Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature

Kaan Kangal

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030343347
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030343354
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels' works has been a common but somewhat unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels' Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. The entire Engels debate separates into two opposite views: Engels the contaminator of Marx's "new materialism" vs. Engels the self-educated genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has not enjoyed so far is a critical reading that considers the relationship between different layers of this standard text: authorial, textual, editorial, and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, this book questions the elements that structure the debate on the Dialectics of Nature. It analyzes different political and philosophical functions attached to Engels' text, and relocates the meaning of the term "dialectics" into a more precise context. Arguing that Engels' dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is but that he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit, this book fully documents and critically analyzes Engels' intentions and concerns in the Dialectics of Nature, the process of writing, and its reception and edition history in order to reconstruct the solved and unsolved philosophical problems in this unfinished work.

© The Author(s) 2020

K. KangalFriedrich Engels and the Dialectics of NatureMarx, Engels, and Marxismshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34335-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Neue Engels-Lektüre

Kaan Kangal¹

(1)

Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Kaan Kangal

End Abstract

Some texts are interpreted and discussed more than others. Authors and texts, once valued and canonized, can be demonized and buried in later periods of time. Authors and texts can create audiences or divide communities. The difference between uniform and divided readership is that the former is expressive of shared convictions while the latter brings disagreements to the fore. Typically, the more divided the community of readers, the broader interpretive possibilities one encounters.¹ This, in turn, provokes a closer scrutiny of authors and texts in order to specify constraints on, and set limits to, a variety of interpretations. An increasing variety of compatible or incompatible interpretations leads readers to pay greater attention to the object of interpretation, that is, authors, texts and readers themselves. Ultimately, readers do two things at once: ‘going beyond’ what is read, and ‘going back’ to what one presumes to have read. Reading is a bidirectional act that suggests re-reading what comes before and anticipating what follows after. Thus any ‘going beyond’ necessitates moving simultaneously in the opposite direction, that is, ‘going back’.² This book deals with that double task: it documents the protocols of ‘going beyond’ a past author, and it delves into a past author by ‘going back’.

The history of reading Engels in general, and the controversies over Dialectics of Nature in particular, exemplify a division of communities par excellence. It goes like this. We are sometimes told that Engels may not be what we think he is: the political companion, life-long comrade and friend of Marx.

One tale suggests that Engels is not just the co-founder of modern socialism but also its malevolent detractor. As forerunner of dialectical materialism Engels allegedly co-invented ‘Marxism’ and damaged it at once. He not only betrayed Marx’s science but infected it with a disease: Dialectics of Nature. It is this infamous work that is sometimes considered the greatest shibboleth of all time. For this reason, Engels is charged with metaphysics, dogmatism, eclecticism, positivism and so on. According to this narrative, dialectics of nature is Engels’ own invention, and it must be distinguished from Marx’s social scientific enterprise.

Another tale enforces the opposite: whatever stands and falls with materialist dialectics is not an invention of Engels but a product of Marx and Engels’ collaboration. Accordingly, Marx and Engels do not diverge but rather complement each other. Dialectics of Nature is a crystallization of the Marxist worldview, penned by Engels with Marx’s support. Those who come up with strange accusations against Engels do so for political reasons. What underlies their account is a hidden anti-communism under the mask of scholarship.

It is not unusual in the history of Marxism that scholarly debates turn into battlefields. But no other topic seems to have been a matter of dispute to this extent. I am not aware of any other work that has been subject to greater conflict and chaos. Dialectics of Nature might be the most appreciated and disliked philosophy book ever. The Engels debate goes so far as to divide Marxists into ‘Western’ and ‘Soviet’ varieties. Supposing rather naively that there are Marxisms distributed to different regions of the earth, we are sometimes told that those who blindly commit themselves to Engels’ dialectics are grouped in the ‘East’, while the ‘intelligent’ Marxists are placed in the ‘West’.

Looking at their enemies from afar, Engels’ critics propose to drop Engels, leave his natural dialectics aside and simply move on. Engels’ supporters, by contrast, typically oppose this tendency. As a consequence, the debate clusters around the narrow questions of whether Engels earned his place in Marxism, whether he is a true friend or a genuine foe of Marx, and whether he deserves our attention or rather wastes our time.

At his bicentenary, however, it is somewhat odd to observe that one of the pioneering figures of modern socialism is remembered with mixed feelings. The present study is prompted by a curiosity about the reasons as to why and how a philosopher/politician can be interpreted in so many controversial ways, and by an interest in finding out anything philosophically new and insightful from that infamous book.

