Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (16)

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

Volume 16 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels contains works written between August 1858 and February 1860. They consist mainly of articles published in the then progressive New-York Daily Tribune (and in many cases reprinted in the special issues, the New-York Weekly Tribune and tho New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune), and in the German-language London weekly Das Volk, which was for a short time the newspaper of the exiled German revolutionary workers. The present volume also includes Engels’ pamphlets Po and Rhine and Savoy, Nice and the Rhine.

The works belonging to 1858 deal with the final period of the first capitalist world economic crisis which began in 1857 and embraced all the leading European countries and the USA.

As Marx and Engels had foreseen, the crisis gave an impetus to the working-class and democratic movements and also to the national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples. By late 1858 and early 1859 a new revolutionary upsurge had begun in Europe, broadly reflected in the works contained in this volume. A revolutionary situation was developing in a number of countries. The masses, particularly the working class, were growing increasingly active. The question arose of the national unification of both Germany and Italy, and it was clear in each case that only a democratic solution of it would correspond to the interests of the masses. Marx’s and Engels’ theoretical and practical activity during this period was therefore aimed at preparing the international working class for new class struggles.

In elaborating revolutionary theory Marx and Engels paid particular attention to the development of economic theory. June 1859 saw the publication of Marx’s Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (see present edition, Vol. 30). This work was a landmark in the creation of Marxist political economy. For Marx had by now elaborated the theory of surplus value (see present edition, Vol. 29), which completed the proof of the inevitability of the replacement of capitalism by a higher social order, socialism. Lenin described the Preface to this work as having formulated “the fundamental principles of materialism as applied to human society and its history” (Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 55).

The present volume contains Engels’ review—published in August 1859 in Das Volk—of Marx’s Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in which he pointed out that Marx had laid the foundations for a completely new political economy, which differed radically from bourgeois economics.

Engels’ review explained the basic features of Marx’s method for studying such important economic categories as those of commodity and money. He snowed that in the Preface the materialist conception of history was not only made the scientific foundation of the revolutionary working-class world outlook, but also the essential methodology for the fruitful study of economic and other social processes. Marx had subjected the Hegelian dialectical method to criticism as early as the 1840s, and Engels emphasised the fundamental difference between materialist dialectics and Hegel’s dialectics. It had been essential, he pointed out, to free Hegel’s dialectics from its mystical form. “Marx was and is the only one who could undertake the work of extracting from the Hegelian logic the kernel containing Hegel’s real discoveries in this field, and of establishing the dialectical method, divested of its idealist wrappings, in the simple form in which it becomes the only correct mode of the development of thought” (see this volume, pp. 474-75).

Engels among other things laid stress on the dialectical relationship of the logical and historical approaches to the analysis of phenomena in political economy and the other social sciences. Logical analysis, which effects a certain abstraction from concrete details,is essential. However, it must not be reduced to arbitrary and purely speculative abstractions but must be based on the consistent application of the historical method. The logical method, Engels explained, “is indeed nothing but the historical method, only stripped of the historical form and of interfering contingencies. The point where this history begins must also be the starting point of the train of thought, and its further progress will be simply the reflection, in abstract and theoretically consistent form, of the course of history” (p. 475).

The present volume consists mainly of journalistic items by Marx and Engels. Revolutionary journalism was at that period one of the main means of propagating Marxist ideas and the strategical and tactical principles of the working-class and democratic movement. Marx and Engels attached special importance to this at a time when the political situation in Europe was growing increasingly tense and new revolutionary events were imminent.

The work of Marx and Engels in this sphere became particularly intense in the summer of 1859, when they were able to write for the weekly Das Volk. The history of this newspaper and Marx’s and Engels’ association with it forms an important episode in their struggle for a working-class party.

The urgent requirements of the working-class movement impelled them to engage increasingly in the practical aspect of this struggle. It was essential to expose circles hostile to the working class, to promote in every possible way the liberation of workers from the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology, and ensure the working class an independent role in bringing about any bourgeoisdemocratic transformations in contemporary society. The question of using the press for communist propaganda became more urgent in the new conditions. So when, in May 1859, Marx was invited to write for the new weekly Das Volk, which began publication on May 7, 1859 as the organ of the German Workers’ Educational Society and other London societies of German workers, he promised its editor, Elard Biscamp, his firm support. He took part in editing the articles, raising funds for the newspaper and selecting material for it.

