The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels: Volume II: Classical Marxism 18501895

About this book

Richard N. Hunt has examined the entire body of writings by Marx and Engels including little-known essays and letters to present a lucid chronological analysis of the development of their political ideas. Volume 1 Marxism and Totalitarian Democracy 1818-1850 called "gracefully written massively researched and generally magnificent" (Thomas Ferguson Slavic Review) was widely acclaimed volume Professor Hunt covers the period 1850-1895 whose central political events were the FrancoPrussian War and the short-lived Paris Commune. He continues to document with meticulous scholarship his thesis that throughout their lives Marx and Engels were committed to classic democratic ideals and did not advocate minority revolution dictatorship by an elite or the establishment of a totalitarian regime. In volume 1 Professor Hunt distilled from the Marx-Engels corpus two general strategies for achieving communism. He now finds two more one based on the study of conditions in Russia undertaken by the two men in the 1870s and another that developed after they observed the expansion of democratic institutions especially in England. Although the twentieth century regards Marx and Engels as the apostles of violent revolution Professor Hunt finds that the most truly radical element in their political thought was their vision of a postrevolutionary society that would transcend the division of labor becoming a society of occupational fluidity one without professional politicians bureaucrats or legislators.