In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, J.WALKER
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Also when Engels wrote (and presumeably while he was writing)
>Anti-During - as a manifesto of their joint position within the
>German Socialist Workers Party - we would have to believe he neither
>read it or knew what it contained (we do know Marx had a copy.) It is
>hard to prove he read it (harder to prove he didn't!),
The story, according to Engels, is that he read the entire manuscript to
Marx. This was an odd thing to say - Marx could read, and his health was
good at this time. Also Engels' comment about "our joint position" was
also made after Marx's death. Engels never made such a presumptuous
comment while Marx was alive and, in fact, he was careful to defer to
Marx as the leading thinker.
The plausible conclusion by Terrell Carver in a number of books is that,
after Marx died, there was an enormous explosion of interest in Marx's
work. Engels became busy and famous as a populariser of Marx's work, and
in the process added his own gloss, and sometimes to Marx's detriment,
e.g. with the dialectic.
Whether Engels turned this materialist methodology into a metaphysics
(as I believe) or not, the issue now is one of political practice. In
what way does "dialectical materialism" contribute to the struggle for
socialism? Until and unless an explanation is forthcoming the only
sensible position is the atheist one of unbelief.
In short, the explanation has to be a better one than the testament of
faith - "It's what Marx believed" - as if that clinched the argument.
--
Lew
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