SOURCE: “The Political Ideas of the Young Engels, 1842-1845: Owenism, Chartism, and the Question of Violent Revolution in the Transition from ‘Utopian’ to ‘Scientific’ Socialism,” in History of Political Thought, Vol. VI, No. 3, Winter, 1985, pp. 455-78.

[In the following essay, Claeys attempts to explain Engels' theory of revolution by analyzing the political statements Engels made during his first stay in England from 1842 through 1844. Claeys traces Engels' development from the non-violent Owenite brand of socialism to Marxism, arguing that despite this transition, Engels still held that the violence of class conflict could be lessened through the employment of Owenite-type strategies.]

Most accounts of early Marxist political thought have concentrated upon the development of the young Marx from the ‘Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right’ (1843) through the German Ideology (1845-46) and on to the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) and the seminal analysis in Class Struggles in France (1850). While a degree of collaboration in the Holy Family (1844), the German Ideology and the Manifesto is acknowledged, the contribution of the young Engels to this development has not generally been treated with much care. It is usually conceded that the idea of the state as an agency of class despotism mainly originated with Engels, and that the latter reached conclusions about the necessity of proletarian revolution independently of Marx's thoughts on this subject.¹ Few writers, however, have tried to discuss in any detail the development of Engels' political opinions prior to his common endeavours with Marx. In this regard a lack of interest has been compounded by a deficit of information concerning Engels' activities in England between 1842-44, which remains the least well-documented period in his long career despite scholarly concern with the social context of one of Engels' best-known works, the Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.²

This article offers a detailed analysis of Engels' political statements during the period of his first visit to England with a view to elucidating his theory of revolution. It is argued that while Engels echoed his youthful revolutionary sentiments when he first arrived in England, he soon converted to the evolutionary and non-violent strategy of the Owenite socialists, with its emphasis upon the formation of model communist communities and the dissemination of propaganda. Engels held to this view for approximately two years, but was weaned from it by the failure of the strategy itself, by the arguments of the left-wing Chartists whom he had befriended, and by his early collaboration with Marx and the implications of the first statements of the materialist conception of history. For a time Engels accepted the view that the proletariat was to be the agency of social change, while nonetheless continuing to hope that communist propaganda (especially in its Owenite form) could prevent violence or dampen its excesses by an appeal to reason rather than to class hatred. Even up to 1848, moreover (if not considerably longer) he retained elements of his beliefs in Owenite communitarianism and Fourierism, while accepting Marx's argument that ‘local communism’ by example was an impossibility and that revolution had to sweep through the industrialized countries simultaneously. By 1846, too, he had come to accept the idea that the choice of the proletariat as the agency for overthrowing the old society was central to the new variety of communism which he and Marx saw as their own distinctive contribution to revolutionary struggle. It was this which constituted the advance of ‘revolutionary science’ over ‘utopian’ science, as this essential distinction was first put by Marx in the Poverty of Philosophy (1847). Hence the development of the opposition of ‘scientific’ to ‘utopian’ socialism, which through Engels' Anti-Dühring (1878) became central to Marxist historiography, and particularly the acceptance of the need for violent revolution which was later recognized as vital to this distinction, can be clarified through an analysis of the particular path taken by Engels in this period through Owenite socialism and towards Marxism.

I

When Engels first arrived in Britain in the autumn of 1842 he already considered himself as something of a revolutionary.³ Only a few months earlier he had been converted to communism during a visit to Moses Hess in Cologne, where Hess described him as being on arrival ‘an Anno I revolutionary’ and on departure ‘a wholly enthusiastic communist’.⁴ This transformation did not however mean that Engels shed his desire for or belief in revolution at this point. To the contrary, it is clear from his first articles in England that he expected and desired a revolution to take place there. Hence in ‘The English View of Internal Crises’, his first article from England written in late November 1842, he argued that

If Chartism has the patience to wait until it has won a majority in the House of Commons, it will have to go on for many a year to come holding meetings and demanding the six points of the People's Charter; the middle class will never renounce its occupation of the House of Commons by agreeing to universal suffrage, since it would immediately be outvoted by the huge number of the unpropertied as the inevitable consequence of giving way on this point.⁵

Shortly thereafter, too, he began a second article entitled ‘The Internal Crises’ with the question, ‘Is a revolution in England possible or even probable?’, and answered of the results of the 1842 strikes and disturbances that

a revolution by peaceful means is impossible and … only a forcible abolition of the existing unnatural conditions, a radical overthrow of the nobility and industrial aristocracy, can improve the material position of the proletarians. They are still held back from this violent revolution by the Englishman's inherent respect for the law; but in view of England's position described above there cannot fail to be a general lack of food among the workers before long, and then fear of death from starvation will be stronger than fear of the law. This revolution is inevitable for England, but as in everything that happens there, it will be interests and not principles that will begin and carry through the revolution; principles can develop only from interests, that is to say, the revolution will be social, not political.⁶

On his arrival in England Engels was hence committed to the view that a violent revolution by the proletariat was both inevitable and desirable. Its character was to be ‘social’ rather than ‘political’ in keeping with the ‘triarchy’ conception of Hess on the development of revolutions in philosophy in Germany, politics in France, and economics and industry in England.⁷ When we next hear from Engels some six months later in the ‘Letters From London’ (May-June 1843) it is evident that this view had been modified somewhat by his intervening experiences with the Owenite socialists and Chartists with whom he had associated regularly since his arrival (in the Owenite case, he implied that he had attended their meetings every Sunday at the ‘Hall of Science’ in Manchester).⁸ From these first reports on Manchester we can see that Engels was not only becoming very favourably inclined to many of the socialist doctrines of the Owenites, but that he was also affected by their choice of a policy of peaceful propaganda, writing that ‘despised and derided socialism marches forward calmly and confidently and gradually compels the attention of public opinion’.⁹ Describing the activities of both the Chartists and Socialists for the readers of the Schweizerischer Republikaner Engels emphasized that the Owenites had a very advanced, critical position on political economy and that they were ‘engaged in an open struggle against the various churches and do not want to have anything to do with religion’, with the result that ‘the English Socialists are far more principled and practical than the French’. Besides their atheistical propaganda, too, Engels noted of the political views of the Owenites that ‘they laugh at the mere Republicans, because a republic would be just as hypocritical, just as theological, just as unjust in its laws, as a monarchy’.¹⁰ Clearly the Owenite view of the inadequacy of ‘mere’ political reforms was one with which he found himself in agreement.¹¹

When we next hear from Engels (once again some six months later) in the series of articles for the leading Owenite journal (the New Moral World) entitled ‘Progress of Social Reform on the Continent’, the extent of his adherence to Owenite views and the general tenor of his political ideas are much clearer. Speaking for the German communists in general, Engels emphasized that

we agree much more with the English Socialists than with any other party. Their system, like ours, is founded upon philosophical principle; they struggle, as we do, against prejudices whilst the French reject philosophy and perpetuate religion by dragging it over with themselves into the projected new state of society. The French Communists could assist us in the first stages only of our development, and we soon found that we knew more than our teachers; but we shall have to learn a great deal yet from the English Socialists. Although our fundamental principles give us a broader base, inasmuch as we received them from a system of philosophy embracing every part of human knowledge; yet in everything bearing upon practice, upon the facts of the present state of society, we find that the English Socialists are a long way before us, and have left very little to be done. I may say, besides, that I have met with English Socialists with whom I agree upon almost every question.¹²

