Letter to Karl Kautsky, February 10, 1883

ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN VIENNA

London, 10 February 1883

Dear Mr Kautsky,

At long last I can get round to answering you and thanking you for the various things you have sent. You have no idea of the way impediments of all kinds have prevented me, not only from working, but also from attending to the most urgent correspondence. Since Marx has been ill the burden has fallen upon myself alone and, on top of that, the number of inquiries, etc., has doubled. Moreover, I cannot very well write in the evenings because it tires my eyes and interferes with my sleep. Thus all written work is dependent on the few — in wintertime here, all too short — hours of daylight and, in view of the distances one has to cover here, a single trip into town will, as often as not, disrupt one's entire working day. And some fine to-ing and fro-ing I have had to do of late!

Enough of that. I have not yet seen Die Neue %eit. But I shall write to Dietz today. I must have street and house number if I am to send the subscription per money order; that's the rule here.

Your treatise on American food production is most timely. The fact that you make such use of the information supplied by Mr Meyer must have made him very proud. 49^? Is he still in Vienna, and do you still see him from time to time?

But what irony of history! 3 or 4 years ago you, a neonato^[1] Malthusian, were advocating the necessity of restricting the population by artificial means, because otherwise the time would soon come when we should none of us have enough to eat. And now you prove that the population is not even large enough to consume America's surplus food production as well as what Europe herself produces. Solve, I pray, Count Oerindur, this conundrum posed by nature!^[2] Presumably, then, it won't be rations that are withheld, but rather that much-vaunted little sponge! Which is not to say, of course, that this same or some other method might not be of great practical use in middle-class families to keep the number of children proportionate to income, and prevent the wife's health being ruined by too frequent confinements, etc. But I still maintain that this is a private matter between husband and wife, or at most the family doctor (in one such case I myself recommended what you call the 'Raciborski method'), and that our proletarians will continue as before to live up to their name by producing numerous proles.^[3]

It will not surprise you to learn that my standpoint in regard to your article on hetaerism still remains the same, namely that community of wives (and of men for women) was the basis for sexual relations within the tribe. The psychological argument against this, deriving from jealousy, interpolates more recent views, and is disproved by countless facts (some of which below). Darwin is no more of an authority in this field than in that of political economy, whence he imported his Malthusianism. We know practically nothing about apes in this respect, since observations in a menagerie prove nothing and are difficult to make in the case of a troop of wild apes, while such as are alleged to have been made cannot claim to be accurate, conclusive or even universally valid. Gorillas and orang-outangs must in any case be excluded, because they do not live in troops. Those primitive tribes you adduce, with a loose form of monogamy, are, in my view, degenerate, as Bancroft has shown of the Californians of the peninsula.^[4] Proof of primitivity is provided, not by barbarism, but by the degree of integrity of ancient tribal blood ties. These, therefore, must first be established in each individual instance before conclusions can be drawn from individual manifestations in this tribe or that. For instance, in the case of the peninsular Californians, these ancient ties have become very much looser, nor has any other organisation come to take their place; a sure sign of degeneracy. But even these argue against you. For amongst them, too, the women periodically revert to concubinage. And this is a crucial point though you do not so much as mention it. Just as it may be confidently inferred that, wherever,— e.g. with the Hutzwang—the land periodically reverts to common ownership, there will once have been complete common ownership of land, so too, I believe, one may confidently conclude that there has originally been community of wives wherever women — symbolically or in reality — periodically revert to concubinage. And this happens, not only amongst your peninsular Californians, but also amongst many other Indian tribes, not to mention the Phoenicians, Babylonians, Indians, Slavs and Celts, either symbolically or in reality; hence it is very ancient and widespread and entirely refutes the psychological argument based on jealousy. I am curious to see how, in due course, you will contrive to overcome this obstacle, for you cannot after all omit all mention of it.

Here comes Pumps with her husband and child^[5] and that means no more writing. This is always happening.

With kindest regards,

Yours,

F. E.