Weng Qianlin: Foreign Engels Studies: Latest Progress and Hot Issues
For a long time, an anti-Engels tendency has persisted within the academic discourse of Marxism abroad. Many scholars have implied that Engels debased and distorted Marx’s thought, viewing him as the source of the crisis within Marxism. At the end of the 20th century, as the world socialist movement fell into a low ebb, foreign Marxist research also underwent periodic growing pains and adjustments. During this period, foreign scholars began to reflect on traditional Engels studies—which had been characterized by the dominance of ideology, the "Marx-Engels dichotomy" [1], and a preoccupation with Dialectics of Nature. Building upon this reflection, they have re-examined Engels's thought in an attempt to excavate his theoretical legacy in economics, politics, philosophy, ecology, and geography. Foreign Engels studies now appear to exhibit a developmental trend described as "one source, many streams."
I. Reflection and Renaissance: Innovation and Development in Engels Studies
In the 1980s, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, neo-feminists called for a "revisiting" of Engels, raising a theoretical demand for the reflection upon and revival of Engels studies. (1) In 1995, on the centenary of Engels’s death, British historian Stephen Rigby published a commemorative article supporting this view, advocating that the perspective of "revisiting" be expanded from feminism to a broader field of research. He argued that Engels had borne excessive criticism and blame, while in reality, his contributions to Marxism were significant and multifaceted; therefore, it was necessary to re-examine Engels’s thought and contributions to produce a more just and objective evaluation. (2) In 2018, British scholar Terrell Carver wrote on the revival of Engels studies, suggesting that research on "Engels as an independent thinker" was replacing research on "Engels as a Marxist," as people placed greater emphasis on unearthing Engels’s individual intellectual contributions. (3) In 2020, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Engels’s birth, the city of Wuppertal, Germany, hosted a series of events under the theme "Rethinking Engels" (Engels neu denken), aimed at promoting the further development of Engels studies. In foreign Engels research of recent years, similar keywords include "rethinking," "revaluating," "rediscovering" (neu entdecken), and "redefining" (neu bestimmen).
Under the general tone of reflecting upon traditional Engels studies, foreign scholars have continuously advanced the field, reconsidering the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels and his status and contribution within Marxism, thereby injecting new vitality into the subject.
First, the excavation of texts and documents. The new progress in Engels studies in recent years is primarily due to newly excavated documentary materials entering the public eye. With the support of the International Marx-Engels Foundation (IMES), experts, scholars, and research institutions from Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, Japan, and elsewhere have dedicated themselves to the editing, organizing, and publication of the second historical-critical edition of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels (MEGA2). In this process, a large number of Engels’s articles, correspondence, and excerpt notebooks have been published for the first time. This provides a textual foundation for re-examining Engels and offers new evidence for studying the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels, further propelling the academization and theorization of foreign Engels studies. As MEGA2 editor Jürgen Herres stated, the rich documentation provided by MEGA2 reveals the practices of Marx and Engels across different fields of work, allowing us to more systematically understand their intellectual journeys and deep dialogues, and "to evaluate the person of Engels more appropriately." (4)
Second, the rise of the "New Reading" movement. Despite the recent flood of relevant documents and a trend toward analyzing the textual differences between Marx and Engels through empirical methods, scholars have not neglected the study of Engels’s thought. They advocate for a re-reading of Engels’s classic works, focusing on and deeply cultivating key texts in the trajectory of his intellectual development. In his book Engels and the "Dialectics of Nature", Turkish scholar Kaan Kangal innovatively proposed a "New Engels Reading" (Neue Engels-Lektüre) in a hermeneutic sense. He argues that past scholars failed to distinguish between Engels’s purposes, goals, needs, and motivations. The "New Engels Reading" refers to an interpretive method that separates the reader’s layer and the editor’s layer to let the author speak for himself, emphasizing the investigation of Engels’s own authorial intent, reconstructing the external environment of the text’s birth, and "opposing the practice of defending or defeating Engels by appealing to the authority of Marx." (5) This movement has expanded the depth of textual research. Similar interpretive works include A Study of "Anti-Dühring" (6) by Japanese scholar Makoto Ajisaka and others, and Rediscovering Engels: "Dialectics of Nature" and the Critique of Accumulation and Growth (7) by German scholar Elmar Altvater.