From today’s vantage point, one might rightfully expect that such concerns as Marx’s alleged (dis)approval of Engels and the problem of applying dialectics should have come down to more fundamental questions like these: how to understand Engels’ dialectics in its own right in the text as he has written it? What were his intentions and goals? What did he achieve, and where did he fail? These questions hardly need a justification, for if Dialectics of Nature is a work that really matters, and if the application of dialectics to nature is a real question, the potential merits of what the author has to say and what his text can offer are self-evident.

Since dismissive attacks rather than reasoned arguments have shaped much of the polemical framework of this literature, it is not surprising to see that the debate has ended up attaching different, conflicting and controversial meanings to Engels’ text that are not necessarily there. For the debate was never only about Engels’ science; his intellectual prestige and political authority were at stake. Challenging or defending him was, and still is, ideologically motivated, though that motivation has sometimes led scientific argument to personal insult. Present interpretations have often been projected into a past text, but this has risked a clear distinction between author’s intentions, his text and its subsequent readings. As a by-product of this fallacy, to which it has contributed in turn, we have the editorial aspects of the text. In the sixty years of publication history (1925–1985), Engels’ text has been presented and read differently. Under different titles and with different manuscript arrangements in subsequent editions of the ‘book’, the audience has met, and was supposed to meet, a different Engels. Invariably, however, a completeness and maturity of his dialectics was always editorially imposed.

The chronicle of the Engels debate testifies that scholars have failed to distinguish Engels’ purposes, goals, desires, motivations, intentions and procedures. Relatedly, they have tended to ignore the possibility that Engels’ project might have been marked out by potential incongruencies among the tasks that he set for himself and the choices he made in order to realize his plans. Understandably, picturing Engels’ science as inconclusive is an undesired interpretive option for the proponents of Engels’ dialectics. Yet I cannot help but notice that even his opponents fail to appreciate the incomplete character of Engels’ work. That fallacy might have something to do with this: charging someone with the alleged defects presumes that the ‘wrongs’ are unmistakably there; talking of indecision, by contrast, would make him a ‘moving target’ that would be harder to hit. Hence we are left in ignorance of his intentions, complete or otherwise.

Seeking proper ways to approach Engels, one runs into the difficulty to decide where to begin. We enter an old arena occupied for generations by countless warriors, both friendly and hostile. Curiously, since the Soviet Union is gone and the Cold War is over, there is not much left of the Engels debate. For the last twenty years or so, scholars have hardly been bothered with Engels’ philosophy. The topic seems to have lost its heat; it has perhaps died away. Surprisingly, now might be a better occasion to take up the issue once again. What we need today is more space for reasoned arguments rather than appeals to political authority, closer scrutiny of alternative positions rather than dismissive attacks, interesting questions rather than final answers. Aware of the fertile grounds for endless disputes regarding textual exegeses and eclectic doctrines, the present study aims to dig into new ways of reading, understanding and interpreting Engels.

Here I offer neither an exhaustive analysis of Engels’ intellectual biography nor a fully-fledged inquiry into his overall views on philosophy and natural sciences. Instead, I focus on Dialectics of Nature, and deal with its most controversial component, namely dialectics. I consider Engels’ Dialectics of Nature one of the products of, and an intended response to, the theoretical needs and concerns of nineteenth-century working-class politics. The Marx-Engels relationship in general and Engels’ philosophical undertakings in particular, emerge from, belong to, and represent part and parcel of, this political background. Concentrating largely on Engels’ own intentions in his own text and context, I search for (successful) failures and (failed) successes of Engels’ project. I go against the grain of previous attempts either to defend or to defeat Engels by turning to Marx’s authority, for I believe that we need to let the philosopher speak for himself in the text as he wrote it. I take into account that his problems were changing throughout the years, because he was setting different tasks for himself and speaking to different audiences. These intentions deserve a reconsideration without anyone else giving him a voice or speaking on his behalf. Thus in this regard what Marx would have said of Engels’ dialectics is less decisive than one might usually think.

Drawing attention to the intentional quality of Engels’ work, I reveal that Engels was not oblivious to a majority of the theoretical problems that he intended ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Neue Engels-Lektüre
• 2. After Engels, After Marx
• 3. The Origins of the Engels Debate
• 4. Dialectics of Nature Between Politics and Philosophy
• 5. Dialectics in Dialectics of Nature
• 6. Conclusion: What Is Dialectics of Nature?
• Back Matter