Three theses about Marxism Thesis I: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: two sides of the same coin

Abstract

In the Soviet times, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were believed to be the founders of dialectical materialism. Indeed, the name of Marx has always been emphasized and even the philosophical system itself was called Marxism. Meanwhile, F. Engels’s enormous work entitled “The Condition of the Working Class in England” remained, as it were, in the shadows. In the post-Soviet times, the idea is held that F. Engels is second among equals, to the extent that Engels is sometimes written as a shadow of Marx. In this work, the author asserts the thesis according to which Marxism is a joint creation of two equal thinkers. If we claim that F. Engels was a Marx’s disciple, then K. Marx was equally an Engels’ one. The intellectual symbiosis of the two thinkers was facilitated by the same vision of the prevailing philosophical and political situation of that time in Europe, which is justified by a kind of isomorphism between F. Engels’ “The Position of the Working Class in England” and K. Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”.