Business “Angel” Engels
商贾“天使”恩格斯
When the financial crisis took off last autumn, Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital",originally published in 1867， whooshed up bestseller lists. The first book to describe the relentless, all-consuming and global nature of capitalism had suddenly gained new meaning. But Marx had never really gone away, whereas Friedrich Engels 一 the man who worked hand in glove with him for most of his life and made a huge contribution to “Das Kapital” — is almost forgotten. A new biography by a British historian makes a good case for giving him greater credit.
去年秋天金融危机爆发之际，卡尔•马克思的《资 本论》（ 1867年初版）一度蹿升至畅销书榜首。仿佛突 然间，这部最先描述资本主义冷酷无情、吞噬一切及全 球扩张的本性的巨作再度重获新生。其实，马克思从未 真正离开。而弗里德里希•恩格斯——这个伴随他大半 生且对《资本论》诞生贡献巨大的挚友——却几乎已被 世人淡忘。英国史学家的恩格斯传还原了 一个更值得尊 重的恩格斯。
The two men became friends in Paris in 1844 when both were in their mid-20s, and remained extremely close until Marx died in 1883. Both were Rhinelander’s but came from very different backgrounds: Marx’s father was a Jewish lawyer and turned Christian; Engels’s a prosperous Protestant cotton-mill owner. Marx studied law, then philosophy; Engels, the black sheep of his family, was sent to work in the family business at 17. While doing his military service in 1841 in Berlin, he was exposed to the ferment of ideas swirling around the Prussian capital.
他们于1844年在巴黎成为至交，两人彼时年龄相 仿，均为二十四五岁。他们的亲密友谊一直延续到马克 思辞世时的1883年。虽然都是莱茵人，但他们的家庭 背景却并不一样：马克思的父亲是一名犹太人律师，后 来改宗，成为基督徒；恩格斯的父亲则是一位信奉新教 的成功的纺织厂工厂主。马克思研习法律，随后是哲 学；恩格斯则作为一名“败家子”，17岁时就被迫去打 理家族生意。1841年在柏林服兵役期间，他经受了普鲁 士首都天空之上的各种激荡思潮的洗礼和冲击。
Next, he went to work for the Manchester branch of the family business, Manchester’s “cottonpolis” in the mid-19th century was a manufacturer’s heaven and a working man’s hell, and it provided an invaluable lesson for Engels: that economic factors were the basic cause of the clash between different classes of society. By 1845, when he was just 24, he had not only learnt how to be a successful capitalist; he had also written a coruscating anti-capitalist work, “The Condition of the Working Class in England\ which charted the inhumanity of modem methods of production in minute detail.
随后，他动身前往家族企业，曼彻斯特分厂上班。19世纪中叶的曼彻斯特号称全球的“棉都”，被视为厂 商的天堂，工人的地狱。正是在这里，恩格斯发现了一 条颠扑不破的铁律：经济因素是导致社会各阶级之间发 生冲突的基本原因。1845年刚满24岁，恩格斯不仅学 会如何成为一名成功的资本家，而且还写就了一部熠熠 生辉的反资本主义作品——《英国工人阶级状况》。此 书揭露了现代生产方法中所暗含的残暴和冷酷，笔法极 为细腻。
Engels left Manchester to work with Marx on the “Comm-unist Manifesto” and the two of them spent the late 1840s crises-crossing Europe to chase the continental revolutions of the time, ending up in England. Marx had started work on “Das KapitaF, but there was a problem. He had by then acquired an aristocratic German wife, a clutch of small children and aspirations for a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle, but no means of support.
恩格斯后来离开曼彻斯特，与马克思共同着手创作 《共产党宣言》。19世纪40年代晚期，他们马不停蹄地在 欧洲来回穿梭，以便近距离考察正在这块大陆上展开的 革命运动，两人最终在英国落脚。马克思开始创作《资 本论》，却无法全身心投入其中。那时的他拖家带口，除 了一个有着贵族血统的德国太太，身边还有一群孩子。 他渴望过上安稳舒适的中产阶级生活，却又力不从心。
Engels (whose name resembles the word for “angel” in German) offered an astoundingly big-hearted solution: he would go back to Manchester to resume life in the detested family cotton business and provide Marx with the money he needed to write his world-changing treatise. For the next 20 years Engels worked grumpily away, handing over half his generous income to an ever more demanding Marx. He also collaborated intensively on the great work, contributing many ideas, practical examples from business and much-needed editorial attention. When at last volume I of “Das Kapital"was finished, he extricated himself from the business and moved to London to be near the Marx family, enjoying life as an Economist-reading renter and intellectual.
恩格斯（其姓类似于德语中的“天使” 一词）提 出了一个完全让人动容的解决办法：他愿意重返曼彻斯 特，继续从事可恨的家族棉纺生意，为马克思完成他未 来的划时代巨著提供经济援助。接下来的20年，恩格 斯脾气暴躁地苦闷从商，却把他过半的收入交给一个总 是嗷嗷待哺且甚为苛求的马克思。对于这部伟大作品的 问世，恩格斯功不可没，他不但贡献了许多灵感、思 想，还能为马克思提供实用的商业案例。另外，之前的 文本编辑经验也在发挥着余热。当《资本论》第一卷终 于写成时，他才得以从生意场上抽身而出，并迁居伦 敦，伴随马克思家人左右。他很享受这样的时光，作为 这部经济学家必读书目的权威解读人和一名知识分子该 有的智力欢愉。
Engels was gifted, energetic and fascinated by political ideas, he was nevertheless ready to play second fiddle to Marx. “Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented,” he declared after his friend’s death.
恩格斯天资聪慧、精力过人，为诸多政治思想而目 眩神迷，但他却甘于充当那片“绿叶”。“马克思是个天 才，其他人充其量不过略具才情而已”，挚友死后，他这般解释。
Engels’s sacrifices continued after Marx’s death. He not only carried on funding the Marx family and their various hangers-on, but also spent years pulling together the chaotic notes Marx left behind for volumes II and III of "Das Kapital ".Inevitably there were lots of loose ends which Engels tied up as he saw fit，and sometimes the results were more revolutionary than the author may have intended. In volume III, where Marx discussed the tendency of companies’ profitability to fall and noted that this might lead to the “shaking” of capitalist production, Engels substituted the word “collapse”，opening up the text to much more radical interpretations by 20th-century Marxists.
马克思离开后，恩格斯的奉献一如既往。他不仅 继续供养马氏一家以及围在他们身边驱之不去的众多食 客，还花费数年时间尽心竭力地整理马克思未竟的《资 本论》第2、3卷的凌乱书稿。这些手稿不可避免会有 大量疏漏，他一旦发现，若觉得合适，就会动手修改、 补充。有时这种整理编辑的结果使书中的某些观点要比 作者的本意更加激进。如在卷3中马克思在探讨公司利 润率下降趋势时，他提到这股趋势或将导致资本主义 生产的“动摇”。恩格斯将这个词替换为“崩溃”。实际 上，这也为20世纪的马克思主义者所采纳的更加激进 的释经之举埋下伏笔。
When Engels died in 1895, he eschewcd London’s Highgate cemetery where his friend was laid to rest. Self-effacing to the last, he had his ashes scattered off England’s coast at Eastbourne 一 the scene of happy holidays with the Marx family.
1895年，恩格斯病逝，他有意避开挚友长眠于此的 伦敦海格特公墓。他的谦卑善始善终，他让把他的骨灰 洒向英国伊斯勃恩海湾——那个昔日他与马克思一家愉 快度假的地方。 |