Marx And Engels An Old Meeting Place Of Voltaire And...

In August of 1844, 26-year-old Karl Marx and 23-year-old Friedrich Engels met in Paris for an aperitif at the Cafà © de la Regence – an old meeting place of Voltaire and Diderot. Their ensuing discourse lasted ten intense days and resulted in a lifelong friendship. This transformative relationship is evident in the publishing of The Communist Manifesto in 1848, during a period of widespread European revolution. Although Marx and Engels agreed that revolution was justified to create a communist society, their difference of opinion on how that revolution should occur is compelling. Marx believed that even if the revolution occurred in just one factory district, as with the 1844 weavers’ revolt in Silesia, it would start a chain reaction that would threaten the entire state. Conversely, while observing the nineteenth-century revolutions such as the Paris Commune, Engels’ promulgated revolution through more controversial guerilla warfare tactics. From 1917 to th e fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the writings of Marx and Engels inspired several violent uprisings throughout Europe and Asia, seeking to create a â€Å"dictatorship of the proletariat.† Since Marx deferred to Engels on military matters in their literary works, the question becomes â€Å"Did Engels influence over Marx lead to the adulterated twentieth-century version of communism in countries such as North Korea, Vietnam and Soviet Union?† Karl Marx’s writings prior to befriending Freidrich Engels center on the