Steger on Engels — A Brief Comment
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| Author | Paul Kellogg |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00350 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Steger on Engels – a Brief Comment
Paul Kellogg
University of Toronto
Manfred Steger argues that properly to evaluate the last writings of Friedrich Engels, theorists must
situate his work historically. With such a perspective, the tensions in his last major political work
(what has come to be known as his ‘testament’) are easily explained. Engels was trying to preserve
his revolutionary principles while outlining policies appropriate to a non-revolutionary situation.
That tension was resolved in a positive direction, according to Steger, by Eduard Bernstein who
discarded the revolutionary husk to preserve the liberal, reformist and realistic kernel. This article
argues that Steger, while right to situate Engels’ writings in their historical context, misjudges the
subsequent history of Germany. This history, far from vindicating Bernstein’s revisionism, provides
stunning confirmation of Engels’ revolutionary socialism.
Manfred Steger (1997, p. 259; 1999, p. 194) writes ‘the objective political and eco-
nomic developments in Germany defied Engels’ revolutionary expectations’. He
sees a tension in Engels’ later writings on political strategy – especially in his so-
called ‘testament’ – between a realistic emphasis on the tactics of gradualism, and
a continuing faith in the long-term necessity of a revolution. Steger praises Eduard
Bernstein for his ‘more realistic evaluation of capitalist development’ and on this
basis ‘supplying a sophisticated theoretical justification for a liberal, reformist social-
ism’. Steger’s historically based method is, in my opinion, a real strength, but his
evaluation of Bernstein is off the mark.
The tension in Engels’ later writings on political strategy were inevitable in a period
– faced by many Marxists before and since – of knowing that without a socialist
revolution, capitalism would not be overthrown, and at the same time knowing
that an immediate revolution was not on the cards. Bernstein did end the tension
by rejecting the possibility of working class revolution. However this did not prove
to be a ‘more realistic evaluation of capitalist development’, but an almost utopian
naiveté in the light of the tumultuous history of Germany in the first decades of
the twentieth century.
Bernstein ‘made Engels consistent’ by removing any notion from his ‘Marxism’
of an ultimately necessary ‘war of manoeuvre’. He became the embodiment of
all in the German labour and socialist bureaucracies who became acclimatized to
the ‘quiet times’, to the steady growth of industry and the seemingly concomi-
tant steady growth in working class support for the German Social Democratic
Party...
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