On Engels’s “Three Greatnesses”

Engels and Marx are both revolutionary mentors of the proletariat and working people worldwide. Together, Engels and Marx provided the most powerful ideological weapon—Marxism—for criticizing the old world, creating a new world, and for the struggle of the proletariat and all humanity for liberation. As we commemorate the 200th anniversary of Engels’s birth and recall his brilliant thought and lofty spirit, we may grasp this through the “three greatnesses.”

恩格斯和马克思都是全世界无产阶级和劳动人民的革命导师。恩格斯和马克思一起为批判旧世界、创造新世界，为全世界无产阶级和全人类争取解放的斗争，提供了最强大的思想武器——马克思主义。我们纪念恩格斯诞辰200周年，缅怀恩格斯的光辉思想和崇高精神，可以从三个伟大”中进行把握。

Engels’s Great Life

恩格斯的伟大人生

Engels was born on 28 November 1820 in Barmen in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia (today’s Wuppertal, Germany) and died on 5 August 1895 in London, England. In his seventy-five years of life, Engels cherished lofty ideals, fought unremittingly for the cause of human liberation, scaled the heights of thought in pursuit of truth, and battled tirelessly to build a new world.

恩格斯1820年11月28日出生于普鲁士王国莱茵省巴门市（今德国乌培塔尔市），1895年8月5日于英国伦敦逝世。恩格斯人生七十五载，胸怀崇高理想，为人类的解放事业不懈奋斗，为追求真理勇攀思想高峰，为建立新世界不息战斗。

Although born into a bourgeois family, Engels resolutely embarked on the revolutionary path. While still a middle-school student, he already detested the despotic system and the arrogance of officials. In 1842, he went to Manchester, the industrial center of England, to work as a clerk in a commercial firm. There, he often visited the residential districts where workers lived, spending two years living and eating alongside them, personally experiencing and investigating their impoverished and bitter lives, and collecting a large amount of first-hand material. He wrote and, in 1845, published *The Condition of the Working Class in England*, thereby beginning his great life of exploring the path of liberation for the working class. Through organizing the manuscripts of *Capital*, Engels completed the systematic construction of the logic and structure of capital, and, through the workers’ movement, effectively explored practical modes of transcending capital.

恩格斯虽出身于资产阶级家庭，却毅然走上了革命道路。他还是中学生时，就憎恶专制制度和官吏的专横。1842年，他到英国工业中心曼彻斯特一个商号去当办事员。在那里，他常常到工人栖身的住宅区去，曾历时两年与工人同吃同住，亲自体验考察工人贫穷困苦的生活，搜集到大量的一手资料，撰写并于1845年出版了《英国工人阶级状况》一书，自此开启为工人阶级探求解放道路的伟大人生。恩格斯通过整理《资本论》手稿完成了对资本逻辑和结构的体系化建构，更借助工人运动有效探索了超越资本的实践方式。

Engels fought side by side with Marx, carrying out long-term work of extensive reading, investigation and research, theoretical creation, and practical exploration to establish the scientific theoretical system of Marxism, guide and support the workers’ movement, and found the proletarian party. He overcame enormous economic, livelihood, and physical difficulties, endured hardships beyond ordinary imagination, and produced a series of important achievements. After Marx’s death, Engels became “the most outstanding scholar and the mentor of the modern proletariat in the entire civilized world.” Engels’s life was a life of exploring and establishing scientific theory for the liberation of the proletariat and humanity, a life of ceaseless struggle to transform the old world and build a new one, and a life of dedicating everything to pursuing and defending truth.

