Letter to Karl Kautsky, April 11, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 11 April 1884


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1932
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN ZURICH

London, 11 April 1884

Dear Kautsky,

Have got yours and Ede's letter. I hope to be done with Morgan next week 174; cannot do much at the moment as Schorlemmer and Moore are here. This will be my last job for some time; it is no joke making a résumé of so meaty and ill-written a book. If Tussy can find the letter, I shall also include an assessment of Richard Wagner by Marx 2 0 7; what the connection is you must find out for yourselves.

Thereafter work will proceed uninterruptedly on Volume II[1] as well as on revisions of: 1) your Poverty, ' 1 8 2) notes and preface 169 to the French ditto, 165 3) revision of the English translation[2] which ought now to forge ahead. Besides that, 4), more Diihring'20B and whatever else may be sent me from France for revision.

Fabian has been going for me with a persistence he would be quick to drop if he knew how much entertainment we over here derive from it. Some years ago he had suggested that we should write for a period- ical to be founded by him and another great thinker,[3] and this on the basis of a philosophical programme they had laid down ready cut and dried and consisting in a crabbed and misconstrued fourth generation Kantianism. After that he went for my dialectical approach to math- ematics and complained to Marx that I had defamed -J —1.[4] And now the fun is beginning all over again. Let him roam the world arm in arm with von der Mark; he will not be read by me.

The Condition of the Working-Class. The last news / had about it from Liebknecht was that Freytag had told him that I was still bound by my contract with Wigand. You can't go by what Liebknecht says, and what he has done in this matter amounts to nil.[5] I shall write to Frey tag myself; it is the only thing to do. 3 9

However much Geiser may abuse the atheists, Bismarck certainly won't do him the favour of repealing the Anti-Socialist Law. 3 7

Whoever may have harboured any illusions on this point hitherto will doubtless now be rid of them, Bismarck having thrown in his last re- serve, that old jackass Lehmann, in order to preserve it. 2 ' °

How delicious that the parliamentary group should have forbidden Liebknecht to write for a paper.[6] 2 ' ' That beats the old Prussian cen- sorship. Well, if Liebknecht stands for that, things have come to a pretty pass.

Rodbertus,[7] etc., received, many thanks; will be returned next week. The relevant note in Capital is in the 2nd edition, p. 552[8] and will, in the 3rd edition, be considerably qualified by me in an ad- dendum; kindly attend to this.

You must now excuse me, as I still have to write to Ede.

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ of Capital
  2. ↑ The idea of translating Capital into English occurred to Marx as early as 1865, when he was working on the manuscript (see Marx's letter to Engels of 31 July 1865, present edition, Vol. 42). The British journalist and member of the Interna tional's General Council, Peter Fox, was to help Marx find a publisher. However, this matter was not settled due to Fox's death in 1869. The English translation of the first volume of Capital, edited by Engels, did not appear until after Marx's death, in January 1887, and was published by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., London. The translation was done by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling between mid-1883 and March 1886. Eleanor Marx-Aveling took part in the preparatory work for the edition (see also this volume, pp. 33 and 127-28).
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg
  4. ↑ On 11 October 1880 Heinrich Wilhelm Fabian, a German émigré living in the United States, wrote to Marx and Engels asking them to contribute to a weekly journal called Einheit which he planned to start publishing in an American city on 1 January 1881. The journal's programme was compiled by Fabian together with Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg and sent together with the letter.
    On 6 November 1880 Fabian wrote to Marx about V— 1 (on this, see Ch. XII of the first part of Anti-Dilhring; present edition, Vol. 25, p. 112).
    In April 1884 Fabian published in the Freidenker newspaper an article di rected against Marx's and Engels' doctrine of the state.
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 19-20 and 102.
  6. ↑ Berliner Volksblatt
  7. ↑ K. Rodbertus, Offener Brief an das Comité des Deutsch en Arbeitervereins zu Leipzig
  8. ↑ See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part V, Ch. XVIII (present edition, Vol. 35).