia, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of the Comecon and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.

Eurocommunism[link]

Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the influence or control of the Soviet Union. Parties such as the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the French Communist Party (PCF), and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), were politically active and electorally significant in their respective countries).^{[citation needed]}

The main theoretical foundation of Eurocommunism was Antonio Gramsci's writing about Marxist theory which questioned the sectarianism of the Left and encouraged communist parties to develop social alliances to win hegemonic support for social reforms. Eurocommunist parties expressed their fidelity to democratic institutions more clearly than before and attempted to widen their appeal by embracing public sector middle-class workers, new social movements such as feminism and gay liberation and more publicly questioning the Soviet Union. Early inspirations can also be found in the Austromarxism and its seeking of a "third" democratic "way" to socialism.

Libertarian and non-Leninist forms of Marxism[link]

Libertarian Marxism refers to a broad scope of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism,^[48] emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism^[49] and its derivatives, such as Stalinism, Maoism, and Trotskyism.^[50] Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions, such as those held by social democrats.^[51] Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France;^[52] emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation.^[53] Along with anarchism, Libertarian Marxism is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism.^[54]

Libertarian Marxism includes such currents as Luxemburgism, council communism, left communism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Johnson-Forest tendency, world socialism, Lettrism/Situationism and operaismo/autonomism, and New Left.^[55] Libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Anton Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Antonio Negri, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Guy Debord, Daniel Guérin, Ernesto Screpanti and Raoul Vaneigem.

Council communism[link]

Council communism is a far-left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and libertarian socialism.

The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist Communism, is that democratic workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working class organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the reformist and the Leninist ideologies, with their stress on, respectively, parliaments and institutional government (i.e., by applying social reforms), on the one hand, and vanguard parties and participative democratic centralism on the other).

The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run authoritarian "State socialism"/"State capitalism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a worker's democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils.

Rosa Luxemburg, prominent left communist critic of Leninism

Left communism[link]

Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first and during its second congress.

Left Communists see themselves to the left of Leninists (whom they tend to see as 'left of capital', not socialists), anarchist communists (some of whom they consider internationalist socialists) as well as some other revolutionary socialist tendencies (for example De Leonists, who they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances).

Although she died before left communism became a distinct tendency, Rosa Luxemburg has heavily influenced most left communists, both politically and theoretically. Proponents of left communism have included Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Karl Korsch, Sylvia Pankhurst and Paul Mattick.

Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Party, the International Communist Current and the Internationalist Communist Tendency.

Situationist International[link]

The Situationist International was a restricted group of international revolutionaries founded in 1957, and which had its peak in its influence on the unprecedented general wildcat strikes of May 1968 in France.

With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires and the pursuing of a superior passional quality. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the construction of situations, namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism and psychogeography.

They fought against the main obstacle on the fulfillment of such superior passional living, identified by them in advanced capitalism. Their theoretical work peaked on the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow such a system, the Situationist International supported the May 1968 revolts, and asked the workers to occupy the factories and to run them with direct democracy, through workers' councils composed by instantly revocable delegates.

After publishing in the last issue of the magazine an analysis of the May 1968 revolts, and the strategies that will need to be adopted in future revolutions,^[56] the SI was dissolved in 1972.^[57]

Autonomism[link]

Antonio Negri, main theorist of Italian autonomism

Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist (operaismo) communism. Later, post-|Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio, Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno, etc.

Through translations made available by Danilo Montaldi and others, the Italian autonomists drew upon previous activist research in the United States by the Johnson-Forest Tendency and in France by the group Socialisme ou Barbarie.

It influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen, the worldwide Social Centre movement, and today is influential in Italy, France, and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to post-structuralists and anarchists. The Autonomist Marxist and Autonomen movements provided inspiration to some on the revolutionary left in English speaking countries, particularly among anarchists, many of whom have adopted autonomist tactics. Some English-speaking anarchists even describe themselves as Autonomists. The Italian operaismo movement also influenced Marxist academics such as Harry Cleaver, John Holloway, Steve Wright, and Nick Dyer-Witheford.

Non-Marxist schools[link]

The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christian communism and anarchist communism) also exist.

