The German Genius

natures.”
    Engels’s erudition is perhaps insufficiently appreciated now. He had a wider range of interests than Marx, spoke and wrote English and French as well as he did German and as well as Marx, and was eventually able to speak Greek, Latin, and some Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. * He wore his learning lightly but it stood him in good stead, in that he predicted that Wilhelm II, grandson of Wilhelm I, would commit many blunders and prove catastrophic for Germany. He was not blind to the fact that the English working classes had enjoyed increased prosperity, although unequally, as a result of the British Empire, and he thought that explained why there had been so little socialism in England since Owenism. He thought that with the decline of empire and the abolition of the English monopoly, together with the rise of American commercial success, the English working class would lose its privileged position and socialism would reemerge. As with so much else, he was right. 59
    Engels was hardly less interesting than Marx, and there has always been a debate as to who was first with the main ideas they jointly evolved. With Engels surviving Marx by more than a decade, and editing the second and third volume of Das Kapital after Marx died, it is perhaps no surprise that J. D. Hunley, in a recent critique, makes a powerful case for saying that there was in fact very little difference between Marx and Engels in their materialistic understanding of history, economics, and politics, that the “Principles of Communism,” which Engels wrote, is hardly different from the Communist Manifesto , which they both produced, though the latter is slightly more radical. 60 Engels, Hunley says, may have been marginally less enthusiastic for the revolutionary cause than Marx, though this could have had more to do with the fact that Engels lived longer, surviving to see the gathering strength of the Social Democrats in Germany. In the preface to the English translation of the first volume of Das Kapital , both Engels and Marx took the view that in England revolutionary changes might occur by peaceful and legal means, and both agreed that this was preferable. But Engels, no less than Marx, was convinced that in some countries force would be necessary. 61
    Both Engels and Marx retained a form of Hegelianism to the end, believing that history was the result of impersonal forces, yet shaped by men. Engels went on record as saying specifically that it was “laughable” to explain everything in history in terms of economic factors. “History, to an extent, rests on the unconscious of all concerned….” 62
    Marx’s comment on Darwin’s Origin of Species was perhaps revealing: “This is the book that contains the natural historical foundation for our view.” Note the use of the word “our.” But there is little evidence to suggest that Engels’s contributions to at least the first volume of Das Kapital were more financial and critical than substantive. Volumes two and three were different matters, because of the messy nature of Marx’s manuscripts. We don’t know what additions Engels did make but historians are agreed there is no evidence of any intent to deceive. Tristram Hunt, in his 2009 biography of Engels, says that “Marx’s bulldog” tried to enfold him in a “scientific turn,” that the bulldog was “mezmerized” by the scientific advances of the nineteenth century and sought to position their socialism within this context. Maybe so, but their collaboration was always one of mutual respect, a decisive factor in making that collaboration “the most significant intellectual partnership of all time.” 63

German Historicism: “A Unique Event in the History of Ideas”
     
    T hanks to Johann Herder, history became the basis of all culture. Development and evolution became central to all understanding. This is Herder, in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit ( Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity ). “The purpose of our existence…is to develop this incipient element of humanity fully within us…Our ability to reason is to be developed…our finer senses are to be cultivated…the task incumbent upon each one is to develop his own unique personality to the fullest.” Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all argued in favor of the basic uniqueness of individuals and nations in history. For them, as for Wilhelm von Humboldt, the purpose of man’s life becomes emphatically not