The Frock-coated Communist: The Life and Times of the Original Champagne Socialist

by Tristram Hunt

Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable, middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman. Yet Engels was also the co-founder of international communism - the philosophy which in the 20th century came to control one third of the human race. He was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless party tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so Karl Marx could write Das Kapital. Tristram Hunt relishes the diversity and exuberance of Engels's era: how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy.

Genres: Biography, History, Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Philosophy, European History

406 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tristram Hunt is the author of Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels and Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City. One of Britain’s leading young historians, he writes regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, and The Times, and has broadcast numerous series for the BBC. A lecturer in history at the University of London, Hunt represents Stoke-on-Trent in the British Parliament, where he serves as the education spokesman for the Labour Party.

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an excellent title Tristram Hunt gave to his book , one which is so apt. Engels was not your average revolutionary. Born into a well heeled manufacturing family in Germany – the family being the principal employer in his home town, he did wear a frock-coat throughout his life. He also hunted with the Cheshire Hunt, one of the most prestigious foxhunting outfits in England. At that time he was working in the family firm in Manchester using his financial wherewithal to further the socialist/communist cause. A loyal (almost Christ like loyalty!) friend to Karl Marx whose family he bankrolled for the rest of his life. Importantly he was Marx’s collaborator and work slave, doing a lot of the written spade work for The Communist Manifesto and enabling Marx to write Das Kapital.


Engels’ role was pivotal for Marx and Marxism: there to promote the great man and safe guard his legacy (Marx predeceasing his friend by over 10 years).Engels was happy to be in Marx’s shadow even after his friend’s death. His energy levels left me breathless, merely contemplating his punishing work schedules.

Whilst true to his beliefs and principles it was hard to avoid the conclusion that he was naive: eg lots of Marx family members hanging on to the Engels’ frock-coated tails and expecting him to constantly bail them out of financial difficulties. His heart was in the right place and we follow him promoting the communist revolution throughout Europe and parts of the new world. That part of the book was not always easy for me to follow and my attention tended to wander. After his death Engels’ name was given to a town in Russia, its inhabitants exhorted to honour comrade Engels’ example throughout their slave like lives. Ironically, like Engels, many of these inhabitants were of German origin. They would be scattered to the winds (and worse) by Uncle Joe on Hitler’s invasion of Russia, perceiving them to be traitors to the cause and to their adopted country.

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

ENGELS: COMMUNIST, REVOLUTIONARY, FACTORY BOSS, "GENERAL", HUNTSMAN, WRITER, FEMINIST & ALL ROUND SOUND BLOKE

This is a fine, readable biography of Friedrich Engels in a similar vein to Francis Wheens "Karl Marx" but not such a virtuso performance. It more than competently covers Engels rich and varied life, anchoring it in the context of his times, as he journeys from his birth place in Germany to exile in London with more than a few points in between. The tone of the book is generally sound, and not infrequently quite funny - as is Engels. . . and Marx for that matter. There is an element of finger wagging on Hunts part about some of Engels real or alleged misdemeanours, but I rather think M.A. Krul in his above (or below?) review is being rather too sensitive in regarding this as "hostility" towards Engels on Tristram Hunts part.

The philosophical roots and theory of Marxism are clearly explained for those of us, like myself, who are a little light on the nitty gritty of Marxist theory. Developments in Engels wide intellectual interests are giving room as well as his copious writings on issues as diverse as Communism, Science, Feminism, Family and Warfare. His relationship with Marx recieves ample coverage and it is evident from this, and other books Ive read, that they got on like a house on fire: writing to each another daily and when they were both in London they visited each other daily aswell (and this despite Marxs perpetual cadging!). When Marx died Engels looked after his intellectual, aswell as his biological, offspring.

I was sorry that the book had to end which is always a good sign, and while there are a few quibbling problems with the book (which could have done with being polished up a little) I wouldnt hesitate to reccommend it to anyone whether or not they are ideologically committed, or even sympathetic, to Socialism.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, really well done. It is a challenge to reconstruct the atomosphere of mid nineteenth century England in which Engels and Marx thought and wrote. It is easy to describe events, but challenging to show us why their brilliant socialist tracts had such traction. Economic disparity alone can't explain it. I am rooting for the revival of socialist thought as we face the dire economics in America in 2009.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I have read some of Engels' works and many of the Marx-Engels works and, of course, many of Marx' "solo" authored works, I had little information about Friedrich Engels the person. I did know that there was a tension between his role as a socialist thinker and his business role, making money off of the work of proletarians. Of course, the counterargument is that, as much as he was uncomfortable with this, it allowed him to financially support Marx's life work.

I found this a good biography of a major figure in politics and political thought. Whether or not one might agree with Marx and Engels, they are important figures historically. The more that we understand the context in which their work developed, the better off we are in understanding the whys and wherefores of such writing.

Many have viewed Engels as a second rate thinker. This book seems to do a nice job in debunking that. The evidence here (and elsewhere) is that he made genuine contributions to joint works with Marx (such as "The German Ideology"); he also wrote some solid works on his own; he ended up completing "Das Kapital" after Marx's death, using the latter's almost undecipherable notes and fragments for these manuscripts.

