 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. This November 28th was the 200th birthday anniversary of Frederick Engels, a communist icon, of course, a philosopher, a journalist, a writer who's actually written about a vast variety of topics. And in recent times, of course, recent times over the past few decades, in fact, Engels has often not really received his due. He's been seen as someone who's basically just as a compiler or an interpreter of Marx, as opposed to a writer with very original perspectives. And the synergy between Marx and Engels has often been sort of not really properly understood. A lot of this is changing right now because of the increasing amount of his work, his notebooks, his writings that are being published. So to talk more about this, we have with us Dr. Ajay Guravarthi of the Jahlalaya University and NewsClick's Pabir Purkayastha. Thank you so much both of you for joining us. So Dr. Ajay, I wanted to start with you first on this team of Engels not being really seen as an original thinker in his own right. And you've talked about this as well. Because he's in fact, long before Capital came out, long before some of Marx's other works came out, Engels was also someone who was carrying out a lot of studies from a very Marxist perspective. So could you talk a bit about this? Yeah, thanks Prashant. Yeah, you know, go back to history. Engels, in fact, wrote his first volume, The Conditions of the Working Class in England, much before he met Marx. And he wrote it being himself belonging to a kind of a bourgeois family. He was looking into the working classes. And if you read that book on English, that working class, it gives extremely detailed sociological firsthand experiential account of what the working class went through. I think this brings that and that was actually the basis for the friendship with Marx later on. You know, they met in a cafe and that's how they started and Marx said that repeatedly Marx mentions that in a couple of places that Engels arrived at a similar conclusion, independent of Marx. So in that sense, I think Engels was also in a very original sense, inaugurated the materialist, historical materialist or what they refer to as new materialism. And this we need to see in the context of the 19th century, you know, that where there was Egelian idealism, not all pervasive, Engels took the first step to bring it to a kind of a materialist service. And it's interesting you mentioned materialism and Praveer, I'm going to come to you on this because you just recently wrote an article about reading Engels today. And one of his enduring contributions has been in how we understand science or the philosophy of science. And this is not again, not just a theoretical or an academic perspective, but something that is very much rooted in struggles, in perspectives by scientists as well. So could you maybe take us to how some of his writings actually shaped how we understand science today? Before I do that, there are two aspects of Engels that I think we should really register. One is that he was a polymath, he did dabble with various things, he read vast amounts, he knew 20 languages. So he is one of the minds who was quick, who had a very wide-ranging interest, like Marx. Marx also has a huge wide-ranging interest, they were not limited to looking at philosophy, history or economics. They really did a very large list of things that they were interested in and they worked on. Both Engels and Marx are important, their importance is also that they looked at how production technology was changing society. And to that extent, there was a kind of division of labor. So both knew what each other was doing and reading. That Engels would focus more on science and Marx would look at more on history of technology as it was changing. And both of them put together, look at the development of productive forces in England as it applied to the textile industry. And that, if you look at Capital Volume 1, you will see Marx is a brilliant historian of technology. And if you see somebody who could have founded the discipline, then Capital Volume 1, according to me, is the best description of his historical view of how technology changes society. Engels looked at far beyond the immediate issues as well. He was interested in looking at chemistry, was interested in looking at physics. And also, in his dialectics of nature, there is this role of labor in human evolution, where he talks about how the hand evolves because of labor. It is not only that it produces labor, but it is also the product of labor. And this vision of how the evolutionary process takes place in nature is something which is quite original at that point of time. People claim that he was Lamarckian, he was not good, and so on and so forth. They forget. Even Darwin was a Lamarckian at the time. In his theory of evolution, one of the arguments he gives, apart from natural selection, one of the driving forces he considers is Lamarckian inheritance. So that was not something which is not mainstream at the time. It was very much a mainstream view. And cutting its biological view at the time, it changes only when Mendelian genetics becomes more widely known. So that's really the mark of time. But the interesting part is, of course, both Marx and Engels was asked by Marx to write on people like During, who were spreading a lot of confusion regarding science, regarding socialism to be derived from absolute principles, which is why Engels calls During metaphysical, that it is not changing, is to be derived from some fundamental principles which are developed through logic. And that logic does not consider change in itself. And that's, I think, the major contribution when you look at anti-during, that it is a view of nature. It's a view of nature in change. And it's a principle of philosophy being enunciated, which puts at the heart