Friedrich Engels and Marxian Political Economy

Rejects the perception of Engels as perpetuator of a 'tragic deception' of Marx, and the body of opinion treating him as 'his master's voice'.

Samuel Hollander (Author)

9781107617308, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2014

424 pages, 3 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.65 kg

'This volume adds substantially to our understanding of the distinctive contribution made by Engels to nineteenth-century socialist political economy. Hollander's work makes clear Engels's role in shaping Marxian political economy in the 1840s and subsequently. Engels emerges in this work as a thinker whose capacity for self-effacement and deference to Marx too-often obscured the originality and importance of his contribution to socialist thinking. Engels in Hollander's rendition proves a more subtle and original theorist than he is often presented and certainly not as a proponent of the crude determinism which some have seen as his corruption of the Marxian legacy. Taken with his earlier volume … The Economics of Karl Marx, Hollander's Friedrich Engels and Marxian Political Economy represents a major addition to the scholarly literature on these two titans of socialist thought.' Noel Thompson, University of Wales, Swansea

This book rejects the commonly encountered perception of Friedrich Engels as perpetuator of a 'tragic deception' of Marx, and the equally persistent body of opinion treating him as 'his master's voice'. Engels' claim to recognition is reinforced by an exceptional contribution in the 1840s to the very foundations of the Marxian enterprise, a contribution entailing not only the 'vision' but some of the building blocks in the working out of that vision. Subsequently, he proved himself to be a sophisticated interpreter of the doctrine of historical materialism and an important contributor in his own right. This volume serves as a companion to Samuel Hollander's The Economics of Karl Marx (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Prolegomena
1. Engels' early contribution
2. The surplus-value doctrine, Rodbertus' charge of plagiarism, and the transformation
3. Economic organization, income distribution, and the price mechanism
4. Revisionism I: constitutional reform versus revolution
5. Revisionism II: social reform
6. The Engels–Marx relationship
7. A methodological overview
Epilogue: the immediate legacy.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Economics [KC], Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Philosophy [HP]