readable
this is a curious essay that seems to be letting on quite a bit about what engels really thought of workers, or at least did near the very end of his life. the editors of the text i'm pulling it from want to suggest that it's evidence of the christian nature of the communist movement, and a sort of weak point where engels manages to accidentally contradict himself. it may, perhaps, have been influential on various christian left movements (such as canada's ndp). insofar as that's true, however, engels is actually launching an attack on the mindlessness of the working class. when he compares the gestating continental workers movement to early christianity, the aim is not to stress the inherent morality of communism or to place religion as an important part of a workers' program but to stress the idiocy of the uneducated worker; unfortunately, from engels' perspective, the german proletariat is as hopelessly stupid and painfully naive as the early christians were. yet, engels seems to present this hopeless worker ignorance as an opportunity for a charismatic leader to take advantage of.
given that this text was written at the end of engels' life, it may have a certain "bitter old man" quality to it. yet, it may also display a higher level of honesty than earlier propaganda pieces. with his comrade long dead and no future to plan for, perhaps engels is finally telling us what he really thinks.
there's been this underlying concern regarding marxism from the very start, coming from both liberals to marx' right and anarchists to marx' left, that it's really just an elaborate justification for despotism, and that the intended despot was always marx himself. was marx merely trying to build a proletariat army in which he could conquer europe like napoleon did? we'll never truly know the answer to this. this particular text is written by engels after marx' death, but if you read their joint writing carefully what comes out (especially in the dictatorship of the proletariat) is something that seems rather similar to the counter-enlightenment position of enlightened despotism. see, one could conceivably derive the counter-enlightenment (a peculiarly tory position) from a dialectical combination of enlightenment and anti-enlightenment. it's easy to see why marx may have seen something of interest, then, in counter-enlightenment toryism. of course, marx was certainly a product of the enlightenment. yet, he seems to have spent his whole life arguing against it. true, historical materialism is not toryism. yet, in the sense that an enemy's enemy is a friend? the truth is that marx and engels seem to have been very much aligned with the counter-enlightenment, a deeply aristocratic movement. they may have claimed they were attacking the bourgeoisie from a working class perspective, but they lived the lives of aristocrats and their writings stress that point rather clearly from time to time.
this text by engels is a good example of that. it is technically a defense of historical materialism as it relates to the collapse of the roman empire. engels very briefly argues that christianity was the socialism of late antiquity, and the rise of christianity in the empire was equivalent to a socialist revolution. curiously, the revolution failed because the dictatorship of the blessed prevented the meek from inheriting the earth. might there be lessons for the marxist in this realization?
yet, this is really just a lot of hand-waving. what engels really wishes to discuss is how the history of christianity provides lessons to control the german workers with. once engels lays out the argument that the intellectually feeble german working class should be as easy to control through charismatic leadership as the early christians were, he completely changes the topic to an academic debate about the age of the book of revelations, as though he is trying to demonstrate his point: as christianity was a construction of the roman elite designed to control the mass of peasants, communism may be used by the german elite to control the gestating worker movement.
some specific notes:
- engels stresses the idea of communism differing from christianity primarily in where the utopia is placed. engels carefully points out that conditions in the empire were so terrible that christians could be convinced that their death was preferable. communism, on the other hand, aims to convince workers to seek their utopia as built from their own hands. it's not hard to see which approach would be more productive.
- the precise comparison that engels draws is between a greek named proteus (who first convinced some early christians he was a prophet, then used that position of trust to try and take control of them) and a german named kuhlmann (who managed to convince a group of swiss workers that his wisdom was so great that he should be their pampered leader).
- engels' biblical scholarship is interesting, but likely out of date. it seems to be that the majority position is currently to take a late authorship (c. 95) of the book of revelations due to the author being a persecuted christian and persecutions beginning under domitian. engels himself also points out a prophesy of the eighth emperor, indicating a later date (by his own logic of prophecy in scripture indicating a date of composition later than the prophesied events). one needs to be careful with these arguments, though. i'm not fully convinced that christians were persecuted at all, under domitian or not. i'm not convinced there were even early christians! and, how much of a difference does 25 years really make? more interesting to me is engels' deconstruction of the text. the dating is a strong focus of the article, but the real point is that the text is constructed. well, with this particular text, it could be said this is obvious; we don't really need an argument against the historicity of the book of revelations. it's quite obviously either a work of complete fiction or a psychedelic hallucination. while the latter option is not to be completely discounted, if it is the case then the interpretation of that trip is certainly a work of fiction. so, it's a work of fiction either way, and this much is blatantly obvious. the key here is that engels points out that the entire thing can be easily deconstructed into source material. the underlying implication is that the religion is a construction of the elite - just as communism is.
- engels curiously draws the comparison between the different kinds of socialism (marxists, proudhonists, anarchists) in the 1800s and the different kinds of christianity that existed until the church managed to stamp them all out. it's curious in the sense that it assigns marxism to the role of the catholic church in the analogy. considering that engels is deconstructing christianity as a created religion of the upper classes in this very text, this comparison only makes sense if he sees marxism in a similar light. the analogy also naturally produces the non-marxian forms of socialism as analogous to the purer sects of christianity that were stamped out by the centralized church. is this really the future that engels desires? is this really how he sees marxism in relation to the other types of socialism?
full text:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_On_the_Histsory_of_Early_Christianity.pdf
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/HX/6.N5/index.html