From a small paper reflecting the interests of a narrow circle of German refugees in London, Das Volk began to turn into a militant revolutionary organ speaking for the working class. This enabled Marx and his associates to establish closer relations with it in June 1859. At the beginning of July Marx became to all intents and purposes the editor and manager of the paper, which had finally committed itself to the proletarian revolution.

In the columns of Das Volk Marx and Engels examined questions of the revolutionary theory and tactics of the working class. The newspaper published Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and also, as mentioned above, Engels’ review of this book.

Each issue of Das Volk contained “Political Reviews”, evidently written by Elard Biscamp and Wilhelm Liebknecht. But as soon as Marx took over the management of the newspaper he began to help with the editing of this section, and parts of it were written by him. In particular, the extract “On Ernest Jones” from one of these reviews, published in this volume, was written by Marx, who revealed in it the causes of the final decline of the Chartist movement.

Das Volk responded to current working-class struggles. Thus it reported the London building workers’ strike at the end of July 1859, which played an important role in rousing the British working class to action. One of the “Political Reviews” pointed out that the British bourgeoisie’s attempt to compel workers to renounce the revolutionary struggle could only “make the already deep rift between labour and capital even wider” (p. 637).

Marx regarded the struggle against petty-bourgeois ideology as one of the newspaper’s most important tasks. Its reviews “Gatherings from the Press”, written by Marx with Biscamp’s participation, satirised the philistinism and nationalism of articles by German petty-bourgeois democrats—Gottfried Kinkel and others—in their London organ Hermann (pp. 625-34).

In the columns of Das Volk Marx and Engels were able to express their revolutionary views more freely than in the Tribune, where they were hampered by the paper’s bourgeois bias. Marx and Engels used Das Volk to condemn the foreign and domestic policies of the ruling classes in the European states, to unmask reaction and uphold revolutionary principles.

Das Volk ceased publication on August 20, 1859, despite Marx’s tremendous efforts to keep it going. However, in spite of its brief existence, the newspaper made a considerable contribution to the propagation of the ideas of scientific communism and the principles of the working-class party.

One of the main subjects of Marx’s and Engels’ writings during this period were the events in Italy. In July 1858 Napoleon III and the Prime Minister of Piedmont, Cavour, whose policies reflected the desire of the liberal nobility and bourgeoisie to unite Italy under the Savoy dynasty, concluded a secret agreement for a joint war against Austria. Although the war preparations were conducted in the greatest secrecy, Marx and Engels predicted the inevitability of an armed conflict between France and Piedmont, on the one hand, and Austria, on the other, many months before it actually broke out. They revealed the true reasons that had led Louis Bonaparte and his supporters after the Crimean war to embark upon a new military escapade, pointed to the diplomatic moves by the European powers aimed at exacerbating the conflict and drew attention to the war preparations by the hostile states.

As soon as Das Volk was set up, their articles on the Italian question, which had originally appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune, began to be published in the new weekly too. They also became more politically pointed.

Marx and Engels strongly supported the revolutionary method of solving the Italian question. In the article “On Italian Unity” written at the beginning of January 1859 Marx expressed the conviction that “the burning hate of the Italians toward their oppressors, combined with their ever-increasing suffering, will find vent in a general revolution” (p. 148). Exposing the anti-democratic nature of the dynastic plans for uniting the country, Marx supported the truly patriotic forces in Italy, which he called the “national party”. He hoped that the Italian democrats would succeed in uniting around them the middle and petty bourgeoisie, the progressive intelligentsia, the peasantry, and the still numerically small working class, and in “initiating the great national insurrection” (p. 153). Only in this way, Marx believed, would it be possible to achieve the national liberation and unification of Italy on a truly democratic basis, and also solve the social and political questions—eliminate the vestiges of feudalism, abolish monarchist regimes, etc.—in the interests of the masses.

In the articles “The War Prospect in Europe”, “The Money Panic in Europe”, “Louis Napoleon’s Position”, “Peace or War”, “The War Prospect in France” and others, Marx and Engels revealed the attempts to prevent the outbreak of revolution by unleashing a new war. Marx and Engels believed that it was the task of the proletarian revolutionaries to use the developing war situation, created by the ruling classes, for strengthening the revolutionary movement, and if a war were unleashed, to do everything possible to turn it into a revolutionary war against the existing reactionary regimes.

