KARL MARX

LONDON 217
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 relationship
- 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 enthusiasm
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-