Engels was, so to speak a member of the Marx family. Marx’s daughters called him their second father. He was Marx’s alter ego. For a long time the two names were never separated in Germany and they will be for ever united in history.

Marx and Engels were the personification in our time of the ideal friendship portrayed by the poets of antiquity. From their youth they developed together a parallel to each other, lived in intimate fellowship of ideas and feelings and shared the same revolutionary agitation; as long as they could live together they worked in common. Had events not parted them for about twenty years they would probably have worked together their whole life. But after the defeat of the 1848 Revolution Engels had to go to Manchester, while Marx was obliged to remain in London. Even so, they continued their common intellectual life by writing to each other almost daily, giving their views on political and scientific events and their work. As soon as Engels was able to free himself from his work he hurried from Manchester to London, where he set up his home only ten minutes away from his dear Marx. From 1870 to the death of his friend not a day went by but the two men saw each other, sometimes at one’s house, sometimes at the other’s.

It was a day of rejoicing for the Marxes when Engels informed them that he was coming from Manchester. His pending visit was spoken of long beforehand, and on the day of his arrival Marx was so impatient that he could not work. The two friends spent the whole night smoking and drinking together and talking over all that had happened since their last meeting.

Marx appreciated Engels’ opinion more than anybody else’s, for Engels was the man he considered capable of being his collaborator. For him Engels was a whole audience. No effort could have been too great for Marx to convince Engels and win him over to his ideas. For instance, I have seen him read whole volumes over and over to find the fact he needed to change Engels’ opinion on some secondary point that I do not remember concerning the political and religious wars of the Albigenses. It was a triumph for Marx to bring Engels round to his opinion.

Marx was proud of Engels. He took pleasure in enumerating to me all his moral and intellectual qualities. He once specially made the journey to Manchester with me to introduce me to him. He admired the versatility of his knowledge and was alarmed at the slightest thing that could befall him. “I always tremble,” he said to me, “for fear he should meet with an accident at the chase. He is so impetuous; he goes galloping over the fields with slackened reins, not shying at any obstacle.”

Marx was as good a friend as he was a loving husband and father. In his wife and daughters, Helene and Engels, he found worthy objects of love for a man such as he was.

[–] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

😢🥹

Bromance goals.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Up there with JD and Turk, or Frodo and Sam. We have Marx and Engels. It's so sweet 🥹

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 18 points 3 days ago

Other men are Jims looking for their Pams, but I'm a Marx looking for my Engels. Where my intellectual and spiritual life partners at?

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 26 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

If Marx had not lived, I think Engels would be more lauded as a great revolutionary thinker. Though I am very happy that is not how it went, as I don’t believe Engels could have taken the theory to the same heights as Marx. Marx really was a genius of world-historical magnitude. Nevertheless, the brilliance of Engels is very evident from his numerous solo works and joint writings with Marx (e.g. The Holy Family and of course the Manifesto).

I’m reminded of Engels’ statement about his first encounters with Marx:

Excerpt

When I visited Marx in Paris in the summer of 1844, our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became evident and our joint work dates from that time. When, in the spring of 1845, we met again in Brussels, Marx had already fully developed his materialist theory of history in its main features form the above-mentioned basis and we now applied ourselves to the detailed elaboration of the newly-won mode of outlook in the most varied directions.

This discovery, which revolutionized the science of history and, as we have seen, is essentially the work of Marx — a discovery in which I can claim for myself only a very insignificant share — was, however, of immediate importance for the contemporary workers’ movement. Communism among the French and Germans, Chartism among the English, now no longer appeared as something accidental which could just as well not have occurred. These movements now presented themselves as a movement of the modern oppressed class, the proletariat, as the more or less developed forms of its historically necessary struggle against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie; as forms of the class struggle, but distinguished from all earlier class struggles by this one thing, that the present-day oppressed class the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into classes and, therefore, from class struggles. And Communism now no longer meant the concoction, by means of the imagination, of an ideal society as perfect as possible, but insight into the nature, the conditions and the consequent general aims of the struggle waged by the proletariat.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think the interesting thing to consider is that even without Marx socialism would happen because class struggle would happen without him anyway. Proles would rise against bourgeoisie and proles would establish themselves as the dominant class or eliminate bourgeoisie entirely and well there you have it, socialism.

If Marx hadn't noticed this occurrence in the Paris Commune someone after him certainly would have in subsequent revolutionary efforts. Lenin perhaps.

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 25 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The basic notions of class society and materialism I agree would have developed regardless. We are, however, very lucky to have had, in particular, an expert whose PhD thesis was on the question of free will in the context of materialism; that this expert also deeply understood the dialectic and popularized that as the theoretical foundation of the nascent capitalist world; and that this expert politically favored working-class socialism over bourgeois socialism (communism over socialism). Marx had a longitudinal view of the history of socialist thought and of economic thought. The sheer clarity of the ideas may have saved us from centuries of confusion and quasi-religious fighting over the precise formulation of these principles. Someone like Lenin might not have succeeded at combating liberal dogma without this clarification being handed down at the right moment in history.