Letter to Vladimir Shmuilov, February 7, 1893

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 February 1893


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50


ENGELS TO VLADIMIR SHMUILOV

IN DRESDEN

[Copy]

London, 7 February 1893
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Comrade,

My best thanks for your kind hope that I should attain my nineties. If I remained as I am now, I should have no objection but were I, like so many, to degenerate physically and mentally as well, I would really rather not. Were that the case, I should prefer to be counted out.

As to your requests regarding Marx's biography, I am afraid that there is little I can do to meet them. Moreover I lack the time, being engaged on the 3rd volume of Capital and unable to take time off from it.

Ad[1] I. There is nothing I can recommend over and above the biographical material already in your possession. Nothing reliable, at any rate.

Ad II. Marx's practical activities between 1844 and 1849 were in part devoted to the working men's associations, especially the Brussels association between 1846 and 1848, and to the League. It is only on these last that you will find anything in print, namely in our prefaces to the Manifesto (LATEST Berlin edition, 1892) and in the Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial along with my introduction[2] thereto, Zurich edition, 1885.—As regards the International, Eichhoff ALONE is reliable,[3] for he worked from Marx's notes; all the rest from Fribourg,[4] to Laveleye[5] and Zacher,[6] are a source of nothing but LIES AND MYTHS. Here it would be more a case of writing a fat book to set matters right than of sending material for a third party to work on. I can, however, send you two publications issued by the General Council (Prétendues Scissions and L'Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste)[7] for the decisive struggle with Bakunin.—Héritier's offering in the Berliner Volks-Tribüne on the subject of the Jura Federation and M. Bakunin betrays unexampled naïveté in its blind faith in the anarchists' inventions and, from what Héritier writes and tells me, his translator has vitiated it still further in the anarchist sense. (In which case, by the way, the Russian censor will, with his excisions, guard you against a good many mistakes.)

Ad III. You will have to get hold of The Holy Family by fair means or foul. In no circumstances will I let my own copy out of my hands and to supply particulars of the contents is an impossible task. Nor would it do any good to write out for you the main passages. You must be familiar with the whole. It surely ought to be possible to pick one up in Berlin.

As to the genesis of historical materialism, you will, in my opinion, find everything you want in my Feuerbach (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy)—the appendix by Marx is, of course, itself the genesis! Also in the prefaces to the Manifesto (new Berlin edition, 1892) and to the Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial.

Marx quietly elaborated the theory of surplus value in the fifties, all on his own, and resolutely refused to publish anything on the subject until he was in absolutely no doubt about each of his conclusions. Hence the non-appearance of the 2nd and subsequent instalments of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

I am sending you the Splits and Alliance by post and hope these will suffice. Unfortunately that is all I can do for you.

Kindest regards to Gnardnauer and all the comrades over there.

Ever yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ as to
  2. ↑ F. Engels, On the History of the Communist League.
  3. ↑ W. Eichhoff, Die Internationale Arbeiterassociation. Ihre Gründung, Organization, politisch-sociale Thätigkeit und Ausbreitung.
  4. ↑ E. E. Fribourg, L'Association internationale des travailleurs.
  5. ↑ E. de Laveleye, Le Socialisme contemporain.
  6. ↑ [J.] Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale.
  7. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Fictitious Splits in the International and The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association.