Letter to Johann Philipp Becker, May 22, 1883

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

To J.P. Becker in Geneva

London, 22 May, 1883

Dear Old Man,

How can you suppose that / might somehow be able to find paid literary work for a young party member? After all, it is years since I had any sort of contact with German publishers apart from Meissner (on account of Capital), let alone with newspapers and periodicals. So what could I do? Even if the man could translate the other way round, from German into French or English, I should be unable to help him find work. You would certainly do better to approach Liebknecht who after all has the Neue Zeit and connections in plenty.

We shall be saddled with Marx’s house until next March, so there is no need to be over-hasty about the removal or plans for the future. Moreover a tremendous amount of work is involved in getting these papers in order. What surprises me is that Marx has actually saved papers, letters and manuscripts from the period prior to 1848, splendid material for the biography which I shall of course be writing and which, inter alia, will also be the history of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and of the movement of 1848-49 on the Lower Rhine, as well as the history of the rascally emigration in London between 1849 and 1852 and of the International. The first task is the editing of Volume II of Capital and that is no joke. There are in existence 4 or 5 revisions of Book II, of which only the first is complete, the others having been merely started on ; some labour when you’re dealing with a man like Marx, who weighed every word. But to me it is a labour of love; after all I shall be back again with my old comrade. For the past few days I have been sorting letters from 1842-62. As

I watched the old times pass before my eyes they really came to life again, as did all the fun we used to have at our adversaries’ expense. Many of our early doings made me weep with laughter; they didn’t, after all, ever succeed in banishing our sense of humour. But there were also many very serious moments in between whiles.

This is in confidence; mind you, don’t let a word of it get into the papers. Such information as is ripe for imparting will be published by me from time to time in the Sozialdemokrat. Bernstein is getting on very well, he is eager to learn, is witty and has an open mind, can put up with criticism and is quite free of all petty-bourgeois moralisings. Our lads in Germany are really magnificent fellows, now that the Socialist Law* has freed them from the "educated " gentlemen who had tried before 1878 to schoolmaster the workers from the superior heights of their ignorant university-bred confusion, an attempt to which unfortunately only too many of the leaders lent themselves. That rotten trash has not been entirely got rid of as yet, but all the same the movement has come into a definitely revolutionary channel again. This is just the splendid thing about our boys, that the masses are far better than almost all their leaders, and now that the Socialist Law is forcing the masses to make the movement for themselves and the influence of the leaders is reduced to a minimum things are better than ever.

Your old friend

F. Engels