Letter to Paul Lafargue, March 11-15, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 11 March 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 PAUL LAFARGUE

IN PARIS

[London,] 11 and 15 March 1884

My dear Lafargue,

In complete agreement with almost all your alterations,[1] except for the following:

p. 6, wrong ideas about... exchange value — you can't continue with an 'and'; what follows, his Utopian interpretation, is caused by those wrong ideas; that causation must be shown.

p. 6, bottom: he deafens us, etc., has been unduly shortened; what is lacking is the false or spurious science. You must try to stick closer to the original.

p. 7, same objections; and also: 'but who, having to forego some of his pretensions to originality' — this corrupts the text. Marx says: 'There is in addition the clumsy repugnant show of erudition of the self-taught, whose natural pride in his original reasoning has already been broken';[2] he has, in fact, been an original thinker and is proud so to have been, but is so no longer, having discovered that what he believed to be original and new had already been said by others before him; then he goes on to spurious science, etc. Your text denies the originality of Proudhon.

ibid. Cabet. You have no right to make Marx say more than he actually said: 'Cabet — worthy of respect for his practical attitude towards the French proletariat'.[3] Marx says nothing of devotion, a word he abhorred, as you must know,— it might run: worthy of respect for the rôle he played amongst the French proletariat (or in the political movement of the French proletariat), etc., or something of the sort.

ibid. Can you say: to preach throughout all 3 volumes?

Ibid, bottom, Thiers: if you abridge in the way you do, you ought to add what the original says: 'Thiers, by his reply opposing Proudhon's proposals, which was then issued as a special booklet'.'[4] This is, I think, the famous book De la propriété, but I am not sure.

p. 8, credit... might accelerate — not credit, but the application thereof; you should therefore say: might serve to accelerate, or some such turn of phrase.

p. 9, displays the cynicism of a moron to the greater glory of the Tsar? 'For the greater glory of the tsar he expresses moronic cynicism'.[5] The extreme cynicism with which Proudhon addresses himself to the misfortunes of Poland pays court to the policy of the Tsar.[6]

This is what needs to be brought out.

ibid, bottom. On the one hand, etc.— the two contradicting tendencies which govern the interests of the petty bourgeois, should not be omitted; your text appears to do away with them.

p. 10, rowdy would be better than scandalous.

15 March

Well, now! Try to be more faithful to the original; Marx isn't a man with whom one can afford to take liberties. I hope that Laura will insist upon the text's being well and faithfully rendered.

Herewith the £ 10. We have all the books and BOOKCASES[7] here and, for the past 3 days, have been busy amalgamating the two libraries and setting them in order. It's the very devil of a task and Nim and I are both tired, so WITH LOVE TO Laura FROM Nim AND MYSELF NO MORE AT PRESENT

FROM YOURS TRULY,

F.E.

  1. ↑ of the English translation of K. Marx, 'On Proudhon' (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 26-33) for the magazine To-Day (see this volume, p. 115)
  2. ↑ K. Marx, 'On Proudhon', present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 30-31; here and below Engels quotes Marx's article in German.
  3. ↑ Ibid., p. 31.
  4. ↑ Ibid.
  5. ↑ Ibid., p. 32.
  6. ↑ In February 1863, Proudhon's pamphlet Si les traités de 1815 ont cessé d'exister? Actes du futur congrès was published in Paris in which he came out against the restoration of Poland as an independent state.
  7. ↑ from Marx's library