In analysing the information which appeared in the press, Marx and Engels gave an accurate forecast of the progress and outcome of the imminent hostilities. Engels did so, in particular, in the articles “The Austrian Hold on Italy” and “Chances of the Impending War”.

The present volume includes Engels’ pamphlet Po and Rhine, written with the aim of outlining the position of the proletarian revolutionaries on questions connected with the Italian crisis and the impending war between Austria and France and exposing the various chauvinist theories used to justify both the aggressive policy of Napoleon III and Austrian rule in Northern Italy.

Po and Rhine, published in April 1859, is a model analysis of complex international problems. As his pamphlet was intended for the general public, including the bourgeois reader, Engels concentrated on military history and strategy. Nevertheless, this work also trenchantly advocates the revolutionary-democratic unification of Italy and Germany and shows that the policies of the ruling classes in the states involved in the conflict were incompatible with the true national interests of the Italian and German peoples.

Engels championed these national interests from the standpoint of proletarian internationalism, at the same time exposing the nationalistic ideology of the ruling classes and their chauvinist conceptions of the superiority of some peoples over others. Thus he firmly denounced the idea, widespread among reactionary circles in Germany, particularly the Austrophile section of the bourgeoisie, of creating a “Central European great power” under the aegis of Austria. The supporters of this idea, Engels noted, argued that the Germans were destined to rule the world. They spoke condescendingly of the Romanic peoples as being degenerate and declared that the Slavs were unfit for independent statehood.

Engels criticised the theory of “natural frontiers” invoked by those who argued that Austria should retain Northern Italy because the Po was, allegedly, such a natural frontier. He ardently supported the liberation of Lombardy and Venice from Austrian oppression and showed that the granting of independence to Italy would benefit Germany both politically and militarily. “Instead of seeking our strength in the possession of foreign soil and the oppression of a foreign nationality, whose future only prejudice can deny, we should do better to see to it that we are united and strong in our own house” (p. 240).

Engels strongly attacked the aggressive plans of Napoleon III, stressing that Bonapartism, as one of the bulwarks of European reaction, was a serious obstacle to the national unification of Italy and Germany. The national interests of the German and Italian peoples were gravely threatened by the territorial claims of the ruling Bonapartist circles and their plans to redraw the map of Europe in favour of France, which they too sought to justify by referring to the false concept of “natural frontiers”. To solve the national tasks facing the Germans and Italians, Engels noted, a resolute struggle against Bonapartism was needed.

Engels’ work is one of his finest writings as a military theoretician and military historian. In it he analysed the military scene in Italy and on the Rhine and expressed a number of important strategic and tactical ideas. His conclusions were based on a careful study of military history, in particular of the wars which had been fought in Northern Italy and the adjoining areas, from the campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte and other French generals to the operations of the Austrian army against Italy in 1848. In his analysis Engels paid great attention to the Italian and, in particular, the Swiss campaign by Russian forces under the command of Suvorov in 1799. He called Suvorov’s passage through the Alps “the most impressive of all Alpine crossings in modern times” (p. 222).

After the outbreak of the Italian war (as the Austro-ItaloFrench war was called at the time) in April 1859, Marx and Engels continued to develop the viewpoint they had expressed during the initial period of the Italian crisis before the commencement of hostilities. They regarded the war of France and Piedmont against Austria as a continuation of the antidemocratic policies of the ruling Bonapartist circles. Louis Napoleon and his entourage, they emphasised, needed this war to delay the collapse of the Bonapartist regime in France by comparatively easy victories over an “external foe”, to win popularity by playing demagogically on the slogan “free Italy from Austrian rule” and the “principle of nationalities”. Stripping Louis Napoleon of the hypocritical mask of “the liberator of Italy”, Marx and Engels exposed his counter-revolutionary designs with respect to the Italian national movement. Like the Austrian Empire, Bonapartist France, they wrote, was emphatically opposed to the independence and unification of Italy. The war unleashed by Napoleon III was a masked intervention against the popular revolutionary movement for Italian unity. In his article “Louis Napoleon and Italy” Marx compared this war with the French expedition of 1849 aimed at restoring the power of the Pope, an expedition initiated by Louis Bonaparte, then President of the French Republic. Marx pointed out that for Louis Napoleon “the war ... was only another French expedition to Rome—on a grander scale in all respects, to be sure, but in motive and results not dissimilar to that ‘Republican’ enterprise” (p. 482).

