Letter to Karl Marx, July 31, 1877

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 31 July 1877


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

[Ramsgate,] 31 July 1877 2 Adelaide Gardens

Dear Moor,

Just a couple of lines in great haste enclosing letter from W. Liebknecht which might perhaps influence your reply to the Zukunft[2] I haven't yet sent a straight answer, but have written to Liebknecht about the oddity of expecting us to entrust our manuscripts to totally anonymous persons because a congress has conferred a scientific character on them.3'4 I further told him that

I would write articles only in exceptional cases and when I myself considered it imperative.[3]

Wilhelm himself obviously doesn't know how things stand— otherwise he couldn't have made such a howler about Wiede. A fine way of setting up a scientific journal! Anyhow, it's a good thing there isn't any Dühringianism.

I was delighted by the business of the strike in America.[4] The way they throw themselves into the movement has no equivalent on this side of the ocean. Only twelve years since slavery was abolished and already the movement has got to such a pitch!

Knies[5] is capital. Dühring, too, concerning whom you have again hit the nail on the head. What he ultimately says, in fact,— translated from confusion into economics — is that value is determined by wages.[6]

Doubtless one will have to resign oneself to the Russians remaining between the Balkans and the Danube until the autumn. The Turks have allowed a very large proportion of their regular troops to succumb for want of proper provisioning during the fighting in Serbia and Montenegro,[7] and Abdul Kerim has done his best to finish off the rest. I doubt whether Mehemet Ali has more than 50,000 men capable of an offensive; Osman Pasha will have some 25,000 and another 25,000 south of the Balkans; that would seem to be all, the remainder being untrained militia of no use in the field. Provided the Turkish government doesn't now conclude a premature peace, the Russians will not get to Constantinople this year, but probably cross the Danube again in November and, not having yet made any impression on the fortresses which—barring accidents—are therefore likely to con- tinue secure throughout this campaign, they can start from the beginning again in the spring—if at all.

The wretched Standard correspondent in Constantinople is, at Layard's behest, disseminating alarmist rumours in order that the English fleet may be imposed on the Turks.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Marx and Engels, On the United States, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1979.
  2. ↑ On 28 July 1877, Wilhelm Liebknecht asked Engels and Marx to become contributors to the Zukunft (see Note 313). He wrote that the magazine was to be edited by 'bright young men', Höchberg and Wiede, and stressed that the editorial board would work under strict control from the party leadership.
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 257 580.
  4. ↑ In 1877, the United States witnessed large-scale workers' action against the industrialists. One of the major events was the railway workers' strike in July 1877 provoked by a 10 per cent wage cut on the three main west-bound railway- lines. The strike was suppressed by force.
  5. ↑ C. Knies, Geld und Credit. Part I: 'Das Geld'.
  6. ↑ E. Dühring, Cursus der National und Socialökonomie..., Leipzig, 1876, p. 27.
  7. ↑ A reference to the French edition of the first volume of Capital. An attempt to translate Marx's principal work into French was first made by Charles Keller, a member of the Paris Section of the International. Between October 1869 and April 1870, he translated about 400 pages which he sent TO MARX for editing, After the defeat of the Paris Commune, however, Keller was forced to emigrate to Switzerland, where he embraced Bakuninist views, after which Marx terminated co-operation with him. In December 1871, Paul Lafargue assisted Marx in concluding a contract for the publication of Capital with the progressive French journalist and publisher Maurice Lachâtre. The contract was signed on 15 February 1872. Under it, Capital was to appear in 44 instalments, one printer's sheet each. The work appeared between 1872 and 1875 in two instalments at a time, but was sold in series of five instalments each, making nine series in all. The last instalments having come out, the series were stitched together and sold as separate books. The first volume of Capital was translated into French by Joseph Roy. Marx did not think much of the effort and made a vast number of alterations, in fact, revised the book. As he himself said, the authorised French translation had an independent scientific value alongside the German original. In this edition, the first volume of Capital is published in Engels' authorised English translation with the interpolations from the French edition given in the Appendix (see present edition, Vol. 35).