| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 13 August 1886 |
ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY
IN ZURICH
Eastbourne, 13-14 August 1886
4 Cavendish Place
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
My reply to your kind letter of the 9th June was delayed for the simple reason that overwork compelled me to suspend all my correspondence (such as did not command immediate despatch) until the ms. of the translation of Das Kapital was finally ready for the printer. 56 Such is now the case, and I can at last attend to the heap of unanswered letters before me; and you shall have the first chance. Had you told me in the above letter that you had spare time on your hands for party work, I should at once have sent you a short reply; I am sorry if through my fault you were prevented from doing some useful work.
I quite forgot, when proposing to you Lohnarbeit und Kapital,[1] that an English translation had already appeared in London. As this is offered for sale in New York it would be useless to translate it over again.
Now about Der Ursprung.[2] The thing is more difficult to translate than Die Lage,[3] and would require comparatively greater attention and more time per page on your part. But if I had time left to me for the looking it over, that would be no obstacle, provided you could devote that time and attention to it, and leave me a larger margin of blank paper to suggest alterations. There is however another matter to consider. If the thing is to come out in English at all, it ought to be published in such a way that the public can get hold of it through the regular book-trade. That will not be the case, as far as I can see, with Die Lage. Unless the trade arrangements are very different in America from those in Europe, the booksellers will not deal in works published by outside establishments belonging to a working men's party. This is why Chartist and Owenite publications are nowhere preserved and nowhere to be had, not even in the British Museum; and why all our German party publications are — and were, long before the Socialist Law 37 —not to be had through the trade, and remained unknown to the public outside the party. That is a state of things which sometimes cannot be avoided, but ought to be avoided wherever possible. And you will not blame me if I wish to avoid it for English translations of my writings having suffered from it in Germany for more than 40 years. The state of things in England is such that publishers can be got — either now or in the near future — for socialist works, and I have no doubt that in the course of next year I can have an English translation published here and the translator paid; and as I have, moreover, long since promised Dr Aveling the translation of the Entwicklung[4] and Ursprung, 606 if he can make it pay for himself, you see that an American edition, brought out outside the regular book-trade, would only spoil the chance of a London edition to be brought out in the way of the regular trade and therefore accessible to the public generally and everywhere.
Moreover I do not think that this book is exactly what is wanted at the present moment by the American working men. Das Kapital will be at their service before the year is out, that will serve them for a pièce de résistance.[5] For lighter, more popular literature, for real propaganda, my booklet will scarcely serve. In the present undeveloped state of the movement, I think perhaps some of the French popularisations would answer best. Deville and Lafargue have published two series of lectures, Cours d'économie sociale, about two years ago, Deville taking the economic and Lafargue the more general, historic side of the Marxian theory. ' ' 9 No doubt Bernstein can let you look at a copy and get one from Paris, and then you might judge for yourself. Of course I do not mean Deville's larger work, the extract from Das Kapital, which in the latter half of it is very misleading.[6]
14th August
To return to the Ursprung. I do not mean to say that I have absolutely promised Aveling to let him have it, but I consider myself bound to him in case a translation is to come out in London. The final decision, then, would depend very much upon the nature of the publishing arrangements you can make in America. To a repetition of what Miss Foster has done with Die Lage I decidedly object.[7]
When I see my way to an English edition, brought out by a firm known in the bourgeois trade, and not only of this book, but probably of a collection of various other writings, with the advantage of having the translation done here (which saves to me a deal of time) you will admit that I ought to look twice before sanctioning the bringing out, in America, of this little book alone and thereby spoiling the whole arrangement. And with the present anti-socialist scare in America, I doubt whether you will find regular publishers very willing to associate their names with socialist works.
A very good bit of work would be a series of pamphlets stating, in popular language, the contents of Das Kapital. The theory of surplus value No. 1; the history of the various forms of surplus value (cooperation, manufacture, modern industry) No. 2; accumulation and the history of primitive accumulation No. 3; the development of surplus value making in colonies [last chapter) No. 4 — this would be especially instructive in America, as it would give the economical history of that country, from a land of independent peasants to a centre of modern industry, and might be completed by specially American facts.
In the meantime you may be sure that it will take some time yet before the mass of the American working people will begin to read socialist literature. And for those that do read and will read, there is matter enough being provided, and least of all will Der Ursprung be missed by them. With the Anglo-Saxon mind, and especially with the eminently practical development it has taken in America, theory counts for nothing until imposed by dire necessity, and I count above all things upon the teaching our friends will receive by the consequences of their own blunders, to prepare them for theoretical schooling.
Yours very sincerely,
F. Engels
I shall be in this place until 27th inst.5"; after that, in London.