Marx’s General

Ultimately, however, Mr. Hunt largely exonerates him. “In no intelligible sense can Engels or Marx bear culpability for the crimes of historical actors carried out generations later,” he writes, “even if the policies were offered up in their honor.” Engels was skeptical of top-down revolutions, Mr. Hunt notes, and later in life advocated a peaceful, democratic road to socialism. He connects Engels the man to Engels the thinker. “This great lover of the good life, passionate advocate of individuality, and enthusiastic believer in literature, culture, art and music as an open forum could never have acceded to the Soviet Communism of the 20th century, all the Stalinist claims of his paternity notwithstanding,” he writes. Engels almost certainly was, in other words, the kind of man Stalin would have had shot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/books/19garner.html?pagewanted=2&ref=books