The book contributes more than summaries of Marx' and Engels' writings. We learn quite a bit about Marx--and surely a great deal about Engels. They became friends and collaborators while in Germany. They dabbled in revolutionary movements, without accomplishing a great deal by their active work on the parapets. Their family lives diverged greatly, with Marx having a brood of children, doting on them. Engels only formally married once, as his second partner lay near death. His relationship with the Burns sisters is rather nicely told--a tempestuous relationship with the elder sister and a more comfortable relationship with the younger sister, who became Engels' partner upon the death of the elder sister. Engels' relationships with Marx’s children and sons-in-law add a nice, sometimes poignant, touch.

Some questions arise for me in the selection of subjects in this book. For instance, I would have thought that at least a few pages should have been devoted to "The Economic and Philosophical" manuscripts, in which Marx began playing with themes that were later elaborated (e.g., alienation).

The story of Engels' life is valuable in its own right. The tension between his business-oriented family and his own youthful radical views. He often found himself on the "outs" with his family. He was pretty wild while young, drinking a great deal and living a reasonably dissolute life. His interest in issues of politics and philosophy saw him attending lectures of major figures and reading the works of key philosophers. His relationship with a group of Young Hegelians ("die Freien") accelerated his radical thinking. It was during that time that he met Marx. Their collaboration (and friendship) began at that point.

The book does a nice job of showing how dedicated Engels was toward Marx, subordinating his own philosophical ambitions to support the work of Marx. At that, the two worked together on some major co-authored works, such as "The Communist Manifesto" and "The German Ideology" and "The Holy Family." Engels wrote a book that generated some visibility early on, "The Condition of the Working Class in England" as well as later in life, such as "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State."

He was more than just a writer and a collaborator of Marx; He was a political activist (although he and Marx weren't always comfortable working in organizations where people would disagree with them). He played a role in socialist organizations, often in leadership positions. He wrote pamphlets and articles that advocated change.

If you are interested in learning more about Friedrich Engels as a thinker, a political actor, and as a person, this book will be useful reading.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's call this a solid 3.5 stars. It works best when it's exploring the character and personal history of Engles, as well as his views of the people in his life (particularly Marx...Engles' view of Marx up close are the highlights of this work). But when it gets into the minutiae of theory and ideology, the storytelling bogs down -- you can't make theory and ideology great & enjoyable reading, no matter how hard you try. No wonder Socrates didn't write anything down.

[Tanroop · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent window into the world and ideas that shaped Engels and his partner Marx. Hunt does an excellent job situating their beliefs in an intellectual milieu that characterized 19th century Europe. As someone sympathetic to many of the ideas of Marx and Engels, it was nice to get to read about the men behind the philosophy. Engels was a much more colorful character than I expected, and his devotion to the Marx clan was endearing. I also ended up learning quite a bit of theory from this.

While Hunt makes a convincing argument that Engels doesn't deserve "blame" for the excesses of Marxism-Leninism in the 20th century, one can certainly see the seeds being planted during his life. He had a tendency to rage at ideological "deviations" on the left, and both he and Marx could credibly be accused of a more academic than humanistic interest in the working classes.

Nonetheless, I come out of this book with an increased appreciation for Engels the writer, and Engels the man. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of socialism or communism.

[RYD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about Friedrich Engels through this book. I had been unaware of his background as a scion of the mill industry, and I did not know the sacrifices he made on behalf of Karl Marx. The biography also did a good job of stressing Engels' clear humanitarian impulses and intellectual rigor.

Here's what the author had to say about Engels given the Soviet Union:

"Engels was highly skeptical of vanguard-led, top-down revolutions like those with which communist parties seized power in the twentieth century. He always believed in a workers' party led by the working class itself (rather than by intellectuals and professional revolutionaries), and he remained adamant that the proletariat would arrive at socialism through the contradictions of the capitalist system and the development of political self-consciousness rather than by having it imposed upon them by a self-selecting communist leadership. 'The Social Democratic Federation over here and your German-American Socialists share the distinction of being the only parties that have contrived to reduce Marx's theory of development to a rigid orthodoxy which the working man is not expected to arrive at by virtue of his own class consciousness; rather it is to be promptly and without preparation rammed down his throat as an article of faith,' he complained pointedly to Adolph Sorge in May 1894. The emancipation of the masses could never be the product of an external agent, a political deus ex machina, even if it came in the form of V.I. Lenin. Moreover, as his support for the German SPD suggests, Engels was inclined toward the end of his life to advocate the peaceable, democratic road to socialism, acting through the ballot box rather that the barricades (while always retaining the moral right to insurgency). In the specific Russian context, it is most likely that Plekhanov's post-1917 'Menshevik' demands for a period of bourgeois rule and capitalist development before any effective transition to a socialist state would have been more in tune with Engels's thinking the the Bolshevik will to power."

