Letter to Hermann Schluter, December 7, 1885

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 December 1885


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO HERMANN SCHLÜTER

IN HOTTINGEN-ZURICH

London, 7 December 1885

Dear Mr Schlüter,

My best thanks for the 2 copies of Diihring.[1] If I can have 20 copies all told, that will do for the time being. Please also send me 4 copies of the Peasant War, 3rd edition. I haven't a single copy left and so cannot get to work on the new edition.[2]

I have no connections whatever with Eccarius and neither can nor wish to renew them. I shall see if the address is obtainable through Lessner. But I would at most advise you simply to reprint without alterations, etc.— for, having gone completely to the dogs, Eccarius is in fact unlikely to make any; moreover, in view of his bad conscience, any such addenda would most likely be used by him to introduce extenuating circumstances for the many ill-deeds he has perpetrated since 1873, and thus materially impair the book which was written with much prompting by and help from Marx (towards the end, entire pages were literally written by Marx), if not render it completely useless for our propaganda. I would even advise you to insist on printing it as it stands.[3]

You will have had the bill for the photographs.a

In my Dühring I continue to suffer at the printer's hands even in the list of misprints where I find hopeless 'error' [Verirrung] for 'confusion' [Verwirrung].

Kind regards.

Yours,

F.E.

  1. ↑ Frederick Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science), 2nd edition, Hottingen-Zurich, 1886.
  2. ↑ Frederick Engels, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg (The Peasant War in Germany), 3rd edition, Hottingen-Zurich, 1875.
  3. ↑ On 16 November 1885 Hermann Schlüter wrote to Engels asking for the address of Johann Georg Eccarius, the former secretary of the General Council of the First International. He intended to reissue the latter's book Eines Arbeiters Widerlegung der national-ökonomischen Lehren John Stuart Mill's in the Social-Democratic publishing house in Zurich; Schlüter believed that Eccarius would revise his book. It appeared in 1888, without any changes on Engels' advice.