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Utopia in 19 th Century Thought: Utopian images in Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology

Utopia in 19 th Century Thought: Utopian images in Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology. by Professor Terrell Carver, University of Bristol. Utopian Images in Marx and Engels’s ‘The German Ideology’. Terrell Carver Professor of Political Theory Department of Politics University of Bristol

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Utopia in 19 th Century Thought: Utopian images in Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology

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  1. Utopia in 19th Century Thought:Utopian images in Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology by Professor Terrell Carver,University of Bristol

  2. Utopian Imagesin Marx and Engels’s‘The German Ideology’ • Terrell Carver • Professor of Political Theory • Department of Politics • University of Bristol • t.carver@bristol.ac.uk

  3. Current revisions • Marx and Engels’s relation to the ‘utopians’ of 1845-46 • Understanding of the text and its presentation – elements of debate • Critique of the interpretive tradition and editorial process from 1923 to date • Critical assessment of Marx and Engels as utopians

  4. Relationship to utopians • Read retrospectively through Engels’s 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific • Sharp binary and harsh judgements of commentators recently questioned • More nuanced position in 1845-46 • Makes The Communist Manifesto, Part IV (1848), rather more exciting

  5. Take-away points • Interpretive traditions are often retrospective and anachronistic • Changing the interpretive lens makes ‘familiar’ texts say things differently • Texts do not say ‘one thing’ … even at the time of writing or publication • The understanding of politics, and what counts as a (legal or acceptable) political idiom, alters with structural and cultural change • Beware ‘timeless’ pastiche in intellectual history!

  6. Hunting, fishing, criticising …

  7. German text 2004

  8. German apparat

  9. Japanese edn (1974)

  10. New translation/presentation • Therefore as soon as the division of labour IS starts to develop, each exclusiveman has a particular, area of activity that constrains him, that he cannot get out of; he is a hunter, fisherman or or critical criticherdsman & must remainas such unless he wants to lose HIS the

  11. Cont. • means to live – whereas in communist society, where each man does not have an exclusive area of activity, RATHER but can rather develop himself in any branchES he likes, society MERELY regulates the general production & thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another

  12. Cont. • to hunt,tomorrow, in the morning TO BE A SHOEMAKER & AT MIDDAY IN THE AFTERNOON A to fish, to herd livestock,GARDNER, in the evening TO BE A PLAYWRIGHT,and to criticise after dinner, just as I have

  13. Cont. • without ever becoming hunter{,}a mind,or critic.fisherman or herdsman.

  14. Smooth text with handwriting • another tomorrow, in the morning to hunt, in the afternoon to fish, in the evening to herd livestock and to criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter{,} fisherman, herdsman or critic.

  15. Commentators’ reactions to this passage over the years • 1. Sharp criticism • 2. Sympathetic reconciliation • 3. Sympathetic omission • 4. Puzzlement

  16. Marx and Engels as utopians – critical assessment • Hi-tech, high productivity • Anti-money • Anti-consumption • Pro-leisure time • Compatible with feminism, anti-colonialism, ecologism • How much high tech do we need?

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