All Marx’s and Engels’ articles on the Italian war are full of ardent support for the struggle of the Italian people against foreign rule. Marx approved of the manifesto of the Italian revolutionary Mazzini, which exposed the demagogic manoeuvres of Louis Napoleon, and published a translation of it in the NewYork Daily Tribune (see this volume, pp. 354-59). Marx and Engels saw the anti-Austrian operations of the volunteer detachments led by the great Italian patriot Garibaldi as a splendid example of popular resistance to foreign rule and of a true war of liberation. Garibaldi, Engels wrote, “does not seem afraid of that dash, which Napoleon III warns his soldiers not to indulge in” (p. 360). In the article “Strategy of the War” Engels rated Garibaldi very highly as a revolutionary military commander.

In the articles “The War”, “Fighting at Last”, “Progress of the War”, “Military Events”, “A Chapter of History”, “The Battle at Solferino”, “The Italian War. Retrospect” and others, Engels gave an all-round review of the military campaign of 1859, making frequent excursions into the history of warfare and drawing some important theoretical conclusions. For example, in the article “The Campaign in Italy”, published in Das Volk, Engels notes the changes that have taken place since the period of the Napoleonic wars in the conduct of warfare due to the development of a system of entrenched camps and fortresses to protect state frontiers, and also to the introduction of railways and shipping lines making it possible to speed up considerably the transport and concentration of troops. Engels uses this example to reveal the connection between the development of productive forces and methods of warfare.

In the articles “The French Disarmament”, “The Invasion Panic in England” and others, Marx showed that the policy of military gambles pursued by the rulers of the Second Empire was the source of ever new conflicts and wars. In a number of articles Marx and Engels also criticised the reactionary forces that gave diplomatic support to France during its preparations for the war in Italy and in the period of the fighting. This applies first and foremost to the agreement between Louis Napoleon and Palmerston, which left Napoleon III free to carry out his Italian adventure. The agreement concluded between Bonapartist France and Tsarist Russia in March 1859, Marx and Engels stressed, served the same purpose.

The Italian war produced a social upsurge in Prussia and other states of the German Confederation. Napoleon Ill’s war against Austria was rightly regarded in Germany as the prelude to encroachments on German territory, in particular, the left bank of the Rhine. In the press, at mass meetings and in clubs demands were made for the organisation of national resistance to Napoleon Ill’s aggressive plans. The national upsurge in Germany in 1859 again brought to the fore the question of the unification of the numerous German states.

Marx and Engels worked out the tactics of the working class on this question, linking them closely with the position of proletarian revolutionaries on the Italian conflict. Proceeding from the fact that Bonapartism was one of the main obstacles to the unification of Germany and that the fall of the Second Empire was an important prerequisite for a European revolution, they considered it essential that Prussia and the other German states should take part in the armed struggle against Bonapartist France. “While decidedly taking part for Italy against Austria, they cannot but take part for Austria against Bonaparte,” wrote Marx in the article “The War Prospect in Prussia” (p. 269). But needless to say, their tactics by no means envisaged support for the reactionary regime of the Austrian Empire or its rule in Italy. Marx and Engels never ceased to denounce the Habsburgs as butchers of the freedom of the Italian and other oppressed peoples.

Marx and Engels believed that military action by the German states against France would create the conditions, independently of the will of the governments of these states, for the dynastic war to turn into a revolutionary war. The defeat of France might in this case lead to a revolutionary explosion in Europe. The result would be the destruction not only of the Bonapartist regime in France, but also of the reactionary regimes in Austria itself, Prussia and the other states of the German Confederation, and the unification of both Germany and Italy in a revolutionary, democratic way. Developing this idea, Marx noted in the article “Spree and Mincio” that an alliance of Prussia and Austria in the situation that had arisen “means revolution” (p. 381).

