Letter to August Bebel, April 30, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 April 1883


First published in: A. Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, Th. III, Stuttgart, 1914
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL

IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG

London, 30 April 1883

Dear Bebel,

There is a very simple answer to your question as to whether I might remove to Germany or Switzerland or somewhere else on the Continent, namely that I shall not go to any country from which one can be expelled. But that is something one can only be safe from in England and America. I should at most go to the latter country on a visit, unless otherwise compelled. Hence I shall remain here.

Moreover England has another great advantage. Since the demise of the International there has been no labour movement whatsoever here, save as an appendage to the bourgeoisie, the radicals and for the pursuit of limited aims within the capitalist system. Thus, only here does one have the peace one needs if one is to go on with one's theoretical work. Everywhere else one would have had to take part in practical agitation and waste an enormous amount of time. As regards practical agitation, I should have achieved no more than anyone else; as regards theoretical work, I cannot yet see who could take the place of Marx and myself. What younger men have attempted in this line is worth little, indeed, for the most part less than nothing. Kautsky, the only one who applies himself to study, has to write for a living and for that reason if no other can achieve nothing. And now, in my sixty-third year, up to my eyes in my own work and with the prospect of a year's work on the second volume of Capital and another year's work on Marx's biography,[1] along with the history of the German socialist movement from 1843 to 1863 and of the International from 1864-72,[2] it would be madness for me to exchange my peaceful retreat here for some place where one would have to take part in meetings and newspaper battles, which alone would be enough to blur, as it necessarily must, the clarity of one's vision. To be sure, if things were as they were in 1848 and 1849, I would again take to the saddle if need arose. But now — strict division of labour. I must even withdraw as much as possible from the Sozialdemokrat. You have only to think of the enormous correspondence, formerly shared out between Marx and myself, which I have had to conduct on my own for over a year now. For after all, we wish to maintain intact, in so far as it is in my power, the many threads from all over the world which spontaneously converged upon Marx's study.

As regards a monument to Marx,[3] I do not know what ought to be done. The family is against it. The simple headstone made for his wife, which now also bears his and his little grandson's[4] names, would be desecrated in their eyes if replaced by a monument which, here in London, would be scarcely distinguishable from the pretentious philistine monuments surrounding it. A London cemetery of this kind looks quite different from a German one. The graves lie closely side by side, not room for a tree between them, and a monument is not allowed to exceed the length and breadth of the small plot that has been bought.

Liebknecht spoke of a complete edition of Marx's writings. All very well, but Dietz's plan for Volume II has made people forget that that Volume was long since promised to Meissner and that an edition of the other, shorter works would likewise have to be offered to Meissner first, and then could only appear abroad. After all, even before the Anti-Socialist Law it was always said that not even the Communist Manifesto could be printed in Germany save in the document read out at your trial.[5]

The manuscript of Volume II was completed prior to 1873, probably even prior to 1870.[6] It is written in German script; after 1873 Marx never used anything but Latin characters.

It is too late for registration, so this letter must go off as it is; however, I shall seal it with my seal.

A letter this evening to Liebknecht in Berlin.[7]

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ Engels attached a great deal of importance to publicising Marx's theoretical and practical revolutionary activity. With this aim in mind, he wrote three biographies of Marx at different times — in 1869, 1877 and 1892 — and for different publications (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 59-64, Vol. 24, pp. 183-95 and Vol. 27, pp. 332-43). The new biography which Engels planned, taking account of the extensive correspondence and other materials which had survived, and to which he refers in this letter, was not written.
  2. ↑ Engels was unable to carry out these plans due to the enormous demands made on him by the preparation for the press of volumes I and II of Capital and the publication of translations of Marx's and his own works. At the same time, he was working on his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (see Note 174).
  3. ↑ On 17 March 1883, August Bebel informed Engels that at the forthcoming congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany in Copenhagen (see Note 15) he intended to put up for discussion the question of the party erecting a monument to Marx. It seems that the stance taken by Marx's family, about which Engels informed Bebel in this letter, long remained an obstacle to the erection of a monument in Highgate Cemetery where Marx was buried. In 1954 the Marx grave was moved to a better place in the cemetery. Lawrence Bradshaw was commissioned by the Communist Party of Great Britain to sculpt a bronze head of Marx, and the monument which incorporated it was unveiled in 1956 by Harry Pollit, then General Secretary of the British Communist Party.
  4. ↑ Henri Longuet
  5. ↑ The materials used by the prosecution in the trial of Wilhelm Liebknecht, August Bebel and Adolf Hepner for high treason in Leipzig in March 1872 included the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels. It was carried by the book Leipziger Hochverrathsprozess. Ausführlicher Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Schwurgerichts zu Leipzig in dem Prozeß gegen Liebknecht, Bebel und Hepner wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrath vom 11-26. März 1872, Leipzig, 1872, pp. 97-119.
  6. ↑ Eight of Marx's draft manuscripts for Volume II (Book II, as he originally intended) of Capital have survived. The longest of them, consisting of three lengthy chapters, is Manuscript I. It was completed in the spring of 1865, and Engels subsequently turned it into parts of Volume II. Since he did not regard the said manuscript as the final version of Book II, as he was preparing Volume I of Capital for the press Marx wrote Manuscript III (in which he gave a conspectus of works apparently intended for quotation in Volume II) and Manuscript IV, which Engels later described as 'an elaboration, ready for the press, of Part I and the first chapters of Part II of Book II' (see present edition, Vol. 36, Preface). In 1868-70 Marx wrote a completely new version of the second book, i.e. Manuscript II. The reason why manuscripts III and IV appeared earlier than Manuscript II is that, when he was numbering the drafts of Volume II in the late seventies, Marx started with the two complete versions and followed them with the outlines of individual parts. In the latter half of the 1870s Marx resumed work on Book II, having realised that it was not complete; although he had examined the simple reproduction of capital in great detail in Manuscript II, he had not analysed its extended reproduction. Manuscripts V, VI and VII appeared between April 1877 and July 1878 and were an attempt to turn the text into a suitable form for printing. The final version of the second book of Capital was Manuscript VIII on which Marx seems to have worked between the autumn of 1879 and early 1880. Later it was used in full by Engels when preparing Part III of Volume II.
  7. ↑ The letter mentioned has not been found.