恩格斯与马克思并肩战斗，为创立马克思主义的科学理论体系，指导支持工人阶级运动，创立无产阶级政党，进行了长时期的博览群书、调查研究、理论创作、实践探索工作，克服了经济、生活、身体上的巨大困难，付出了常人难以想象的艰辛，产出了一系列重要成果。在马克思逝世后，恩格斯成为“整个文明世界中最卓越的学者和现代无产阶级的导师”。恩格斯的一生，是为无产阶级和人类解放探索创立科学理论的一生，是为改造旧世界建立新世界战斗不止的一生，是为追求真理捍卫真理奉献所有的一生。

Engels’s Great Character

恩格斯的伟大品格

In the history of the development of Marxism, Engels and Marx were both founders of Marxism. Their revolutionary friendship lasted forty years, their cooperation was harmonious and tacit, and their contributions are difficult to rank as greater or lesser. Engels generously supported Marx financially, ensuring Marx could concentrate on theoretical creation. After Marx’s death, Engels painstakingly organized and published Marx’s posthumous works, for which he had to temporarily set aside the writing of *Dialectics of Nature*. Marx was fully aware of everything Engels did for him and the sacrifices Engels made, and repeatedly expressed his gratitude to Engels. Engels, however, modestly said: “I have done what I was destined to do, that is, play second fiddle, and I think I have done it quite well. I am glad to have such an excellent first violinist as Marx.” Engels devoted most of his life to Marx, especially in the last twelve years of his life, sparing no effort to organize Marx’s manuscripts, analyze principles, perfect the system, protect Marx’s image, and expand his influence.

在马克思主义发展史上，恩格斯和马克思同为马克思主义的创始人，二人的革命友谊长达40年，合作愉快默契，贡献难分大小。恩格斯在经济上倾囊相助马克思的生活，保障马克思专心进行理论创作，在马克思逝世后又呕心沥血整理和出版马克思的遗著，为此不得不暂时放弃《自然辩证法》的写作。马克思非常清楚恩格斯为他所做的一切和付出的牺牲，多次向恩格斯表达感激之情。恩格斯却谦逊地说：“我一生所做的是我注定要做的事，就是拉第二小提琴，而且我想我做得还不错。我很高兴我有像马克思这样出色的第一小提琴手。”恩格斯把生命中的大部分时光奉献给了马克思，特别在其生命历程的最后十二年，不遗余力地为马克思整理书稿、解析原理、完善体系、维护形象、扩大影响。

Engels’s immense contributions to the founding and development of Marxism, the unbreakable revolutionary friendship between Engels and Marx, Engels’s selfless assistance to Marx, and his calm modesty about his own contributions—these are a vivid manifestation of Engels’s great character and have left a beautiful story for the world. As Lenin said, “Ancient legends contain various very moving stories of friendship,” but the friendship of Marx and Engels “surpasses the most moving legends of human friendship from antiquity.”

恩格斯对创立和发展马克思主义的巨大贡献，恩格斯和马克思牢不可破的革命友谊，恩格斯对马克思的无私相助、对自己贡献的淡然自谦，正是恩格斯伟大品格的鲜明体现，留给世人美谈。正如列宁所说，“古老传说中有各种非常动人的友谊故事”，但马克思、恩格斯的友谊“超过了古人关于人类友谊的一切最动人的传说”。

Engels’s Great Contributions

恩格斯的伟大贡献

As one of the founders of Marxism, Engels’s great contributions are mainly reflected in the theoretical sphere. Lenin pointed out: “To understand what Friedrich Engels contributed to the proletariat, one must clearly understand the significance of Marx’s doctrine and activities for the development of the modern working-class movement,” and “without studying all of Engels’s works, it is impossible to understand Marxism, nor to expound Marxism completely.” Engels’s great theoretical contributions include, but are not limited to, the following aspects.