Anarcho-communism[link]

Peter Kropotkin, main theorist of anarcho-communism

Anarchist communism (also known as libertarian communism) is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property, and capitalism in favour of common ownership of the means of production,^[58][59] direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".^[60][61]

Anarcho-communism differs from marxism rejecting its view about the need for a State Socialism phase before building communism. The main anarcho-communist theorist Peter Kropotkin argued "that a revolutionary society should “transform itself immediately into a communist society,”, that is, should go immediately into what Marx had regarded as the “more advanced,” completed, phase of communism."^[62] In this way it tries to avoid the reappearence of "class divisions and the need for a state to oversee everything".^[62]

Some forms of anarchist communism such as insurrectionary anarchism are egoist and strongly influenced by radical individualism,^[63][64][65] believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian nature at all. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society^[66][67][68]

To date in human history, the best known examples of an anarchist communist society, established around the ideas as they exist today, that received worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon, are the anarchist territories during the Spanish Revolution and the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish Anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in 1936 anarchist communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante and Andalusia, as well as in the stronghold of Anarchist Catalonia before being brutally crushed by the combined forces of the authoritarian regime that won the war, Hitler, Mussolini, Spanish Communist Party repression (backed by the USSR) as well as economic and armaments blockades from the capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself. During the Russian Revolution, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked to create and defend—through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine—anarchist communism in the Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.

Christian communism[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Christian communism is a form of religious communism centred on Christianity. It is a theological and political theory based upon the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ urge Christians to support communism as the ideal social system. Christian communists trace the origins of their practice to teachings in the New Testament, such as the Acts of the Apostles at chapter 2 and verses 42, 44 and 45:

⁴² And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship ... ⁴⁴ And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; ⁴⁵ And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

—King James Version

Christian communism can be seen as a radical form of Christian socialism. Also, because many Christian communists have formed independent stateless communes in the past, there is a link between Christian communism and Christian anarchism. Christian communists may not agree with various parts of Marxism, but they share some of the political goals of Marxists, for example replacing capitalism with socialism, which should in turn be followed by communism at a later point in the future. However, Christian communists sometimes disagree with Marxists (and particularly with Leninists) on the way a socialist or communist society should be organized.

Criticisms[link]

Victims of Soviet NKVD in Lviv, June 1941.

Some people have criticised socialism and by extension communism, stating that the two systems have distorted or absent price signals,^[69][70] slow or stagnant technological advance,^[71] reduced incentives,^[72][73][74] reduced prosperity,^[75][76] feasibility,^[69][70][71] and its social and political effects.^{[77][78][79][80][81][82]}

Part of this criticism extends to the policies adopted by one-party states ruled by communist parties (known as "communist states"). Some scholars are specially focused on their human rights records which are claimed to be responsible for famines, purges and warfare resulting in deaths far in excess of previous empires, capitalist or other regimes.^[83][84][85] However, such state regimes do not fit the definition of communism as a stateless and international workers' democracy, as repeatedly advocated by Marx and Engels, and subsequent orthodox Marxists.

The Council of Europe in Resolution 1481 and international declarations such as the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the Declaration on Crimes of Communism have condemned some of the actions that resulted in these deaths as crimes.

Stéphane Courtois argues that Communism and National Socialism are slightly different totalitarian systems^{[citation needed]}, and that communism is responsible for the murder of almost 100 million people in the 20th century,^[86] but two of the main Black Book's contributors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, disagreed and publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois's statements.^[87]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Adami, Stefano. "Communism", in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone – P.Puppa, Routledge, New York- London, 2006
• Beer, Max. The General History of Socialism and Social Struggles Volumes 1 & 2. New York, Russel and Russel, Inc. 1957
• Daniels, Robert Vincent. A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse. University Press of New England, 1994. ISBN 978-0-87451-678-4.
• Dirlik, Arif. Origins of Chinese Communism. Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-505454-5
• Forman, James D. Communism From Marx's Manifesto To 20th century Reality. New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN 978-0-531-02571-0
• Furet, Francois and Deborah Kan (translator). The Passing of An Illusion: The Idea of Communism In the Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-226-27341-9
• Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Communist Manifesto. (Mass Market Paperback – REPRINT), Signet Classics, 1998. ISBN 978-0-451-52710-3
• Pons, Silvio and Robert Service. A Dictionary of 20th century Communism. 2010.
• Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2
• Hollander, Paul (ed). From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence And Repression in Communist Studies. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006). ISBN 978-1-932236-78-1
• Zinoviev, Alexandre. The Reality of Communism (1980), Publisher Schocken, 1984.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Communism

