Letters: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence 1895

Marx Engels Correspondence 1895

Friedrich Engels to Ferdinand Tönnies

In Kiel

24 January 1895 [1]

... Your observations on Auguste Comte [2] are very interesting. As far as this ‘philosopher’ is concerned a considerable amount of work has in my opinion still to be done. Comte was for five years secretary to Saint-Simon [3] and his intimate friend. The latter positively suffered from repleteness of thought. He was a genius and mystic in one. To establish clearness, order, system was not his forte. So Comte was a man he enlisted who after his master’s death would perhaps present these overbrimming ideas to the world in orderly fashion. Comte’s mathematical schooling and method of thought seemed to render him peculiarly fit for this in contrast to other pupils, who were dreamers. Suddenly Comte broke with his ‘master’ and withdrew from the school. Then, after a rather lengthy period of time, he came out with his ‘positive philosophy’.

In this system there are three characteristic elements: 1) a series of brilliant thoughts, which however are nearly always spoiled to some extent because they are incompetently set forth likewise; 2) a narrow, philistine way of thinking sharply contrasting with that brilliant mind; 3) a hierarchically organised religious constitution, whose source is definitely Saint-Simonian, but divested of all mysticism and turned into something extremely sober, with a regular pope at the head, so that Huxley [4] could say of Comtism that it was Catholicism without Christianity.

Now I'll bet that No 3 furnishes us the clue to the otherwise incomprehensible contradiction between No 1 and No 2; Comte took all his bright ideas from Saint-Simon but when arranging them he distorted these ideas in his own peculiar way; by divesting them of the mysticism that adhered to them he dragged them down to a lower level, reshaping them in philistine fashion to the best of his ability. In very many of them the Saint-Simonist origin can easily be traced and I am convinced that this would be possible in yet other cases if somebody could be found to tackle the job seriously. It would certainly have been discovered long ago if after 1830 Saint-Simon’s own writings had not been completely stifled by the clamour of the Saint-Simonist school and religion, which stressed and developed certain aspects of the master’s teaching to the detriment of the magnificent conceptions as a whole.

Then there is another point I should like to correct, the note on p 513. [5] Marx never was Secretary General of the International but only Secretary for Germany and Russia. And none of the Comtists in London participated in the founding of the International. Professor E Beesly [6] deserves great credit for his defence of the International in the press at the time of the Commune against the vehement attacks of that day. Frederic Harrison [7] too publicly took up the cudgels for the Commune. But a few years later the Comtists cooled off considerably toward the labour movement. The workers had become too powerful and it was now a question of maintaining a proper balance between capitalists and workers (for both are producers according to Saint-Simon) and to that end of once more supporting the former. Ever since then the Comtists have wrapped themselves in complete silence as regards the labour question.

Yours very truly

F Engels