In this article, and also in the articles “Austria, Prussia and Germany in the War” and “A Prussian View of the War”, Marx branded the neutral policy of the Prussian Government as one which aided and abetted Bonapartism. His article “Quid pro Quo”, based on an analysis of numerous facts and documents, makes this point with particular force. In it Marx showed that what lay behind the diplomatic manoeuvring of the Prussian rulers at the time of the Italian war, manoeuvring which greatly assisted Napoleon III, was first and foremost the fear of a revolutionary upsurge in Germany if the German states joined in the war. This policy, disguised as one of neutrality, was also calculated to weaken Prussia’s rival, Austria, in the struggle for supremacy in Germany. For the sake of this,Prussia’s rulers ignored the all-German national interests. Marx pointed out that by its manoeuvring and refusal to enter the war Prussia hoped “by trickery eventually to gain hegemony in Germany at a discount” (p. 452). The results of this double-faced policy, he noted, were most unfortunate for Prussia itself.

Marx’s article “Erfurtery in the Year 1859” (the title contains an ironic allusion to the Prussophile plans of the Erfurt Parliament of 1850 and the attempt to revive them) attacked the support given by wide circles of the German bourgeoisie to the idea of Germany’s unification under the hegemony of the Prussian Junkers. The very course of history, Marx pointed out, presented Germany with a choice: either the urgent tasks of national unification would be carried out in a revolutionary way, or they would be effected from above by the ruling Junker circles, with the help of the bourgeoisie, in the form and by the methods which were in keeping with their interests. Marx noted that one could not discount the possibility of the counter-revolutionary classes prevailing, in which case the unification of Germany would have to be carried out by the reactionary forces, i.e. the Prussian ruling clique, acting as the revolution’s mandatory. But this clique could perform the tasks of the revolution, in particular, that of unifying the country, only in a distorted way. Marx warned that in the hands of reaction the “programme of the revolution turns into a satire on the relevant revolutionary efforts” (p. 404). Thus already in 1859 Marx called attention to the danger of allowing the reactionary circles to take over the initiative in unifying Germany.

The results of the Italian war, which ended with the signing on July 11, 1859 of the Preliminary Treaty of Villafranca (most of its terms were later adopted at Zurich), were the subject of Marx’s articles “What Has Italy Gained?”, “The Peace”, “The Treaty of Villafranca”, “Louis Napoleon and Italy” and others, and of Engels’ pamphlet Savoy, Nice and the Rhine. Napoleon III concluded peace so hastily, Marx noted, because, against the will of its instigators, the war “was tending to become a revolutionary war” (p. 413). At the same time the Treaty of Villafranca clearly revealed that Louis Napoleon’s aims were opposed to the cause of Italian liberation and unification. Marx stressed how humiliating the treaty was for the Italians: Lombardy was transferred first to France and then “as a French gift to the Savoy dynasty” (p. 418), Napoleon providing himself with compensation for it in the form of Savoy and Nice. Venice remained in Austrian hands, as did the strategically important quadrilateral of fortresses (Mantua, Legnago, Verona and Peschiera). Despite his promises, the French Emperor “has left Austria seated almost as firmly as ever on the neck of Italy” (p. 414). In addition Napoleon III sought to place the Pope, the main inspirer of reaction in Italy, at the head of the proposed Italian Confederation and to restore the deposed dukes of Tuscany, Modena and Parma.

Marx stressed that the conclusion of the Peace Treaty of Villafranca did not lessen the danger of armed conflicts breaking out in Europe as a result of the adventurist policy of the ruling classes in Bonapartist France and other states. He emphatically condemned the war preparations that were being made under the pretext of securing peace. “Of all the dogmas of the bigoted politics of our time,” he wrote in the article “Invasion!” which examined the possibility of the British Isles being occupied by Napoleon Ill’s army, “none has caused more harm than the one that says ‘In order to have peace, you must prepare for war’” (p. 439). Revealing the social roots of the Italian crisis, Marx pointed out that the ruling circles in the European states that resorted to this “cunning perfidy” had turned their countries into military camps and created an international situation in which “every new peace pact is regarded as a new declaration of war” (ibid.).

As Marx and Engels had foreseen, the war ended in a betrayal of Italy’s interests. Bonapartist France and Austria concluded a deal to which Piedmont was admitted only some time later, as a special favour by Napoleon III. Not one of the main questions of the bourgeois revolution was solved. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that in 1859 it proved impossible to turn “a modestly liberal movement ... into a tempestuously democratic one”, as Lenin put it (Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 142), the events of that year promoted an upsurge of the national liberation movement in Italy in the following year, 1860.

