Vladimir Lenin
The Marx-Engels Correspondence
Written: end of 1913
Source:Collected Works,Volume 19, pp. 452-458
First Published: November 28, 1920 -- Pravda, No. 268
Translated: George Hanna, 1963
Online Version: marx.org 1996; marxists.org 1999
Transcribed: Zodiac
HTML Markup: Brian Basgen and David Walters
The long-promised edition of the correspondence of the famous founders of
scientific socialism has at last been published. Engels bequeathed the work of
publishing it to Bebel and Bernstein, and Bebel managed to complete his part of
the editorial work shortly before his death.
The Marx-Engels correspondence, published a few weeks ago by Dietz, Stuttgart,
consists of four big volumes. They contain in all 1,386 letters by Marx and
Engels covering an extensive period, from 1844 to l883.
The editorial work, i.e., the writing of prefaces to the correspondence of
various periods, was done by Eduard Bernstein. As might have been expected, this
work is unsatisfactory both from the technical and the ideological standpoint.
After his notorious "evolution" to extreme opportunist views, Bernstein should
never have undertaken to edit letters which are impregnated through and through
with the revolutionary spirit. Bernstein's prefaces are in part meaningless and
in part simply false -- as, for instance, when, instead of a precise, clear and
frank characterisation of the opportunist errors of Lassalle and Schweitzer
which Marx and Engels exposed, one meets with eclectic phrases and thrusts such
as that "Marx and Engels were not always right in opposing Lassalle" (Vol. III,
p. xviii), or that in their tactics they were "much nearer" to Schweitzer than
to Liebknecht (Vol. IV, p. x). These attacks have no purpose except to serve as
a screen and embellishment for opportunism. Unfortunately, the eclectic attitude
to Marx's ideological struggle against many of his opponents is becoming
increasingly widespread among present-day German Social-Democrats.
From the technical standpoint, the index is unsatisfactory -- only one for all
four volumes (Kautsky and Stirling are omitted, for instance); the notes to
individual letters are too scanty and are lost in the editor's prefaces instead
of being placed in proximity to the letters they refer to, as they were by
Sorge, and so forth.
The price of the publication is unduly high -- about 20 rubles for the four
volumes. There can be no doubt that the complete correspondence could and should
have been published in a less luxurious edition at a more reasonable price, and
that, in addition, a selection of passages most important from the standpoint of
principle could and should have been published for wide distribution among
workers.
All these defects of the edition will, of course, hamper a study of the
correspondence. This is a pity, because its scientific and political value is
tremendous. Not only do Marx and Engels stand out before the reader in clear
relief in all their greatness, but the extremely rich theoretical content of
Marxism is graphically revealed, because in their letters Marx and Engels return
again and again to the most diverse aspects of their doctrine, emphasising and
explaining -- at times discussing and debating -- what is newest (in relation to
earlier views), most important and most difficult.
There unfolds before the reader a strikingly vivid picture of the history of the
working-class movement all over the world -- at its most important junctures and
in its most essential points. Even more valuable is the history of the politics
of the working class. On the most diverse occasions, in various countries of the
Old World and the New, and at different historical moments, Marx and Engels
discuss the most important principles of the presentation of the political tasks
of the working class. And the period covered by the correspondence was a period
in which the working class separated from bourgeois democracy, a period in which
an independent working-class movement arose, a period in which the fundamental
principles of proletarian tactics and policy were defined. The more we have
occasion in our day to observe how the working-class movement in various
countries suffers from opportunism in consequence of the stagnation and decay of
the bourgeoisie, in consequence of the attention of the labour leaders being
engrossed in the trivialities of the day, and so on -- the more valuable becomes
the wealth of material contained in the correspondence displaying as it does a
most profound comprehension of the basic aims of the proletariat in bringing
about change and providing an unusually flexible definition of the tasks of the
tactics of the moment from the standpoint of these revolutionary aims, without
making the slightest concession to opportunism or revolutionary
phrase-mongering.
If one were to attempt to define in a single word the focus, so to speak, of the
whole correspondence, the central point at which the whole body of ideas
expressed and discussed converges -- that word would be dialectics. The
application of materialist dialectics to the reshaping of all political economy
from its foundations up, its application to history, natural science, philosophy
and to the policy and tactics of the working class -- that was what interested
Marx and Engels most of all, that was where they contributed what was most
essential and new, and that was what constituted the masterly advance they made
in the history of revolutionary thought.
* * *
We intend in the following account, after giving a general review of the
correspondence, to outline the most interesting remarks and arguments of Marx
and Engels, without pretending to give an exhaustive account of the contents of
the letters.
I. GENERAL REVIEW
The correspondence opens with letters written in 1844 by the 24-year-old Engels
to Marx. The situation in Germany at that time is brought out in striking
relief. The first letter is dated the end of September 1844 and was sent from
Barmen, where Engels' family lived, and where he was born. Engels was not quite
24 years old at the time. He was bored with family life and was anxious to break
away. His father was a despot, a pious manufacturer, who was outraged at his
son's continual running about to political meetings, and at his communist
convictions. Engels wrote that had it not been for his mother, of whom he was
deeply fond, he would not have spent at home even the remaining few days before
he was due to leave. "You would never believe," he complained to Marx "what
petty reasons, what superstitious fears were put forward by the family against
my departure."
While he was still in Barmen -- where he was delayed a little longer by a love
affair -- Engels gave way to his father and worked for about two weeks in the
factory office (his father was a manufacturer). "Huckstering is too horrible,"
he writes to Marx. "Barmen is too horrible, the way they waste their time is too
horrible, and above all things it is too horrible to remain, not merely a
bourgeois, but a manufacturer, a bourgeois who actively opposes the
proletariat." He consoled himself, Engels goes on to say, by working on his book
on the condition of the working class (this book appeared, we know, in 1845 and
is one of the best works of world socialist literature). "And perhaps one can
while being a Communist remain in one's outward status a bourgeois and a
huckstering beast as long as one does not write, but to carry on a wide
communist propaganda and at the same time engage in huckstering and industry
will not work. Enough. At Easter I quit here. Add to this the drowsy life of a
thoroughly Christian-Prussian family -- I cannot stand it any longer; I might in
the end become a German philistine and introduce philistinism into communism."
Thus wrote the young Engels. After the Revolution of 1848 the exigencies of life
obliged him to return to his father's office and to become a "huckstering beast"
for many long years. But he was able to stand firm and to create for himself,
not Christian-Prussian surroundings, but entirely different, comradely
surroundings, and to become for the rest of his life a relentless foe of the
"introduction of philistinism into communism".
Social life in the German provinces in 1844 resembled Russian social life at the
beginning of the twentieth century, before the Revolution of 1905. There was a
general urge for political life, a general seething indignation in opposition to
the government; the clergy fulminated against the youth for their atheism;
children in bourgeois families quarrelled with their parents over their
"aristocratic treatment of servants or workers".
The general spirit of opposition found expression in the fact that everybody
declared himself to be a Communist. "The Police Commissary in Barmen is a
Communist," Engels writes to Marx. He was in Cologne, Dusseldorf, Elberfeld --
wherever he turned he stumbled upon Communists! "One ardent Communist, a
cartoonist ... named Seel, is going to Paris in two months. I shall give him
your address; you will all like him for his enthusiastic temperament and his
love ...
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