Ilango Arasiyal

ENGELS RELIGION
REFERENCE BOOKS

In an earlier post I argued that the core of Marx’s Aufhebung of religion may be found in his use of the idea of the fetish. Engels had a somewhat different idea of what such an Aufhebung would look like. However, putting it this way may suggest that they worked and thought on their own. By contrast, nearly every thought they developed was a joint project. They wrote letters to each other every day, and when Engels moved to London, they met every afternoon to talk. In Marx’s study (at Modena Villas), they paced up and down in an X-shape, crossing the middle. Engels would smoke his pipe and Marx his cigars, and they would discuss, debate, and joke for hours. So Marx was fully aware of Engel’s thoughts, making suggestions and criticisms in the process. So also was Engels a direct contributor to Marx’s thought.

With that in mind, how did Engels’s see the Aufhebung of religion? The answer is both simple and surprising: religion (he has in mind Christianity) may become a revolutionary movement. Let us see how he constructs this position, which was really a lifelong project. Engels grew up as a devout, if critical Christian. His family was of the Reformed (Calvinist) part of Christianity. Indeed, his mother was of Dutch background, coming from a country – Holland – that was deeply Calvinist in its north. Engels may have been devout, but he was also critical. He saw the many hypocrisies of the people in his hometown (Elberfeld, part of the twin town of Wuppertal).[1] Their deep piety was coupled with vicious exploitation of poor workers, with disdain for the plight of the latter. As they read their Bibles, they also contemplated ever new ways to turn a profit, not caring how it was done.

As a brilliant young man, Engels studied the newest philosophy and biblical criticism. This study challenged his ‘Wuppertal faith’, pushing him to new horizons and arguments with his close but pious friends (especially Wilhelm and Friedrich Graeber). Their arguments concerned the Bible, theology and philosophy. But in the process of those arguments he gradually realised – painfully – that he was losing his faith.

At the same time, he began to notice an ambivalence in Christianity. It may be deeply conservative, opposed to new discoveries in science and philosophy, indeed opposed to new political directions and supportive of the status quo. At the same time, it could also challenge the very same powers in a revolutionary manner. This insight first appears in some of his comments on the minister of his local church, the renowned preacher, Reverend F. W. Krummacher (who eventually became court chaplain at Potsdam).[2] Krummacher may preach some of the more ridiculous theological positions, but at the same time he criticises earthly rulers and riches as undesirable in God’s sight. If Krummacher had been a little more specific, Engels suggests, and criticised the Prussian government directly, he may well have been seen as a religious revolutionary. Indeed, in his younger years, Krummacher was precisely such a firebrand.[3]

================================

[1] See especially Friedrich Engels, “Letters from Wuppertal,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 2, 7-25 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1839 [1975]).

[2] Engels writes of the passages in Krummacher’s sermons where ‘he speaks of the contradiction between earthly riches and the humility of Christ, or between the arrogance of earthly rulers and the pride of God. A note of his former demagogy very often breaks through here as well, and if he did not speak in such general terms the government would not pass over his sermons in silence’. Engels, “Letters from Wuppertal,” 15.

[3] ‘As a student he was involved in the demagogy of the gymnastic associations, composed freedom songs, carried a banner at the Wartburg festival, and delivered a speech which is said to have made a great impression. He still frequently recalls those dashing times from the pulpit, saying: when I was still among the Hittites and Canaanites’. Engels, “Letters from Wuppertal,” 13.

[4] For example, ‘We too attack the hypocrisy of the present Christian state of the world; the struggle against it, our liberation from it and the liberation of the world from it are ultimately our sole occupation’. Friedrich Engels, “The Condition of England: Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle, London, 1843,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 3, 444-68 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1844 [1975]), 462. See also Engels, “The Condition of England. I. The Eighteenth Century,” 469-76, 86; Engels, “The Condition of England II: The English Constitution,” 501-4, 10, 12; Friedrich Engels, “Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 25, 3-309 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1877-8 [1987]), 16, 22, 26, 40-1, 62, 67-68, 79, 86, 93-99, 125-26, 30, 44, 232, 44, 300-4.

[5] Friedrich Engels, “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 3, 392-408 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1843 [1975]).

[6] Karl Kautsky, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, trans. J. L. Mulliken and E. G. Mulliken (London: Fisher and Unwin, 1897); Karl Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus I: Kommunistische Bewegungen im Mittelalter  (Berlin: Dietz, 1976 [1895-97]); Karl Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus II: Der Kommunismus in der deutschen Reformation  (Berlin: Dietz, 1976 [1895-97]); Karl Kautsky and Paul Lafargue, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus III: Die beiden ersten grossen Utopisten  (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1977 [1922]); Roland Boer, “Karl Kautsky’s Forerunners of Modern Socialism,” Chiasma: A Site for Thought 1, no. 1 (2014).

[7] Friedrich Engels, “The Peasant War in Germany,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 10, 397-482 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1850 [1978]).

[8] Friedrich Engels, “Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 24, 427-35 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1882 [1989]); Friedrich Engels, “The Book of Revelation,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 26, 112-17 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1883 [1990]).

[9] Friedrich Engels, “On the History of Early Christianity,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 27, 445-69 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1894-5 [1990]).

[10] Engels, “Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France,” 523. Engels also has some criticisms of the early Christians, especially the point that they tended to focus on other-worldly salvation, but he was fully aware that Christianity makes this-worldly claims as well.

[11] Karl Marx, “Record of Marx’s Speech on the Seventh Anniversary of the International,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 22, 633-34 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1871 [1986]), 633; see also, Karl Marx, “On the Hague Congress: A Correspondent’s Report of a Speech Made at a Meeting in Amsterdam on September 8, 1872,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 23, 254-56 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1872 [1988]), 255; Karl Marx, “Marx to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis in the Hague, London, 22 February 1881, 41 Maitland Park Road, N.W.,” in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 46, 65-7 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1881 [1992]), 67.