Third, the application of new research methods. In addition to philological authentication and textual analysis, foreign scholars have attempted to further innovate methodology in Engels studies. For example, Engels research within "Marxology" [2] primarily uses the method of differential analysis to investigate the similarities and differences between Marx and Engels. In contrast, interdisciplinary research methods have become more popular. Foreign scholars have launched cross-disciplinary studies from the perspectives of history, military science, natural science, geography, psychology, and literature, exploring and opening new paths for Engels research.
Methodological innovation has brought about a renaissance in Engels studies, with a large number of books and papers covering a wide range of topics appearing in succession. Notable influential and academically valuable works include J.D. Hunley’s The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels: A Reinterpretation (8), Rigby’s Engels and the Formation of Marxism: History, Dialectics and Revolution (9), Tristram Hunt’s The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (10), and Carver’s Engels Before Marx (11). Important collections include Engels Today: A Centenary Appreciation, The 200th Anniversary of Engels: Reading Friedrich Engels in the 21st Century, Resolving Contradictions: The 200th Anniversary of Friedrich Engels, Revisiting Engels's Legacy in the 21st Century, Friedrich Engels for 200 Years: Critical Appraisals of His Life and Scholarship, Philosophy of Nature, Social Theory and Socialism: On the Actuality of Engels's Thought, and The Life, Work and Legacy of Friedrich Engels: Emerging from Marx's Shadow. (12)
On the occasions of the centenary of Engels’s death in 1995 and the bicentenary of his birth in 2020, world-renowned left-wing journals—such as Z. Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung (Journal of Marxist Renewal) in Germany, and Science & Society and Monthly Review in the United States—opened commemorative columns and published numerous articles. Journals such as Historical Materialism and New Left Review in the UK and Actuel Marx in France also published several research papers. Simultaneously, a new international journal, Marxism & Sciences, announced its founding after a 2020 symposium in Turkey, designating the theme of its 2022 inaugural issue as "The Actuality of Friedrich Engels." In the inaugural editorial, the editor-in-chief reflected on the current neglect of natural sciences in Marxist research, attributing it primarily to "the absence of Engels in Marxism." He fully affirmed Engels’s vital contributions to the natural sciences, viewing him as "the core of the problematic relation between Marxism and the natural sciences." (13)
Furthermore, significant academic activities commemorating Engels include: an international workshop in Tokyo in 2005 where Carver delivered a lecture titled "'Marx and Engels' or 'Engels vs. Marx'" (14); a 2010 international symposium in Kyiv organized by Russian and Ukrainian scholars under the theme "Marxism and Modernity: Contours of the Future in the Works of Engels" (15); a 2020 conference at the University of Wuppertal titled "Friedrich Engels: The Actuality of a Classic," which resulted in the volume Engels in the 21st Century: Reflections and Revaluations (16); and a 2023 international symposium in Eastbourne, co-hosted by the University of Brighton and the International Society for Marx-Engels Humanities (ISMEH), covering topics such as Engels’s thought, its contribution to the development of Marxism, and the influence of Marxism on the contemporary world, particularly the path of Chinese-path modernization. (17)
Through observation of these works, journals, and activities, it is clear that foreign Engels studies are characterized by their actuality, localization, and diversity. On one hand, researchers focus on major practical and "hot" issues, such as new forms of contemporary capitalism, the dilemmas of class struggle in the era of 21st-century digital capitalism, and the links between Marxism and social movements like feminism and post-colonialism, seeking theoretical weapons in Engels’s thought to analyze today’s world. On the other hand, although capitalist contradictions have shifted to a global level, scholars from different countries have different focuses, giving their research a local character. For instance, in terms of perspective, Russian scholars pay more attention to Engels’s contributions to scientific socialism and military theory; contemporary French scholars broadly focus on his theory of women’s liberation, the concept of labor, and religious thought. In terms of paradigm, German and Japanese scholars excel in archival and philological research, conducting empirical organization and authentication of classic texts; British scholars, based on a long tradition of empiricism, focus more on hermeneutic paradigms.
