Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (26)

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Volume 26 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains works by Frederick Engels, most of which were written between August 1882 and December 1889.

After Marx’s death Engels took upon himself the complex tasks of the development of the theory and the ideological leadership of the international socialist movement, which for many decades had been performed by himself and Marx in close collaboration. “For after all, we wish to maintain intact, in so far as it is in my power, the many threads from all over the world which spontaneously converged upon Marx’s study,” he wrote to August Bebel on April 30, 1883 (see present edition, Vol. 47).

Throughout the 1880s Engels’ links with members of the socialist working-class movement of various countries grew stronger and broader. The working-class struggle for emancipation acquired greater dimensions, and was joined by new strata of the proletariat. The process of forming independent working-class political parties begun in the preceding years continued, and by the end of the decade they had been set up or were in the stage of being set up in almost all the countries of Europe. Most of them based their programmes on the principles of scientific socialism. These principles were also reflected in the decisions of the Paris International Socialist Congress of 1889, which marked the beginning of the Second International. The creation of parties was an important new step in the process of combining socialism with the working-class movement.

Engels constantly helped the young socialist parties and working-class organisations to draw up their programmes, tactics and political line. He contributed actively to the socialist press and did his utmost to promote the dissemination of Marxism. He carried on an extensive correspondence with members of the workingclass and socialist movement of different countries. Alongside the preparation for the press of volumes II and III of Capital, a major part of Engels’ activity consisted of publishing new editions of Marx’s and his own works and organising translations of them into other languages. The prefaces to these editions published in this volume constitute an important part of his literary heritage.

During this period Engels wrote two major theoretical works which occupy a central place in the volume: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State was an important contribution to the development of the materialist conception of history. The scientifically argued theses advanced in this work about the role of production in the development of society, the origin and evolution of the family, the origin of private property and classes, and the emergence and class essence of the state, fully retain their significance today. This work remains, to quote Lenin, “one of the fundamental works” of scientific communism (Collected Works, Vol. 29, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 473). It contains a profound theoretical generalisation of scientific achievements in the sphere of the history of primitive society and ethnography, first and foremost, of the studies of the progressive American scientist Lewis H. Morgan, whose results were set out in his book Ancient Society. This book was based to a large extent on many years of studying the life and customs of North American Indians. Morgan, Engels wrote in his preface to the first edition of The Origin of the Family, “rediscovered ..., in his own way, the materialist conception of history that had been discovered by Marx forty years ago” (this volume, p. 131). The extensive material contained in Morgan’s book provided Engels with “a factual basis we have hitherto lacked” (Engels to Karl Kautsky, April 26, 1884, present edition, Vol. 47), which enabled him to analyse the early stages of human development from the viewpoint of the materialist conception of history.

Engels regarded his work as, “in a sense, the fulfilment of a behest” of Marx (p. 131), who himself had planned to write a book on the early period of human history drawing on the results of Morgan’s studies. Engels made full use of Marx’s notes in the latter’s conspectus of Morgan’s book, drawn up shortly before his death, and made the structure of this conspectus, which differed from that of Morgan, the basis for his work. He also drew on a great deal of additional material, including his own studies on the early history of Ireland and of the Germans, carried out in preceding years (all this is referred to in the Notes to this volume). In preparing a fourth edition of the book (1891) Engels made certain changes and important additions based on a study of the most recent scientific literature of his day.

Engels based his work on the idea of two types of production, remarking in the preface: “According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is again of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the implements required for this; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and of a definite country live are determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour, on the one hand, and of the family, on the other” (pp. 131-32).

Tracing the evolution of the family, Engels examined how its forms had changed under the influence of the development of productive forces and changes in the mode of production. He showed that at the early stages of human history, when private property and the division of society into classes had not yet arisen, family relations, ties of kinship played a very important part. With the growth of productive forces, however, this role was gradually reduced, and with the emergence of private property and classes the family became totally subjected to property relations.