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Communism

Look up communism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Marxists.org (Marxists Internet Archive)
• Libertarian Communist Library
•  Samuel McCune Lindsay (1905). "Communism". New International Encyclopedia. 
• Marxist Theory

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels
Born	28 November 1820 Barmen, Kingdom of Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany)
Died	5 August 1895(1895-08-05) (aged 74) London, United Kingdom
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Marxism, Materialism
Main interests	Political philosophy, Politics, Economics, class struggle, capitalism
Notable ideas	Co-founder of Marxism (with Karl Marx), alienation and exploitation of the worker, historical materialism
Influenced by Hegel, Feuerbach, Stirner, Smith, Ricardo, Rousseau, Goethe, Fourier, Hess, Morgan, Heraclitus
Influenced Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Guevara, Sartre, Debord, Frankfurt School, Negri, more...
Signature

Friedrich Engels (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɛŋəls]; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German-English industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research. In 1848 he co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx, and later he supported Marx financially to do research and write Das Kapital. After Marx's death Engels edited the second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organized Marx's notes on the "Theories of Surplus Value" and this was later published as the "fourth volume" of Capital.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Engels-house in Barmen, Germany (now Wuppertal)

Friedrich (Frederick) Engels was born on November 28, 1820 in Barmen, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany).^[2] At the time, Barmen was an expanding industrial metropole and Frederick was the eldest son of a wealthy German cotton manufacturer. As his father, Friederich Sr., was a Methodist. Accordingly, Fredrick was raised Christian Pietist. As he grew up, his relationship with his parents became strained because of his atheist beliefs.^[3] Parental disapproval of his revolutionary activities is recorded in an October, 1848 letter from his mother, Elizabeth Engels.^[4] In this letter his mother berates him for having "really gone too far" and "begged" him "to proceed no further.".^[5] "You have paid more heed to other people, to strangers, and have taken no account of your mother's pleas. God alone knows what I have felt and suffered of late. I was trembling when I picked up the newspaper and saw therein that a warrant was out for my son's arrest."^[6] At the point this letter was written Frederick Engels was in hiding in Brussels, Belgium and was soon to make his way to Switzerland and then in 1849 make his way back into Germany to participate in the revolutionary uprising in Baden and Palatinate.

Earlier when he was merely 18 years of age, young Frederick had been dropped out of high school because of family circumstances. At this point, he had been sent by his family to work as a nonsalaried office clerk at a commercial house in Bremen.^[7][8] His parents expected that he would begin a career in business like his father. Accordingly, Frederick's revolutionary activities were a definite disappointment to his parents.

Whilst at Bremen, Engels began reading the philosophy of Hegel, whose teachings had dominated German philosophy at the time. In September 1838, he published his first work, a poem titled The Bedouin, in the Bremisches Conversationsblatt No. 40. He also engaged in other literary and journalistic work.^[9][10]

In 1841, Engels joined the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery. This position moved him to Berlin where he attended university lectures and began to associate with groups of Young Hegelians. He anonymously published articles in the Rheinische Zeitung exposing the working and living conditions workers in the factories had to endure.^[8] Editor of the Rheinshe Zeitung was Karl Marx. However, Engels never met Karl Marx until they had a brief encounter near the end of November 1842.^[11] Throughout his lifetime, Engels would point out that he was indebted to German philosophy because of its effect on his intellectual development.^[7] A remarkable quotation from that period: "To get the most out of life you must be active, you must live and you must have the courage to taste the thrill of being young ... " (1840)

Manchester[link]

In 1842, the 22-year-old Engels was sent by his parents to Manchester, Britain, to work for the Ermen and Engels' Victoria Mill in Weaste which made sewing threads.^[12][13][14] Engels' father thought that working at the Manchester firm might make Engels reconsider the opinions he had developed at the time.^[7][13] On his way to Manchester, Engels visited the office of the Rheinische Zeitung and met Karl Marx for the first time - they were not impressed by each other.^[15] Marx mistakenly thought that Engels was still associated with the Berliner Young Hegelians, with whom he (Marx) had just broken.^[16]