II. Revaluation and Reception: Re-evaluating Engels's Status and Contribution
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the ideological tendency in foreign Marxist research has gradually eased. Many scholars have begun to study Engels in a more academic manner, re-evaluating his contribution as "Marx's lifelong collaborator and the co-founder of Marxism."
First, rejecting "Engelsism" and rethinking the "Marx-Engels Problem." The so-called "Engelsism" is an extreme form of the "Marx-Engels dichotomy." Norman Levine is well-known for this extreme dichotomy, claiming to adhere to the principle of value neutrality while expanding the differences between Marx and Engels into an opposition between systems. He referred to the dialectical materialism embodied in Dialectics of Nature as "Engelsism," opposing it to Marx's social-interpretive method. (18) Carver, in Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship, also insisted on this dichotomy. He suggested that the writing of Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature was not a joint venture, and that Marx merely remained politely silent to preserve their friendship. (19)
The theory of "Engelsism" has challenged the integrity of Marxism, and responses to this challenge have been primarily grounded in both ideological and academic dimensions. Kangal argues that the controversy surrounding Engels and his Dialectics of Nature concerns more than just Engels’s thought itself; rather, it challenges his academic prestige and political authority. He contends that both the questioning of and the defense of Engels have been—and remain—driven by ideological motives. [22] Paul Blackledge also pointedly notes that proponents of the "Marx-Engels dichotomy" are mostly driven by ideological bias. He criticizes Terrell Carver’s "Marx-Engels dichotomy" for relying on straw-man assumptions and notes that while it is unsurprising that Marx and Engels had differences as two independent individuals, further expanding these differences to the point of manufacturing an opposition ignores the academic division of labor between them—which is precisely the strongest evidence of their high level of cooperation. [23] John Stanley and Ernest Zimmermann, drawing on the correspondence between Marx and Engels, prove that "Marx fundamentally agreed with the ideas in Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature," and that "it was with Marx’s manifest encouragement" that Engels formulated a "'research agenda' for the natural sciences" that "occupied 'eight of his golden years.'" [24]
Notably, the latest manifestation of "Engelsism" over the past two years has appeared in the field of ecology. In Marx in the Anthropocene, the Japanese scholar Kohei Saito argues that Engels deleted the phrase "natural metabolism" from the manuscript of Volume 3 of Capital, which reflects a fundamental "methodological difference" between him and Marx on ecological issues, particularly the concept of metabolism. [25] Responding to this, John Bellamy Foster counters that all of Saito’s assumptions regarding a "profound ecological divergence" between Marx and Engels rely on minor changes in the concept of metabolism, and lack any empirical evidence to prove a "methodological rupture" between the two. On the contrary, in the era of the Anthropocene, "it is necessary to integrate Marx's theory of metabolism with Engels's dialectics of nature." [26]
Second, rebutting the view of Engels as a "positivist," "mechanist," and "fatalist."
