Letter to Karl Kautsky, April 22, 1884

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	22 April 1884

First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 50, Moscow 1981
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47

ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN ZURICH

London, 22 April 1884

Dear Kautsky,

Letters and ms. ' ' 8 received, similarly cards for Nim. More anon. Hard at work on Morgan,^[1] 4 having been able to return to it only to- day.

The purpose of this is the following: Please inform the printers that I have very major revisions to make right at the beginning both of Anti-Diihring² °⁸ and the Peasant War² ' 3 and so must insist that no new edition is tackled before receipt of my manuscript. I shall write at further length to Ede as soon as he can get back,^[2] i. e. in about a week, for he, after all, is the one who has to take care of these things.

So please see that not one line is set under any circumstances. I wouldn't be able to acknowledge it.

In haste,

Your

F. Engels

↑ Eight of Marx's draft manuscripts for Volume II (Book II, as he originally inten ded) 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 subse quently turned it into parts of Volume II. Since he did not regard the said manu script 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 appar ently 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 IF (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. Manu scripts V, VI and VII appeared between April 1877 and July 1878 and were an at tempt to turn the text into a suitable form for printing. The final version of the sec ond 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 IL
↑ See this volume, pp. 135 36.

[1] Eight of Marx's draft manuscripts for Volume II (Book II, as he originally inten ded) 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 subse quently turned it into parts of Volume II. Since he did not regard the said manu script 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 appar ently 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 IF (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. Manu scripts V, VI and VII appeared between April 1877 and July 1878 and were an at tempt to turn the text into a suitable form for printing. The final version of the sec ond 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 IL

[2] See this volume, pp. 135 36.

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