Engels hence classified what English Socialism had to offer as being more in the realm of the ‘practical’ than the ‘political’, in keeping with the triarchy conception of revolutionary developments. What one could learn from the history of specifically French developments was thus ‘what the future history of the English Chartists must be’, and this was doubtless the sort of advice which Engels gave his Chartist friends. But this did not mean that the political strategy pursued by the French socialists was the one Engels preferred to recommend himself. Here he argued that amongst the objections which could be made to the French communists

They intend overthrowing the present government of their country by force, and have shown this by their continual policy of secret associations … Even the Icarians, though they declare in their publications that they abhor physical revolutions and secret societies, even they are associated in this manner, and would gladly seize upon any opportunity to establish a republic by force. This will be objected to, I dare say, and rightly, because, at any rate, secret associations are always contrary to common prudence, inasmuch as they make the parties liable to unnecessary legal persecutions. I am not inclined to defend such a line of policy, but it has to be explained, to be accounted for; and it is done fully so by the difference of the French and English national character and government.¹³

This difference in strategy did not imply that Engels accepted what he took to be the Owenite view of the future mode of political rule, which he described as ‘more favourable to an elective monarchy’ than to a republic. He did however praise the Owenites for being ‘too enlightened to force their kind of government upon a people totally opposed to it’ since he claimed that it was evident that ‘to try this would involve this people in far greater disorders and difficulties than would arise from their own democratic mode of government, even supposing this to be bad’.¹⁴ Yet in involving himself to some degree in a debate amongst the Owenites on the best form of government for a community and for the principal Socialist organization, the Association of All Classes of All Nations, Engels also expressed his disdain for the language of liberal politics in a manner similar to that argued by the Owenites and most other socialists in this period. ‘Democracy’, he stated bluntly, was

as I take all forms of government to be, a contradiction in itself, an untruth, nothing but hypocrisy (theology, as we Germans call it), at the bottom. Political liberty is sham-liberty, the worst possible slavery; the appearance of liberty, and therefore the reality of servitude. Political equality is the same; therefore democracy, as well as every other form of government, must ultimately break to pieces: hypocrisy cannot subsist, the contradiction hidden in it must come out; we have either a regular slavery—that is, an undisguised despotism, or real liberty, and real equality—that is, Communism.¹⁵

The exact sources of Engels' hostility to ‘government’ in general cannot of course be ascertained. Such a sentiment cannot merely be labelled ‘anarchist’ though we know that Engels had read and was favourably impressed with the writings of Proudhon in this period. We also know that he found in the Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit of the German communist tailor Wilhelm Weitling the idea of ‘the abolition of all government by force and by majority, and establishment in its stead of a mere administration, organising the different branches of labour, and distributing its produce’. He was sufficiently acquainted with the writings of Saint-Simon in this period to have gained such a notion from this source. He also on occasion applied a Feuerbachian analysis of the ‘essence’ of the state to current affairs, as in the claim that ‘the essence of the state, as of religion, is mankind's fear of itself’. And, furthermore, he had been introduced in Manchester by his good friend the Owenite lecturer John Watts to the writings of William Godwin, and wrote in the spring of 1844 that Godwin had ‘attacked the very essence of the state itself with his aphorism that the state is an evil’ and that (again in a Godwinian vein) ‘the government in every state is but another expression for the level of education of the people’. Socialism could hence be described as ‘a principle transcending everything of a political nature’ in the context of which words like ‘state’ and ‘government’ were anachronistic.¹⁶

In bringing about this new form of organization the proletariat would not be acting entirely on its own. Although Engels' ‘social’ analysis and emphasis upon material interests made logical his early discussion of the proletariat as a source of revolution, it is clear that he expected some degree of guidance to come from the middle classes. In his earliest statements he held that middle class interests meant that ‘Chartism has not yet been able to gain any hold among educated people in England and will remain unable to do so for some time yet’, and that amongst the Chartists themselves ‘the party's few educated spokesmen are lost among the masses’.¹⁷ Two years later, in the autumn of 1844, this stress on the role of the middle classes was still present. To some degree this was simply the result of German conditions in particular, for as Engels wrote of German socialism in December 1844, ‘Up to the present time our stronghold is the middle class … this class in Germany is far more disinterested, impartial, and intelligent, than in England, and for the very simple reason, because it is poorer’. He added, however, that ‘We … hope to be in a short time supported by the working classes, who always, and everywhere, must form the strength and body of the Socialist party’.¹⁸ As part of the strategy of change, however, Engels also anticipated that the enlightened dedication of the workers would itself result in further support from the classes above them:

if … they have set their sights upon such a rational purpose, and one which desires the best for all mankind, as community of goods, it is self-evident that the better and more intelligent among the rich will declare themselves in agreement with the workers and support them. And there are already many prosperous and educated people in all parts of Germany who have openly declared for community of goods and defend the people's claims to the good things of this earth which have been appropriated by the wealthy class.¹⁹

For England Engels quickly came to see this necessary meeting of education and social force in terms of the uniting of the Chartist and Owenite movements. Certainly Engels felt that the future could only be described as lying with the proletariat as a class, however, for despite ‘all their roughness and for all their moral degradation’ it was still true that ‘It is from them that England's salvation will come, they still comprise flexible material; they have no education, but no prejudices either, they still have the strength for a great national deed—they still have a future.’ But this strength, represented by the Chartist movement, was in and of itself not sufficient. Chastising the Owenites in early 1844 for their lack of acquaintance with German philosophy, Engels nonetheless conceded that

that is their only shortcoming, and they are directly engaged in the rectification of this deficiency by working for the removal of national differences … But in any case they are the only party in England which has a future, relatively weak though they may be. Democracy, Chartism must soon be victorious, and then the mass of the English workers will have the choice only between starvation and socialism.²⁰

Engels was not of course alone in his wish to see the strength of the Chartists united to the social programme of the Owenites. On the Chartist side there were a few leaders (notably Bronterre O'Brien) who shared similar aims.²¹ Engels tended continually to overestimate both their strength and their dedication to the communist cause, however, writing in 1845 for example that the average Chartist ‘is more than a mere republican, his democracy is not simply political’, while admitting of the movement as a whole that its ‘Socialism is very little developed’.²² Even those Chartist leaders with whom he became close tended to see Engels as rather over-optimistic about English developments, with George Julian Harney in particular writing to Engels in early 1846 that

Your speculations as to the speedy coming of a revolution in England I doubt … I cannot see the likelihood of such changes in England at least until England is moved from without as well as within. Your prediction that we will get the Charter in the course of the present year, and the abolition of private property within three years will certainly not be realised;—indeed as regards the latter, although it may and I hope will come, it is my belief that neither you nor I will see it.²³