Substantiating in detail the thesis already advanced by him in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, to the effect that human society at the early stages of its development was a classless society based on a gentile structure and common ownership of the means of production, Engels summed up, as it were, his and Marx’s many years of research in this sphere. He supplemented Marx’s view of socio-economic formations expounded in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Part One (present edition, Vol. 29).

In a note to the 1888 English edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party he made a major correction, quoting The Origin of the Family, to the Manifesto’s thesis, that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (present edition, Vol. 6, p. 482). The emergence of classes, he pointed out, was preceded by a lengthy period when communal, tribal ownership of the means of production reigned supreme.

The periodisation of the early periods in the history of humanity, which Engels adopted from Morgan, i.e. the division into epochs of savagery and barbarism each sub-divided into three stages, is now regarded as obsolete in the light of new scientific data and recent research and is no longer used by scholars. However, in present-day research account is taken of Engels’ outline of the main stages of development of the primitive communal system. Ideas of the individual stages in the development of the family and the origin of the gens have also changed considerably. This applies, for example, to such stages in the evolution of the family, advanced by Morgan and accepted by Engels (although with certain reservations in the fourth edition of the book), as the consanguine family and the punaluan family, and also to certain other concrete theses which have not been confirmed by subsequent archaeological and ethnographic investigations.

At the same time the methodological principles on which Engels based his work remain fully valid. Here for the first time he applied the dialectical-materialist method to the study of the history of the family, which enabled him to draw the highly important conclusion as to the dependence of forms of the family on the development of productive forces and changes in the mode of production. This was a major step forward in the development of the materialist conception of history.

Equally important and relevant today is Engels’ explanation of the causes of the inequality of women in a class society. Engels showed that this inequality is determined not by biological factors, but in the final analysis by economic causes, and that its very emergence is connected with the appearance of private ownership of the means of production. Thus the way was pointed to the establishment of the full equality of the sexes.

Drawing on factual material from Morgan’s book and other sources, Engels examined the process of the formation of antagonistic classes and showed that it was based on the development of productive forces, the growth of labour productivity.

It was in The Origin of the Family that Engels, for the first time in Marxist literature, gave such a detailed picture of the emergence of the state. He showed that the state had not always existed, but arose at a certain stage of economic development. Its appearance was the result of the division of society into antagonistic classes. It is proof that “society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable opposites which it is powerless to dispel” (p. 269) and therefore needs some force that could restrain them. The state is such a force.

Developing the theory of the state set out by Marx most fully in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France, and also in his own works The Housing Question and Anti-Diihring (see present edition, vols 11, 22, 23 and 25), Engels analysed the essence of the state, revealed the scientific invalidity of the view of the state as a kind of “supra-class” force, and characterised it as an organ “of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class” (p. 271). The state retains this character in a bourgeois democratic republic as well.

Engels did not limit himself to analysing the causes of the emergence of the state, and characterising its essence and explaining its structure, which already in itself meant developing further the theory of the state. He showed, in addition, that with the growth of productive forces the existence of antagonistic classes becomes an obstacle to the development of social production and that this, in the final analysis, leads to their destruction on the basis of the nationalisation of the means of production and, consequently, the withering away of the state.

The society of the future “which will reorganise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe” (p. 272).

This volume also contains one of the most famous Marxist philosophical works, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Although the direct aim of this work was a critique of the book on Feuerbach by the Danish philosopher and sociologist Carl Starcke, its polemical aspect took second place. Here Engels expounded in positive form some vital philosophical problems: the subject of philosophy, the laws of its development and the struggle of materialism and idealism, the attitude of Marxism to its philosophical predecessors, above all, to Hegel and Feuerbach. Finally, he revealed the essence of Marxist philosophy, namely, dialectical and historical materialism, and showed how it differed fundamentally from preceding philosophical systems.

Engels’ work was particularly important for the socialist movement, because some Social-Democratic intellectuals were influenced by idealist philosophical trends popular at that time, above all, by Neo-Kantianism.