[Joey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to do some reading on the author as the emphasis on Engles being jingoistic racist huckster is such a child's farce I knew this guy had to be a neo liberal. Worse: A hyper Zionist former Blair Labour MP who wrote this book, amidst his fantasy land excursions to foreign countries, funded by his position as leech (trustee) to the predatory British lottery system, all about how M and E spent too much time and money playing savior traveling state to state and how their commitments were false because of greed. Important as the author will lambast anachronism of his own invention and excoriate Engels and Marx on hearsay from letters less about their actual being and more as a literary punching bag representing his own self imposed vampirism. There's little subtlty to this charade. It is clearly an attempt to cripple the reclamations of what have been deemed sanitary leftisms for the anti war left by the pro war neoliberal and soc Dem. The rhetoric used when deviating from straight fact is always the key to the authors intent and in this work the use of huckster is an almost MK Ultra hypnogogic loop, exacerbated by the utter laziness of the work. No self respecting professor would have even assigned a letter grade to a research paper length abridgement of this, which leans into the conclusion of the authors hypocritical arc. The only reason this book attacking the use of capital for criticism of the state was funded and published was because of the legitimate threat to capital the likes of Jeremy Corbin were showing to be in Parliament. You know... Part of the state.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not enough of an expert to comment on the previous reviewer's dismay about Hunt's deficiencies in depicting 19th century Germany, but suffice it to say that whatever they are, they don't affect the central narrative enough to dismiss the whole book. In fact, most of the context of Engels's story is Victorian England, which clearly is the author's speciality. The narrative flows very nicely; the chronicle of Engels's life is coloured with contextual information and discussions of the 'supporting cast' including, obviously, Marx. There is the required womanising, drinking and gossip, but mostly the personal side of Engels is discussed in relation to the international socialist circles and his guarding of Marx's heritage. In the latter lies the one disappointment of the book: as much as the author makes of Engels being consciously the 'second fiddle' to Marx, he never offers an _explanation_. Why was this so? This is of course a notoriously difficult question to answer, and many have gone down the easy, narrow and most likely fallacious route of psychonanalysing their subjects (e.g. Radkau's Max Weber). However, some kind of 'theory'--no matter how tentative--would have been interesting and would have provided a lens through which to read the otherwise brilliant, but descriptive narrative.

[Jim Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Jim Cook’s review): Published in Britain as The Frock-Coated Communist (the version I read), I found this book to be an interesting and lively biography of the life and times of Engels. It has two sets of photographic plates, interesting illustrations dispersed throughout the text, and a reasonable set of notes and bibliography.

One caveat, though. It’s not a work of deep scholarship and important Engels scholars (eg, Terrell Carver) have trashed Hunt’s book in reviews.

Regardless of some academic criticism, I think this “bio-lite” potentially brings Engels to the attention of many people who either have never read any of his work or who are completely misinformed about it. Recommended.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marx and Engels are inextricable. Engels developed his own ideas independently but deferred to Marx as a far better communicator and theorist. After Marx died, Engels ensured that his works were completed, properly edited, published and promoted. It is fascinating and helpful to appreciate the separate contributions Engels did make without falling into the mistaken idea that he and Marx were in any important way divergent. They were rather each others’ best critics and stimulants. But it is also not correct to try and interpret Marxism without taking Engels into account.

Much of 20th century history can be traced to the impact and evolution of Marxism and of course reactions to Marxism. Obviously later “Marxists” wanted the credibility and status that goes with their association with Marx, cited Marx and Engels in support of their own proposals and actions, argued ad nauseam about who had the true inheritance, but that does not mean we have to accept their claims of authenticity. Why for example would we be required to believe the claims of a pathological liar and psychopath like Stalin? On reflection, how could that ever make sense? One answer is of course that it suits some sources to accept Stalin’s claims, for example, because that helps to discredit Marxism without proper scrutiny. It is worth discrediting Marxism because – and only because - it remains relevant to current circumstances.

Actually, many important works of Marx and Engels were not even available to read, let alone to influence anybody, until the third decade of the 20th Century, and so far as Marxism was influential this was largely through the medium of several short introductions written by Engels after Marx died. In a curious way, we are probably better placed today to appreciate what Marx and Engels really did say, and to evaluate their theories in a considered way in the light of evidence, than was possible throughout the last century.

To do this in a useful way, we need guides who are not overtly signed up to the Cold War camps of the past, either for or against. It is a task for a decent historian and on the whole Tristram Hunt has done a professional job of work here.

He certainly points out some of the howling errors in Engels' writing, not least when Engels tries to fit Science and mathematics into his dialectical methodology, and he bewails the poisonous legacy – vicious as well as plain stupid - of this strand of thought in soviet science under Stalin. [I suppose it is best compared to the impact of creationism on attitudes to science in the modern USA]. He also describes with resigned distaste the enthusiasm with which Engels engaged in sectarian infighting among revolutionaries and their allies, and suggests that a major error of judgement in Engels' dealings with English socialists probably played a significant part in preventing Marxism from becoming established there [for better or worse is another debate, but I suspect this claim is excessive since Engels himself offered better explanations for the failure of British workers to sign up to the Marxist, revolutionary agenda].

