The Engels Language

Tristram Hunt is certainly making the effort to publicise his new biography of Engels, a figure of almost impossible importance.

Engels rightly regarded the family, property and the State as having a common origin. After all, why bother having the State, if not to defend the family and property? Why bother having property, if not to defend the family and the State? And why bother having the family, if not to defend property and the State?

Those ostensible conservatives (and Conservatives) who now advocate the withering away of the State undoubtedly know that it is a Marxist term for a Marxist aspiration. But do they know that it would also be the withering away of the family and of property? They ought to be able to work this out. But nevertheless it is time that someone told them, and that in no uncertain terms.

Meanwhile, those who have taken control of the Labour Party not only know and understand this perfectly well, but have merely changed their tactics from the economic to the social, cultural and constitutional, in order to bring about the destruction of all three of the family, property and the State, all three of which that party was in fact founded to conserve against the "free" market.

Engels is best-known and most revered in China. The Trotskyist roots of many now in positions of power or influence are at last becoming reasonably well-known. But the Maoist roots of many such, beginning with the President of the European Commission, also cry out most urgently for investigation.