of it, what is change, that you are not talking of absolute categories that from which you derive everything else, but you are considering motion in nature and therefore also motion in society. If I put it in today's terms, it would be, you consider that change is something which is constant, that there is nothing which is static, which does not change. And this is what in physics would be called matter in motion. There is nothing called matter, which is completely steady. It is always in motion and we're all always in the state of change. And this is the dialectics versus metaphysics, which is what I think at that time philosophy really was referring to. Today, when we look at it, we don't know what we really mean by metaphysics at that time. And we don't know therefore what is the dialectics being talked about. But that is the problem of reading something 200 years later and then trying to understand what was the framing at the point of time. But even if we look at it today, this is something which is even today, we need to look at the consideration that are we trying to develop from absolute principles something which is say justice or are you trying to talk about it in the context of societal change. And I think that's central to both the sciences and it is also true for society. And I think that's where Engels major contribution lies, both as a polymesist, both the task that he was given by Marx to polymerize against people like Engels, but also original views on how science was shaping philosophy, how science was shaping other things. And of course, as I said, both of them put together how science and technology shaped society itself. Absolutely. And Praveer, I'll come back to some of those aspects you mentioned, but I wanted to go to Dr. Ajay about another area where Engels wrote a lot. And this was in the realm of anthropology, political science, a mix of all these topics. For instance, there is his most famous one of his most famous works on the original family, private property and state. And this was this, of course, again, today to this day continues to be read by many people, although it was written so long ago, it's actually had a very powerful impact on a lot of thinking, both in the academic and in the political sphere. So could you maybe talk a bit about that also? Yes, one is to argue which has generally been acknowledged that kind of a socialist feminism originated and Engels, this was in the book that you're referring to was in fact the original work. So that's one aspect. And there have been a lot of debates on that going on to Clara, the king, Todorzal and Jambore, and on the carrier effect. And once Engels was the first one to link private property or, you know, the starting of agriculture, surplus being linked to modern complex state, and then private property as the, you know, that complex link, I think. But along with that, I think the other side, which is often missed is that Engels emphasis on labor as the, as the intermediate support between nature and society. And also communication developing as a force in course of labor, we talked about communication, which later critical there is like ever mass pickup between labor and communication as the two constant sources of societal evolution. And the third aspect is that of cooperation. The engines was the first one to point all these three elements, labor, communication, and cooperation. And because of cooperation, more complex functions were possible. And in fact, this expansion of brain happened partly because of this mode of communication that was based on labor. And, you know, even in a recent writing by a Ferrari on homework years, he talks about this idea that what is so distinctive about human homo sapiens that in fact, you know, the market from the animal world, he says is our ability to cooperate. And it is the cooperation with sorts of magnified our capability. So I think in this sense, I mean, though engines did not work further, and as we know, many of his work were left halfway done, even both anti during and dialectics of nature, you know, one of the back office I was reading, he believed in taking things easy. So he also therefore believed along with doing all this, that socialism was he says somewhere is not just about labor party meetings, but socialism is also about good life, having good drinks, having party, you know, he also talked about socialism in this philosophical sense that it means about happy life. And it is happy life for everyone. So I think there's all this entire philosophical thing that a lot of the one way to approach angels today, I really think is not to read his text here less closed, you know, complete text, but the kind of opportunities, kind of questions he has opened up, which he might not fully work them out. But if you go back when I read angels now, I think that the number of questions that one can raise, which I think have very senior propositions and give us tools to how to contemplate theorize our own contemporary. You know, Prashant, let me add to that what Ajay has said, that there is also the other part in the book that you're talking about is also the concept of relation of property and endogamy. How do you control women's sexuality? Because you want to pass your inheritance and without private property, you would not get this. So this whole concept of endogamy, this is particularly important today, when we see the UP government has passed a law, which essentially is to control the women, that their marriage should be settled by the parents and not by the girl themselves, though it is also in the nature of inter-religious marriage that girls should not marry outside religion. Hindu girls should not marry a Muslim. Now, if you take that into account, then you will see this runs very deep in Indian society, that controlling women is the perpetuation of caste. And that's why when Ambedkar