He describes the extent to which Engels was a creature of his own times, but also the way Engels learned to challenge and radically transform some of the mistakes in his youthful thinking. A major example was in Engels' very racist references to supposedly inferior ethnic groups in his youth and his later appreciation and writing about the evils of racism and colonialism in capitalist values. A different example is the way Engels moved away from his early commitment to violent, revolutionary change, and increasingly advocated a gradualist, democratic process of social transformation, based on his long experience of witnessing failed and abortive revolutions around Europe and his realistic appreciation of the powerful resources available to the modern, reactionary state. In this and other examples, it becomes clear how important it is to place the writings of Marx and Engels in their historical context and to recognise the way their thinking changed over time, so that merely because there is a text to support one point of view, say to show their racism, this does not demonstrate that this was their final, considered judgement. [This is how ruffians can misuse scripture to perverse ends in every ideological system.]

Where Engels was right, though, his work is of lasting importance. He is appreciated by modern feminists, for example, because he analysed the position of women with reference to economic rather than biological determinism. He identified nationalism as a reactionary force that could totally undermine working class solidarity and he predicted that a major European war would destroy all prospects of socialist change for a generation. His prediction in the 1880s of what a modern war would look like turns out to be chillingly accurate and he developed a true horror for warfare, in contrast with his youthful practical engagement as well as theoretical fascination with it.

What emerges as the greatest strength in the work of Marx and Engels is not their prophecies nor their political machinations, but their thorough, systematic and evidence based critique of the way 19th Century Capitalism played out around them, and in their own time, with Engels of course offering a well informed, insider view as a practical industrialist, entrepreneur and financial speculator. It is even the one part of Marxism that really was successfully prophetic, as witnessed for example in the treatment of workers in the emerging capitalism of China and India and the impact of globalisation generally. It is because they were so perceptive in describing their own, contemporary environment – based on empirical evidence and observation, but also structured by an effective explanatory model - that their work has had such lasting value, and continues to be relevant today.

[Damla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fikirler dünyayı değiştirebilir. İki adam dünyayı değiştirebilir. Sadece dünyayı değiştirirken ve öyle bir devrimin içindeyken, diğer yandan gençlik hayatlarını, aşık olmalarını, aile çatışmalarını okumak onları gözümüzde daha canlı, bize daha yakın yapıyor belki ve aslında hatasız olmadıklarını kabul ettiğimizde daha çok örnek alabiliyoruz. Sevdiğimiz tarihi figürlerin ve kuramların arasında belleğimizde kalan bilgi boşluklarını dolduracak yeni ve bir sürü doyurucu sayfa okumak çok güzel. Bildiğin bir konuda bile okusan yine de bilmediğin bir sürü şey çıkıyor ve sonra onların kafanda uyuştuğunu, birbirlerini tamamladığını görüyorsun. Her şeyden önce yeni sinaptik bağlantılar oluşuyor ve bilgi daha kalıcı oluyor belki de.
Marksist teoriyi az çok biliyorsanız kronolojik olarak ortaya çıkışını okumak da sebep sonuç ilişkileri kurmaya, ‘ne nerden ortaya çıktı’yı anlamaya büyük fayda sağlıyor. Ayrıca Engels’in eserlerinin içeriği, başlangıç ve anlaşılması için de ideal.
Tabi ki kısa, kolay ve çok akıcı bir okuma olmuyor ama değiyor. Salgın havasından kaçıp başka bir zaman dilimine gitmek de bence yararlı, zaten kitaplar hep güvenilir bir zaman kapsülü olmuştur.

[Anneli Waara · Rating 4 out of 5]

En fyllig och lärorik biografi över Engels och hans livslånga arbete med att vidareutveckla den marxistiska filosofin tillsammans med Marx. Ett radarpar, en livslång vänskap. Engels, en kapitalist som stred för socialismen med frukten av sina industriinvesteringar. Engels har senare givits skulden för kommunismens omänsklighet men författarens porträtt av denne livsbejakande och ständigt nyfikne man omöjliggör en sådan slutsats. Boken innehåller långa stycken detaljerad beskrivning av tankarna, som kan kännas tröttande, men behållningen är att följa personen genom livet. Från ung och hetsig till gammal, hjälpsam och mer eftertänksam.

[Alfredo Suárez Palacios · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si entras aquí es porque sabes lo que te gusta: mezcla perfecta y divertida de teoría y praxis. A veces se enfanga un poco en detalles como la larga descripción del Manchester industrial, pero aun así pillas lo importante, entender cómo era el hombre que vivió siempre a la sombra del genio. El hombre que dio un paso a un lado para que brillase su amigo, la amistad duradera de dos personas que a pesar de todo, nunca perdieron la vocación de hacer de este pozo infesto al que hemos sido arrojados en un lugar mejor. Gracias chicos, os debemos todo.