In Manchester Engels met Mary Burns, a fierce young working woman with radical opinions with whom he began a relationship that lasted until her death in 1862.^[17][18] The two never married, as both were against the institution of marriage. While Engels regarded monogamy as a virtue, state and church regulated marriage were to him a form of class oppression.^[19][20] Burns guided Engels through Manchester and Salford, showing him the worst districts for his research. While in Manchester, Engels wrote his first economic work. This article was called "Outline of a Critique of Political Economy" and was written between October and November 1843.^[21] Engels sent the article to Paris, where Marx published it in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Engels also wrote a three part series of articles called "The Condition of England" in January, February and March 1844.^[22]

While observing the slums of Manchester in close detail, Engels took notes of the horrors he observed, notably child labor, the despoiled environment and overworked and impoverished laborers.^[23] and sent back a series of articles to Marx, first for publication in the Rheinische Zeitung and then for publication in Deutsch–Franzosische Jahrbucher, chronicling the conditions amongst the working class in Manchester. These he would later collect and publish in his influential first book, The Condition of the Working Class in England.^[24] The book was written between September 1844 and March 1845 and was printed in German in 1845. In the book, Engels gave way to his views on the "grim future of capitalism and the industrial age",^[23] and described in detail, street after street, the total squalor in which the working people were living.^[25] The book was published in English in 1887.

While writing it, Engels continued his involvement with radical journalism and politics. He frequented some areas also frequented by some members of the English labour and Chartist movements, whom he met, and wrote for several journals, including The Northern Star, Robert Owen’s New Moral World and the Democratic Review newspaper.^[17][26][27]

Paris[link]

After a productive stay in Britain, Engels decided to return to Germany in 1844. On his way, he stopped in Paris to meet Karl Marx, with whom he had an earlier correspondence. Marx had been living in Paris since late October 1843, following the banning of the Rheinsche Zeitung by Prussian governmental authorities in March 1843.^[28] In Paris, Marx was now publishing the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Marx and Engels met at the Café de la Régence on the Place du Palais, 28 August 1844. The two became close friends and would remain so for their entire lives. In late May 1845 Engels published the English version of his first book - a quotation: "A class which bears all the disadvantages of the social order without enjoying its advantages…Who can demand that such a class respect this social order ?"^[29]

Engels stayed in Paris to help Marx write The Holy Family.^[30] The Holy Family was an attack on the Young Hegelians and the Bauer brothers and was published in late February 1845. Engels' earliest contribution to Marx's work was writing to the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher journal, which was edited by both Marx and Arnold Ruge in Paris in 1844.^[12] However, as Ruge remained a Young Hegelian in his belief, Marx and Ruge soon split and Ruge left the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher^[31] Nonetheless, even following the split, Marx remained friendly enough to Ruge that Marx sent Ruge a warning on January 15, 1845 that the Paris police were going to execute orders against both Marx and Ruge and others at the Deutshe-französische Jahrbücher requiring all to leave Paris within 24 hours.^[32] Marx, himself, was expelled from Paris by French authorities on February 3, 1845 and settled in Brussels, Belgium with his wife and one daughter.^[33] Having left Paris on September 6, 1844, Engels returned to his home in Barmen, Germany, to work on his The Condition of the English Working Class, which was published in late May 1845.^[34] Even before the publication of his book, Engels moved to Brussels in late April 1845, to collaborate with Marx on another book--German Ideology.^[35] While living in Barmen, Engels began making contact with Socialists in the Rhineland to raise money for Marx's publication efforts in Brussels.^[36] However, these contacts became more important as both Marx and Engels began political organizing for German Workers Party.