This view was widespread within the 20th-century Western Marxist philosophical tradition, where Engels was frequently accused of being the progenitor of "orthodox Marxism" and "determinism" within the Second and Third Internationals. As the first scholar to systematically articulate the intellectual opposition between Marx and Engels, George Lichtheim’s views are representative. In Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study, he portrays Engels as a mechanist and positivist, arguing that Engels should be held responsible for the positivist elements in Soviet "orthodox Marxism." Since then, more and more scholars have followed and repeated this view. Henry even predicted that thematic research for proponents of the "Marx-Engels dichotomy" would henceforth concentrate on technicism, determinism, and positivism. [27]
In response to this denigration of Engels’s philosophical achievements, scholars such as Foster have pointed out that Western Marxist criticism of Engels and the one-sided negation of the dialectics of nature are essentially intended to support an idealist interpretation of Marx’s philosophy. It is not that Engels’s dialectics of nature leads to mechanical materialism and positivism, but rather that the philosophical inclinations of the researchers themselves lead to a reductionist reading of Engels’s works. [28] Jerrold Seigel further demonstrates from the perspective of political economy that Engels was not a positivist. When studying the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Seigel found that in the version of Volume 3 of Capital edited by Engels, certain texts in Chapter 14 ("Counteracting Influences") that restate the validity of the law of the rate of profit were moved after Chapter 13 ("The Law as Such") [29], thereby unifying the expression of the law of the falling rate of profit in Chapter 13 while distinguishing it from the contradictory factors in Chapter 14. Seigel believes that through this adjustment, Engels sought to weaken the formulation in Marx’s Capital manuscripts that viewed the law of the falling rate of profit as an economic law of capitalist society. This modification, which highlights the "contradiction" between the two, reflects Engels’s dialectical epistemology. [30] Christian Fuchs, from the perspective of scientific socialism, points out that Engels should not be held responsible for the emergence of Stalinism. In Fuchs's view, Stalin ignored the principles of Aufheben [29-1] and the "negation of the negation," which are the primary characteristics of Engels’s dialectics. Engels always insisted that humans are conscious, purposeful actors; therefore, the history of social development differs from the history of natural development, and the dialectical laws of society cannot be equated with those of nature. Fuchs admits that some of Engels’s classic statements could lead to "determinist" readings—such as his discussion of the "automatic collapse of capitalism"—but Engels emphasized more frequently that class struggle is the decisive practice for change, and Engels himself actively participated in actual revolutionary activities. Thus, Engels is by no means a "determinist." [29-2]
Third, criticizing the accusations of "misreading" and "falsification" leveled against Engels.
In the 1990s, particularly after the publication of Volumes 12–15 of Part II of MEGA2, the "battlefield" for accusing Engels of misinterpreting Marx shifted from the realm of philosophy to political economy [32], primarily targeting Engels’s editorial work on Capital. Represented by Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt of the German "New Reading of Marx" school (Neue Marx-Lektüre) and Christopher Arthur of the British "New Dialectics" school, the "misreading" theory argues that Engels, from a linear historical perspective, misunderstood Marx's theory of "simple circulation" as a theory of "simple commodity production," which in turn led to the failure of the reconstruction of monetary theory. In Backhaus’s view, Engels’s "misreading" caused "the mountain of Marx’s dialectics to bring forth only a mouse." [33] The "falsification" theory argues that Engels’s modifications to the text of Capital distorted Marx’s original intentions. For example, by comparing Marx’s 1864–1865 manuscripts with Engels’s 1894 published version of Volume 3 of Capital, Carl-Erich Vollgraf and Jürgen Jungnickel concluded that Engels’s editorial work both obscured the openness of Marx’s text and, in some places (such as crisis theory), clearly diverged from Marx’s dialectical method of thinking and narrative. [34]
To accurately reveal Engels’s changes to Marx’s original manuscripts, the "Sendai Group" from Japan, who participated in editing Volume 12 of Part II of MEGA2, produced a concordance of textual differences between the edited version of Volume 2 of Capital and Marx’s manuscripts, listing approximately 5,000 textual modifications. This provided crucial evidence for evaluating Engels’s editorial work and the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels. [35] Overall, the semantic changes in the vast majority of the listed modifications were minimal. The editors ultimately concluded that the textual differences were mostly intended to improve defects in the source texts and could not be used to claim that Engels deliberately falsified Marx’s manuscripts. The editors also especially emphasized the unfinished nature of Marx’s manuscripts. [36] Rolf Hecker, one of the editors of that volume, also pointed out that it is unrealistic to demand that Engels always organize the Capital manuscripts according to Marx’s thought process, as Marx himself did not have a definitive path. He also expressed respect for Engels’s achievement in producing "readable" books. [37] Furthermore, foreign scholars who have defended Engels’s editing of Capital include the Canadian historian of economic thought Samuel Hollander, the German MEGA2 editor Michael Krätke, and the British Marxist economist Michael Roberts, all of whom believe that Engels completed the editorial work exceptionally well.