[Hana]

Personal Ads: Recovering Wall Street executive Googling Dialectical Materialism Hoping to find fellow travelers with well-disguised ISPNs

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hunt's tale begins, appropriately enough, with a subtle comparison of the mostly forgotten and stripmall-blighted city of Engels (formerly Pokrovsk) on the Volga river in Russia today to the bustling industrial-revolution era town of Barmen in the German Rhineland. Here and elsewhere throughout this biography of Engels the man, the urban historian Hunt is never far from his first love. Hunt's Engels closely tracks Marx's emphatic dictum that history's great men are a product of social context: men may make their own history, but they do not make it as they wish. The intellectual, social, religious and most importantly economical milieu in which Engels moved are front and center of this story. Nevertheless, it is as an intellectual historian that Hunt excels here.

"Marx's General" is a distinctly intellectual biography. Hunt's strong skills as a writer are apparent in his ability to thoroughly convince the reader that Engels and his ideology were a clear product of his times, without belaboring the point at all. The story-telling is lively, the characters enjoyable. Perhaps most impressively of all, Hunt does justice to the complicated philosophical foundations of Hegelianism that formed the assumptions with which Marx and Engels approached their social science.

Despite its considerable strengths, the book suffers from erring perhaps too much on being an intellectual biography. Engels the man shines through in a few fascinating passages. He was an avid fox-hunter, his friendship with Marx was severely challenged when his not-quite-official wife died, and, surprisingly to me, Engels proved to be a raging (and, from the perspective of 21st century America, obnoxious) homophobe. Engels left a voluminous correspondence, but his personal life takes a distinctly diminished role in a book that goes into considerable depth on Engels' writings on Marxism. Whereas Marx and Lenin's personal lives were front and center in "Love and Capital" and Service's "Lenin", respectively and thus gave us a sense of how the ideologies of these characters emerged from their everyday experiences, the Engels of "Marx's General" seems to emerge largely from the historical conditions he experienced rather than his development as an independent person. Perhaps this is appropriate, given that Marx, Engels and Lenin had little use for the view of individual thinkers as working in isolation of their social background. I can understand Hunt wanting to save space by omitting much details of Engels' fascinating personal life, and perhaps this won't be the book to do so. Hunt painted Engels the child and Engels the old man as fully human, whereas the Engels in Manchester seemed to exist largely through his social commentary and writings on scientific socialism. As a matter of personal taste, I found this a bit uneven. The focus on Engels' role in the cause during his Manchester years is by and large fine, except in one respect - Engels the businessman does not come through very clearly here, despite tantalizing hints of him being a competent, if at times abrasive, capitalist.

Despite this limitation, Hunt also sees the book as his opportunity to rescue Engels from the crude, mechanistic portrayal he has come to receive. In several effective passages (e.g., page 211-213), Hunt manages to quote a letter from Engels in which he renounces economic determinism as "if someone distorts (the materialist view of history held by Marx and myself) by declaring the economic moment to be the only determining factor, he changes that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, ridiculous piece of jargon." A more direct condemnation of the cult of dialectical materialism that emerged in the USSR could not be imagined.

Equally admirable is Hunt's epilogue, were he grapples seriously with the question of whether Engels bears the responsibility for the horrors of 20th century bolshevism. One needs to read Hunt's passages for oneself to get a feel for his case, but I note that I find his judgment on the matter fair and well-reasoned.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published in Britain as "The Frock-Coated Communist," this recent and celebrated biography of Engels is worthy of a recommendation. This, despite the author's social-democratic politics (or rather worse than social-democratic; since its publication, he has been installed as an unappetizing Blairite Labour Member of Parliament).

Hunt succeeds in bringing to life the debates of the Young Hegelians; the Revolution of 1848; Engels's pious and conservative family, and his own frustrations in helping to run the family business for 20 years; his skill as an agitator and organizer among workers, along with his lively participation in doctrinal squabbles; his womanizing; his epicurean wine consumption and fox-hunting; his then-unorthodox but loving relationships with two illiterate working-class Irish sisters. And above all, Hunt brings out the uniquely close relationship Engels had with Marx, in which Engels willingly subordinated his own talents in order to enable the full flowering of the unparalleled genius of his closest friend.

Hunt stumbles in his summation of the political significance of Engels's work. In his attempt to "exonerate" Engels for the mixed (at best) record of revolutionaries in the 20th century, Hunt "bends the stick" decidedly too far in the other direction. Against all reliable evidence that he has laid out in the preceding pages, Hunt concludes that Engels would have ended up a Menshevik; he also caricatures "Marxism-Leninism," for instance by portraying Lenin and his vanguard party concept as a throwback to Blanqui, which is nonsense. Revolutionaries of the twentieth century are accorded none of the sophisticated exposition that Hunt allots their 19th century forebears, and while this was not the subject of Hunt's book, he was at least obligated not to oversimplify too much, and he falls flat on that obligation.

These faults color the whole book, but they are most glaring only in the final chapter (epilogue), so the rest of the volume is still worth reading.

[Kris McCracken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a confession to make: I am an Engels Man.

Friedrich Engels used to be a name that was known throughout the world. Cities, towns and streets bore the name. Ships, railway engines and tanks. You don’t see so much of that these days…

It seems to me that – with this book – Hunt is seeking to recover Engels’s reputation from those who have portrayed him as responsible for Stalinist excesses and chosen him as the fall guy for the failures of Marxism. In this (at least halfway through the book), he’s partly successful.