Brussels[link]

From 1845 to 1848, Engels and Marx lived in Brussels, spending much of their time organizing the city's German workers. Shortly after their arrival, they contacted and joined the underground German Communist League. The Communists League was the successor organization to the old League of the Just which had been founded in 1837, but had recently disbanded.^[37] Influenced by Wilhelm Weitling, the Communist League was an international society of proletarian revolutionaries with branches in various European cities.^[38] The Communist League also had contacts with the underground conspiratorial organization of Louis Auguste Blanqui. Many of Marx's and Engels' current friends became member of the Communist League. Old friends like Georg Friedrich Herwegh, who had worked with Marx on the Rheinsche Zeitung, Heinrich Heine, the famous poet, a young doctor by the name of Roland Daniels, Heinrich Bürgers and August Herman Ewerbeck all maintained their contacts with Marx and Engels in Brussels. Georg Weerth, who had become a friend of Engels in England in 1843 now settled in Brussels. Karl Wallau and Stephen Born (whose real name was Simon Buttermilch) were both German immigrant typesetters who settled in Brussels to help Marx and Engles with their work in the Communist League. Additionally, Marx and Engels made many important new contacts through the Communist League. One of the first was Wilhelm Wolff, who was soon to become one of Marx's and Engels' closest collaborators. Others were Joseph Weydemeyer and Ferdinand Freiligrath, a famous revolutionary poet. While most of the associates of Marx and Engels were German immigrants living in Brussels, some of there new associates were Belgians. Phillipe Gigot, a Belgian philosopher and Victor Tedesco, lawyer from Liege both joined the Communist League. Joachim Lelewel a prominent Polish historian and participant in the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 was also a frequent associate of Marx and Engels.^[39] The Communist League commissioned Marx and Engels to write a pamphlet explaining the principles of communism. This became The Manifesto of the Communist Party, better known as the Communist Manifesto.^[40] It was first published on 21 February 1848 and ends with the world famous phrase: ""Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win ... Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"^[7]

Return to Prussia[link]

There was a revolution in France in 1848 that eventually spread to other Western European countries. This event caused Engels and Marx to go back to their home country of Prussia, specifically the city of Cologne. While living in Cologne, they created and served as editors for a new daily newspaper called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.^[12] Besides Marx and Engels, other frequent contributors to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung included Karl Schapper, Wilhelm Wolff, Ernst Dronke, Peter Nothjung, Heinrich Bürgers, Ferdinand Wolf and Carl Cramer.^[41] Frederick Engels' mother, herself, gives unwitting witness to the effect of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on the revolutionary uprising in Cologne in 1848. Criticizing his involvement in the uprising she states in a December 5, 1848 letter to Frederick that "nobody, ourselves included, doubted that the meetings at which you and your friends spoke, and also the language of (Neue) Rh.Z. were largely the cause of these disturbances."^[42] At the time of this letter, Frederick Engels's even more dangerous involvement in the revolutionary uprisings in Baden and the Palatinate in 1849, still lay ahead him. Engels' parents hoped that young Frederick would "decide to turn to activities other than those which you have been pursing in recent years and which have caused so much distress."^[43] At this point Frederick's parents felt the only hope for Frederick was to emigrate to America and start his life over. They told him that he should do this or he would "cease to receive money from us."^[43] However, the problem in the relations between Frederick and his parents was worked out without Engels having to leave England or to be cut off from any financial assistance from his parents. In July 1851, Frederick Engels father arrived to visit him in Manchester, England. During the visit his father arranged for Frederick to Peter Ermen of the office of Ermond & Engels to move to Liverpool, England and for young Frederick to take over sole management of the office in Manchester, England.^[44]

Starting in with an article called "The Magyar Struggle" written on January 8, 1849, Frederick Engels, himself, began a series of reports on the Revolution and War for Independence of the newly founded Hungarian Republic.^[45] Engels' articles on the Hungarian Republic became a regular feature in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung under the heading: "From the Theater of War."^[46]

