Friedrich Engels and the Issue of the Revolution in Germany (1883–1895)

ABSTRACT

After Karl Marx’s death in 1883, Friedrich Engels witnessed a resurgence of the labour movement, which roused his optimistic expectations of an imminent victory of socialism. This article focuses on the remarkable change that took place in Engels’ revolutionary perspective during the early 1890s, when he became convinced that the Social Democratic Party in Germany could move straight to power without having to pass through a transition period of bourgeois rule. This conclusion was influenced, above all, by the outstanding electoral performances of the German workers’ party. However, the impact that the developments in Britain and France had on Engels’ new approach ought not to be underestimated. In the last year of his life, he came to reject the idea that bourgeois political rule was a progressive stage on the road to socialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Friedrich Engels
• bourgeois revolution
• proletarian revolution
• Germany
• German Social Democratic Party

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributor

Nicola D’Elia is an independent scholar. His main fields of research are the history of socialism and the labour movement between the end of the nineteenth century and the First World War, and the history of German–Italian cultural relations in the interwar period. He has published the books Democrazia e “modello inglese”: Eduard Bernstein scrittore politico nell’esilio di Londra (1890–1901) (Florence 2005), and Delio Cantimori e la cultura politica tedesca (1927–1940) (Rome 2007).

Notes

1 On this point, see in particular Shanin (1983), Anderson (2010), Cinnella (2014).

2 For more detailed information on these events and Engels’ reaction to them, see Hunt (2009, 316–317, 321–322, 332–334).

3 This work appeared in Der Sozialdemokrat (The Social Democrat), the SPD’s official organ edited by Bernstein in Zurich under the title Marx und die Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848–49).

4 This writing was published first in Der Sozialdemokrat in November 1885 under the title Zur Geschichte des Bundes der Kommunisten, and then as an introduction to Marx (1885).

5 Engels wrote these words in a letter to Paul Lafargue dated March 7, 1890. Some days earlier, on February 26, he had expressed himself in a similar way when writing to Laura Lafargue (see Marx and Engels 2001a, 454).

6 This work appeared for the first time in 1901 in Die Neue Zeit (The New Times), the SPD’s theoretical journal edited by Kautsky, under the title Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteientwurfes 1891 (A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme 1891).

7 For a general sketch of Engels’ approach to Italy and the Italian labour movement, see Ragionieri (1971).

8 This article was published in Die Neue Zeit under the title Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland.