Research help - evolution of Socialism/Anarchism if Marx & Engels die in November 1863

raharris1973

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Did they have a brush with death at this particular time? Not that I know of.

Why are you asking about this particular point in time?

----it plays a role in an ongoing ASB thread I have going, but I thought the audience and knowledgeable board members on alternate socialist theory would stronger on the straight AH forums.

As of November 1863, here's what my tally of Marx's work wikipedia says he finished or published:

Marx & Engels joint productions-

Much Marx reporting for Horace Greeley's New York Herald Tribune, on European and British affairs and the US Civil War

Unwritten or unpublished at the time:

Engels solo album-


Cutting off both their careers in November 1863 means it is after Marx has set several theoretical directions and some key terminology, but before the theories are more fully developed.

It also cuts off their careers nearly a year before the launch of the First International in London in September 1864.

The First International, briefly, was started by British and French workers and their advocates, along with varied European emigre participation. Other participants included Owenite Utopian Socialists,French followers of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Louis Auguste Blanqui, and multiple German socialists.
Mikhail Bakunin joined in 1868. Ferdinand Lassalle was the biggest name in German practical, political socialism at the time and even corresponded with Bismarck. He was a popularizer and more straightforward communicator of Socialist ideas and coined the term Sozialdemokrat (Social Democrat). He accomplished *most* of his life's work before November 1863, because he was mortally wounded in a duel, dying August 31, 1864.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Lassalle#Death_and_legacy

What happens to the ideological stew given the presence of these remaining thinkers, the objective conditions of industrialization and so forth?

I would note one could easily vary the results by picking a "Lasalle dies on schedule" or "Lasalle's death is butterflied away" option.

The latter could easily happen because apparently Lassalle met the woman he fought the duel over only in 1864, and differences in Socialist gatherings and correspondence caused by the absence of Marx could easily prevent the meeting that led to Lasalle's fatal duel.

One thing I would note is that the simultaneous death of Marx and Engels is a double-whammy because Engels funded many publications of Marx's works, including posthumous ones. And Engels continued theoretical work on his own after Marx's death.

So I'll ask again what happens to Socialism, Communism, Anarchism and the radical left in general in an environment altered this way?
 

raharris1973

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Is Sam Russell still a board participant?

Despite the length of my post, the above is just gathered from a wiki-cram.
 
For what its worth the Paris Commune in my timeline was an attempt to think about something similar - namely, what left-wing politics and wider economic, political, and social thought might look like without the influence of Marx and Engels. In my timeline the success of the Commune meant that they never got that post-1871 boost that came from writing The Civil War in France and seeming very prophetic in their other writings. I had them expelled and marginalized by the International.

Really, though, I think its anyone's guess. I personally felt it unlikely that one alternate author or theorist [I sort of count them as a pair] would emerge as so influential across so many fields. I upped the influence of Blanqui as being the organizer of a successful revolution ITTL. Proudhon is an odd one - by the 1860s his ideas were already a little bit marginal, partly because the core idea of 'property is theft' really played poorly with those more moderate socialists trying to engage with the radical fringes of the middle class. As they did OTL, Bakunin and Kropotkin will have more traction internationally in anarchist and left-wing circles.

For what its worth I think that all elements of left wing politics would take on a more nationalized focus - one of the interesting and unique things about Marxism is how widely it spread and how it provided a core shared ideology for many on the left. That's not to say that internationalism wouldn't be a thing, just that it would be more of a rainbow coalition.

Of course this is just politics, and doesn't cover the huge effects that removing the influence of Marxism in other fields [economics, academic study, social science etc etc etc] would have.

Also, as I said above, these are just my thoughts that I put into Spectre of Europe. There's nothing to say that other visions of a non-Marxist future aren't available.
 

raharris1973

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Thanks for the thoughtful replies and link to the Commune story - it gives me some stuff to think about.
 
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