Fourth, demonstrating Engels’s "theory of historical resultant force."
The "theory of historical resultant force" was elaborated independently by Engels after Marx's death. Later generations have mostly viewed it as an innovation in historical materialism by Engels, though some scholars see it as a distortion of Marx’s historical materialism; Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser even viewed the "theory of historical resultant force" as the "dissolution of dialectics" and an "epistemological vacuum."
In recent years, foreign scholars have conducted in-depth research into the dialectical aspects of historical materialism as articulated by Engels, discovering that the dialectical thoughts proposed in his late works and correspondence offer a groundbreaking understanding of traditional economic base-superstructure theory. For instance, Georgi Bagaturia argues that in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels, acting as a "dialectician," proposed a "profound idea regarding the historical nature of the social base itself." That is, with the development of human society, the historical nature of the social base gradually shifts from the dominance of the "production of humans" toward the dominance of "spiritual production" and the "production of ideas, concepts, and consciousness." This thought is a continuation and deepening of the "five types of production" idea proposed in The German Ideology and has been confirmed by current social development trends. In Bagaturia’s view, this idea of Engels effectively rebuts the view that equates Marxism simply with "economic determinism" and reveals the applicability and vitality of Marxist theory in contemporary society. [38] Smaïl Rapadžic also believes that Engels transcended Marx’s reductionist interpretation of the relationship between the capitalist economic base and superstructure in Capital. He points out that Engels not only emphasized the influence of economy on law but also specifically highlighted the reaction (counter-action) of law on economic development. This suggests that the capitalist economy and politics are no longer independent spheres but are intermingled and mutually shaping processes. Engels did not understand bourgeois law as a direct reflection of the economy; rather, based on the reaction of law, he successfully predicted the outbreak of the First World War. By analyzing the relationship between bourgeois law and the economy, he revealed the deep contradictions and conflicts hidden beneath the surface, a historical inference based on a materialistic view of society and social history. [39]
III. Sedimentation and Activation: The Multidimensional Problematic of Engels’s Thought
Traditional Engels studies have generally tended to view Engels as Marx's collaborator. In recent years, foreign scholars have begun to pay more attention to Engels’s identity as an independent thinker, deeply excavating the multidimensionality of his thought. This is partly because Engels, hailed as an "encyclopedic scholar," had broad research interests and conducted specialized research in multiple fields; it is also because scholars seek to closely link Engels’s thought with the complex realities of contemporary capitalism. This collision between the diversification of thought and the diversification of contradictions has formed the multidimensional problematic of foreign Engels studies, and Engels’s thought has been reactivated in the 21st century.
First, research on digital workers, digital class struggle, and digital dialectics in the era of digital capitalism.
Taking the 200th anniversary of Engels’s birth as an opportunity, the journal Communication, Capitalism & Critique launched a special issue in the first issue of 2021 themed "Engels @ 200: Friedrich Engels in the Age of Digital Capitalism," attempting to apply Engels’s theories to the new context of digital capitalism to provide a reference for 21st-century social science and digital society research. [40] Using Engels’s works as a theoretical foundation, scholars explored topics ranging from the critique of monopoly capitalism to the critique of digital capitalism, from the condition of the working class in 19th-century England to the current status of the digital working class, from the dialectics of nature (the relationship between man and nature) to digital dialectics (the relationship between man and machine), and from scientific socialism to digital socialism. Content involved digital labor, digital exploitation, digital surveillance, the class struggle of digital workers, digital commons, and digital utopia.