However, during the June 1849 Prussian coup d'état the newspaper was suppressed. After the coup, Marx lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported, and fled to Paris and then London. Engels stayed in Prussia and took part in an armed uprising in South Germany as an aide-de-camp in the volunteer corps of August Willich.^[47][48][49] Engels also brought two cases of rifle cartridges with him when he went to join the uprising in Elberfeld on May 10. 1849.^[50] Later when Prussian troops came to Kaiserlautern to suppress an uprising there, Engels joined a group of volunteers under the command of August Willich, who were going to fight the Prussian troops.^[51] When the uprising was crushed, Engels was one of the last members of Willich's volunteers to escape by crossing the Swiss border. Marx and others became concerned for Engels life until they finally heard from him.^[52] Engels traveled through Switzerland as a refugee and eventually made it to safety in England.^[7] On June 6, 1849 Prussian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Frederick Engels which contains a physical description of Frederick Engels as "height: 5 feet 6 inches; hair: blond; forehead: smooth; eyebrows: blond; eyes: blue; nose and mouth: well proportioned; beard: reddish; chin: oval; face: oval; complexion: healthy; figure: slender. Special characteristics: speaks very rapidly and is short-sighted."^[53] As to his "short-sightedness," Engels, himself, admitted as much in a letter written to Joseph Weyedemeyer on June 19, 1851 in which he says he was not worried about being selected for the Prussian military because of "my eye trouble, as I have now found out once and for all which renders me completely unfit for active service of any sort."^[54] Once he was safely in Switzerland, Engels began to write down all his memories of the recent military campaign against the Prussians. This writing eventually became the article published under the name "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution."^[55]

Back in Britain[link]

Friedrich Engels' house in Primrose Hill, London

In order to help Marx with the new publishing effort in London, Neue Rheinsche Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue, Engels sought ways to escape the continent and travel to London. On October 5, 1849, Engels arrived in the Italian port city of Genoa.^[56] In Genoa, Engels booked passage on the English schooner, Cornish Diamond under the command of a Captain Stevens.^[57] The voyage across the western Mediterraean, around the Iberian Peninsula by sailing schooner took about five weeks. However, finally on November 10, 1849 the Cornish Diamond sailed up the Thames River to London with Engels on board.^[58]

Once Engels made it to Britain, Engels decided to re-enter the Manchester company in which his father held shares, in order to be able to support Marx financially so he could work on his masterpiece "Das Kapital". Engels didn't like the work but did it for the good of the cause.^[59][60] Unlike the first time he lived in England, in 1843, this time, Engels was under surveillance from the secret police, and had `official' homes and `unofficial homes' all over inner city Manchester where he lived with Mary Burns under false names to confuse the police.^[25] Despite his work at the mill, Engels found time to wrote his monumental work on Luther, the Reformation and and the revolutionary war of the peasants in 1525. This work was entitled The Peasant War in Germany.^[61] Engels also wrote some important newspaper articles like "The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution which he finished in February 1850,"^[62] and "On the Slogan of the Abolition of the State and the German 'Friends of Anarchy'" written in October 1850.^[63] In April 1851, Engels wrote the pamphlet, "Conditions and Prospects of a War of the Holy Alliance against France."^[64]

When Louis Bonaparte carried out a coup against the French government and made himself president for life on December 2, 1851, Marx and Engels, like many people, were shocked. In condemning this action, Engels wrote to Marx on December 3, 1851 about the coup.^[65] Engels characterized the coup as "comical"^[66] and referred to coup as occurring on "the 18th Brumaire"--the date of the coup according to the 1799 republican calendar of France under Napoleon I.^[67] Marx was later to incorporate this comically ironic characterization of Louis Bonaparte's coup into his book on the coup. Indeed, Marx even called the book "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Lois Bonaparte" again using Engels suggested characterization of the coup.^[68] Marx also borrowed Engels quote of Hegel that "history occurred twice, once as a tragedy and secondly as a farce" on the very first paragraph of his new book.^[69]

Meanwhile, while working at the mill in Manchester, England owned by his father, Engels started off working as an office clerk, the same position he held in his teens while in Germany where is father's company was based. However, Frederick worked his way up to become a partner of the firm in 1864. Five years later, Engels retired from the business and could focus more on his studies.^[12] At this time, Marx was living in London but they were able to exchange ideas through daily correspondence. One of the ideas that Engels and Marx contemplated was the possibility and character of a potential revolution in the Russia. As early as April 1853, Engels and Marx anticipated an "aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Russia^[70] which would begin in "St. Petersburg with a resulting civil war in the interior."^[71] The model for this type of aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Russia against the autocratic czarist government in favor of a constitutional government had been provided by the Decembrist Revolt of 1825.^[72] Although an unsuccessful revolt against the czarist government in favor of a constitutional government, both Engels and Marx anticipated a bourgeois revolution in Russia would occur which would bring about a bourgeois stage in Russian development which would precede a communist stage. However, by 1881, both Marx and Engels began to contemplate a course of development in Russia that would lead directly to the communist stage without the intervening bourgeois stage. This analysis was based on what Marx and Engels saw as the exceptional characteristics of the Russian village commune or the mir.^[73] However, later doubt was cast on this theory by Georgi Plekhanov.

