| Through the investigation of Engels’ s texts and letters in various periods during the establishment of historical materialism,this paper sorts out Engels’ s great theoretical contributions to historical materialism in order to highlight his important role in the establishment and development of historical materialism.At the same time,some western scholars try to shape the opposition between Marx and Engels in order to subvert Marxism.The content of this paper consists of four parts:The first part mainly discusses the preparation of historical materialism.From1842 to 1843,Engels,who was working in his cotton mill in Manchester,England,and Marx,who was editor of The German newspaper Rheinisheung Zeitung,met with the same problem: the relationship between material interests and rational thinking principles.To explore this problem,Engels and Marx bid farewell to the theoretical structure of Hegel’s speculative idealism and began to accept the ideological framework of Feuerbach’s humanism.Engels and Marx had the same theoretical level in this period.The second part mainly discusses the establishment period of historical materialism.Based on Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and Engels’ s the Conditions of the Working Class in England,we think that Marx and Engels’ s founded in this period of historical materialism is a kind of all roads lead to Rome.The German Ideology and the Manifesto of the Communist Party were the great achievements of their joint efforts to advance historical materialism.The establishment of historical materialism is the collaboration of Engels and Marx.The third part mainly discusses in his later years Engels to enrich and develop the historical materialism.After Marx’s death,Engels undertook the important task of explaining and disseminating historical materialism.In his later years,he put forward two production theory and “historical joint efforts theory”,which enriched and developed Marxist historical materialism.The fourth part refutes the western scholars’ criticism of Engels’ s social history theory in his later years.Taking Norman Levine’s misinterpretation of Engels’ s“economic determinism” and Althusser’s criticism of “historical joint efforts theory”as examples,this paper refutes and criticizes the opposing ideas of Marx and Engels by some Western scholars. |