On the Owenite side, too, some attempt had been made to bring together Chartism and socialism before Engels came to consider the matter. As Engels' German friend from Bradford, Georg Weerth, had perceived, the general influence of Owenism on the Chartist movement from 1836 to the mid-1840s had been to aid in splitting the leaders of the latter on the question of physical force.²⁴ Some Owenites, however, had always felt that the strength of the movement should derive from the working rather than the middle classes. The Birmingham Owenite William Hawkes Smith, for example, writing in 1838, asked

Who shall first raise the standard of revolt against competition and selfishness, and commence the establishment of a purer system of morality—a more rational basis of Society, than any which is now influential? … to the greatest sufferers;—the producers of all wealth, who most practically feel the blunders and anomalies of a system which makes excessive production another name for increasing destitution—must we look for any great efforts at decided amelioration. These are the agents in the work of regeneration.²⁵

During the mid-1840s, too, Owenite lecturer James Napier Bailey attempted to unite the Chartist and Socialist movements under the banner of ‘Republican Socialism’ or ‘Charter Socialism’. These views, however, which argued against the more paternalistic aspects of Owen's rule over the movement as a whole, were studiously ignored by the central Owenite organization and found no reception among the Chartists (who at this point had begun to concentrate upon their Land Plan) either.²⁶ In essence the fairly orthodox economic views of the average Chartist (and his fears of Owenism's views on marriage and religion) as well as the stridently anti-political attitude of most Owenites stood in the way of any proposed union of the two camps.

It is quite clear that the form of communism to which Engels was most attached in this period, and to which he sought to help join the Chartist movement, was in fact the Owenite variety. In his ‘Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence’, written for the Deutsches Bürgerbuch at Darmstadt in late 1844, it was Owenite communitarianism which played the central role. Communism, which Engels defined as ‘social existence and activity based on community of goods’, had admittedly first been successfully practiced by various small religious sects, especially the Shakers. But, Engels argued, there was no necessary connection between religion and communism, and he gave an extensive description of the Owenite community at Harmony, Hampshire, which Weerth as well as various of the German socialists in London had themselves visited. The difficulties which had been experienced at Harmony (and which were shortly to prove its undoing) Engels excused as entirely due to the financial problems suffered by the Owenite organization. Of the actual results of community life he was emphatic that ‘We also see that the people who are living communally live better with less work, have more leisure for the development of their minds, and that they are better, more moral people than their neighbours who have retained private property’. Writing back to England on his propaganda efforts in Germany during a visit at home, Engels shortly after announced that a German communist (probably himself) had been ‘invited to draw up a plan of organization and regulations for a practical Community, with reference to the plans of Owen, Fourier, etc’.²⁷

It was in fact at this point, during late 1844 and early 1845, that Engels was at his most enthusiastic about communitarian socialism. On two successive occasions in early February 1845 he lectured to a group of the assembled burghers of Elberfeld, his hometown in the Wuppertal. Here, analysing the ‘divergence of interests’ as lying at the root of existing social problems, he argued that production would be regulated according to need in communist society, and specifically supported Owen's plans for the organization of the latter, ‘since these are the most practical and the most fully worked out’. In these communities an administrative body would manage the whole of social life, such that there would be no more wastage of labour power or production of useless luxuries, and no need of standing armies or other mechanisms of oppression.²⁸

Two points in Engels' Elberfeld speeches are of importance to understanding how he conceived the relationship between communitarian socialism and revolution at this point. The first is that he felt that different modes of implementing socialism were possible. The English, he argued, would ‘probably begin by setting up a number of colonies and leaving it to every individual whether to join or not’, while ‘the French, on the other hand, will be likely to prepare and implement communism on a national basis’. For the Germans Engels recommended three measures which he said were ‘bound to result in practical communism’: the general education of all children at state expense, the reorganization of the poor law system such that ‘all destitute citizens would be housed in colonies where they would be employed in agriculture and industry and their work organized for the benefit of the whole colony’, and a ‘general, progressive tax on capital’ established in order to fund the former reforms. This plan was close to that often offered by the Owenites, and allowed Engels to argue that ‘it is not intended to introduce common ownership overnight and against the will of the nation, but … it is only a matter of establishing the aim and the ways and means of advancing towards it’.²⁹

Secondly, Engels was clearly of the opinion at this time that the establishment of socialist communities was the only means by which a violent revolution could be avoided in England and, eventually, elsewhere too. The point which England had now reached, he stated, was ‘the eve of the social revolution’. The tendency of capital to concentrate in a few hands and of the middle classes to become impoverished meant a continuous enlargement of the proletariat. One day, thus:

the proletariat will attain a level of power and of insight at which it will no longer tolerate the pressure of the entire social structure always bearing down on its shoulders, when it will demand a more even distribution of social burdens and rights; and then—unless human nature has changed by that time—a social revolution will be inevitable.

The change in human nature which Engels demanded did not however involve the proletariat at all, but rather the middle classes, upon whose shoulders in turn he seems to have placed the burden of introducing communism as a means of forestalling revolution:

If, gentlemen, these conclusions are correct (he concluded at the end of his second talk), if the social revolution and practical communism are the necessary result of our existing conditions—then we will have to concern ourselves above all with the measures by which we can avoid a violent and bloody overthrow of the social conditions. And there is only one means, namely, the peaceful introduction or at least preparation of communism. If we do not want the bloody solution of the social problem, if we do not want to permit the daily growing contradiction between the education and the condition of our proletarians to come to a head, which, according to all our experience of human nature, will mean that this contradiction will be solved by brute force, desperation and thirst for revenge, then, gentlemen, we must apply ourselves seriously and without prejudice to the social problem; then we must make it our business to contribute our share towards humanising the condition of the modern helots.³⁰

II

It was about this time that Engels ceased to have much faith in the ability of revolution to be prevented by the peaceful introduction of communism through the enlightened efforts of middle class reformers. This fundamental break in Engels' thought, which is first expressed in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, written between September 1844 and March 1845, took the principal form of an attack upon the Owenite strategy of social reform from a Chartist point of view. Hence those accounts which take this text as a point of departure for discussions of Engels' early political thought miss the significance of this shift of loyalties on Engels' part.