Second, natural science and ecological research under the wave of the Third Industrial Revolution.
With the surging wave of the Third Industrial Revolution, Engels's views on the epistemology and ontology of natural science have garnered extensive attention in international academic circles. Scholars have explored Engels's elucidation of dialectical scientific thinking through the dual approach of understanding natural science and pursuing the starting point of dialectics, focusing on his significant contributions to the cognitive methods of natural science and the construction of theoretical logic. For instance, Hans Heinz Holz [11] emphasized the use of theoretical thinking to govern the relationship between "experiment–model–theory," arguing that solving the problems of empiricist epistemology in contemporary natural science is inseparable from Engels’s Dialectics of Nature. (39) From the perspective of synthetic cells, Hub Zwart pointed out that Engels's study of life through the dialectical thinking of affirmation–negation–negation of the negation laid the foundation for a dialectical evaluation of contemporary technoscience. (40) Foster also noted: "The real shift that has allowed Engels to recover his reputation as a great classical Marxist theorist on a par with Marx has come not as a historian or political economist, but as a natural scientist." (41) Scholars also focus on excavating the ecological value within Engels's dialectics of nature; Foster even transformed Engels's famous dictum "nature is the proof of dialectics" into "ecology is the proof of dialectics," (42) viewing Engels as one of the founders of modern ecology. He argues that the dialectics of nature played a "formative" role in the development of modern ecological and evolutionary perspectives, making it necessary to re-examine the importance of Engels's ecological thought for solving ecological problems. (43)
Third, research on epidemics and the condition of women under the COVID-19 pandemic. The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to humanity and provided an opportunity for foreign scholars to re-examine Engels's epidemiological thought. As early as 1983, Howard Waitzkin gave a detailed introduction to Engels's role as a pioneer of social epidemiology. He pointed out that when the 24-year-old Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, he explored the etiology of disease in a manner later adopted by the field of public health. (44) Camilla Royle also noted that Engels conducted in-depth research on epidemics in his youth and proposed unique insights. Though these insights were ignored at the time, they appear highly visionary today. For example, Engels believed that an epidemic is not only a natural phenomenon but also a social phenomenon; its spread is often closely related to factors such as social structure, economic conditions, and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, to effectively control the spread of epidemics, one must proceed from the social totality and comprehensively consider various factors. The current trend of introducing "structural violence" into public health analysis coincides with Engels's research from over a century ago. (45) Based on investigations into the living conditions of women during the COVID-19 pandemic, Julianna Faludi and Michele Crosby argue that the dissolution of physical space during the pandemic reactivated one of Engels's fundamental ideas: his discourse on the boundary between paid and unpaid labor, and the public and private spheres. In particular, the domestication and privatization of women exposed by Engels in the 19th century has reappeared within 21st-century digital communities. Women suffer "double exploitation" in the social media-mediated digital economy—namely, social exploitation and self-exploitation. (46) Marnie Holborow noted the large influx of women into the labor market following the pandemic, causing Engels's views on women re-entering the wage-earning class to oppose gender oppression to resonate in the present era. She argues that, as Engels foresaw, the increase in women’s paid work has intensified the disintegration of old gender norms and led to changes in political expectations regarding the family and traditional gender roles. (47)