Hunt has achieved much in constructing with some flair the intellectual, cultural and economic milieu that helped form Engels the man – businessman, armed revolutionary, philosopher, and pants man. The years surrounding preceding and following the tumultuous events of 1848 are full of the kinds of tales to keep a good biography ticking over (despite the necessary deviations into political philosophy).

Money, spies, revolution, bullets whizzing past, busty wenches, tempting maids, theories of surplus; so far this book has it all. It's well worth a look, particularly if you'd like to bone up on your socio-economic history.

I loved it.

[Bardon Kaldian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read tons of works on Marx, Engels, Marxism etc. Marx, it must be noted, towered over all socialists & communists with his erudition, intellectual acumen & creativity. Engels was the first to acknowledge this; he said that Marx was the genius, and all the rest just talents. Marx had a stronger “prophetic” strain than Engels, so although both co-authored prophetic “Communist Manifesto”, Engels had become more realistic & anti-apocalyptic over years, especially after Marx’s death, when he was treated as the Grand Old Patriarch of world socialism.

It is futile to speculate whether someone like Lenin would be “ideologically incapacitated” had Engels’ more nuanced down-to- earth ideology had won. Ultimately, every one in this trinity was, basically, apocalyptic enough & driven by quasi-religious ideological zeal.

[Conrad]

If that pest Karl Marx hadn't distracted Friedrich Engels from his studies with his interminable nagging for money, god only knows how different the 20th century would've turned out.

Engels managed to unite within himself a bitter loathing of the economic system that sustained him and a libertinage sadly lacking in Lenin, Marx, Mao, et al. He managed to identify and denounce the injustices of 19th century Europe with compassion that came from feeling that human existence is worth the effort of redeeming it, and while pushing the Revolution forward, he never suffered from the anhedonia of his fellow leftists.

God forbid I should ever fall prey to the orthodoxies of Marxism. Engelsism is another story.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite its terrible title this is a great book. I read it from an interest in finding out what Engels was doing when he was living in my home town of Manchester but it's served as a brilliant introduction to a period of history i knew next to nothing about. If i thought about Engels at all, which i didnt, then i would have imagined a quite boring, stiff backed, starched collar type of person but nothing could be further from the truth. This book steers a commendable route through informative research and entertaining anecdote. Highly recommended.

[Eugene Kernes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Friedrich Engels is the intellectual partner and editor of Karl Marx’s work. Without Engels support of Marx, much of the Marx work would not be published or reputation secure. This book contains Engels youthful background, intellectual arguments, taking part in battles, financial status, promiscuousness and dedications, but most importantly are the sacrifices he made to support the socialist cause. This book is not just about Engels, it is about the people and situations which made Engels see the world the way he did.

Even when Engels was young, he disagreed with his families earned income. Writing under a pseudonym to protect his family’s reputation. He was fascinated with community bonds in the novels he read. Those community bonds were being destroyed by the disbanding of guilds, undermined working conditions, and other assaults on paid labor. It was not capitalism that Engels was distraught over as the terminology had not yet existed, but the social cost of religious dogma. Although socialism is an ancient concept, it was secularism which facilitated the conditions for the construction of socialism.

There are many different types of socialism, some being ancient. Marx’s and Engels’s socialism is based on Hegelian philosophy. Hegelian philosophies see each era as becoming increases more progressive in every component such as art, religion, governance, with the usual trend of reason producing more freedom. Historical states are transient and develop in a process of change in the status quo followed by their synthesis. The state is seen as the embodied progress, reason, and what freedom means so each individual has to submit to the state for affirmation of knowledge and freedom. Capitalism brought with it class consciousness than was not present in feudalism, and communism will bring with it more freedom.

The centerpiece of the argument of going against capitalism is that the capitalistic mode of production competition creates waste and unemployment which result in market failures and cyclical trade cycles. Communism would eliminate competition by efficiently allocating capital and labor through a central authority. Without tension between individuals, there would be no crime, and production would increase. Production and social relations are bound together as having different way of earning a living changes the way individuals engage with each other.

Communism allows for a control of exchange, and end the alienation between production and worker. When politics and economic fundamentals are not aligned, their adjustments are usually painful transformations. For change to happen, it requires the proletariat to understand their role in the process. This creates the trend considered the law of history that history itself is a about class struggle. When the proletariat succeeds in taking control of the political process there will be no more class struggle so an end to history.

Ideas have an unfortunate aspect that they tend to be tied to the character of idea maker, their reputation matters not just the idea. In this case, to protect the socialist ideals meant protecting Marx’s reputation. Engels’s sacrificed his personal finances and reputation to protect Marx. Marx was a bourgeois who made an income writing, but not enough support the lifestyle. Engels provided Marx with additional sources of income to maintain the bourgeois lifestyle. Engels income came from exploited labor power which were used to finance Marx. Although Marx was married to Jenny, Marx took advantage of their housemaid who proceeded to have his child. Engels sacrificed his already fragile reputation by claiming Marx’s child as his own.

