Book Description
Virtually everything Marx and Engels ever wrote on labor strikes and trade unions has been collected in this volume for the first time. It includes vivid, often eyewitness accounts of many of the greatest strikes and labor struggles of the last century.
This original and valuable collection challenges the prevailing assumption that Marx and Engels cared little for trade unions and their role in the transition to socialism or that they had little practical involvement with unions. Lapides illuminates the immense part personally played by Marx and Engels in helping to establish the modern labor movement. Covering the period 1844-1894, the book features graphic and moving portrayals of contemporary labor stuggles, candid personal views of various labor leaders, biting polemics against socialist rivals, and eloquent passages. Lapides provides an introduction that places the excerpts in historical and theoretical context. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Probably the best English-language work on Engels
In fact, comparable to Gustav Mayer's immense work on biography and theory of the grand man, Friedrich Engels. Hunley wrote this apparently as a "Deputy Command Historian" in the USAF; I have no idea what that is, but his affiliation with the US military has in any case in no way prevented him from writing an excellent and balanced analysis of Engels' works and, of course, his relation to Marx.

Engels has been much maligned by Marxists of all sorts, something eagerly adopted by non-Marxist historians looking for an easy explanation for the degeneration of socialism in the first half of the 20th Century. Even otherwise competent people like Terrell Carver and Shlomo Avineri have gone along with this tendency. Fortunately for those of a more critical mind, in comes J.D. Hunley, according to his own political statement something of a libertarian, to set the record straight. And that he does with excellence in both style and substance.

Hunley starts by giving a rapid but effective overview of Engels' life, dividing it into an early and a mature period. He shows the way Engels abandoned his faith, the influence of the Young Hegelians, and the development of the extreme width and depth of Engels' knowledge and erudition over the years. He succesfully refutes the view of Stedman-Jones that Engels' character was that of a disappointed believer looking for a new faith; on the contrary, Engels is shown as a critical and consistently materialist thinker.

In the middle part of the book, probably the most important and by now unfortunately dreadfully necessary, Hunley refutes all the negative stereotypes attributed to Engels over the decades, particularly those by Marxist analists and biographers. He goes into the "dichotomist" view, which sees the theories of Engels and of Marx as very different, and shows the degree to which this is untenable. Delightful here are the sections where he subtly shows how the authors arguing this dichotomy contradict themselves, for example praising Marx and blaming Engels when saying the exact same thing. One of the authors involved even praises Marx' clearly superior view, not realizing the quote involved was written by Engels!

Hunley also goes into the view of Engels as being more technologically determinist or positivist in the natural sciences than Marx, showing that the former is untenable since every determinist phrase used by Engels can be shown to have been used or agreed to by Marx as well. The latter point is addressed quite extensively by showing how the use of concepts like "laws of nature" is the same with both Marx and Engels.

The final dichotomy Hunley rejects is that of Engels as father of social-democrat reformism. The (in)famous statement where the SPD in Germany is praised for its use of the ballot instead of the barricades is put into the context of military strategy, and is besides shown to have been heavily censored into a reformist view by Liebknecht et al., something Engels got very angry about. Hunley also compares Engels' "Principles of Communism" with the "Communist Manifesto", largely written by Marx, and shows that they say essentially the same things on every significant point. Finally, Engels is established to have been just as 'humanist' as Marx, in asserting the primacy of humans as actors in history in an equal manner (and sometimes stronger) as Marx.

Hunley ends with a chapter on the intellectual partnership between Marx and Engels, and while never saying this, quite correctly leaves no other conclusion possible than to view Marx and Engels as people who worked at an equal level of intellectual competence and who generally agreed on all matters of socialist theory, but at the same time different people with very different characters and temperament. One can go on blaming Engels for everything in a rather silly attempt to 'save' Marx from the errors of his followers, but Hunley shows what they both actually wrote about the controversial issues: and, to paraphrase Harry Truman, the buck stops there. ... Read more

Book Description
Presents the thought of Marx and Engels as sources of critical self-understanding of ourselves and our institutions, as well as sources of ideals for making ours a better world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Amazingly insightful!
I have been trying to get an understanding of Marx/Engels that I could be comfortable with for years. This is it! Written without having to excise Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky/Mao to understand it. Mr. Schmitt is right-on with his very readable description of the nature of bourgeois hegemony of political power within the modern state.

He is very honest with the reader about where he thinks the holes are in Marx's theories. This should be required reading for anyone on the "Left", as well as for any young person attempting to understand how our society really works.

Explains complex philosophical insights without jargon.
Too often Marx and Engels are reduced to philosophical caricatures inorder to serve an author's own agenda.Richard Schmitt's book is noteworthfor his careful analysis of the enduring issues and insights of Marx andEngels.I enjoyed this refreshing reminder of what all the fuss was about. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A must Read!!!
A must read!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

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

Book Description
A thoroughly researched, full exposition of Marx's and Engel's ideas on morality and ethics. ... Read more