Stavros D. Mavroudeas

Department of Social Policy, Panteion University, Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT

Engels is the co-founder of Marxism. However, he sometimes came under attack as a distorter of Marx’s thought. The first wave of attacks (1970s and 1980s) focused on philosophical and methodological issues. The second wave of attacks emerged since the 1990s and centred more on political economy, pioneered by the Neue Lekture and the Sraffians. It maintains that Engels distorted Capital by making unwarranted interventions during his editing of the book. More specifically, it is argued that he misrepresented Capital as a complete book whereas it is supposed to be a solely incomplete research project. Among others, Engels is accused that he inscribed to Marx a theory of economic crisis based on the law of the falling rate of profit (LFRP), whereas the latter was supposedly agnostic. This paper concentrates on this second wave of attacks. It argues that their accusations are unfounded and do injustice to the great contribution of Engels in the Marxist tradition.

KEYWORDS

Engels; Marxism; Capital; MEGA

From: International Critical Thought 2020 10 (3)

Editor: Wang Yi