Utopia in 19th Century Thought:

Utopian images in Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology

by

Professor Terrell Carver,University of Bristol

Utopian Imagesin Marx and Engels’s

‘The German Ideology’

• Terrell Carver

• Professor of Political Theory

• Department of Politics

• University of Bristol

• t.carver@bristol.ac.uk

Current revisions

• Marx and Engels’s relation to the ‘utopians’ of 1845-46

• Understanding of the text and its presentation – elements of debate

• Critique of the interpretive tradition and editorial process from 1923 to date

• Critical assessment of Marx and Engels as utopians

Relationship to utopians

• Read retrospectively through Engels’s 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

• Sharp binary and harsh judgements of commentators recently questioned

• More nuanced position in 1845-46

• Makes The Communist Manifesto, Part IV (1848), rather more exciting

Take-away points

• Interpretive traditions are often retrospective and anachronistic

• Changing the interpretive lens makes ‘familiar’ texts say things differently

• Texts do not say ‘one thing’ … even at the time of writing or publication

• The understanding of politics, and what counts as a (legal or acceptable) political idiom, alters with structural and cultural change

• Beware ‘timeless’ pastiche in intellectual history!

Hunting, fishing, criticising …

German text 2004

German apparat

Japanese edn (1974)

New translation/presentation

• Therefore as soon as the

division of labour ISIS starts to develop, each

exclusiveman has a particular, area of

activity that constrains him, that he cannot

get out of; he is a hunter, fisherman or

or critical criticherdsman & must remain

as such unless he wants to lose HIS the

Cont.• means to live – whereas in communist

society, where each man does not have an

exclusive area of activity, RATHER but can

rather develop himself in any branchES he

likes, society MERELY regulates the general

production & thus makes it possible for me

to do one thing today and another

Cont.• to hunt,

tomorrow, in the morning TO BE A

SHOEMAKER & AT MIDDAY IN THE AFTERNOON A

to fish, to herd livestock,GARDNER, in the evening TO BE A PLAYWRIGHT,

and to criticise after dinner,

just as I have

Cont.

• without ever becoming hunter{,}a mind,

or critic.

fisherman or herdsman.

Smooth text with handwriting

• another tomorrow, in the morning to hunt,

in the afternoon to fish, in the evening to

herd livestock and to criticise after

dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever

becoming hunter{,} fisherman, herdsman

or critic.

Commentators’ reactions to this passage over the years

• 1. Sharp criticism

• 2. Sympathetic reconciliation

• 3. Sympathetic omission

• 4. Puzzlement

Marx and Engels as utopians – critical assessment

• Hi-tech, high productivity

• Anti-money

• Anti-consumption

• Pro-leisure time

• Compatible with feminism, anti-colonialism, ecologism

• How much high tech do we need?