Much of what is novel in the Condition of the Working Class can be described primarily in terms of a heightened sense of awareness of both the inevitability and the necessity of class antagonism. Building upon the model of competitive industrialization which he had first described in the ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’, where he had developed Owenite conclusions in political economy in a manner which had profoundly influenced Marx, Engels here came to explore the political implications of his economic model more carefully.³¹ These, in turn, he connected to an analysis of how the Chartist movement had developed in the last several years. More clearly than in his earlier works, Engels described the middle class as distinct from the aristocracy, and as the ‘opponents’ of the proletariat whose ‘interest is diametrically opposed to yours’. Here he strongly emphasized ‘the peculiarly social character of working-men's Chartism’, and argued that ‘in Chartism it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie’. What had been particularly vital, in this regard, about the uprising of 1842 and the long strike that year was that this provoked what Engels described as ‘the decisive separation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie’. This separation was effected over two points—the question of moral versus physical force in the carrying of the Charter itself, and the question of the repeal of the Corn laws.³² The ‘Complete Suffrage Association’ was founded in order to carry out the programme of middle class political reform and hence, Engels claimed, ‘From this moment Chartism was a purely working men's cause freed from all bourgeois elements’.³³

There is no doubt that Engels felt that the Chartists still had to become socialists. He bemoaned the fact that ‘their Socialism is very little developed’, but argued that ‘The approach to Socialism cannot fail, especially when the next crisis directs the working-men by force of sheer want to social instead of political remedies’. Such a crisis, he felt, might come as early as 1846, but would certainly follow ‘the present active state of industry and commerce in 1847’ which would ‘far exceed in extent and violence all former crises’ (as indeed it largely did).³⁴

Yet for our purposes what is central about this conception of economic development is the effect it had on Engels' conception of English socialism. After briefly describing the practical programmes of the latter, Engels introduced a new note of criticism into his thinking, and here we can clearly see how far Engels' study of economics and his acceptance of Chartist conceptions of class antagonisms combined to produce a rejection of Owenism's approach to social revolution:

English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore with great consideration towards the bourgeoisie and great injustice towards the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in demanding the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat. The Socialists are thoroughly tame and peaceable, accept our existing order, bad as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of winning public opinion. Yet they are so dogmatic that success by this method is for them, and for their principles as at present formulated, utterly hopeless. While bemoaning the demoralisation of the lower classes, they are blind to the element of progress in this dissolution of the old social order, and refuse to acknowledge that the corruption wrought by private interests and hypocrisy in the property-owning class is much greater. They acknowledge no historic development, and wish to place the nation in a state of Communism at once, overnight, not by the unavoidable march of its political development up to the point at which this transition becomes both possible and necessary. They understand, it is true, why the workingman is resentful against the bourgeois, but regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present state of England. They acknowledge only a psychological development, a development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to the Past, whereas the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual man included. Hence they are too abstract, too metaphysical, and accomplish little.³⁵

Here, in one passage, outlined are many of the elements which would later be incorporated into the distinction between ‘utopian’ and ‘scientific’ socialism. In order to progress Engels urged English socialism to ‘condescend to return for a moment to the Chartist standpoint’ or (what he saw as the same) ‘recede for a moment to the French standpoint in order to proceed beyond it later’. Politically, in other words, Owenism was wholly inadequate, and only in union with Chartism could it have any future.³⁶

This rejection of the ‘tame and peaceable’ methods of the Socialists entailed a clear conception of how revolution might take place. Crisis would follow crisis, with the proletariat soon growing to ‘embrace the whole nation’, at which time ‘there comes a stage at which the proletariat perceives how easily the existing power may be overthrown, and then follows revolution’. This ‘war of the poor against the rich’ would be ‘the bloodiest ever waged’, and no general reform of the bourgeoisie could help to prevent it. Yet Engels does retain a significant element of the Owenite conception of how class antagonisms developed. He now argued that ‘The revolution must come; it is already too late to bring about a peaceful solution’, which separated him from the vast majority of Owenite writers on such questions. But he nonetheless added that ‘it can be made more gently than that prophesied in the foregoing pages’ precisely insofar as socialist ideas became disseminated:

In proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic and communist elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge, and savagery. Communism stands, in principle, above the breach between bourgeoisie and proletariat, recognises only its historic significance for the present, but not its justification for the future: wishes, indeed, to bridge over this chasm, to do away with all class antagonisms. Hence it recognises as justified, so long as the struggle exists, the exasperation of the proletariat towards its oppressors as a necessity, as the most important lever for a labour movement just beginning; but it goes beyond this exasperation, because Communism is a question of humanity and not of the workers alone. Besides, it does not occur to any Communist to wish to avenge himself upon individuals, or to believe that, in general, the single bourgeois can act otherwise, under existing circumstances, than he does act. English Socialism, ie., Communism, rests directly upon the irresponsibility of the individual. Thus the more the English workers absorb communistic ideas, the more superfluous becomes their present bitterness, which, should it continue so violent as at present, could accomplish nothing; and the more their action against the bourgeoisie will lose its savage cruelty. If, indeed, it were possible to make the whole proletariat communistic before the war breaks out, the end would be very peaceful; but that is no longer possible, the time has gone by. Meanwhile, I think that before the outbreak of open, declared war of the poor against the rich, there will be enough intelligent comprehension of the social question among the proletariat, to enable the communistic party, to conquer the brutal element of the revolution and prevent a ‘Ninth Thermidor’. In any case, the experience of the French will not have been undergone in vain, and most of the Chartist leaders are, moreover, already Communists. And as Communism stands above the strife between bourgeoisie and proletariat, it will be easier for the better elements of the bourgeoisie (which are, however, deplorably few, and can look for recruits only among the rising generation) to unite with it than with purely proletarian Chartism.³⁷

These comments demonstrate how important Owenite socialist concepts still were for Engels' idea of revolution and of class alliances. Among the proletariat violence was to be inhibited by the doctrine of the formation of character by external circumstances, which engendered the idea that individuals were not in any essential sense responsible for their own behaviour. This notion was the centrepiece of Owenite psychology and one of the best-known aspects of Owenite propaganda.³⁸ Meanwhile, the fact that the idea of communism was ‘above the strife between bourgeoisie and proletariat’ meant that it could attract those members of the upper and middle classes for whom class hatred had no appeal, or indeed, a negative and distasteful connotation. Here Engels' conception of communism is midway between a purely Owenite notion, in which the pressure of working class struggle played little or no role, and the soon-to-emerge idea of communism as embedded in and inseparable from the struggle itself, which Marx was in the process of developing and which would form the principal definition of the doctrine shortly thereafter.³⁹

It is in the German Ideology (composed between November 1845 and August 1846), in fact, that we find evidence for the view that Marx's influence was essential in altering Engels' conception of revolution and its relation to communism. Marx's sense of confidence in the conclusions of his economic studies had been evident as early as the autumn of 1844, when he mentioned in reference to his own views on ‘the centralisation of property and its consequences for the working classes’ that ‘the stupid Chartists think they are well aware of them; the Socialists maintain that they expounded those consequences in detail long ago.’⁴⁰ The German Ideology, however, marks a specific break from Owenism in a manner which has hitherto remained unappreciated. Engels was later to stress that Marx's articulation of the materialist conception of history was one of the two central elements of the new ‘scientific’ socialism (the other being the theory of surplus value).⁴¹ But it is important to understand that the real failure of the strategy of communitarian socialism at exactly this time helped to ensure that this break was much sharper than it might otherwise have been. The Owenite community at Harmony collapsed, in fact, in 1844, and by 1845 the Owenite movement was in total disarray, with Owen abandoning his followers to go off to America once again and the entire communitarian effort widely discredited in the eyes of the public. One result of this failure would be the emergence of far more cautious ‘shopkeeping’ forms of co-operative socialism, with the model provided by the Rochdale Pioneers beginning in 1844.⁴² Another result, however, was the decisive reformulation of a new strategy in which model communitarianism was abandoned in face of something approaching total socialist revolution.