In his book Engels broached some of the main questions of philosophy, namely, the relationship of thinking to being, of mind to matter, a question which divides philosophers into two major camps: the idealists, who believe that the mind is primary, and the materialists, who believe in the primacy of matter. The answer to this question predetermines to a large extent the solution of other philosophical problems. The struggle between idealism and materialism is the main characteristic feature of the history of philosophy. Engels stresses that the question of the relationship of thinking to being has yet another aspect: is the reflection of being by the human consciousness identical to the real world? And is this world cognisable? Arguing that being is cognisable and criticising philosophers who deny the possibility of cognising it, Engels points out that the main criterion for the cognisability of the world is practical human activity. “The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical quirks is practice, namely, experimentation and industry” (p. 367).

Here for the first time Engels advanced the thesis on the three great discoveries in natural science: the discovery of the cell, the theory of the transformation of energy and Darwin’s theory of evolution, “which have advanced our knowledge of the interconnection of natural processes by leaps and bounds” (p. 385) and thanks to which the dialectical nature of this connection was established.

Engels regards Hegelian dialectics and Feuerbach’s materialist views as the most important philosophical sources of Marxism. He characterises Hegelian philosophy as “the termination of the whole movement since Kant” (p. 359), and sees Hegel’s dialectical method as “the way ... to real positive cognition of the world” (p. 362). In doing this Engels reveals the contradiction between this method and Hegelian idealism.

Characterising the philosophical views of Feuerbach, Engels stresses his importance in reviving materialism in philosophy. At the same time he shows the limitations of Feuerbach’s materialism, which did not extend to the materialist interpretation of social life. In criticising Hegel’s idealism Feuerbach also rejected the main positive feature of Hegel’s philosophy, his dialectical method. Feuerbach, wrote Engels, “as a philosopher, ... stopped halfway, was a materialist below and an idealist above” (p. 382).

The final chapter of Engels’ work examines the essence of dialectical and historical materialism. The combining of the dialectical method with a consistently materialist world outlook meant in fact a revolutionary change in philosophy. “Thus dialectics reduced itself to the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thinking” (p. 383). And the extension of the dialectical-materialist method to the study of the history of human society, the materialist conception of history, made it possible for the first time to reveal the objective laws of social development. It was established that the historical process is based on the development of productive forces and economic relations, changes in which bring about alterations in the political system and, eventually, in the forms and types of social consciousness—in other words, in the whole ideological superstructure. Here Engels notes the relative independence of the political superstructure and different forms of social consciousness and their ability to exert a reciprocal influence on the economic basis.

The volume also includes a number of works defending Marx’s economic teaching against the attacks of his ideological adversaries.

During the period to which the works published in this volume belong Engels prepared for the press Volume II of Capital, which came out in 1885, and the third (1884) and fourth (1890) German editions of Volume I, and also edited its English translation which appeared in 1887. All these editions were provided with prefaces written by him. In the preface to Volume II (see present edition, Vol. 36) and in the article “Marx and Rodbertus” published in this volume and written as a preface to the first German edition of Marx’s work The Poverty of Philosophy, Engels criticised the views of the German economist Karl Rodbertus, whose works had served as the theoretical basis for the “state-socialist” measures of Bismarck and become the banner of the so-called armchair socialists who advocated bourgeois reforms in solving the social question, disguised in pseudo-socialist phraseology. Rodbertus also had apologists within the ranks of the Social-Democrats. Engels convincingly disproved the fabrications of certain bourgeois economists who accused Marx of plagiarising Rodbertus’ ideas on the origin of value, by showing the fundamental difference between Marx’s theory of value and Rodbertus’ views. He exposed the reactionary-utopian nature of his views on the formation of value, his theory of “labour money” (pp. 288-89), and his statements on the ability of the modern state by means of legislative reforms to radically improve the position of the workers and to solve the social question, without touching the basis of the capitalist mode of production.

With the aim of making Marx’s great work accessible to the socialists of all countries, Engels did his utmost to promote translations of Capital into other languages, in particular, Russian, Polish and English. He showed constant concern as to their accuracy. The present volume contains his article “How Not to Translate Marx”, written in connection with the publication in the London journal To-Day of an English translation of a few paragraphs from chapter one of Volume I of Capital. The translator was the leader of the English Social-Democratic Federation H. M. Hyndman, who used the pseudonym Broadhouse. Engels demanded that the translator should possess not only a perfect knowledge of both languages, but also a profound understanding of the content of the work to be translated.