In April 1860 Engels published the pamphlet Savoy, Nice and the Rhine in which he showed the extent to which the conclusions formulated by him in Po and Rhine had been confirmed by the outcome of the Italian war.

The immediate reason for writing this work was the attempt by the pro-Bonapartist press to justify France’s annexation of Savoy and Nice. Engels demonstrated the invalidity of attempts to justify on linguistic, ethnographical and military grounds the claims of individual states to this or that territory, without taking into account the will and interests of the population. In the historical situation at that time, Engels noted, the> annexation of Savoy and Nice by France meant that France’s counter-revolutionary rulers were acquiring new military strongholds, thus consolidating the anti-democratic regime of the Second Empire. In addition, such acts were whetting the appetites of Bonapartist circles for other territories, including the Rhine, and creating precedents for further acts of aggrandisement.

In examining the alignment of forces in the international arena at that time and the tasks of the revolutionary democrats in the struggle against the reactionary monarchist bloc led by Bonapartist France and supported by Russian Tsarism, Engels combined in an exemplary way a patriotic defence of the interests of the progressive development of Germany with a consistently internationalist approach to the problems of national and revolutionary development.

Engels in no way identified the ruling circles with the peoples of the countries then forming the counter-revolutionary camp, nor did he make the slightest attempt to impose the responsibility for aggressive policies on the masses. On the contrary, within each of these countries Engels sought to pinpoint the forces the European revolution could count on. Thus, in making a sharp distinction between official Russia and the revolutionary Russia of the people, Engels expressed the hope that in their clash with Tsarism and the other counter-revolutionary powers the working class and democracy would this time find an ally in the Russian peasantry, which had entered the movement after the Crimean war. He wrote in Savoy, Nice and the Rhine: “The contest that has now broken out in Russia between the ruling and the oppressed classes of the rural population is already undermining the entire system of Russian foreign policy. That system was only possible so long as Russia had no internal political development. But that time is past” (p. 609).

Among the other problems treated in the journalistic writings of Marx and Engels of this period the consequences of the economic crisis of 1857-58, the domestic development of Britain, France, Prussia and Russia, and the situation in the colonial world stand out in particular. Many of these writings were sequels to articles written on the same subject in earlier years and developed the ideas expressed in them.

In a number of his articles Marx describes the specific features of the economic crisis of 1857-58 in Britain during its final stage, and also analyses the effects of the crisis. Marx shows that British industry and commerce were not only hit by the internal crisis, which to some extent paralysed Britain’s economy, but were also adversely affected by crises in other countries and parts of the world. Using Britain as an example he shows the harmful effect of the crisis on the condition of the working masses.

Marx’s articles “The English Bank Act of 1844”, “Commercial Crises and Currency in Britain” and “British Commerce and Finance”, written in August-September 1858, contain strong criticism of the British Free Traders, who advocated the abolition of tariffs as a panacea for all crises. Marx revealed the futility of attempts by bourgeois economists to find a remedy for crises, refuted their simplistic explanation of the origin of the 1857 crisis and of crises in general, and drew some important conclusions concerning the theory of crises. The true causes of the crisis, he remarked, lay not in excessive speculation and abuse of credit, as bourgeois economists, including the ideologists of Free Trade, argued, but in the socio-economic conditions peculiar to capitalism. Crises, he pointed out, “are inherent in the present system of production”, “so long as the system lasts, they must be borne with, like the natural changes of the seasons” (p. 34).

Analysis of Britain’s economic and political situation occupies an important place in this volume. Marx’s articles “The State of British Manufactures”, “Population, Crime, and Pauperism”, “British Commerce” and “Manufactures and Commerce” trace the operation of the increased concentration of production and the cyclic nature of its development on the basis of official British statistics. Analysing the current figures of British imports and exports, Marx notes a’specific feature of the development of the British economy, namely that “England, in regard to the markets of the world, develops its function as money-lender still more rapidly than its function as manufacturer and merchant” (p. 494).