Hence in the German Ideology Marx and Engels already inscribed their epitaph to communitarianism in proclaiming ‘who in England believes in the plans of Owen, which he preached in various modifications with an eye to propaganda among particular classes or with respect to the altered circumstances of the moment?’ Incremental socialism would never be able to emerge successfully out of the present economic system, since such collective enterprises had ‘always perished because they were unable to compete with the “contending” private bakers, butchers, etc, and because for the proletarians—owing to the frequent opposition of interests among them arising out of the division of labour—no other “agreement” is possible than a political one directed against the whole present system.’ On the historical side, moreover, what Marx termed ‘local communism’ was clearly an impossibility, since every extension of economic development in non-communist areas tended to abolish whatever achievements local communism might have been able to make. Hence, Marx wrote, communism was ‘only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with them.’ ‘Communism’ itself, moreover, changes its nature at the same time; it is no longer ‘a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.’⁴³

To some extent the polemic with Max Stirner with which the German Ideology was mainly concerned helped to sharpen many of the passages in which other forms of existing radicalism are also taken into account. This is the case, for example, when Marx and Engels reproach Stirner for presuming that any kind of ‘amicable’ settlement of the property question is possible, adding that the question of peaceableness is also what separates the Chartists from the Owenites in Britain, as well as the communists from the Fourierists and Saint-Simonians in France.⁴⁴ But what is central in clarifying Marx and Engels' new conception of revolution is the materialist conception of history, for it is clearly stated that it is from this conception that arguments for revolution can be deduced:

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.⁴⁵

Here, hence, the strategy of revolution is not only the only practical means by which the old world can be superseded. It also plays an essential role in the problem of remaking the human beings who would make up the future world, who would cleanse the prejudices of the past in the act of recreating the future. Since the accusation that socialism had failed because it tried to create a ‘new moral world’ out of the ‘old moral materials’ was commonly levelled against Owenism in 1844-45, the significance of Marx and Engels' comments must be seen in this light.

The theory of revolution outlined in the German Ideology did not mean that Marx and Engels committed themselves to the view that only violent revolution was possible after 1845. To some extent such statements were avoided because their Blanquist overtones were seen as indicative of a conspiratorial view of revolution, which Marx and Engels tried to avoid.⁴⁶ Hence the ‘Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith’ (June 1847) said that

We are convinced not only of the uselessness but even of the harmfulness of all conspiracies. We are also aware that revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily but that everywhere and at all times they are the necessary consequence of circumstances which are not in any way whatever dependent either on the will or on the leadership of individual parties or of whole classes. But we also see that the development of the proletariat in almost all countries of the world is forcibly repressed by the possessing classes and that thus a revolution is being forcibly worked for by the opponents of communism. If, in the end, the oppressed proletariat is thus driven into a revolution, then we will defend the cause of the proletariat just as well by our deeds as now by our words.⁴⁷

In the ‘Principles of Communism’ (October 1847) which succeeded the ‘Confession of Faith’, these views were repeated again, and the question of the peaceable abolition of private property is answered by the statement that ‘It is to be desired that this could happen, and Communists certainly would be the last to resist it.’⁴⁸ This answer is however once again mainly directed at the problem of conspiracies rather than at the general question of the violent overthrow of existing circumstances. In his correspondence Engels, for one, argued as early as October 1846 that the aims of the communists could only be met through ‘democratic revolution by force’, and at the same time wrote to Marx that he had written to Harney ‘gently attacking the pacific nature of the Fraternal Democrats’, the internationalist wing of the late Chartist movement.⁴⁹ In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, moreover, the last paragraph (written before the revolutions of 1848 had broken out) said that ‘The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions’, and this was to be the view with which they would be associated until discussion of possible forms of peaceful transition within democratic regimes arose again some thirty years later.⁵⁰

Meanwhile the classification of the types of socialism in part on the basis of their attitude towards class struggle had begun in Marx's Poverty of Philosophy, which was written in the first half of 1847. Here, however, it is not ‘utopian’ and ‘scientific’ socialism which are directly juxtaposed, but rather two forms of science:

Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the socialists and the Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and consequently so long as the very struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science. But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From the moment they see this side, science, which is itself produced by the historical moment and associating itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.⁵¹

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party these groups are now categorized as ‘Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism’, and the implications of their ahistorical conception of science for their tactics more carefully outlined. Here it is ‘the undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings’ which ‘causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all antagonisms’, which in turn leads them to ‘reject all political, and especially all revolutionary, action’ in favour of attaining ‘their ends by peaceful means, and small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure.’ What gives their critical component ‘a purely utopian element’ is thus in particular the extent to which their ‘proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at the time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms only.’⁵² This then was the clearest statement of the distinction which Engels was to render in vaguer if equally famous terms many years later in the Anti-Dühring, and which he had gone through himself, in microcosm, in the period we have been describing here.⁵³

The new theory and tactics announced in the materialist conception of history did not at first mean a complete separation from Owenite and Fourierist forms of communitarianism, however. The ‘Principles of Communism’ still included as part of its programme a provision for ‘the erection of large palaces on national estates as common dwellings for communities of citizens engaged in industry as well as agriculture, and combining the advantages of both urban and rural life without the one-sidedness and disadvantages of either.’ But such communities were not of course to serve as models any longer; revolution would have to take place ‘simultaneously in all civilised countries’, and communitarianism was no longer a method of achieving socialism but merely a means of improving it.⁵⁴ In the Manifesto itself such plans were reduced to the statement that communism would include ‘combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, (and) a more equable distribution of the population over the country.’⁵⁵ By this time, thus, the remnants of Engels' communitarianism had been almost completely eradicated, and thereafter ‘scientific socialism’ would have few occasions to re-examine this aspect of its own prehistory. As we have seen, however, the formation of this concept on Engels' side requires that we understand the context of his early views on revolution, and in particular the impact of Owenite socialism upon these. For even after he had come to accept the virtual inevitability of the proletarian overthrow of the existing order, Engels at least for a time hoped that Owenite beliefs might mitigate the fierceness with which the class struggle would be fought out. With the German Ideology Marx and Engels' conception of revolution is placed securely on a new basis, and such sentiments thereafter do not reappear. After this point, too, communism ceases to be seen as something hovering above class antagonisms, and hence can hardly be construed as having for its mission their mitigation. Such views were possible as long as Engels remained essentially an Owenite, or even an Owenized Chartist, but they disappeared soon after he became a Marxist.

Notes

1. On Engels' contribution to Marxist political thought see especially Gareth Stedman Jones ‘Engels and the Genesis of Marxism’, New Left Review, CVI (1977), pp. 79-104, also reprinted as ‘Engels and the History of Marxism’, in The History of Marxism, ed. E. Hobsbawm (Hassocks, 1983), pp. 290-326. For general treatments of Marx's and Engels' political ideas see John Sanderson, An Interpretation of the Political Ideas of Marx and Engels (London, 1969); Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1: Marxism and Totalitarian Democracy 1818-1850 (London, 1974); Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford, 1977); and Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution (2 vols., New York, 1977-8).

2. For background on the young Engels see Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels (2 vols., Berlin, 1975), Vol. 1, 100-220; Horst Ullrich, Der junge Engels (2 vols., Berlin, 1961), Vol. 1, pp. 1-165; Friedrich Engels. Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1970), pp. 63-166; Hans Peter Bleuel, Friedrich Engels. Bürger und Revolutionär (Bern, 1981), pp. 90-159; W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels (2 vols., London, 1976), Vol. 1, pp. 1-80; Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class (London, 1974); Harry Schmidtgall, Friedrich Engels' Manchester-Aufenthalt 1842-1844 (Trier, 1981); Friedrich Engels 1820-1970. Referate. Diskussionen. Dokumente, ed. Hans Pelger (Hanover, 1971), pp. 1-24; John Lucas and Standish Meacham, ‘Engels, Manchester and the Working Class’, Victorian Studies, XVIII (1975), pp. 461-72; Hyman Fagan, ‘Engels and the British Working Class’, World Marxist Review, XIII (1970), pp. 13-14; John Smethurst, Edmund Frow and Ruth Frow, ‘Frederick Engels and the English Working Class Movement in Manchester, 1842-1844’, Marxism Today, XIV (1970), pp. 340-6; Michael Knieriem, ‘Ein unbekanntes Auswanderungsgesuch Friedrich Engels nach England’, Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins, MXXXVII (1974-76), pp. 105-9; Wolfgang Köllemann, ‘Der junge Friedrich Engels', Ibid; MXXXVI (1973), pp. 146-63; Bruno Kaiser, ‘Neues über den jungen Engels', Beiträge für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, XIX (1977), pp. 77-80; Howard Parsons, ‘Engels' Development from Christianity to Communism’, Revolutionary World, XXII-XXV (1977), pp. 180-90; Gertrude Himmelfarb, ‘Engels in Manchester: Inventing the Proletariat’, American Scholar, MII (1983), pp. 479-96.

3. On Engels' early political ideas see especially Meyer, Friedrich Engels, Vol. 1, pp. 35-118; Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1, pp. 93-131; Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 149-94; Norman Levine, The Tragic Deception: Marx contra Engels (Santa Barbara, 1975), pp. 107-39; Martin Gilbert, Marx's Politics; Communists and Citizens (Oxford, 1981), pp. 50-60.

4. Moses Hess, Briefwechsel, ed. E. Silberner (The Hague, 1959), p. 103, Hess to Berthold Auerbach, 19 June 1843. On Hess generally see Auguste Cornu, Moses Hess et la Gauche Hégélienne (Paris, 1934) and Isaiah Berlin, The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess (Cambridge, 1959). Hess's main ideas on communism came from French sources, on which see Zwi Rosen, ‘The Attitude of Hess to French Socialism and His Plans for Publishing a Series of Socialist Writings with Marx and Engels', Philosophical Forum, VIII (1977), pp. 310-22; and Moses Hess and Karl Marx (Hamburg, 1983), especially pp. 63-71, David Gregory, ‘The Influence of French Socialism on the Thought of Karl Marx, 1843-45’, Proceedings of the Western Society for the Study of French History, VI (1978), pp. 242-51; and ‘Marx and Engels' Knowledge of French Socialism’, Historical Reflections X (1983), pp. 143-93; and Robert Bowles, ‘The Marxian Adaptation of the Ideology of Fourier’, South Atlantic Quarterly, LV (1955), pp. 185-93.

5. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Collected Works (London, 1975-), Vol. 2, pp. 368-9 (hereafter MECW). For general treatments of the question of violence within socialism see Gajo Petrovic, ‘Socialism, Revolution and Violence’ in The Socialist Idea, ed. Stuart Hampshire (London, 1977), pp. 96-110; and Neil Harding, ‘Socialism and Violence’, in The Concept of Socialism, ed. Bhikhu Parekh (London, 1975), pp. 192-220.

6. MECW, Vol. 2, p. 374. On the origins of the theory of proletarian revolution in Marx see Robin Blackburn, ‘Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution’, New Left Review, CVII, (1976), pp. 3-35; and Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 41-64.

7. See Hess's Die Europäische Triarchie (Leipzig, 1841). This insistence that British industrial conditions would produce a new form of ‘social’ radicalism has dominated the assumptions of labour historians from Engels onwards. Its historiographical consequences are discussed at length in Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in Languages of Class: Studies in English working class history 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 90-178.

8. MECW, Vol. 3, p. 387. There is no separate study of Owenism in Manchester in this period, though some details are given in Eileen Yeo, ‘Robert Owen and Radical Culture’, in Robert Owen: Prophet of the Poor, ed. Sidney Pollard and John Salt (London, 1971), pp. 84-114; and Owenism generally is well covered by J. F. C. Harrison's Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (London, 1969). The other main area of Owenism's impact on Engels in this period (and through him on Marx) was political economy, on which see Gregory Claeys, ‘Engels' Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1843) and the Origins of the Marxist Critique of Capitalism’, History of Political Economy, XVI (1984), pp. 207-32. On Chartism in Manchester see Donald Read, ‘Chartism in Manchester’, in Chartist Studies, ed. Asa Briggs (London, 1959), pp. 29-64.

9. MECW, Vol. 3, p. 379. Engels had at this point also come briefly into contact with some of the communist workers in London, many of whom also advocated a peaceful strategy. Their views are described at length in N. Beloussawa, ‘Joseph Moll’ and S. Lewiowa, ‘Karl Schapper’, in Marx und Engels und die ersten proletarischen Revolutionäre (Berlin, 1965), pp. 42-119. Many original documents from this group are reprinted in Der Bund der Kommunisten. Dokumente und Materialien, vol. 1: 1836-1849 (Berlin, 1970). Two recent reinterpretations are Alexander Brandenburg, ‘Der Kommunistische Arbeiterbildungsverein in London’, International Review of Social History, XXIV (1979), pp. 341-70; and Christine Lattek, ‘Radikalismus im Ausland: Deutsche Sozialisten im englischen Exil, 1840-1852’, in Politischer und literarischer Radikalismus im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Claeys and L. Glage (forthcoming).

10. MECW, Vol. 3, pp. 383-5, 389.

11. On Owenism's treatment of ‘politics’ see Gregory Claeys, ‘Owenism, Democratic Theory, and Political Radicalism: Aspects of the Relationship between Socialism and Politics in Britian, 1820-1852’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1983.

12. MECW, Vol. 3, p. 407.

13. Ibid., pp. 393, 397-8. Draper has strongly understated the character of Engels' contributions to the New Moral World in arguing that they ‘may have been affected by the non-class-struggle character of the Owenite movement’ (Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. 1, p. 185). See also David Gregory, ‘Marx and Engels' Knowledge of French Socialism’, pp. 145-60.

14. MECW, Vol. 3, p. 397. On the controversy on forms of government within Owenism see Gregory Claeys, ‘Owenism, Democratic Theory, and Political Radicalism’, pp. 216-24 and ‘Paternalism and Democracy in the Politics of Robert Owen’, International Review of Social History, XXVII (1982), pp. 161-207.