作为马克思主义的创始人之一，恩格斯的伟大贡献主要体现在理论方面。列宁指出，“要了解弗里德里希·恩格斯对无产阶级有什么贡献，就必须清楚地了解马克思的学说和活动对现代工人运动发展的意义”，“不研读恩格斯的全部著作，就不可能理解马克思主义，也不可能完整地阐述马克思主义”。恩格斯的伟大理论贡献，有但不限于以下几个方面。

First, Engels, as the “second violinist,” worked in perfect harmony with Marx, the “first violinist,” to jointly establish the basic theory of Marxism. Engels and Marx cooperated for forty years, taking the liberation of the proletariat and all humanity as their goal, conducting in-depth research on the laws of human history, especially the laws of capitalist development. They co-authored important works such as *The Holy Family*, *The German Ideology*, and *The Communist Manifesto*, jointly founding Marxist theory.

一是恩格斯作为“第二小提琴手”同“第一小提琴手”马克思珠联璧合，共同创立了马克思主义基本理论。恩格斯和马克思两人进行了长达40年的合作，以实现无产阶级和全人类的解放为目标，对人类历史规律特别是资本主义发展规律进行了深入研究，和马克思合作撰写了《神圣家族》《德意志意识形态》《共产党宣言》等重要著作，共同创立了马克思主义理论。

Second, after Marx’s death, Engels devoted immense effort to organizing Marx’s works. After Marx’s death, the truly arduous work on *Capital* was entirely continued and completed by Engels. Engels spent the last twelve years of his life, with immense effort, completing the editing and publication of Volumes II and III of *Capital*. *Capital* is undoubtedly a major achievement completed jointly by Marx and Engels. The Austrian Social Democrat Adler said: “By publishing Volumes II and III of *Capital*, Engels erected a majestic monument for his genius friend, and unintentionally inscribed his own name indelibly upon it.” On his deathbed, Engels taught the method of deciphering Marx’s handwriting to Kautsky and Bernstein. Kautsky later edited *Theories of Surplus Value*, that is, Volume IV of *Capital*.

二是在马克思逝世后为整理马克思著作付出了巨大心血。马克思逝世后，《资本论》真正繁重的工作完全由恩格斯接续完成。恩格斯用他生命的最后12年，付出极大的心血，完成了《资本论》第二卷和第三卷的编辑出版工作。《资本论》无疑是马克思和恩格斯共同完成的重大成果。奥地利社会民主党人阿德勒说：“恩格斯出版《资本论》第二卷和第三卷，就是替他的天才朋友建立了一座庄严宏伟的纪念碑，无意中也把自己的名字不可磨灭地铭刻在上面了。”临终前，恩格斯又将破译马克思笔迹之谜的方法传授给考茨基和伯恩斯坦。考茨基后来编辑了《剩余价值学说史》，即《资本论》第四卷。

Third, Engels contributed to the systematic integration of Marxism. The author of the biography *Engels*, McLellan, believes that “Engels’s most prominent contribution to Marxism was the systematization of a potentially scientific Marxist ‘philosophy’.” Engels used a systematic, integrated approach to combine “historical materialism” and “dialectical materialism” into an organic whole. After Marx’s death, Engels organized, edited, and published Volumes II and III of *Capital*, enabling the systematic integration of Marxist political economy. In the history of socialism, Engels was the first to use the term “scientific socialism” and profoundly revealed its theoretical theme. Lenin once pointed out: “It is entirely proper to place the names of Marx and Engels side by side as the founders of modern socialism.”

三是对马克思主义体系化的集成。《恩格斯传》的作者麦克莱伦认为，“恩格斯对马克思主义最突出的贡献是对一种具有潜在科学性的马克思主义‘哲学’的系统化”。恩格斯用系统化、体系化的方式整合“历史唯物主义”与“辩证唯物主义”，使之成为一个有机整体。恩格斯在马克思逝世后整理、编辑、出版《资本论》第二、三卷，使马克思主义政治经济学得以体系化集成。在社会主义发展史上，恩格斯首先使用了“科学社会主义”的名称，并深刻揭示了科学社会主义的理论主题。列宁曾指出，“把马克思和恩格斯两个人的名字作为现代社会主义创始人的名字并列在一起是很正当的”。

