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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Unwritten or unpublished at the time: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?
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