Letter to Pyotr Lavrov, February 5, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 5 February 1884


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


ENGELS TO PYOTR LAVROV

IN PARIS

London, 5 February 1884

My dear Lavrov,

So I shall send you the books; that is agreed.[1]

The 2nd volume[2] — ah! If you only knew, my old friend, how it weighs on me! But then six months have gone to waste, thanks to my infernal illness. And, even so, I shan't be able to set about things seriously before the middle of March. It will take me up till then to get all the books, papers, periodicals, etc., in order, and I can't work on them for more than a few hours a day without becoming overtired. It weighs on me all the more heavily for the knowledge that there is not another living soul who can decipher that writing and those abbreviations of words and style. As to publication by instalments,[3] that will depend to some extent upon the editor and upon legislation in Germany; hitherto I have not thought such a method particularly useful for a book of this kind. I shall try and do what Lopatin[4] wants in regard to the proofs. But then Vera Zasulich[5] wrote to me a couple of months ago asking whether I would allow her to do the translation. I told her that I regarded Lopatin as having first refusal and that it was still too soon to talk about the matter.[6] What could be discussed at once, however, would be the possibility of publishing the translation in Russia. Do you think that might be done? The 2nd book is purely scientific, dealing solely with questions as from bourgeois to bourgeois, but the 3rd will contain passages which make me doubt the very possibility of their being published in Germany under the Anti-Socialist Law.[7]

The same difficulty applies to the publication of Marx's complete works, and that is only one of the many difficulties to be overcome. I have some 60 sheets (each of 16 printed pages) of old manuscripts by Marx and myself dating from between 1845 and 1848. Of this material only extracts could be published, but I shan't be able to get down to it until I have finished with the manuscript of the 2nd volume of Capital. So all we can do is wait.

The article you speak of, which we no longer have here, will amount to between 3 and 5 printed sheets; it is a detailed summary of the political development of France from 24 February 1848 up till 1851. It is summed up in the 18th Brumaire[8] but all the same it is worth translating. I myself am on the lookout for a complete set of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue,[9] only 2/5ths of which are in my possession.

Deville sent me his manuscript8 for revision. Being indisposed, I confined myself to the theoretical part where I found little that needed correcting. However the descriptive part has been done in too great haste. To begin with, it is at times unintelligible to anyone who has not read the original and, what is more, he frequently presents Marx's conclusions while passing over the conditions under which those conclusions alone hold good; at times that gives a somewhat false impression. I have drawn his attention to this, but they were much too eager to publish the book.

Yours ever,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 88.
  2. ↑ of Marx's Capital
  3. ↑ In his letter of 30 January 1884 Pyotr Lavrov suggested to Engels the idea of publishing the second volume of Capital in Russia in instalments parallel to it being prepared for the press in Germany. He drew Engels' attention to the great Russian public interest in this edition. He also wrote that Hermann Lopatin had come to Paris for a few days and, intending to publish a Russian edition of this volume in St Petersburg, had expressed the hope that Engels would send the proofs of the German edition in preparation to Nikolai Danielson (see also Note 168).
  4. ↑ (Russ.) Lopatin
  5. ↑ (Russ.) Vera Zasulich
  6. ↑ See this volume, p. 65.
  7. ↑ The Exceptional Law Against the Socialists (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie — the Law against the Harmful and Dangerous Aspirations of Social Democracy) was introduced by the Bismarck government, supported by the majority in the Reichstag, on 21 October 1878 to counter the socialist and workers' movement. This law, better known as the Anti-Socialist Law, made the Social-Democratic Party of Germany illegal, banned all party and mass workers' organisations, and the socialist and workers' press; on the basis of this law socialist literature was confiscated and Social Democrats subjected to reprisals. However, during its operation the Social-Democratic Party, assisted by Marx and Engels, uprooted both reformist and anarchist elements and managed to substantially strengthen and widen its influence among the people by skilfully combining illegal and legal methods of work. Under pressure from the mass workers' movement, the Anti-Socialist Law was abrogated on 1 October 1890. For Engels' assessment of this law, see his article 'Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
  8. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
  9. ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue