On the Alleged Differences between Marx and Engels
In: Political studies: the journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, Band 32, Heft 2, S. 226-248
ISSN: 1467-9248
The supposed differences between Marx and Engels hinge on Marx's failure to endorse Anti-Dühring, on his refusal to hypostatize dialectical categories independent of human reflection and on his refusal to formulate any cosmic super-laws of society or of nature. Engels, on the other hand, is supposed to have viewed man as a passive product of natural evolution governed by super-laws that belong to idealist philosophy. However, Marx strongly endorsed Anti-Dühring, took a strong interest in science and regarded a dialectics of nature as essential to his theory of a unified science, a science that was essential to non-alienated being. Neither Marx nor Engels was consistent on these questions, but their alleged differences really reflect an internal contradiction within their commonly held theory.