15. MECW, Vol. 3, p. 393. On the meanings of ‘democracy’ in early socialism see also Jens Christophersen, The Meaning of ‘Democracy’ as Used in European Ideologies (New York, 1966), pp. 111-57; Frederic Bender, ‘The Ambiguities of Marx's Concepts of “Proletarian Dictatorship” and “Transition to Communism” ’, History of Political Thought, II (1981), pp. 525-55; Murray Stedman, ‘ “Democracy” in American Communal and Socialist Literature’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XII (1951), pp. 147-54; and generally, Keith Taylor, The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists (London, 1982). For a comparison of Engels' with Marx's views in this period see Maximilien Rubel, ‘Notes on Marx's Conception of Democracy’, New Politics, II (1961-2), pp. 78-90; and Horst Mewes, ‘On the Concept of Politics in the Early Work of Karl Marx’, Social Research, XLIII (1976), pp. 276-94.

16. MECW, Vol. 3, pp. 413, 486, 498, 513. There is hence no need to presume that Proudhon alone is responsible for Engels' views on the disappearance of the state, as Hunt, among others, seems to have done (Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1, p. 120). For treatments of this question generally in Marx and Engels see Solomon Bloom, ‘The Withering Away of the State’, Journal of the History of Ideas, VII (1946), pp. 114-21; Elizabeth Rapoport, ‘Anarchism and Authority in Marx's Socialist Politics’, European Journal of Sociology, XVII (1976), pp. 333-43; Paul Thomas, Karl Marx and the Anarchists (London, 1980), pp. 100-23; John Ehrenberg, ‘Dialectics of Dictatorship: Marx and the Proletarian State’, Social Praxis, VII (1980), pp. 21-39; Richard Adamiak, ‘The “Withering Away of the State”: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Politics, XXXII (1970), pp. 3-18; and ‘State and Society in Early Socialist Thought’, Survey, XXVI (1982), pp. 1-28.

17. MECW, Vol. 2, pp. 368-9.

18. Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 230. On Engels' view of German conditions see also J. Dehnert, ‘Engels Korrespondenzen für den “Northern Star” aus dem Jahre 1844’, Beiträge für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, XXV (1983), pp. 384-98.

19. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 227-8.

20. Ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 445-6, 467. On the development of the concept of the proletariat among German socialists in this period see Werner Conze, ‘Vom “Pöbel” zum “Proletariat”. Sozialgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen für den Sozialismus in Deutschland’, Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial—und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, XLI (1954), pp. 333-64.

21. On O'Brien see Alfred Plummer, Bronterre. A Political Biography of Bronterre O'Brien (London, 1971). Of the left-wing Chartists Engels was closely acquainted with G. J. Harney, on whom see A. R. Schoyen, The Chartist Challenge: A Portrait of George Julian Harney (London, 1958); Peter Cadogan, ‘Harney and Engels', International Review of Social History, X (1965), pp. 66-104; and W. Kunina, ‘George Julian Harney’, Marx und Engels und die ersten proletarischen Revolutionäre, pp. 421-55. In Manchester he also knew James Leach very well. See Edmund and Ruth Frow, ‘James Leach’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Marx Memorial Library, XXXIX (1966), pp. 12-14; and Schmidtgall, Friedrich Engels, pp. 60-81.

22. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 518, 524. These opinions were then repeated in Germany by Hess's Gesellschaftsspiegel (IX, January 1846, p. 35). Thanks to Christine Lattek for this reference.

23. The Harney Papers, eds. Frank Gees Black and Renee Métivier Black (Assen, 1969), pp. 239-40. See also Cadogan, ‘Harney and Engels'.

24. Georg Weerth, Sämtliche Werke (Berlin, 1956), Vol. 3, p. 322.

25. W. H. Smith, Letters on the State and Prospects of Society (Birmingham, 1838), p. 35.

26. On Bailey and similar plans in this period see Claeys ‘Owenism, Democratic Theory, and Political Radicalism’, pp. 195-212.

27. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 214-28 (here, 214), 227, 232. On the significance of this article see Lewis Feuer, ‘The Influence of the American Communist Colonies on Engels and Marx’, Western Political Quarterly, XIX (1966), pp. 356-74. On Weerth's visit to Harmony see his Werke, Vol. 3, p. 328. The impressions of two German socialists living in London of their visit to Harmony are recorded in Weitling's Die Junge Generation, 21 March 1842 and 5 November 1842. (Thanks to Christine Lattek for this reference).

28. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 243-64, and here, 245-7, 252.

29. Ibid., pp. 253-5. For Owenite precedents of this plan see, e.g. Robert Owen, Preliminary Charter of the Rational System (London, 1843).

30. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 261, 263. Steven Marcus implies that it is Engels' own confusion as to which class he himself belonged which had much to do with the relatively moderate tenor of his proposals to abolish class at this time. See the discussion in Lucus and Meacham, ‘Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class’.

31. On the ‘Outlines’ see Claeys ‘Engels' Outlines’; Terrell Carver ‘Marx—and Engels' Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’, History of Political Thought, IV (1983), pp. 357-66; and Schmidtgall, Friedrich Engels, pp. 28-32.

32. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 304, 298, 519, 517, 522. On the implications of Engels' theory of classes for his conception of the state in this period see Bob Jessop, ‘Marx and Engels on the State’, in Politics, Ideology and the State, ed. Sally Hibbin (London, 1978), pp. 47-51; Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 182-3; Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1, pp. 117-25.

33. MECW, Vol. 4, p. 523. On the split between the middle and working classes and the Complete Suffrage movement see Mark Hovell, The Chartist Movement (Manchester, 1970), pp. 240-50.

34. MECW, Vol. 4, p. 524. Harney had considerable doubts about the violent propensities of the English even in crises, arguing against Engels in 1846 that ‘The body of the English people … are becoming an eminently pacific people’ (The Harney Papers, p. 240). Engels however continued to have high hopes for the Chartists into the early 1850s, and passed such sentiments along to Marx as well. See, e.g. Engels' ‘England’ (MECW, Vol. 11, pp. 200-1) and Marx's ‘The Chartists’ (Ibid., pp. 333-41).

35. MECW, Vol. 4, pp. 525-6.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., pp. 580-2.

38. On Owen's notion of responsibility see in particular his ‘A New View of Society’, reprinted in A New View of Society and Other Writings, ed. John Butt (London, 1972), pp. 5-92. Alan Gilbert, among others, misses the Owenite context of The Condition of the Working Class in arguing that it was ‘remnants of “true socialist” philosophical pacifism and fear of the workers’ which ‘lingered in Engels' analysis and made him ambivalent about revolution’ (Gilbert, Marx's Politics, p. 56).

39. For Marx's view of communism see especially MECW, Vol. 5, p. 49.

40. Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 14.

41. See Engels' discussion in Anti-Dühring (Moscow, 1947), pp. 316-38 (German edition: Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Moscow, 1935), pp. 265-96); and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (New York, 1969), p. 53.