How Engels lived in Weaste until 1869 is open to speculation as he destroyed over 1500 letters between himself and his friend after Marx's death, so as not to expose their secret life in the north west.^[25]

In 1870, Engels moved to London where he and Marx lived until Marx's death in 1883.^[7] His London home at this time and until his death was 122 Regent's Park Road, Primrose Hill, NW1.^[74] Marx's first London residence was a cramped apartment at 28 Dean Street, Soho. From 1856, he lived at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town, and then in a tenement at 41 Maitland Park Road from 1875 until his death.^[75]

Later years[link]

After Marx's death, Engels devoted much of his remaining years to editing Marx's unfinished volumes of Capital. However, he also contributed significantly to other areas. Engels made an argument using anthropological evidence of the time to show that family structures have changed over history, and that the concept of monogamous marriage came from the necessity within class society for men to control women to ensure their own children would inherit their property. He argued a future communist society would allow people to make decisions about their relationships free from economic constraints. One of the best examples of Engels' thoughts on these issues are in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Engels died of throat cancer in London in 1895.^[76] Following cremation at Woking Crematorium, his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head, near Eastbourne as he had requested.^[76][77]

Personality[link]

Friedrich Engels in 1868 ^[78]

Engels is commonly known as a "ruthless party tactician", "brutal ideologue", and "master tactician" when it came to purging rivals in political organizations. However, another strand of Engels’s personality was one of a "gregarious", "bighearted", and "jovial man of outsize appetites", who was referred to by his son-in-law as "the great beheader of champagne bottles."^[23] His interests included poetry, fox hunting, and he hosted regular Sunday parties for London’s left-wing intelligentsia where as one regular put it, "no one left before 2 or 3 in the morning." His stated personal motto was "take it easy", while "jollity" was listed as his favorite virtue.^[79]

Tristram Hunt, author of Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, sums up the disconnect between Engel's personality, and those Soviets who later utilized his works, stating:

"This great lover of the good life, passionate advocate of individuality, and enthusiastic believer in literature, culture, art and music as an open forum could never have acceded to the Soviet Communism of the 20th century, all the Stalinist claims of his paternity notwithstanding."^[23]

As to the religious persuasion attributable to Engels, Hunt writes:

"In that sense the latent rationality of Christianity comes to permeate the everyday experience of the modern world— its values are now variously incarnated in the family, civil society, and the state. What Engels particularly embraced in all of this was an idea of modern pantheism (or, rather, pandeism), a merging of divinity with progressing humanity, a happy dialectical synthesis that freed him from the fixed oppositions of the pietist ethos of devout longing and estrangement. “Through Strauss I have now entered on the straight road to Hegelianism. . . . The Hegelian idea of God has already become mine, and thus I am joining the ranks of the 'modern pantheists",' Engels wrote in one of his final letters to the soon-to-be-discarded Graebers."

• Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels By Tristram Hunt. 2010. Page 43.

Ideological legacy[link]

Lenin wrote: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world...In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others."^[80]

But Tristram Hunt argues that Engels has become a convenient scapegoat, too easily blamed for the state crimes of the Soviet Union, Communist Southeast Asia and China. "Engels is left holding the bag of 20th century ideological extremism," Hunt writes, "while Marx is rebranded as the acceptable, postpolitical seer of global capitalism."^[23] Hunt largely exonerates Engels stating that "in no intelligible sense can Engels or Marx bear culpability for the crimes of historical actors carried out generations later, even if the policies were offered up in their honor."^[23]

Other writers, while admitting the distance between Marx and Engels and Stalin, are less charitable, noting for example that the anarchist Bakunin predicted the oppressive potential of their ideas. "It is a fallacy that Marxism's flaws were exposed only after it was tried out in power.... [Marx and Engels] were centralizers. While talking about 'free associations of producers', they advocated discipline and hierarchy." ^[81]

