Letter to Karl Kautsky, February 16, 1884

ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN ZURICH

London, 16 February 1884

Dear Kautsky,

I happen to have an hour or two to spare today, hence my prompt reply.

Not only Deville's historical section, but also his descriptive one (working day, cooperation, manufacturing, large-scale industry, etc.) will require revision, of which you may assure yourself by going through a couple of chapters. All I shall do for the present, so far as Meissner is concerned, is to send him the French text and inform him that revision is under way and that I shall let him have further details in due course.

The Poverty is also coming out in a new French edition in Paris. I am writing a preface to it; in the one to the German edition, I shall dispose of the myth of Rodbertus.^[1] This stemmed from Rudolf Meyer and has been so widely hawked around in Germany, this country and even America, that the thing has got to be scotched once and for all. I shall show, 1) that in 1850 we had had no opportunity of learning anything whatsoever from Mr Rodbertus, 2) that he was quite unknown to us, 3) that his great discoveries had already been commonplaces in 1848, 4) that the remedies he specifies for use in socialist therapy had already been criticised in the Poverty, prior to Rodbertus' discovery of them.

So as you see, there's plenty left for you to do; but the above matters can only be attended to, because experienced, by me, while I am also the only person to possess the necessary material from the years 1840-50.

Rodbertus' theory of rent is nonsense; the first 1861-63 manuscript of Capital contains a detailed and somewhat ironical critique of it by Marx, in a very long section, Theories of Surplus Value, which I shall probably publish at the end of the 2nd volume or as a 3rd volume.

What I require for my preface, however, is Rodbertus' Offener Brief an das Comité des Deutschen Arbeitervereins, Leipzig, 1863. Could you or Ede get hold of the thing and let me have it for a few days? As soon as I have made extracts, you shall have it back.

I have not yet received the Proudhon article from the old Social-Demokrat promised me by Ede — might arrive this evening. I shall probably translate it for the French edition.

If Ede were suddenly to turn up here it would please me no end; I could join him in a drink, being now once again able to indulge in a very modest way.

Let us now return to your last letter but one. Dietz asked for the Condition of the Working-Class long ago, and I virtually promised he should have it as soon as I had found out how I stood with Wigand, its former publisher. For the past 15 years Liebknecht has been promising to ascertain this through Freytag (i. e. what my legal position is vis-à-vis Wigand), and still I'm in the dark.^[2] At all events, Dietz has first refusal, and ultimately I shall myself take steps to find out what I am entitled to do.

It would be a good thing if someone were to take the trouble to throw light on the proliferation of state socialism, drawing for the purpose on an exceedingly flourishing example of the practice in Java. All the material is to be found in Java, How to Manage a Colony, BY J. W. B. Money, BARRISTER AT LAW, London, 1861, 2 VOLS Here one sees how the Dutch have, on the basis of the communities' age-old communism, organised production for the benefit of the state and ensured that the people enjoy what is, in their own estimation, a quite comfortable existence; the consequence is that the people are kept in a state of primitive stupidity and the Dutch exchequer rakes in 70 million marks a year (now probably more). It's a most interesting case, and conclusions as to its practical application are easy to draw. It also shows how there, as in India and Russia today, primitive communism (provided no modern communist element comes to stir it up) supplies the best and also the broadest basis for exploitation and despotism, and survives in the midst of modern society as an anachronism (to be eliminated or, one might almost say, turned back on its course) no less glaring than the Mark communities of the original cantons.

There is a definitive book — as definitive as Darwin's was in the case of biology — on the primitive state of society; once again, of course, Marx was the one to discover it. It is Morgan's Ancient Society, 1877. Marx mentioned it, but my head was full of other things at the time and he never referred to it again which was, no doubt, agreeable to him, wishing as he did to introduce the book to the Germans himself^[3] ; I can see this from his very exhaustive extracts. Within the limits set by his subject, Morgan rediscovers for himself Marx's materialist view of history, and concludes with what are, for modern society, downright communist postulates. The Roman and Greek gens is, for the first time, fully elucidated in the light of that of savages, in particular the American Indians, thus providing a firm basis for the history of primitive times. If I had the time to spare, I would work up the material, together with Marx's notes, for the feuilleton of the Sozialdemokrat or for the Neue Zeit, but it's out of the question. All the impostures — endogamy, exogamy and whatever else the balderdash is called — of Tylor, Lubbock and Co. have been demolished once and for all. These gentry are doing all they can to suppress the book in this country; it is printed in America and I ordered it 5 weeks since but cannot get hold of it, although the name of a London firm figures as co-publisher on the title-page!

Kindest regards.

Yours,

F.E.