42. On this development in English socialism see Sidney Pollard, ‘Nineteenth Century Co-operation: From Community Building to Shopkeeping’, in Essays in Labour History, ed. Asa Briggs and John Saville (London, 1960), pp. 74-112. Many brands of English socialism, moreover, continued to distinguish themselves from their Continental competitors by their adherence to non-violence late into the nineteenth century. See for example E. T. Craig, Memoir and in Memoriam of Henry Travis M.D. (London, 1885), p. 11n. For a domestic attack on this view see, e.g. Bronterre O'Brien, State Socialism (London, 1885), pp. 3-4.

43. MECW, Vol. 5, pp. 461-2, 371-2, 49.

44. Ibid., p. 226.

45. Ibid., p. 53. On the development of Marx's conception of the relationship between class and revolutionary consciousness see Michael Levin, ‘Marx and Working Class Consciousness’, History of Political Thought, I (1980), pp. 499-515.

46. On Marx, Engels and Blanquism see D. Riazanov, ‘Zur Frage des Verhältnisses von Marx zu Blanqui’, Unter dem Bannerdes Marxismus, II (1928), pp. 140-9; Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. 1, pp. 212-336. For a contemporary account of the rejection of conspiratorial methods see Frederick Lessner, Sixty Years in the Social Democratic Movement (London, 1907), pp. 11-12. See also John Cunliffe, ‘Marx, Engels and the Party’, History of Political Thought, II (1981), pp. 349-68.

47. MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 101-2. On this text and its background see Herwig Förder and Martin Hundt, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte von Engels' Arbeit “Grundsätze des Kommunismus” ’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, XII (1970), pp. 60-85.

48. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 349.

49. MECW, Vol. 38, pp. 82, 88. On the Fraternal Democrats see Henry Weisser, ‘Chartist Internationalism, 1845-1848’, Historical Journal, XIV (1971), pp. 49-66; Mary Davis, ‘The Forerunners of the First International—The Fraternal Democrats’, Marxism Today, XV (1971), pp. 50-60; Christine Lattek ‘Die Fraternal Democrats’, in Chartismus und britische Gesellschaft 1834-1860, ed. G. Claeys and C. Lattek (Hanover, forthcoming).

50. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 519. On the programme and text of the Manifesto see Y. Wagner and M. Strauss, ‘The Programme of the Communist Manifesto and Its Theoretical Foundations’, Political Studies, XVII (1969), pp. 470-84.

51. MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 177-8. On the character of the ‘social science’ of the Owenites and other early socialists see Gregory Claeys ‘ “Individualism”, “Socialism”, and “Social Science”: Further Notes on a Process of Conceptual Formation, 1800-50’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XLVII (1986), forthcoming; Barbara Goodwin, Social Science and Utopia (Hassocks, 1978); and Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Utopian Socialism Reconsidered’, in After Adam Smith: Essays on the Making of Political Economy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Istvan Hont (forthcoming).

52. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 515. On the context of these views in 1847-8 see Eugene Kamenka, ‘ “The Party of the Proletariat”: Marx and Engels in the Revolution of 1848’, in Intellectuals and Revolution: Socialism and the Experience of 1848, ed. E. Kamenka and F. B. Smith (London, 1979), pp. 76-93. It was also Lenin's opinion that it was the question of violence which distinguished ‘utopian’ from ‘scientific’ socialism: ‘What constitutes the utopian character of the plans of the old advocates of co-operation, beginning with Robert Owen? It is the fact that they dreamed of a peaceful transformation of contemporary society to socialism, without taking into account such basic questions as the class war, the conquest of political power by the working class and overthrow of the rule of the class exploiters’ (‘On Co-operation’, Selected Works, Vol. 9, Moscow, n.d., p. 408). See also John Plamenatz, German Marxism and Russian Communism (New York, 1965), p. 119, for the comment that it is ‘revolutionary zeal’ which separates Marx from his predecessors among the socialists, and that ‘what distinguishes him from the other socialists who believed in the class war, from Blanqui, Proudhon and Bakunin, is again not science but the peculiarities of the theory he invented to explain his faith in the proletariat.’

53. Engels, Anti-Dühring, pp. 305, 314-15. For discussions of the distinctions between ‘utopian’ and ‘scientific’ socialism see: Max Adler, ‘Der Utopismus bei Marx und Engels', Marx-Studien, IV (1922), pp. 292-312; Samuel Bernstein, ‘From Utopianism to Marxism’, Science and Society, XIV (1949-50), pp. 58-67; Adam Ulam, ‘Socialism and Utopia’, Daedalus (1975), pp. 382-400; Frederic Jameson, ‘Introduction/Prospectus to Reconsider the Relationship of Marxism to Utopian Thought’, Minnesota Review, NS VI (1976), pp. 53-8; Pavel Kovaly, ‘Marxism and Utopia’, in Utopia/Dystopia, ed. Peyton Richter (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975), pp. 75-92; Andrew Altman, ‘Is Marxism Utopian?’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, VIII (1981), pp. 387-404; Darko Suvin, ‘ “Utopian” and “Scientific”: Two Attributes for Socialism from Engels', Minnesota Review, NS VI (1976), pp. 59-70; Henri Lefebvre, ‘Engels et l'utopie’, Espaces et sociétés, IV (1971), pp. 3-9; Joachim Höppner, ‘Der Anti-Dühring von Friedrich Engels und der utopistische Sozialismus’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenscaft, XXVI (1978), pp. 310-24; Renate Merkel and Monika Steinke, ‘Engels' Schrift, “Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft’, Beiträge für die Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, XXII (1980), pp. 820-36; Jacques Grandjonc and Hans Pelger, ‘Die Diskussion über utopischen und wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus um 1840’, in Politik und Gesellschaft im alten und neuen Österreich, ed. Isabella Ackerl, Walter Hummelberger and Hans Mommsen (Oldenbourg, 1981), pp. 327-40. Hans Pelger, ‘Was verstehen Marx/Engels und einiger ihrer Zeitgenossen bis 1848 unter “wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus”, “wissenschaftlicher Kommunismus”, und “revolutiorärer Wissenschaft”?’, in Wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus und Arbeiterbewegung . Begriffsgeschichte und Dühring-Rezeption (Trier, 1980), pp. 7-17; Wolfgang Schieder, ‘Zur Geschihte des Befriffs “Wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus” vor 1914’, ibid., pp. 18-24; G.A. Cohen, ‘Karl Marx and the Withering Away of Social Science’, in Marx, Justice and History, ed. M. Cohen, T. Nagel, T. Scanlon, (Princeton, 1980), pp. 288-309; Paul Thomas, ‘Marx and Science’, Political Studies, XXIV (1976), pp. 1-23, and Barbara Goodwin and Keith Taylor, The Politics of Utopia (London, 1982), pp. 72-77, 163-8.

54. MECW, Vol. 6, pp. 351-2. There is some discussion of Engels' views in this period in James Mahon, ‘Engels and the Question about Cities’, History of European Ideas, III (1982), pp. 43-77. See also Gregory Claeys, ‘Country, City and “Community”: Ecology and the Structure of Moral Space in British Owenite Socialism, 1800-1850’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, XXXII (1985), forthcoming.

55. MECW, Vol. 6, p. 505.