talks about annihilation of caste, he says inter-caste marriage, that's the way to break it down. And the way to control that inter-caste, that caste system continues, is that you control the women, no inter-caste marriage. And I think if we look at origin of private property, family, what angles work you are talking about, that endogamy and the relation with property is very clear. And when we are looking at the caste issues in Haryana, for instance, that there we find the women's movement came out repeatedly against this, we are not worried that what they do, what you are worried about the property should not go to other castes. This was the recurring refrain in the Jat Panchayas again and again, when this issue is to come up, how to object, how they would fight against women marrying outside the community. Absolutely, Prabir. So in this context, both of you actually laid down some of his most significant contributions in various disciplines. And I kind of wanted to go to maybe a period over the past few decades, where in some senses there has been a kind of rupture with the sort of thinking that Marx and Engels brought about, especially in the realm of, in some of these realms you talked about. And for classic instances of the sciences, so in the 40s and 50s, we had a very politically charged movement in the disciplines of the sciences, you've written about this Prabir as well. Whereas now we find that a very different perspective of science is being talked about, although there is a very powerful ecological movement, nonetheless, when people think of science, when even scientists think of science is very little politics in it. Whereas what happened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was that there was a very close overlap between these two, as in they were inseparable. So could you maybe talk about that aspect of Engels' contribution as well as how the rupture happened? The issue is that scientists being active in politics, perhaps the sharpest phase was the 40s and 50s with the nuclear bomb. That propelled a large number of the scientific community into active political arena, arguing for peace, banning of nuclear weapons and so on. A certain number of them came from within the Manhattan Project, because they thought that Nazi Germany wasn't the way to the bomb, and they therefore wanted to develop the nuclear bomb so that the fascism would not take over the world. But nevertheless, once Germany was defeated, there was the strongest proponents for peace. And that is something which really made an impact. You talked about the Russell Einstein manifesto, the peace movement, anti-nuclear movement, the world peace council, all of it, the scientific workers associations in different parts of the world. And there's the association of scientific workers of the world, which also had a strong left-wing component to it. Now all of this, if you put together, then you see that the political involvement came also because science went through two horrific wars. You had the gas use of poison gas in the First World War, which was again advance of chemistry. In fact, Haver's process, which we learned in chemistry, Haver was one of the ones who had also worked on poison gas for Germany. Of course, not that one particular country was the only one who was a culprit. But the science was bringing evils as it was perceived of mass killings in the world. And of course, nuclear weapons being the key one in that. And that needed also scientists to explain what was happening. Why was it dangerous? What are the implications of this? And it goes also to Reagan Star Wars, where the scientific community in the United States came out and said, this is madness. So this whole issue is something which is political, but also needed the scientific community to play a role. Unfortunately, when we look at it today, that we seem to see the scientific community and the technical community. I'm including the technical community because we have the surveillance state today. And surveillance state means also technology of a different kind, which is the cyber technologies coming in. So those areas, we seem to see a much more apolitical scientific and technical community today. That kind of activism is not there. The only arena which is still there is what you are talking about the environmental issue in which you do have a set of scientists who are active were being directly opposed by extreme right to deny climate change. And this is something which we have to get back to as basics because in the scientific community and the technical community does not participate in this kind of issues. Then our ability to explain these issues to the people is also limited because we don't then have the expertise. So I think this is one of the weaknesses that we have today. And that is something for which we are paying a price because that is separated. For instance, public health when it comes to vaccines, you have vaccine development, public health is not discussed. So all of these things require the scientists or the technologies to speak up about social issues. And I think hopefully the COVID-19 is a test case by which some of these issues are coming back to public realm. But the weapons issue, the nuclear restraint regime being dismantled, all of these issues still have to come back to center stage, which they should, because they threaten all humanity, just as global warming also does. Absolutely. Dr. Ajay, I'm going to thrust the burden of the social sciences on you here. But just quickly to look at the idea of how the social sciences, of course it's a vast and complex area, but nonetheless how it is also transformed over time. Over the past few decades, you have seen neoliberalism emerge as a key policy, but a focus for countries across the world. And this is creeped into the academy also not just economics, but in so many other