Fourth, military and state-political research in the context of frequent local wars. In recent years, the continuous international tension and the escalation of war and conflict have brought Engels's military theory back into focus. Foreign scholars mainly conduct research from two aspects: the historical materialist view of war and the dialectical materialist view of war. Martin Kitchen argues that Engels analyzed the roots of war from the perspective of the economy and productive forces, emphasizing the political-economic essence of war. However, this does not mean Engels used economic determinism or simple causality to explain military issues; on the contrary, he paid exceptional attention to the dialectical relationship between objective forces and human practice in war. He emphasized the importance of factors such as soldier quality, strategy and tactics, and military theory for combat victory, which fully proves Engels's dialectical materialist perspective in the military field. (48) Wolfgang Streeck argues that Engels’s exposition of 19th-century militarism supplements the Marxist theory of state politics. From the perspective of war, technology, and state development, Engels sketched a more realistic historical materialist research path than Marx’s economic theory, which is of great value for analyzing the interplay of production and destruction, and class struggle and international war, in the contemporary "War on Terror" and regional conflicts. (49)
Fifth, spatial-geographical research in the process of globalization and urbanization. Geographical research is an emerging growth point in foreign Engels studies. Engels once ranged widely across economic geography, spatial geography, urban geography, cartography, and ethnography. Mark Rainey and Steve Hanson emphasize that The Condition of the Working Class in England not only laid the foundation for the development of Marxist political thought but also had a profound impact on the social sciences as a whole, including human geography and urban sociology. Through his ethnographic description of Manchester, Engels not only demonstrated the filth and misery of early working-class slums but also revealed the strategies used by the urban bourgeoisie to insulate themselves from the surrounding social and physical horrors. (50) David Harvey also expressed admiration for Engels’s foresight: "It is staggering to take the living conditions of the laboring classes, marginalized groups, and the unemployed in Lisbon, São Paulo, and Jakarta today and compare them with Engels's 1844 classic The Condition of the Working Class in England; one finds no substantive difference between the two." (51) Thomas Jellis and Joe Gerlach went as far as to describe Engels as an "ahead-of-his-time" geographer, believing he performed a "cartographic mapping" of the relationship between capital and urbanization, clearly pointing out that "the relationship between the urbanization of capital and the geography of the labor market is rooted not only in the dialectic of capital and labor but also in the commingling of space." Using this as an entry point, Jellis and Gerlach attempt to remove the shroud placed over Engels's geographical thought by ideological issues in the Anglophone world, because "Engels's work is still speaking to our time in unexpected ways." (52)
IV. Conclusion Looking at foreign Engels studies in recent years, the main trends have become the reappraisal of Engels, the defense of Engels, and the rectification of the name [12] of Engels’s contributions. Engels’s status and contributions as Marx’s lifelong collaborator and the co-founder of Marxism have been fully affirmed, and the theoretical explanatory power and practical value that Engels’s thought still possesses today have been fully proven. Actively utilizing textual and philological materials and drawing on new foreign research methods will help promote academic exchange, allow us to learn from others’ strengths to offset our weaknesses, and advance the optimization of the perspectives, content, and positioning of domestic Engels studies. In response to the various deficiencies currently existing in domestic academic research on Engels, we should consider increasing research efforts in the following areas. Overall, we should construct a systematized and holistic study of Engels oriented toward the 21st century, which includes both "diversification" (the detailed study of Engels in various periods and fields) and "integration" (the holistic, all-around, generalized study of Engels). In terms of practical reality, we should remain problem-oriented, solving the problems of modernity in contemporary economic and social development by practicing Engels's viewpoints, categories, and methods. Regarding our standpoint, we should construct an Engels research program that combines ideological positions with academic research, ensuring that domestic Engels studies not only reflect the correct political direction and values but also conform to academic norms and align with the international frontier. In our attitude toward foreign research results, on the one hand, we should actively engage in academic exchange and interaction with foreign scholars; on the other hand, we must analyze and differentiate the results of foreign Engels studies, opposing a flattened "blanket acceptance." As General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out when discussing new achievements in foreign Marxism: "We must closely monitor and study new achievements, analyzing and discriminating between them; we can neither adopt an attitude of wholesale rejection nor engage in wholesale copying." (53)