Engels was a careful observer of the development of the capitalist economy, particularly the new phenomena which emerged in it. Evidence of this can be found, among others, in the article “Protection and Free Trade” written as a preface to the American edition of Marx’s “Speech on the Question of Free Trade” published on the initiative of American socialists. For the United States, where the struggle between the supporters and opponents of protectionism was continuing at this time, this publication was of great topical importance. Basing himself on an analysis of historical facts, Engels showed that whereas the protectionist system had for a certain time stimulated the development of capitalist production, with the growth of productive forces and technological progress it was becoming an obstacle to this development. “Free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists,” he noted (p. 536). One of the signs that protectionism had become obsolete in the United States, Engels considered, was the formation of large monopolies which, on the one hand, led to increased competition on the world market, but on the other, threatened the interests of the home consumer by setting up monopolistic prices. Engels stresses that the rapid development of capitalism, whether under protectionism or free trade, is inevitably accompanied by the growth of a revolutionary working class, “that is to say, the class which is fated one day to destroy the system itself” (p. 536).

Many of the articles published in the present volume reflect the great attention paid by Engels to the proletarian struggle for emancipation in various countries, and to the development of the international working-class and socialist movement. As well as corresponding regularly with the leaders and active members of the movement in almost all European countries and the United States, he maintained personal contact with them. Engels readily contributed to the German, French and English socialist press. He not only had his articles printed in the German Social-Democratic newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat, but gave daily assistance to its editors. His articles were published in the French newspaper Le Socialiste, the English organs The Commonweal, The Labour Elector and The Labour Leader, the German theoretical journal Die Neue Zeit, and others. The contents of the present volume provide a full picture of this collaboration.

Engels devoted a great deal of energy to disseminating the major theoretical works by Marx and himself. With his participation and, as a rule, under his editorship the following works were published: a German translation of The Poverty of Philosophy and a French translation of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Marx, the Italian and Danish editions of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and many others. The present volume contains the prefaces to a new German edition (1883) prepared with Engels’ participation and the English edition (1888) edited by him of the Manifesto of the Communist Party. In the latter he noted with satisfaction that “at present” the Manifesto “is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist Literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California” (p. 516).

Engels paid special attention to German Social-Democracy, at that time the strongest, best organised and most militant detachment of the international socialist movement, which rightly held pride of place in the latter. Engels gave it the utmost assistance to overcome reformist influences, to struggle against opportunist elements, to work out correct revolutionary tactics and to propagate scientific socialism. This assistance was all the more important because in the 1880s the party was operating in the intensely difficult conditions of the Anti-Socialist Law when its legal methods of activity were reduced to a minimum. In spite of the outstanding successes of the socialist working-class movement in Germany, it had not freed itself entirely from ideological influences alien to the interests of the working class. In the preface to the second edition of his work The Housing Question, published in this volume, Engels noted that “bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism is strongly represented in Germany down to this very hour”. And in the Social-Democratic Party itself there was “a certain petty-bourgeois socialism” (p. 427), which was explained by the special features of the country’s historical development.

Considering it most important in these conditions that progressive German workers be educated in the spirit of revolutionary and internationalist traditions, Engels undertook in the 1880s the reprinting of a number of Marx’s works relating to the period of the revolution of 1848-49, and also some of his own works, providing them with prefaces which are of specific scientific interest. Appearing, as a rule, in periodicals before the publication of the books for which they were intended, these prefaces, which substantiated revolutionary tactics, were extremely relevant in the conditions of the Anti-Socialist Law and were aimed directly against the opportunist elements within Social-Democracy.

In his article “Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung” about the history of this newspaper, Engels reveals the special features of the Communist League’s tactics in the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848-49. On the experience of the revolution he urged German Social-Democrats to struggle for the leading role of the working class in the solution of general democratic tasks, provided that it retained its independence, and spoke of the need not only to struggle against direct enemies, but also to denounce the false friends of the revolution.

