Letter to Karl Kautsky, June 21-22, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 21 June 1884


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


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN ZURICH

London, 21-22 June 1884

Dear Kautsky,

I hope you are now back from your trip to Salzburg and will soon be able to tell me something about the outcome of the Stuckert[1] -on-the-Neckar affair over the Neue Zeit.[2] According to what I hear from Ede and also from August,[3] something of a damper has since been put on the passions of the Wise Men.[4] It is high time, too, that I heard something definite concerning the fate of my ms.[5] Ede dropped me a pencilled note and promised something more, but did = 0.

Your ms. still reposes here and has not yet been attended to for the following reason. After having completed the ms.[6] I was like a cat on hot bricks until I could begin work on Volume II of Capital. I did so. Next, I proposed to set about revising your work, as also the English translation (of the 1st volume of Capital), in the evenings. But I had reckoned without my host. I had been hard at it since Easter, often spending 8 or 10 hours at my desk and, as a result of the posture this involved, my former indisposition partially reappeared — this time in chronic, not in its previous sub-acute, form. So desk work was again forbidden, sauf quelques exceptions.[7] I therefore took the heroic step of engaging Eisengarten so that I might dictate the ms. to him and, since the beginning of the week, he and I have been slogging away from 10 to 5 every day, during which time I lie on the sofa, recovering visibly (idiotic word — nothing to be seen, only felt) but, of course, slowly. The thing's going far better than expected. Eisengarten is intelligent and hard-working and puts his heart into the thing, the more so since he is just working his way through the 3rd edition of the 1st volume. But most of the mss. are such that I have to spend every evening going through what I have dictated if I am to produce a text that is even provisionally valid. At the moment this takes up all my available time. But I believe that things will improve, as we are now coming to the original gospel written before 1870, which means that there will be less re-editing. Anyway, I couldn't very well have revised your ms. lying down. But if you are in a hurry, I shall find the time and do it all at one go. There could be no question of this, however, nor for that matter, any necessity for it, unless you had got almost all of it done. I shall then — if not before — also let you have the preface about Rodbertus.[8]

For the rest, I shall not discuss in detail your complaints about the eddicated chaps; I have known these worthies in this guise or that for 40 years now and have already given Ede my opinion of them at some length. The main thing is not to let oneself be browbeaten and, at the same time, retain one's composure.

The dynamiters have at long last discovered just what to do. They are concerned with striking at the root of the old social order, and now it transpires that the root in question is in fact the tail. This profound truth with which they are imbued eventually enabled them to discover how best to set about it, and they went and blew up a pissoir.

Which reminds me that the man behind the Geneva-Carouge Explosion is none other than the Italian mouchard,[9] Carlo Terzaghi, who had already been unmasked by us in The Alliance of Socialist Democracy.[10]

The expelled Austrian anarchists[11] purport to be connected with the regular German charities which have long existed over here. One of them touched me for alms but was unmasked and, upon his returning today, was chucked out at top speed.

The 2nd book of Capital will give us even more headaches, at least to start off with, than the first one. But it contains quite admirable analyses that will, for the first time, show people what is money and what capital and much else.

But now it is time to lie down again. All things considered, and apart from the localised trouble, I'm as fit as a fiddle, and my brain is in first-class condition.

Regards to Ede.

Your

F. E.

Sunday 22nd.

Postscript. Hyndman intends to buy up the whole of the little movement here. He has done everything he can think of to ruin To-Day. Bax, who advanced the money for the purpose, got his sums wrong and was soon cleaned out. Hyndman, who is rich and also has access to the resources of Morris, a very rich but politically inept art lover, will either take To-Day under his wing or let it perish. Either way, he believes, he will reign supreme. I am glad that I have remained aloof from the whole caboodle. Hyndman is shrewd and a good business man, but superficial and STOCK-JOHN-BULL; moreover his ambition far outruns his talents and achievements. Bax and Aveling have the best of intentions and are, besides, learning by degrees, but everything's at sixes and sevens, nor can these literati do anything on their own. The fact is that the masses are not yet going along with them. Once the chaps have sorted themselves out a bit it will be better.

  1. ↑ Stuttgart
  2. ↑ On 29 May 1884 Kautsky informed Engels of the differences of opinion which had arisen on the editorial board of Die Neue Zeit between himself and the publisher Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz. The latter thought it essential to make the journal more up to date by introducing a new column headed 'Politische Rundschau' which, he intended, should be run by Wilhelm Bios in Stuttgart. Then Dietz insisted on Bios being appointed editor of Die Neue Zeit. This situation prompted Eduard Bernstein, in a letter to Engels of 29 May 1884, to suggest that for the time being no chapters should appear there from Engels' work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
  3. ↑ Bebel
  4. ↑ Here Engels is apparently referring to several representatives of the Right wing in the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany such as Bruno Geiser, editor of the Stuttgart-based Die Neue Welt, and to journalists who were close to this trend, like Karl Frohme, Wilhelm Bios, Louis Viereck, etc.
  5. ↑ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
  6. ↑ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
  7. ↑ save for a few exceptions
  8. ↑ F. Engels, 'Marx and Rodbertus'. See this volume, pp. 144-47.
  9. ↑ police spy
  10. ↑ An anarchist newspaper called L'Explosion began to appear in Carouge near Geneva in April 1884. One of the men behind it was the former Bakuninist Carlo Terzaghi (see also K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association, present edition, Vol. 23).
  11. ↑ The reference is to the anarchists who were expelled from Vienna and its surroundings due to the introduction of a state of siege there on 30 January 1884 (see Note 154). Some of them emigrated to Britain.