Preface

Summary

This book is a companion to my The Economics of Karl Marx (EKM) published by Cambridge University Press in 2008. My objective is to contribute toward the better appreciation of the contribution to Marxian political economy made by Friedrich Engels. His positions on history and on the natural sciences are taken into account, but only insofar as they pertain to the primary theme. No consideration is accorded Engels as journalist or student of anthropology, law, literature, religion, sociology, linguistics, and military affairs. In Chapter Six I touch on matters of personality when I review Engels's relationship with Marx; in other contexts his business experience proves pertinent. Biography is certainly important, but I shall not provide a detailed account of Engels's life, because we are well served already, as by Carver, Henderson, Hunley, McLellan, Mayer, Riazanov, and, most recently, Hunt. Nonetheless, a brief chronology of select events pertaining to Engels to which I refer in the text and notes may prove helpful to readers, more helpful I think than a nominal potted life. This I provide in an Appendix to the Prolegomena.

Chapter One is devoted to Engels's early contributions to economics, before Marx had assembled his technical apparatus. Here I fulfill a promise made at the close of EKM to justify the contention that Engels provided the “vision” and entered into several of the processes at play in the working out of that vision (Hollander 2008: 488).