Paul Thomas, of the University of California, Berkeley, claims that while Engels had been the most important and dedicated facilitator and diffuser of Marx's writings, he significantly altered Marx's intents as he held, edited and released in a finished form, and commentated on them. Engels attempted to fill gaps in Marx's system and to extend it to other fields. He stressed in particular Historical Materialism, assigning it a character of scientific discovery and a doctrine, indeed forming Marxism as such. A case in point is Anti-Dühring, which supporters of socialism, like its detractors, treated as an encompassing presentation of Marx's thought. And while in his extensive correspondence with German socialists Engels modestly presented his own secondary place in the couple's intellectual relationship and always emphasized Marx' outstanding role, Russian communists like Lenin raised Engels up with Marx and conflated their thoughts as if they were necessarily congruous. Soviet Marxists then developed this tendency to the state doctrine of Dialectical Materialism.^[82]

Major works[link]

[edit] The Holy Family (1844)

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The Holy Family was a book written by Marx & Engels in November 1844. The book is a critique on the Young Hegelians and their trend of thought which was very popular in academic circles at the time. The title was a suggestion by the publisher and is meant as a sarcastic reference to the Bauer Brothers and their supporters.^[83]

The book created a controversy with much of the press and caused Bruno Bauer to attempt to refute the book in an article which was published in Wigand's Vierteljahrsschrift in 1845. Bauer claimed that Marx and Engels misunderstood what he was trying to say. Marx later replied to his response with his own article that was published in the journal Gesellschaftsspiegel in January 1846. Marx also discussed the argument in chapter 2 of The German Ideology.^[83]

[edit] The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)

The Condition of the Working Class in England is a detailed description and analysis of the appalling conditions of the working class in Britain during Engels' stay in Manchester and Salford. The work also contains seminal thoughts on the state of socialism and its development. It was considered a classic in its time and must have been an eye-opener for most Germans. The work is still widely available today.

[edit] Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (1878)

Popularly known as Anti-Dühring, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science is a detailed critique of the philosophical positions of Eugen Dühring, a German philosopher and critic of Marxism. In the course of replying to Dühring, Engels reviews recent advances in science and mathematics and seeks to demonstrate the way in which the concepts of dialectics apply to natural phenomena. Many of these ideas were later developed in the unfinished work, Dialectics of Nature. The last section of Anti-Dühring was later edited and published under the separate title, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

[edit] Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)

In what Engels presented as an extraordinarily popular piece,^[84] Engels critiques the utopian socialists, such as Fourier and Owen, and provides an explanation of the socialist framework for understanding capitalism, and an outline of the progression of social and economic development from the perspective of historical materialism.

[edit] The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is an important and detailed seminal work connecting capitalism with what Engels argues is an ever-changing institution – the family. It was written when Engels was 64 years of age and at the height of his intellectual power and contains a comprehensive historical view of the family in relation to the issues of class, female subjugation and private property.

Sources[link]

• Carlton, Grace (1965), Friedrich Engels: The Shadow Prophet. London: Pall Mall Press
• Carver, Terrell. (1989). Friedrich Engels: His Life and Thought. London: Macmillan
• Green, John (2008), Engels: A Revolutionary Life, London: Artery Publications. ISBN 0-9558228-0-7
• Henderson, W. O. (1976), The life of Friedrich Engels, London : Cass, 1976. ISBN 0-7146-4002-6
• Hunt, Tristram (2009), The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-7139-9852-8
• Mayer, Gustav (1936), Friedrich Engels: A Biography (1934; trans. 1936)

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Friedrich Engels

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Friedrich Engels

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Friedrich Engels

• Marx/Engels Biographical Archive
• The Legend of Marx, or “Engels the founder” by Maximilien Rubel
• Reason in Revolt: Marxism and Modern Science
• Engels: The Che Guevara of his Day
• The Brave New World: Tristram Hunt On Marx and Engels' Revolutionary Vision
• German Biography from dhm.de

Works by Engels[link]

• The Marx & Engels Internet Archive at Marxists.org
• Marx and Engels in their native German language
• Works by Friedrich Engels at Project Gutenberg
• Libcom.org/library Frederick Engels archive
• Works by Friedrich Engels (in German) at Zeno.org
• Pathfinder Press
• Friedrich Engels, “On Rifled Cannon," articles from the New York Tribune, April, May and June, 1860, reprinted in Military Affairs 21, no. 4 (Winter 1957) ed. Morton Borden, 193-198.