Letter to Karl Kautsky, December 13, 1890

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 13 December 1890


First published in full in Aus der Frühzeit des Marxismus, Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN STUTTGART

London, 13 December 1890

Dear Kautsky,

Very many thanks for your two letters and for the article devoted to me[1] which was, alas, all too flattering. I got through my birthday all right and, even though the outside air was clear of fog, my head wasn't when I went to bed at half past three in the morning. I fared almost as you did at my birthday in 1883, when the tippling took place round my sick-bed.

I enclose herewith a preliminary piece about Brentano and would be obliged if you could contrive to get it into the next number of the Neue Zeit, should this be feasible. I'll give the man something to remember me by. He'd like to keep Gladstone's letters up his sleeve until I have answered, but we'll soon put a stop to that.[2]

You will also shortly be getting a contribution from Marx's unpublished work, something quite new and extremely topical and to the point.[3] It has already been copied out but I shall have to look it over first and possibly write a few lines by way of an introduction. But please tell no one else about it yet; my hands are completely full, what with correspondence and replying to the many letters I get, and I can't say exactly when.

I cannot possibly entrust the remaining fascicles of Marx's Volume II to the post or any other intermediary. So when you've had the 2nd fascicle you won't be getting any more for a while. This is also because, in the later fascicles, there are all sorts of divagations and long deleted passages which may not have to be copied out and, since this will entail constant discussion, the work could only be done over here. Later on, if you come back to this country again, and I have been able to familiarise myself a bit more with the ms., we shall see what can be done. Needless to say, you are to finish what you have already got.

I should be obliged if you would send me another 6 copies of the 8th issue[4] ; that will, I think, suffice.

Now, however, I must close; herewith a note to Dietz, which kindly pass on to him.

Your old friend

F. Engels

  1. ↑ [K. Kautsky,] 'Friedrich Engels. Zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag', Die Neue Zeit, 9. Jg. 1890/91, 1. Bd., Nr. 8.
  2. ↑ In his preface to the fourth German edition of Volume I of Capital in June 1890 (see present edition, Vol. 35) Engels described in detail Marx's 1872 polemic with the German economist Lujo Brentano, who had accused Marx of misquoting a passage from Gladstone's parliamentary speech of 16 April 1863 in reproducing it in the Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association and in Volume I of Capital. Brentano's reaction to Engels' presentation of the case was the pamphlet Meine Polemik mit Karl Marx, Berlin, 1890, the introduction to which was published in Deutsches Wochenblatt, No. 45, 6 November 1890. On 4 December this journal carried a note containing two passages from Gladstone's letters to Brentano of 22 and 28 November 1890 in which Gladstone asserted that Brentano was right. Engels replied in a brief article, 'In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx' (Die Neue Zeit, 9. Jg., 1890/91, 1. Bd., Nr. 13) and, at greater length, in a pamphlet of the same title, published in April 1891, which contained a large number of documents, including the above-mentioned article (see present edition, Vol. 27).
  3. ↑ Critique of the Gotha Programme
  4. ↑ of Die Neue Zeit containing Engels' Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy