Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

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chester, Engels was beginning to collect material for his masterpiece, The

Situation of the Working Class in England, probably the bitterest criticism

of early capitalism over written.^191

At the end of August 1844 , Engels passed through Paris on his way

back to Germany. His historic meeting with Marx occurred on 28 August

in the Cafe de la Regence, one of the most famous Parisian cafes of the

time, which had counted among its clients Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin,

Diderot, Grimm, Louis Napoleon, Sainte-Beuve and Musset.^192 Their

long, initial conversation persuaded them to spend the next ten days in

each other's company in the rue Vaneau. 'Our complete agreement in all

theoretical fields became obvious,' wrote Engels, 'and our joint work dates

from that time.'^193 At the end of his life, looking back on this co-operation

Engels summed up his view as follows:

Both before and during my forty years' collaboration with Marx I had

a certain independent share in laying the foundations of the theory,

and more particularly in its elaboration. But the greater part of its

leading basic principles - especially in the realm of economics and

history, and, above all, their final trenchant formulation, belong to

Marx. For all that I contributed - at any rate with the exception of my

work in a few special fields - Marx could very well have done without

me. What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. Marx stood

higher, saw farther, and took a wider and quicker view than all the rest

of us. Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him

the theory would not, by a long way, be what it is today. It therefore

righdy bears his name.^194

Probably this passage presents an accurate account of their later relation-
ship - though obviously Engels was indispensable to Marx financially. But
so far as the theory is concerned, it has been argued (and with considerable
justification), that during the thirteen years that he survived his friend,
Engels managed - in his all too clear elucidations - to take much of the
subtlety out of Marx's ideas.^195 Nevertheless, in the late summer of 1844
Engels, with his practical experience of capitalism, brought more to Marx
than he received.
Thus began a friendship that ended only with Marx's death. In their
similar origins in comfortable middle-class homes, their youthful enthusi-
asm for poetry and their transition through Young Hegelian liberalism to
radical politics, Marx and Engels shared sufficient experiences to form a
basis for lasting friendship. But it was a friendship more of contrasts than
similarities: Marx's forte lay in his power of abstraction. He had throughly
absorbed the Hegelian method and his dialectical approach managed to
blend elements in a subtle synthesis. While Marx had been studying
Hegel, Engels had been gaining practical experience and making first-