disciplines, in sociology, for instance, is a very similar line of thinking. So can you also maybe talk about that disconnect that is right now happening in terms of the social sciences as well when you're analyzing something like society or property relations for that matter? I think that's a very interesting question, also an interesting way that you're formulated, you know, that I think they have a bulk of the debate today seems to be after the cultural turn, you know, the kind of cultural turn that social science has taken. There is a huge amount of interest in the kind of materialism, you know, I was referring, this is in fact probably about this about Tim Panaro's work, Sebastian Tim Panaro's work on materialism, suddenly has picked up a new interest in Western Marxism that how do we really look at this interface between material social arrangements, concrete material social arrangements, nature and its concrete limits, a biological constitution of man, human being, and including our brain. There are few scientists like in Chomsky's work, for instance, talks about certain grammar belonging to the very structure of brain. There are scientists I know in Harvard who are working on morality being inherent to the nature and structure of brain. So this is one kind of materialism that we are revisiting, you know, the biological aspect, the natural ecological movement is again bringing that nature existed prior to homo sapiens and nature as an independent dynamic. And therefore there are natural limits to the how much we can tamper with and angels was one of the early political philosophers have pointed out to this aspect of natural limits. So that's one aspect of it. The other obviously is that the cultural critique of Marxism and neo-Marxist has been that it does not offer a proper space and it plays an emphasis on production, production relations, everything being determined by production relations. Now I think here we need to revisit whether Marx and angels were only talking about production or they were essentially talking about material. They were not talking about merely economy. They were talking about material determination, which in fact means that society is materially constituted which poses limits to what we can do with the nature of change. That's what they eventually meant by determination. And therefore the place for ideas, place for abstraction, I think the important thing is in terms of abstract, abstraction, representation, digital images, all that we have now, you know, Simultra. Where do they belong? I don't know, this non-material kind of aspect which we otherwise refer in contemporary political theorists, discuss it, something being cultural, discuss it, abstract, imaginary. Where do they belong? I think that's where I think Marxism, that is, I find in angels his own writings and Marx more so, that can we bring back categories like self and spirituality back into Marxism? That does this new materialism as they refer to, does it really necessarily completely negate space for non-material aspects like consciousness, will, spirituality? I don't think so. It's a different matter that Marxist classical canonical text did not themselves develop. For instance, there's no space for category like self in Marxism. But I think there's enough space for us now to work on these non-material kind of categories that what constitutes human will. I mean, look at angels' own life. You know, the fact that here is someone who belongs to a bourgeois background, but transcends that extreme compassion with working class. And then his friendship with Marx is amazing when you read his biography, the way he supports, for as you would have had no Marxism, but for angels, he went out of his way to support, work as a manager at Manchester, simply to support Marx. Where does, this is will, this is what is will. Can material aspects of life, can they, can they fully explain this kind of spiritual aspects of a human being? I think it's a key question that we will be engaging with sometimes. You know, the role of individual in Marxism is something we need to do, explore, because I don't think Marxists would say that individuals play no role in history, just classes in the abstract sense. Obviously, history is contingent upon various accidents, including which individual comes at what point of time. So I think there is, there is that element in Marxism that we need to bring out, that it doesn't mean therefore classes subsube everybody, and we just represent classes. That is it. That's, that's not the way to read Marx or angels. And I think that is something which would, I would say that would be a very crude vulgarization of Marxism if you take it to be so, as Marx himself said, that people create history, but they don't create it as the police. It is conditioned by what the productive forces are, what the production relations at a particular time are. So yes, within that you have options, but you don't have the option for instance, from primitive society to get to an advanced social state. So that is, that is the limitation that you talk about. So I think those are the issues that how we read Marx today is not by reading Marx, but actually doing what Marx and Engels did, that as again, I'm quoting Marx in this, that philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point is to change it. That means only in the process of change do we understand society. Only by engaging with it do we understand society. Just as for the biologists or for the scientists, it is the interaction with nature that makes them understand it. And that's the role of interaction or an active exploration, both of society and of nature. And that's what we should really be talking about. And that certainly is not minus the individual. Thank you so much, Dr. Ajay and Prabir for joining us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching us.