The work On the History of the Communist League was written as an introduction to a new edition of Marx’s pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne. It drew attention to one of the most vivid pages in the history of the German workers’ struggle, stressing the historical continuity between the first international and German proletarian organisation, the ideological banner of which was the programme of scientific socialism, and German Social-Democracy. In so doing Engels demonstrated the invalidity of the statement that the foundations of the workingclass movement in Germany were laid by Lassalle’s General Association of German Workers in 1863. He noted in particular the significance of the Communist League as an organisation which had educated many active members of the international working-class movement who subsequently played a major role in the First International and the socialist parties. He emphasised the vital importance of the international solidarity of the struggling proletariat, noting with satisfaction the enormous progress made by the working-class movement and pointing out that the theoretical principles of the League “constitute today the strongest international bond of the entire proletarian movement in both Europe and America” (p. 312).

In his preface to the pamphlet Karl Marx Before the Cologne Jury, containing Marx’s speech at the trial of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats in February 1849, Engels described this speech as a model defence of revolutionary principles before a bourgeois court. In denouncing the hypocrisy of the ruling circles in the German Empire, who persecuted the socialist working-class movement under the guise of “legality” while actually trampling upon it, Engels defended the right of the working class to struggle against reactionary orders with revolutionary means. Engels ridiculed attempts by reactionary circles, which to some extent found support in the moods of reformist elements within the party itself, to force German Social-Democracy to renounce its ultimate aims and thereby turn it into a party of the German philistines.

These three articles of Engels, particularly On the History of the Communist League, are fine examples of Marxist historical research, combining a profound analysis of events of the comparatively recent past with the current problems of the struggle for emancipation of the working class.

Also included in the present volume, the article “The Ruhr Miners’ Strike of 1889” shows how much importance Engels attached to the entry of new detachments of the German working class into the organised labour movement.

Engels paid increasing attention to socialist tactics in relation to the peasantry. On his initiative Wilhelm Wolff’s series of articles, The Silesian Milliard, about the tragic state of the peasants in Silesia, printed in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1849, was published as a separate pamphlet. The article “On the History of the Prussian Peasants”, also contained in this volume, was written as part of the introduction to this pamphlet.

After describing the history of the enserfment of the peasantry in Prussia, Engels showed that the abolition of feudal obligations after the revolution of 1848 was accompanied by large-scale robbery of the mass of the peasants. Consequently, the objective conditions made the peasants the natural ally of the proletariat in the struggle against the bourgeois-Junker order. The same idea also pervades the above-mentioned preface to the second edition of The Housing Question. Here Engels showed that the broad development of domestic industry in Germany led to the ruin of

many peasant farms. And the inevitable destruction of these industries as a result of the development of large-scale machine production would lead to the complete expropriation of a considerable section of the peasantry and put it on the path of revolutionary struggle.

An important place in the ideological education of progressive German workers and socialist intellectuals was allotted by Engels to the materialist explanation of German history in opposition to the reactionary, nationalist historiography that prevailed in the discipline at that time. An explanation of the historical roots of the reactionary practices which had grown up in Germany was also essential for a correct assessment of the policy of the ruling circles at that time. And this was extremely important for elaborating the strategy and tactics of Social-Democracy and determining its long-term activity.

In the 1880s Engels continued his studies of German history. The present volume contains two large manuscripts dealing with the history of the emergence and development of a class society among the Germans. They are based on a large amount of factual material: various historical sources, archaeological data, accounts by ancient writers, etc.

Chronologically these manuscripts belong to 1881-82, but the reason for including them in the present volume is that Engels made extensive use of them in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

The first of them, On the Early History of the Germans, covers the history of the Germans from the point when they appeared on the territory of present-day Europe up to the beginning of the migration of peoples. The clash of the Germanic tribes with the slave-owning Roman Empire which was declining is seen here as a major factor of social revolution, which led to the decay of the primitive-communal system of the conquerors themselves and to the emergence of a class of big land-owning feudal lords, to the development of feudalism and the formation of the Frankish state.

