This event at the Ayewrite festival was in the Burns Room in the older victorian part of the library.It was fitting for a historian who has just written a biography of Engels to give his lecture of a man who was part of the duo who examined and analysed the potential extrapolation of the experience of life in industrialising Europe into a model for revolutionary change.
Engels came to Manchester to work in his fathers Family Cotton Business from Germany as many intellectuals theorised the great proletarian revolution would tale place in the northern workshops of England , it was also ideal as he was close to being incarcerated if he kept up his ideals and thoughts in the current climate in Germany, he also wanted to chronicle and catalogue what may happen in order to enliven his understanding for what would ultimately happen in continental Europe , mainly present day Germany.
Marx and Engels really wrote about , and expected , the great revolution to take place in the hodge podge that was more or less todays Germany , even in the 1890s when Engels was given his last pronouncements he would have been most surprised if a revolution of the type he envisaged was to happen in agrarian Russia.Even when the Bolsheviks took control in Russia Lenin and especially Trotsky still considered Germany to be the heartland for a true long lived Communist revolution and were urging the politburo to agitate and assemble a military force to assist and support the German proletariat.
One odd feature among many of the Marx and Engels critique was their view on the traditional Family. . Not surprising seen as Engels the class ridden combo of one "presentable" wife for his high society Friends ,with whom he got on well , and the mistress in a lovenest elsewhere in the city for his equality delights.
Engels , like Trotsky , enjoyed a bit of hunting and enjoyed his membership of the local hunt a great deal.One of his enduring passions was Fox Hunting.
In the end Engels was to be disappointed when the Manchester population he had carefully documented were given a chance to state their aspirations for their class and send a signal to the ruling masters.They ended up voting for the upper class Tory party candidates because of their bigotry and rivalry against the catholic Irish poor workers as opposed to recognising a common comradely plight and affinity with , if they read their Engels , follow working class brethren.
Engels used a great deal of his wealth to more or less permanently fund and subsidise Marx , ultimately moving to London to be near his dear Friend.
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