Marx and Engels as Polyglots

Kaan Kangal

Recollecting and interpreting the past for present purposes requires a language. Such a language is not naturally given but needs to be socially constructed. What is more, its vocabulary and grammar stem from linguistic legacies of past ideologies. Marx draws in this regard an analogy, comparing acquisition of a political language with mastering a natural language: “a beginner who has learnt a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can freely express himself in it only when he finds his way in it without recalling the old and forgets his native tongue in the use of the new.”

These lines were expressive of Marx’s theoretical investments in and intellectual sensibilities to the fabric of any ideological language. A master of political prose himself, Marx was well aware of the fact that any proper grasp of bourgeois societies requires a close attention to how social, economic, and political affairs are theoretically depicted, politically propagated, and linguistically articulated according to certain class interests.

Edward Aveling recollected that Engels’s home was frequently visited by a large number of socialists from many countries: “Engels could converse with all of them in their own language. Like [Karl] Marx, he spoke and wrote German, French, and English perfectly; nearly as perfectly in Italian, Spanish, Danish, and also read, and could get along with Russian, Polish, and Romanian, not to mention such trivialities as Latin and Greek.”

For Marx and Engels, fluency in reading, writing, listening, or speaking seems to have never been a goal for its own sake. Keen interest in various languages, yes, but always as part of a scientific purpose and political commitment. Socialist internationalism required, and, to some extent, still requires polyglottery.

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