Letter to Karl Kautsky, March 30, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 March 1892


First published in Aus der Frühzeit des Marxismus. Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Prag, 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN STUTTGART

London, 30 March 1892

Dear Baron,

Yesterday evening I sent back to you the preface duly corrected and I also added a couple of lines to the 2nd edition.[1] I think that should do. The old preface will still serve the purpose of preventing the resurrection of the Rodbertus nonsense which, like any article of fashion, has a tendency to keep recurring. It certainly acted remarkably quickly, though it is no credit to me if the great men pitted against us are the sort of chaps who can be done to death in two prefaces. Besides, the economic arguments set out therein will still do the Germans some good; the awkwardness of many of our people when engaged in economic polemics is curious though hardly edifying.

Congratulations on the birth after a difficult confinement of your pamphlet on the programme.[2] The child will get on in the world all right. A new popular digest is always most useful; people's speeches frequently make one realise how necessary such refresher courses are; and a fat tome is the last thing they are either willing or able to read.

Rather than complain about the carelessness of German writers, you should adopt the principle of marking with coloured ink such articles as you intend to accept and returning them to the authors for correction; then they would soon mend their ways. Obviously if the editors are so obliging as to place their own style at the author's disposal, he will become more and more slovenly.

I can understand your complaining about your correspondence, for you speak to a fellow sufferer. But then you are also an editor, which I am not, and are entitled to confine yourself exclusively to business matters — after all, anything more you do is for your own personal pleasure — and that is precisely what is denied me.

Apropos, I did not read Marx's article on Proudhon from the Berlin Social-Demokrat in proof; I had no time.

As regards Adler,[3] you learned rather more from Dietz than I did. I therefore passed on your comments to Louise and asked her to prepare a memorandum on the affair for your own use — this I enclose. From her discretion towards me I gather, as no doubt you will, too, that this is a case which calls for the utmost discretion on the part of us all and where any incautious revelation could have the most dire consequences. Unfortunately, in a case like this, there are so many people who sympathise that out of sheer sympathy they are incapable of keeping their mouths shut. It's already quite bad enough that the affair should have been bandied about so freely in Berlin.

The Condition of the Working-Class[4] has at last come out over here. Unfortunately I have no copies to send you but have arranged for the Neue Zeit to be recommended to S. Sonnenschein & Co. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is also finished, as far as it goes, but since the little book has turned out to be much too meagre for its price of 2s. 6d. (though the jackass of a publisher knew this from the beginning!), I am to swell it out with a long preface.[5] Well, we shall see. That, however, will be the last of my own jobs, after which I shall then get on with Volume III. I have had word from Petersburg (this is between ourselves) that the Origin of the Family will probably be appearing in Russian shortly. The article on 'socialism in Germany' has now come out in Italian, Romanian (Critica Sociala), English (The People, New York) and Polish (Przedswit, here), the last two having been taken from the Neue Zeit.

Kindest regards from one household to the other.

Your

General

  1. ↑ This refers to Engels' work 'Marx and Rodbertus. Preface to the First German Edition of The Poverty of Philosophy by Karl Marx' (see present edition, Vol. 26), which was included in the second German edition of Marx's book (1892), and to Engels' special 'Preface to the Second German Edition of Karl Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy' (see present edition, Vol. 27, p. 277 and this volume, Note 424).
  2. ↑ This refers to Kautsky's brochure, Das Erfurter Programm in seinem grundsätzlichen Theil erläutert, published in Stuttgart in 1892.
  3. ↑ On 27 March 1892 Kautsky wrote to tell Engels that Victor Adler was in financial straits, and his wife, Emma, was seriously ill.
  4. ↑ The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (1892)
  5. ↑ 'Introduction to the English Edition (1892) of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' of Capital