Fourth, Engels made pioneering theoretical contributions to Marxism. In philosophy, Engels founded the dialectics of nature based on the study of the latest achievements in natural science and the history of nature, which, together with Marx’s dialectics of history, constitutes the ideological system of Marxist materialist dialectics. In political economy, at the age of only twenty-three, Engels wrote *Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy*, which Marx praised as a “brilliant outline for a critique of economic categories,” pioneering the study of Marxist political economy. Based on long-term investigation and research and the accumulation of a large amount of first-hand material, Engels wrote *The Condition of the Working Class in England*. Many materials and important viewpoints in this book were absorbed and used by Marx in the process of creating *Capital*. In scientific socialism, apart from the *Communist Manifesto* co-authored with Engels, Marx had no work specifically expounding the theory of scientific socialism. Engels, however, in his work *Socialism: Utopian and Scientific*, specifically discussed the history of the development of socialism and the important role played by Marx’s two great discoveries in the process of socialism’s development from utopia to science, comprehensively and systematically expounding the theory of scientific socialism.

四是对马克思主义的开创性理论贡献。在哲学方面，恩格斯在研究自然科学最新成果和自然史的基础上创立的自然辩证法，与马克思的历史辩证法共同构成了马克思主义唯物辩证法的思想体系。在政治经济学方面，恩格斯在年仅23岁时就写作了《国民经济学批判大纲》这一被马克思称赞为“批判经济学范畴的天才大纲”，开创了马克思主义政治经济学研究的先河。恩格斯在长期调查研究，积累大量一手材料的基础上，写作了《英国工人阶级状况》，书中许多材料和重要观点，都在《资本论》的创作过程中被马克思所吸收借鉴。在科学社会主义方面，马克思除了同恩格斯合著的《共产党宣言》外，尚无一部专门论述科学社会主义理论的著作，而恩格斯则在《社会主义从空想到科学的发展》一书中专门论述了社会主义的发展历史及马克思的两大发现在社会主义从空想到科学的发展过程中起到的重要作用，全面系统地论述了科学社会主义理论。

Fifth, he criticized various non-Marxist trends of thought, upholding and defending Marxism. In the late 19th century, Engels directed serious criticism at the “Youth Faction” within the German Social Democratic Party and at a portion of bourgeois scholars represented by Paul Barth, who seized upon specific theses advanced by Marx and Engels under particular historical conditions, dogmatically understanding or even distorting Marxism as an erroneous ideological tendency. Engels repeatedly emphasized that “Marx’s entire world outlook is not a doctrine, but a method.” Engels also forcefully refuted “economic determinism,” expounding the basic principles of historical materialism more comprehensively and systematically.

五是对各种非马克思主义思潮进行批判，坚持和捍卫了马克思主义。19世纪末，恩格斯针对德国社会民主党内的“青年派”和以保尔·巴尔特为代表的一部分资产阶级学者抓住马克思恩格斯在特定历史条件下提出的具体论断不放，教条地理解甚至歪曲马克思主义的错误思想倾向进行了严肃批评。恩格斯反复强调，“马克思的整个世界观不是教义，而是方法”。恩格斯还对“唯经济决定论”给予了有力驳斥，更全面系统地阐释了唯物史观的基本原理。

Engels’s great life, in which he cherished the ideal of the liberation of the proletariat and humanity and struggled unremittingly for it; his selfless assistance to his revolutionary comrade Marx; his great character of being calm and modest when he became a revolutionary mentor on a par with Marx; and his great contributions to the founding, development, and defense of Marxism—all these are worthy of our remembrance, study, and reverence.

恩格斯胸怀无产阶级和人类解放的理想并为之奋斗不止的伟大人生，对革命战友马克思的无私帮助，在成为与马克思齐名的革命导师时淡然自谦的伟大品格，对创立、发展、捍卫马克思主义所作出的伟大贡献，都值得我们怀念、学习和敬仰。

Online editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