Introduction

My first five chapters demonstrated Engels's impressive contributions in the 1840s to Marxian economic analysis appearing in the Outlines of Political Economy, The Condition of the Working Class, and the Principles of Communism; justified his defense of Marx against charges of plagiarism regarding surplus-value doctrine, perceived (along with the doctrine of historical materialism) as the essence of scientific socialism; rationalized his objections to the “utopian” socialists for proposing organizational arrangements that lack a price mechanism, notwithstanding his own case for a central-control system; and analyzed his so-called revisionism, attending to the scope for (and desirability of) constitutional and welfare reform within capitalism, and to the serious implications of such progress for a communist outcome. (Precisely how my positions on these matters relate to other treatments of Engels's political economy is conveniently summarized in the Prolegomena.) Chapter Six pulled some of the threads of my account together by focusing on facets of Engels's relationship with Marx, including his work as Marx's editor. (Again, my contribution in relation to the secondary literature is clarified in the Prolegomena.) I shall complete the synthesis in this concluding chapter by surveying the methodological implications of Engels's contribution to Marxian political economy.

In Section B, considerable common ground is shown to exist between Engels's view of the character of “political economy” – much of what we say applies equally to Marx – and that of the tradition represented by Lionel Robbins, namely the contrast between value-free economic analysis and value-laden prescription.