In his articles “Electoral Corruption in England”, “The New British Reform Bill” and others, Marx reveals the anti-democratic nature of the British political system. “The real Constitution of the British House of Commons might be summed up in the word Corruption” (p. 526). He shows that Disraeli’s Bill introduced in February 1859 reduced the new parliamentary reform to a number of minor changes in the electoral system and aimed, above all, at preserving the monopoly of political power enjoyed by the landed aristocracy and bourgeoisie and the lack of political rights of the working class. “On first view it will be understood that all these new franchises, while admitting some new middleclass sections, are framed with the express purpose of excluding the working classes, and chaining them to their present station of political ‘pariahs’ “ (p. 204).

Marx criticised the existing factory legislation in Britain, which left many convenient loopholes for the factory-owners.

Some of the articles by Marx and Engels in this volume expose the colonial policy of capitalist states, primarily Britain, and describe the national struggle of the oppressed peoples, which reached considerable scope during this period.

Marx and Engels saw Ireland as one of the centres of revolutionary ferment. There was no peace there after the defeat of the national liberation movement in 1848. Conditions were maturing for a new national liberation struggle, which in the early sixties took the form of the Fenian movement. In the article “The Excitement in Ireland” (December 1858), Marx wrote of the increased activities of the secret peasant organisation, “the Ribbon Society”, in response to the violence and arbitrariness of the landlords and their agents, and the setting up of the patriotic Phoenix Club by revolutionary intellectuals who took part in the events of 1848 (the establishment of the Club was a prologue to the founding of the Fenian Brotherhood). Marx wrote that to blame the Irish for producing such secret societies for the struggle against the oppressors “would be as judicious as to accuse woodland of producing mushrooms” (p. 137).

A striking instance of the British ruling circles trampling on the vital interests of the peoples of economically backward countries was the opium trade in China, which Marx discusses in the two articles entitled “History of the Opium Trade”. The British “civilisers” had monopolised the smuggling of opium and turned it into a goldmine. The British Government, which claimed to oppose the opium trade, had in fact established a monopoly of opium production in India and taken it over, legalising the sale of opium to contraband merchants, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century was receiving a vast income from this source. The finances of the British Government in India, Marx concludes, were closely dependent not merely on the opium trade with China, but on the illicit nature of this trade.

In the article “Great Trouble in Indian Finances” Marx exposes Britain’s policy of rapine in India and points out the disastrous effects of British rule. In particular, he notes the destruction of local industry by the mass import of British cotton fabrics and yarn. He examines the consequences of the British colonisers’ brutal suppression of the national liberation uprising in India in 1857-59 and points out that the vast expenditure this entailed, and also the need to maintain a large armed force in India, placed a heavy tax burden on the British people.

The volume also contains articles on the domestic situation in France. Marx and Engels pointed out that the regime of Napoleon III was maintained by the same methods by which it had been set up, namely, police terrorism. But even such a despotic regime as the monarchy of Napoleon III, Marx noted, could not rely on brute force alone. The flirting with the various classes, the deceit and the demagogy continued throughout the existence of the Second Empire. Marx wrote that the French Emperor was trying at one and the same time to play the part of a protector of the French peasants, “a sort of socialist providence to the proletarians of the towns” and the “savior of property” of the French bourgeoisie (p. 114). Marx regarded the attempts of Bonapartist circles to bribe the French working class as particularly dangerous, and constantly warned against them.

At the end of 1858 Marx wrote a series of articles describing the position in Prussia in connection with the appointment of the Prince of Prussia (the future King William I) as Regent, the beginning of whose regime was hailed as the dawn of a “new era” by the liberals. But Marx showed that the Regent’s liberalism was a sham. In the articles “The King of Prussia’s Insanity”, “The Prussian Regency”, “Affairs in Prussia” and “The New Ministry” he exposed the Hohenzollern dynasty as the suppressor of all progressive trends. The Prussian monarchy and the reactionary Prussian Constitution had turned the people’s rights into a dead letter. Marx exposed the domination of the bureaucracy which had penetrated all spheres of social life in the Prussian state. The feudal monarchist system, he pointed out, was able to survive in Prussia only owing to the cowardly liberalism of the Prussian bourgeoisie, which was always prepared to accommodate itself to the reactionary policies of the ruling circles.

