ABSTRACT
In the history of Marxism, Engels’ relation to Marx and to his work has given rise to two kinds of reactions: on the one hand a rather positive reaction, which emphasizes the financial, moral and spiritual support Engels’ friendship represented for Marx; on the other hand a rather negative reaction, which deplores the reductive effects of philosophic and scientific initiatives of Engels concerning the originality and depth of his friend’s thought. Regarding the first reaction, it is undeniable that Marx had an immense existential and intellectual debt, in fact entirely acknowledged by him, towards his friend. We know that Marx never had stable work throughout his entire life, and it was the fortune of his friend that financed his family’s material existence. Engel’s intellectual influence on Marx was also considerable. Marx began to take in political economy from 1844 onwards, and his philosophic and scientific interest came from Engels’ pioneering study entitled Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie (Engels 1844; see Hollander 2011: 25–42). Marx, who had always expressed the great admiration he nourished for this study, drew his inspiration from the critical thesis of the latter throughout his work. Besides the common work both friends had undertaken after their meeting in Paris in August 1844 (such as Die Heilige Familie 1845, Die deutsche Ideologie 1846, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei 1848, etc.), several theoretical and empirical analyses, statistical studies and fieldwork that Marx introduced into his economic works were provided by Engels (in particular his Die Lage der arbeitende Klasse in England, in 1845).