To promote Capitalism and the ideas held within, the pair decided to create a media firestorm by denouncing the book. There was also a need to defend Marx’s and Engels’s version of communism from alternative versions communism. After the death of Marx, Engels’s needed to edit many of the writing Marx’s had not finished. To protect the socialist idea, Engels’s needed to argue with many institutions which were supposed to act in a socialist manner but were actually protecting its members.

The problem with this book is not what is in it but what is left out. There were generally many events which were given their historical perspective, but not enough to make a full understanding of the situation. Not only the historical events were incompletely described but the ideas presented. Arguments against capitalism and other forms of socialisms which were not supported by Marx and Engels were present throughout, but not the problems with their own ideas. Marx’s and Engels’s ideas were not subject to a critical analysis as everyone else’s were.

As there were many different types of socialisms there were those who departed from socialism while professing to be supporters of the Marx’s. The author does not wish to blame Marx and Engels for the atrocities done in their name as Marx and Engels would not have condoned such acts, much like the author does not place blame done in Adam Smith’s name who would not have condoned many policies in his name. The problem is that Marx’s and Engels’s language and actions inspired those who proceeded them. This story should be read as a lesson and warning that it is not just the ideas that matter, it is how successors will choose to utilize the ideas.

[AHW · Rating 2 out of 5]

As this stew of mediocre liberal misinterpretations and casual misogyny towards the women of Engels’s circle was at least clearly written and willing to expose Engels’s dirty laundry, I was going to give it three stars. I knocked it down to two on finding out that Tristram Hunt crossed a university picket line - to teach a class on marxism, no less! We need careful, interpretivelu serious biography of Engels, not this silly trash.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed reading this book. It was a pleasurable read and also very informative. I liked how he discussed the context in which Engels wrote his major works and how Engels grappled with some of the contradictions of his life and values. His importance is very great.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written book about a most interesting person. Born a scion of a family of wealthy German textile factory owners, he didn't quite fit in and went into the world. First as an artillery officer in the Prussian army, then as a student and then as a revolutionary. At 24 he wrote a book about the horrible working and life conditions of Manchester textile workers - who could confront a 50% salary drop.

Along the way he met Karl Marx and the two become lifelong friends and collaborator. In order to sustain himself he took a management job at the Manchester cotton mill of his father, spending a huge part of his income supporting Marx and his family, so Marx could devote himself to his social economic theories. Quite a contradictory situation, exploiting workers as a factory owner, in order to be able to support the founder of communism, also aiding him in his scientific work. He never shied from the good life either, womanizing, and fox hunting with the aristocrats.

At 50 or so he retired from business, being financially indepedent, and moved to London, where Marx lived, consciously choosing to play the second fiddle, supporting and theorizing with Marx and organizing communist parties and movements all over Europe. He was the practical guy, the action man (Hunt somewhere mentions "beard stroking Fabians". Engels was the opposite, full of tremendous energy and always reading, writing, drinking and fox hunting. Also supporting many people, not just the entire Marx family on the side.

It is interesting to read that Marx and Engels continually updated their views. The were expecting the revolution to finally come through at several occasions and then had to update their theory to explain why it didn't happen after all. The end of the eighties seemed a very good period, as the British started to become socialist minded and tor organize (hold strikes!) while at the same time the right to vote become more widespread (exclusing woman). In that way the revolution would came about through the ballot box! The unfaltering belief in the inexorable advent of the classless society is quite touching and, it should be added, was quite plausible in the eighties and nineties of the 19th century.

So quite a full life. In an epilogue the author takes the trouble to explain that the ruthless and authoritarian conceptions of socialism and communism in Russia, China etc. were travesties of Marx and Engels's ideas. To them dialectics, historic materialism and whatever where a method of thinking about society and how it would develop by itself into something more equitable, adaptable to new developments in science and society. Not infallible truths to be violently enforced.

Must have been a nice guy to hang out with, this Engels.

[C]

Having recently read a biography of Marx, I wanted to learn more about the life of his intellectual partner Friedrich Engels. Hunt paints a picture of Engels as a man of many contradictions (a communist who was a wealthy businessman, a critic of bourgeois institutions who was an avid-fox hunter and member of clubs for bourgeois gentlemen, an anti-imperialist with a penchant for a cavalier use of racist language in correspondence with Marx and other friends, a feminist who was a rather lecherous womanizer in his youth). But he is also concerned with rescuing his subject's reputation as a man who failed to properly grasp Marx's work and thus inaugurated a tradition of rigid orthodoxies in Marxist thought best exemplified by Stalinism and all the horrors that arose therefrom.

In this I think Hunt is successful, for while he has little positive to say about, say, Engels' posthumously published Dialectics of Nature, readers are treated to an engaging story of a man who in his mid-twenties published a masterpiece of socialist writing in The Condition of the Working Classes in England, was a skilled (if at times less than entirely honest) figure in the world of 19th Century socialist politics, a talented journalist (particularly on military matters), a lucid popularizer of the more abstruse elements of Marx's thought, and the person to see the second and third volumes of Capital through to publication when those works were left in an state of incomplete disarray upon the death of their author.

