Idk who the “losers” are i dont listen to the youtubes or the streams (unless its local stuff) nothing i say below should be related to whatever drama thats about

Tldr

I don’t have the interest/knowledge in Stalin’s theory to examine its similarities and difference to Marx(s) beyond that Stalin is generally more in line with an early!Marx understanding (early here meaning before around 1857) of many things. Stalin had an understanding of Marxism, but for him theory was very much subordinate to the immediate material demands of building a socialist oriented state that could stand against really existing imperialism. I have read a few of Stalin’s essays and speeches, and generally I find them very useful when combined with other sources on the period. They provide insights into how decisions were made and what his concerns were at the time. Comparison of what information Stalin had to actual conditions as understood with the benefit of hindsight can teach how material analysis works, how politics work. However his works are generally not “new” in the sense that what Stalin was really good at (and i mean this positively) was changing stuff to make it both more applicable to immediate conditions and more understandable. Stalin was also an amazing organiser. Kotkin is a silly anti-communist but everyone should read Stalin: Paradoxes of Power bc it shows how bullshit the “stalin was a mediocrity” stuff is.

I can speak more to the stuff regarding Engels. No, Engels is not “le evil revisionist who made marxism bad and ruined everything,” but he had differences of opinion from Marx, and these differences influenced how he presented Marx’s thought post-1883.

Starting by proving some examples of Engels’ differences of opinion. We need to begin with the writing of ‘Capital.’ The first german edition was prepared by Marx, with little consultation/collaboration with Engels. Marx does not discuss or mention discussing ‘Capital’ in depth with Engels in his letters, and when he does asks Engels’ opinion on something he’s wrote, Marx explains the concept from the ground up, assuming Engel’s lacks any knowledge of the subject matter. Most of the letters we have where Marx consults Engels are him asking specific questions about the details of Engels’ mill; questions about how accounting is done, knitty gritty details of production and factory management rather than broad theoretical ones. However after Marx’s death Engels burned many of the letters so it is possible that some of these contained more abstract questions, but Engels said the letters he burnt were of a personal nature, mostly relating to his relationships with the Burns sisters.

Its not 100% on topic, but I will mention here that rather than Engels as a contributor to “Capital” we should be looking more at Jenny Marx (sr.) and Eleanor Marx. Marx’s wife and his youngest daughter (all three daughters, but especially Eleanor) were very much active in his research. They would often go with him to the Library and help him research, discuss his research with him at home and make clean copies of manuscripts for the publishers. WIthout their work, Marx would not have written Capital. This is in addition to the (unpaid, underecognised) domestic and emotional labour they did, the turmoils they suffered through (someone has to fend off the landlord and debt collectors while Marx is at the library). [edit: somehow managed to fail to mention Helene 'Lenchen' Demuth, the Marxs' maid/friend who was with them from the mid 1840s until all of their deaths. She was a conversation partner and friend, as well as a maid who undertook untold amounts of domestic labour on Marxs' behalfs. Demuth's son, Freddy Demuth, was also likely Marx's illegitimate child, rather than Engels'. Several letters indicate this, including 2-3 accounts of Eleanor Marx asking Engels on his deathbed, and him confirming. There's also some circumstantial evidence around the period where Freddy was concieved; Marx writes in a letter to Engels of needing to speak to him about something urgent, something too bad to discuss in letters. We have no other indication of what was discussed at the time. Further, afaik Engels wasn't in London at the time, he was in Manchester as usual until his retirement.]

Returning to Capital. We will counterintuitively start with vol2 and vol3 for purposes of completeness, but they are not wholly relevant to the discussion of Marx’s and Engels’ differences. Both were published after Marx’s death. Engels (along with Eleanor Marx until her death) edited them together from Marx’s incomplete manuscripts. Iirc there’s 9 different manuscript versions of the first chapter of vol2, to give an example of what I mean by multiple manuscripts. Thousands of pages of handwritten text, written from the mid 1860s to the 1870s in the case of vol2, but vol3 is from an “extremely incomplete [first] draft” written “between 1863 and 1867” (Marx, Capital vol3 engels’ preface)

Marx got vol1 published in 1867, but it was a very different book from later editions. I won’t mention it in the future because it’d be repetitive, but every new Marx edition (and to an extent engels’ editions) meant updating the empirical portions, bringing it more up to date. This first edition also had few divisions between sections, few headers, misplaced diagrams and other such problems abounded. In the second German edition Marx fixed it up a bit, made it slightly more readable. The Russian translation is completely irrelevant here, but it was the first. The next edition was a French translation, published in 44 installments between 1872 and 1875. The process was that the translator would translate a section, send it to Marx, and then Marx would revise the section, often entirely rewriting parts. The French edition is where the final form of Capital took shape, later editions and translations have generally followed its parts, chapter and section divisions.

The 72-75 French edition also included many changes with theoretical significance. One was the removal of much of the use of Hegelian categories. Another was a change in the preface, and also in the section on primitive accumulation. In the 2nd German edition Marx heavily implied or outright stated (depends on how its read) that “less advanced” societies will inevitably develop through the same stages as western european societies underwent. In the French edition he explicitly restricted the inevitability of primitive accumulation to Western Europe, which has significant implications for our understanding of the future of indigenous peoples and peasants in the global south and 4th world. The French edition also contains more analysis of the effects of unemployment and anticipations of Lenin’s discussion of imperial division of the planet causing worse crises. In the afterward to Le Capital, Marx wrote that it had “a scientific value independent of the [German] original.” Marx also wrote in a letter that future “translator[s should] always compare the second German edition with the French one, since the latter contains many important changes and additions.” (MECW vol45 p.343-344 cited in Pinho “the Originality of Marx’s French Edition, 2021”).

Marx died in 1883, before finishing the 3rd German edition of Capital. Engels completed it (with Eleanor’s help). He included some, but not all of the changes from the French edition. Most of the formatting changes seem to have been accepted easily, but Engels repeatedly mentions in letters during this period that he dislikes how Marx wrote in the French edition. MEGA2 has an appendix containing all the changes and additions Engels did not include, it’s 60 pages long. The first English translation did not engage with the French edition afaik, and to this day there is no English version of Capital including all of the changes and additions Marx made in his last edition of Capital. Even the forthcoming new edition of Capital in English will not have them from what I’ve read.

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