Engels rather than Marx originated systematic Marxism as a worldview
Evidence
This was a key moment, and role, for it âmarked the transition, so to speak, from Marx to Marxism and provided the formative moment of all the leading Marxist interpreters of the Second International and most of the leaders of the Thirdâ (Stedman Jones). Marx had laid the foundations, above all in his work on the capitalist mode of production. But he left âno comparable political theory of the structures of the bourgeois State, or of the strategy and tactics of revolutionary socialist struggle by a working-class party for its overthrowâ (Anderson 1976). Nor did he provide any systematic general statement of historical materialism as a âworld view.â Engels attempted to repair both omissionsâa task which gives the general sense âof a completion, more than a development, of Marxâs heritageâ (Anderson 1976). â Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 498
Categorization
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: the Anderson 1976 claim that Marx left no political theory of the bourgeois state or revolutionary strategy.
- XREF: Connects to E.P. Thompsonâs and othersâ debates distinguishing âMarxâ from later âMarxismâ.