Satire in Marx and Engels

Abstract

The article deals with a heretofore rather unattended aspect of Marx’s and Engels’s writings: the question of satire. It intends to demonstrate that a satirical mode of representation pervades Marx’s and Engels´s critique of objective relations and ideological reflexes in modernity. The article is divided in three parts. First, it aims at a conceptual definition of satire. Second, it tracks how the question of satire appears in the young Marx together with his critique of Romanticism. Finally, it offers a brief analysis of Marx’s and Engels’s 1852 Heroes of Exile, which was written together with Jenny von Westphalen and Ernst Dronke.