the intellectual leader of that faction, Eugen Du ̈hring, entitled simplyAnti-
Du ̈hring, became perhaps the most important vehicle through which Marxism
as a doctrine reached the next generation of young socialists, which included
the leaders of the Russian Revolution. Engels had himself been actively
involved in revolutionary activities in 1848, the great year of European
revolutions, and throughout his life was associated with working-class move-
ments and e ́migre ́ revolutionary cadres. His intellectual interests were prodi-
gious, and his writings spanned a large number of intellectual disciplines,
though Marxists have always considered his greatest service to socialism to be
his editing of Marx’s last great work,Das Kapital.
Enlightenment
The Enlightenment is a conventional label in the history of ideas used to cover
a set of theories and attitudes developing just before and after the French
Revolution, though some would date the Enlightenment as occupying the
whole period from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 18th. Its
political importance stems from the way it has influenced most subsequent
political thought, partly in terms of its actual content, but as much simply by
destroying earlier political assumptions that had reigned throughout the early
and medieval periods of European political history. Although the Enlight-
enment was a broad movement involving many strands of thought, it is
associated particularly with writers likeRousseau, Diderot and the other
authors of the FrenchEncyclopedia,and, in Britain, withHume, and, stretch-
ing the definition slightly, withHobbesandLocke.
The Enlightenment creed stressed the possibility of man’s own intellect
planning a society on rational grounds, and denied, therefore, the traditional
authority of Kings and the Church. Freedom, especially of thought, and co-
operative human behaviour were the high points of the philosophy, which
was, on the whole, optimistic about human nature where the prevailing,
religiously-derived, notion of man was pessimistic, accepting the Christian
doctrine of Original Sin. In many ways Enlightenment social thought was
developed on an analogy with physical science, seeking almost mathematically
perfect designs for society. The major importance was, indeed, the rejection of
received authority, especially that of the Church, rather than any particular
specific doctrine.
Some have thought Rousseau to be responsible for the French Revolution,
because he argued that men could be, were originally, but were not now, free,
and that this freedom, possible only in an egalitarian society, could be grasped
by modern man if only the chains of traditional expectation could be thrown
off. In contrast to the conservative doctrines that were developed by, for
example,Burkein opposition to this movement, the Enlightenment put great
Enlightenment