In the late 1850s Marx and Engels began to give close attention to the development of events in Russia. They became increasingly convinced that the position of Tsarism had weakened after the Crimean war. The war had not only revealed the economic and political backwardness of Tsarist Russia, but also stimulated the rapid growth of unrest among the serfs, which was undermining the foundations of the feudal, serf-owning system. As already stated, in Savoy, Nice and the Rhine Engels spoke of the revolutionary aspirations of the Russian peasantry. Marx and Engels touched upon this question in earlier works too. Thus, at the end of 1858 Marx wrote the articles “The Question of the Abolition of Serfdom in Russia” and “The Emancipation Question”, and Engels the article “Europe in 1858”. Already in these articles Marx and Engels regarded Russia as a country on the verge of a popular, anti-serf revolution, and were saying that the mass movement in Russia was assuming a dangerous character for the autocracy. Studying the international situation in the latter half of 1858, Marx expressed the idea that revolutionary Russia was a potential ally of the revolutionary movement in the West. The revolutionary movement among the peasant masses in Russia, in Marx’s opinion, threatened to turn into a mighty explosion. The reform which the ruling classes themselves were thinking to introduce in order to avert an outbreak of revolution would not remove the question of revolution. Marx was firmly convinced that soon “the Russian 1793 will be at hand”, which would be a “turning point in Russian history, and finally place real and general civilization in the place of that sham and show introduced by Peter the Great” (p. 147).

Marx foresaw that the abolition of serfdom which was being prepared by the Tsarist Government would only be a half measure, like all such reforms introduced from above, merely a step along the path of essential bourgeois transformations in Russia, and would not solve all the pressing questions. These could be finally solved only as the result of revolution.

In their later works Marx and Engels continued to show great interest in the growing popular ferment in Russia and analysed in detail the place of the Russian revolutionary movement in the overall European revolutionary process.

The section “From the Preparatory Materials” contains items by Marx and Engels which were published recently for the first time (in Russian): the unfinished draft of Marx’s article “Symptoms of the Revival of France’s Internal Life”, a draft of his lecture “On the Division of Labour” which he delivered to German workers in London in the autumn of 1859, and also Engels’ chronological notes “The Italian War. 1859”.

The Appendices include articles and notes in the writing of which Marx took part. They throw light on his efforts to turn the newspaper Das Volk into a working-class organ.

* * *

This volume contains a total of 109 works by Marx and Engels, including a short item published in the London newspaper The Free Press. Sixteen of them — fifteen written in German and one in English—are published in English for the first time (Engels’ pamphlets Po and Rhine and Savoy, Nice and the Rhine, eleven articles from the newspaper Das Volk and three items in the section “From the Preparatory Materials”). Of the remaining works, written in English, eighty have not been reproduced in English since their first publication. During the preparation of the volume the authorship of the extract entitled “On Ernest Jones (from the “Political Review” of Das Volk)” was established for the first time. Almost all the materials published in the Appendices are also appearing for the first time in English.

In studying the concrete historical material contained in Marx’s and Engels’ articles one should bear in mind that they used as sources for their articles on current events newspaper information which sometimes proved to be inaccurate. Besides, as we know from Marx’s and Engels’ letters, the editors of the New-York Daily Tribune frequently took liberties with the text of their articles, particularly those which were printed as leaders. In the present edition all known cases of interference by the editors are indicated in the footnotes. If an article was published without a title and Marx also gave it no title in his Notebook, the editors of this volume have provided one, which is given in square brackets.

The volume was compiled, the text prepared and the notes written by Tatyana Andrushchenko in the case of works originally written in English, and Boris Krylov for works originally written in German. The preface is by Boris Krylov, and the volume as a whole was edited by Lev Churbanov (CC CPSU Institute of MarxismLeninism). The name index, the indexes of quoted and mentioned literature and of periodicals, and the glossary of geographical names were prepared by Tatyana Gutina and Yelena Vashchenko; the subject index was compiled by Marien Arzumanov; Olga Korolyova took part in the general work of preparing the notes and indexes.

The English translations were made by Henry Mins (International Publishers), Richard Dixon and Salo Ryazanskaya (Progress Publishers), and edited by J. S. Allen (International Publishers), Maurice Cornforth and Nicholas Jacobs (Lawrence and Wishart), Richard Dixon, Lydia Belyakova and Victor Schnittke (Progress Publishers), and Norire Ter-Akopyan, scientific editor (USSR Academy of Sciences).

The volume was prepared for the press by Lydia Belyakova, Nadezhda Rudenko, Lyudgarda Zubrilova and the assistant editor Lyudmila Mikhailova (Progress Publishers).