Of course, Althusser and most of the anti-Engels crowd never do anything for the workers struggle anywhere near what Engels and Lenin ( an Engelsist) did. The French Communist Party screwed up royally in the period of Althusser's influence. So, they have to heap slander on Engels enormous achievements in intitating the working class movement, and "perform" the impossible task of separating Marx's work from Engels'.
Methinks the "kiss" below is a "kiss" of death. What a joke. The author discovers that here and there Engels got it, but in his main explicit statements of Marxism, he was way off. Anti-Engels literature and arguments are filled with absurdities such as this. What contortions intellectuals will go through to be "closer" to Marx than Engels.
Charles Brown
>>> "rc-am" <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 08/20/99 09:19PM >>>
[just got this today, and since there's been some discussion on marx and
engels, thought lboers would be interested. the translation isn't
great. Negri, as some will already know, is an italian autonomist.
he's currently in prison in italy. - Angela]
From: J?lio BTjar <jbexar at mundivia.es> To: Support Toni Negri <toninegri at egroups.com> http://www.egroups.com/group/toninegri
(YOUNG) COMRADE ENGELS, A KISS TO YOU Toni Negri
We know the disasters that Engels caused, after Marx death, into german socialdemocracy bosom. We know the disasters that the reference to Engels bore into workers movement dynamics during its century of expansion. Engels was a socialist there where Marx was a communist; Engels was Gotha's Program partisan, whereas Marx was against it and favorable to free ourselves of work. Engels was a dialectic materialist, while Marx only was a bit dialectic, but above all he was a materialist. At last, Engels was fundamentally sectarian, while Marx was libetarian. All sectarian people, in workers movement history, rested on Engels. However, those who considered the communist theory free and opened like the society it must construct, they didn't refer to him.
Althusser, in one brilliant writing from 1982 ("About marxist thought", published in "Futur AntTrieur, special number "About Althusser", Paris, L' Harmattan, 1993) talks about a deep equivocal in the basis of friendship and collaboration between these two men [Marx/Engels] and looks with rancorous irony the works of Engels, "the General" (as Marx used to call him). It was Engels who created that "only thought", the "marxist thought" or "dialectic materialism"