Abstract
The precise nature of Friedrich Engels' theoretical role following Marx's death in 1883 has remained a hotly disputed topic among historians of socialist thought. However, despite their intellectual disagreements, the exponents of various perspectives frequently share a serious interpretive deficiency: the failure to anchor their readings of crucial texts in an analysis of specific political contexts. Situating Engels' later writings – his 1890s Letters on Historical Materialism, and his 1895 Introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France – within the dramatically changed political situation in fin de siècle Germany, this essay seeks to recast the entire gestalt of the quarrel over Engels' alleged revisionism by illuminating the historical and political framework that shaped his late Marxism and its theoretical premises.
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