I get the sense, perhaps, that Hunt (a former Labour MP in the UK) has a tendency to see in Engels a figure after his own heart, insofar as he emphasizes Engels' optimism towards the end of his life that the solution to capitalism may lie in electoral politics, which I think may be overstating the case a little. While this may have indeed been how Engels felt in the 1890s, and it may have in that case been the last position he ever held on the matter of how to end capitalism, this is almost certainly because he happened to die before the political situation in Europe changed such that he would have prioritized other means of ushering in an era of socialism, rather than this being a definitive ideological development. But on the whole, this is a small quibble, and I found this an extremely informative biography.

[Travis Weaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the thesis statements the author makes are laughably contradicted by the evidence he presents in terms of Engel's legacy. Though, many of the arguments stating that he led to revisionism fail to see the flow of Engel's and Marx's development and to account for the two comrades unity in many of these matters (will you call Marx a revisionist). But ultimately he did lay the foundation for Germany's revisionist turn. Not out of ideological faults but because he was a lush. Yes, drunk and exuding a fraternal love for his movement in the hopes that it would succeed, he made indirect comments that alluded to parliamentary power being the way to communism (he clarifies these statements in personal letter but not to the bulk of the party)

Engel's is an interesting figure and one whose life needs a bit of elucidation in order to understand the contradictory statements he often makes. On one hand he is an ardent follower of Marxism, but he often speaks from an emotional, somewhat patriotic, identity rooted in German romanticism and nationalist ideas. I think it also helps understand how he used Historical Marxism. He is often a champion of using this technique for practical application and sometimes with success but it is important to see how he so often failed and made a completely incoherent argument to help ground the applicability of the methods he presents.

Furthermore, this book does a great job of highlighting the philosophical battleground the Marxist found themselves in. This is where Engel really succeeds (and sometimes embarrassingly fails), he is able to show how Fauerbachs "Materialist Hegelianism" is actually much more enlightening than both the "traditional" scientific method of the enlightenment and it's Kantian-idealist philosophy from which it sprouted. Engel's Dialectic of Nature is a great intro into this subject (for a great failure, the book shows his application of dialectical materialism to Mathematics including a strong refusal of the square root of -1).

All in all, a great book and thoroughly enjoyable to read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book back in 2009 when it was first available, read the first few chapters and put it down. I came across it again in my collection last month and gave it another try. In the interim I have read quite a bit of Marx and a few older books of 1970’s and 80’s British Marxist literature, which assisted me in my understanding of this interpretation.

The book is a dense read, but in a good way, there’s enough secondary material to draw the readers interest. I particularly liked the domestic stuff about Engels and Marx’s daily lives, their relationship and family woes.

With regard the essence of the book, of Engels’ lifelong support of Marx and his self imposed secondary role in bringing Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto to the masses. I felt the author ( of whom I was not really a fan) conveyed a very balanced and enlightened perspective on Marxist Theology and its place in the latter half of the 19th Century.

The section on Feminism and patriarchal domination being a product of the Capitalist evolution, was very good and surprised me. I also liked the view of the author, that Engels discouraged revolutionary action by the proletariat after his own wartime experience and that of the Paris Commune. Both of which predated the Russian Revolution by some years.

The belief in change through the ballot box is highlighted by the author as one Engels’ tenets, which i wholeheartedly endorse.

This brings me to what I think is the main message of the book, that if Capitalism, particularly the current version ( post war neo-liberalist capitalism) is ever to be overturned, it won’t be by revolution. At the time this book was written the 2008 financial crash had happened and people were questioning the current ideology. So this authors message is perhaps wistful, given the taxpayer bailout that followed and the return to casino capitalism, facilitated by quantitive easing. But I do think his view is not far off the mark. Climate change and proxy wars could still be the spark that unites the proletariat into action through the ballet box.

[Tadas Talaikis · Rating 5 out of 5]

"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. (...) 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."

OK, almost read the book, without Engels Europe probably hadn't social democracy as it now has. He was very insightful man, just 100+ years ahead of the time.

Where it leads me is this. Unlimited growth within the ecosystem of the Earth is impossible. Let's say, everyone on Earth have everything, all basic needs are fulfilled, what happens next? Growth is stopped on the maintenance mode. Crook capitalists know that, and sequentially, should strive to destroy in order to achieve further so called "growth" (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism).

For example, when people believe that someone will "cure cancer", it may not actually happen, because it is always more profitable to sell shit (e.g. research shows that chemotherapy does not work), than "cure". At least in the so called "capitalism" state.

Human beings are programmed to and strive for profit, because it is tightly tied to the survival function, but he/ she should learn that that somewhere it should stop, because Earth's resources are limited.

[Barbara Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If, like me, all you knew about Marx & Engels was that they wrote the Communist Manifesto, but nothing more, this book gives an insightful look into the life and times of Friedrich Engels and his colleague, Karl Marx. This book weaves the times with the emerging dueling philosophies of 19th century Europe; examining the treatment of the workers in the emerging industrial powers of Germany and England. This books gives great insight into the authors of Communist Manifesto, the times and philosophy that shaped them, and acquits them for the horrors of the USSR's & PRC's reading of their philosophy as the basis of atrocities.