Samuel Hollander is a distinguished specialist in classical economics, and, by more recently extending his corpus of works to include major studies of Karl Marx and (with the book reviewed here) Friedrich Engels, it is perhaps natural for non-specialists to assume that he would like readers to consider them in some ways as classical economists, too. Hollander declares early on in the book that Engels’ 1844 Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy “provides a sophisticated evaluation of classical value theory” (p. 25), although, of course, Engels is highly critical of many aspects of it. Indeed, a significant portion of Hollander’s book is taken up with Engels’ analysis of what can be called the ‘themes’ of classical economics: value, price, distribution, wages, and population.
Chapter one, on Engels’ early contributions, argues that Engels’ Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy was “the founding document in the Marxian theoretical tradition” (p.25), and, together with the more well-known Condition of the Working Class in England, it laid out “a great deal of the future Marxian program” (p. 85). According to Hollander, in these works Engels demonstrated “impressive technical insight” on issues such as the concept of value in Say and Ricardo, the reserve army of the unemployed, shadow pricing, and endogenous trade cycles. Chapter two considers the extent to which Marx’s concept of surplus value was indebted to Rodbertus, illustrating some definite, if partial, similarities, but concludes that Marx did not silently base his doctrine on Rodbertus’ work (p. 123). Chapter three considers economic organization and the price mechanism, suggesting that Engels had a deeper appreciation of the planning problem in respect of accounting returns for interest and rent than did Marx (p. 173).
Perhaps the most politically controversial chapters of the book (four and five) are concerned with revisionism in Marx and Engels, by which is meant the possibility of a peaceful, reformist path to socialism, rather than a violent, revolutionary one. Hollander attempts to make a case for Marx and Engels as sometime-revisionists who were equally attuned to the possibility of achieving workers’ power by evolutionary steps and ‘constitutional means.’ For example, Hollander writes that “The rhetoric of ‘revolution’ and ‘dictatorship’ has done much to disguise the revisionism apparent throughout the range of Marx–Engels documents extending over nearly half a century” (pp. 216–217). Hollander argues that, on some issues, Engels lagged behind Marx in allowing positive outcomes from constitutional labor reforms (p. 254), but on others, he was equally attuned to their potential. Engels’ final position was that when the monopoly advantages obtained by the British working class were negated by Britain’s long-term industrial decline, a socialist working class in Britain would re-emerge (p. 274). But this tacitly acknowledges that Engels was ultimately a revolutionary, as the working class would then rise up in revolt.
In fact, the difference between a reformist and a revolutionary is not that revolutionaries deny any role for peaceful struggle, but that reformists reject the idea of violent revolution as a necessary focus of their politics. Concomitantly, Hollander does not properly explain the Marxian term “social revolution” in this context (p. 217). It does not mean incremental change by constitutional means, but the structural transformations between sequential modes of production. According to the materialist conception of history, social revolutions (for example, between feudalism and capitalism) entail both short-term political uprisings that are invariably violent and long-run socio-economic changes that are incremental.
Chapter six of the book focuses on facets of the Marx–Engels relationship, notably Engels as editor of (and contributor to) Capital, and the question of whether he was little more than Marx’s mouthpiece (“his master’s voice”). Hollander is mainly sympathetic to Engels, arguing that he did not deliberately mislead readers about authorship in the later incomplete volumes of Capital, although he is evaluated as “more royalist than the king” with respect to the surplus-value doctrine. By way of a general summary, Hollander asserts Engels’ “impressive contributions in the 1840s” to Marxian economics, justifies Engels’ defence of Marx against plagiarism charges, praises Engels’ objections to the Utopian socialists for proposing organizations that lacked a price mechanism, and avows Engels’ laudable support for welfare reform within capitalism (p. 314). Hollander wants, in many ways, to reunite the Marx–Engels partnership, with both as equal contributors, and he argues that a mechanical, scientistic Engels should not be isolated from an ethical, humanist Marx.
Now to wider issues raised in the book. Hollander declares in the prolegomenon that “The notion of a Marx imbued with Hegelianism to a greater degree than Engels does not ring true” (p. 4). Here, Hollander is neglecting some important recent scholarship, as it appears he has not read the most original book on Marx published since the collapse of the USSR (White Reference White1996). If he had consulted James White’s book, he would find a Marx unrecognizable from the standard view of historians of economics. Capital was designed in its overall structure, and also in its basic concepts, as thoroughly Hegelian. The parallels between Hegel’s Science of Logic and Marx’s Capital are explained in convincing detail in White’s book, but in Engels’ economics, the link to Hegel was much more superficial, a fact that Hollander overlooks. Engels’ understanding of dialectics was within a positivistic framework, but Hollander follows Schumpeter in mistakenly accepting that both Marx and Engels only cursorily employed “Hegelian phraseology” in their technical economics (p. 6).
Hollander might protest that there are no references to Hegel’s Logic in volume one of Capital. He would be half right: there are no references to it in the English translation. But there are such references in the first (German) edition of 1867; they were removed in later editions/translations in an attempt to downplay the Hegelian roots of Capital (Barnett Reference Barnett2009, pp. 158, 187). One of the reasons why Marx did this was linked to his ongoing research on the materialist conception of history. As his study of the economic sociology of nation states progressed, he became more aware of the differences between and within national economic systems, which was one reason why inconsistencies appeared in his predictions. He moved from advocating a Hegel-inspired linear scheme of historical evolution, to admitting the possibility of a multi-linear scheme.
Hollander considers this issue (but without fully understanding its consequences) in an appendix considering the “alternative Russian option” for socialism, which was based on the peasant commune and (as supplemented by Engels) the artel (a Russian form of workers’ collective). Hollander erroneously concludes that “such a possibility should not be taken too seriously” (p. 369), but Marx certainly did take it very seriously (but Engels less so). The decision by Engels to omit Marx’s substantial Russian studies from the published versions of volumes two and three of Capital indicates this division very well, and is a major instance where the ‘Marx contra Engels’ thesis is actually right (White Reference White1996, pp. 281–295).
The most perceptive part of Hollander’s book is contained in chapter seven, where he discusses “political economy in the historical context.” He is not fooled by Engels’ attempt to ‘have it both ways’ in respect to the historical inevitability of socialism (p. 328): part of the explanation for this inconsistency is psychological, as both Marx and Engels predicted socialism’s inevitability as one means of encouraging its desired selection. The same subconscious psychology is part of the reason why Marx and Engels were initially reluctant to allow multi-linear schemes of historical evolution, as, if they did, then this would disclose that the transition to socialism was not inevitable. Engels’ later attempted modification of historical materialism by way of the economy being determinate “only in the last instance,” and by positing a “dialectical interrelation” between base and superstructure, is also shown by Hollander as unconvincing. The all-too-brief discussion of behavioral assumptions within historical materialism is enlightening and should have been expanded.
Hollander’s underlying aim in the book, to show that “Engels deserves to be taken seriously in his own right” (p. 339), is undoubtedly true, but this reviewer never believed the opposite. The more contentious question is, ‘taken seriously’ in what sense: as a social-reforming pioneer whose work should be celebrated and extended, or as an advocate of political violence whose promotion of class-hate stereotypes should be condemned? It could be argued that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were classical economists in the same sense that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are classical opera singers, and that the real distinction that should be highlighted by scholars is between the young, humanistic (pre-Communist) Marx, and his older, more aggressively intolerant (Communist) self. Ultimately, Hollander’s suggestion that Engels’ calls for “open revolution against the ruling bourgeoisie” should not always be read literally, that they were sometimes mere rhetoric, is as unconvincing as the 1917 revolution was passionately real for Russian Marxists of the time.