In the manuscript The Frankish Period attention is focused on the agrarian relations in the age of early feudalism in Western Europe during the reigns of the Merovingians and Carolingians. Taking the history of the Franks as an example, Engels sought to trace the formation of the foundations of feudalism, the emergence of the main classes of feudal society. Pointing out the significant role of political factors in this process, he stressed however that they “only advance and accelerate an inevitable economic process” (p. 60).

In the mid-1880s Engels began preparing a new edition of his work The Peasant War in Germany, in which he presented the Reformation and the Peasant War as the first, albeit unsuccessful, bourgeois revolution, as an event which largely determined the whole subsequent history of Germany. He intended to revise his book thoroughly, in particular to provide it with a detailed introduction, the draft for which is published in this volume under the editors’ title On the Decline of Feudalism and the Emergence of National States in the section “From the Preparatory Materials”. Engels showed here the process of the emergence of capitalist relations and the formation of nations and national states in Western Europe during the decline of feudalism. He also revealed the progressive centralising role of the monarchy, a counterforce to feudal anarchy.

Judging from these drafts, Engels intended to analyse the reasons why feudal fragmentation had lasted much longer in Germany than in most other European countries, which had a negative influence on her further development.

Other commitments prevented Engels from completing the work which he had begun.

The present volume also contains the unfinished work The Role of Force in History which deals with the history of the unification of Germany under Prussia. It was to form the fourth chapter of a pamphlet of the same name as a supplement to the chapters of Anti-Diihring which contain a critique of the theory of force. Engels revealed the economic and political causes which led to the unification of Germany not in a revolutionary democratic way, but “from above”, by means of wars and territorial aggrandizement, “blood and iron”. He gave a profound and vivid description of the German Empire, its constitution, class structure, political parties, the domestic contradictions inherent in it and also the reforms carried out by Bismarck in the 1870s. A considerable section of the work was devoted to criticising Bismarck’s aggressive foreign policy, and his policy of militarising the country, which threatened to cause an all-European war.

The surviving preparatory materials for this work, its general plan and a plan of the final part, which are included in the present volume in the section “From the Preparatory Materials”, indicate that Engels intended to continue his account up to the second half of the 1880s, to show the inevitability of the failure of Bismarck’s domestic policies and the growing influence of revolutionary Social-Democracy.

In a number of articles in this volume, “England in 1845 and in 1885”, “Appendix to the American Edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England”, “The Abdication of the Bourgeoisie”, and others, Engels examines the condition and prospects of the English working-class movement. Analysing the changes in the position of the English working class over the last forty years, Engels notes a certain improvement in the conditions of its life and labour, particularly of factory-workers, and also a growth in the influence of the large trade unions uniting qualified workers. With regard to the majority of the working people, however, the state of misery and insecurity of their existence was “as low as ever, if not lower” (p. 299). An analysis of the tendencies in the development of the English economy in the 1870s and 1880s led Engels to conclude that signs had appeared which heralded England’s loss of her industrial monopoly in the relatively near future. He assumed that this fact would lead to the loss by the English working class of its relatively privileged position compared with that of the proletariat of other countries and would stimulate the socialist movement in England. Engels placed great hopes on the process which began in the late 1880s of drawing the broad mass of unqualified workers into an organised struggle for their rights. “It is a glorious movement,” he wrote in connection with a strike by the London dockers (p. 545).

Engels’ great interest in the revolutionary traditions of the struggle for emancipation of the English proletariat can be seen from his manuscript “Chartist Agitation” published here in English for the first time. In this manuscript, which is essentially a brief conspectus of the history of Chartism, the activity of its revolutionary wing headed by Ernest Jones was brought out clearly for the first time.

The material published in this volume testifies to Engels’ keen interest in various aspects of the social life of the United States, in this country’s remarkably rapid economic development and the special features of its history. In the summer of 1888, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Aveling and Carl Schorlemmer, he made a journey to the United States. He intended to record his impressions in travel notes, but this intention was not realised. The outlines for these notes are published in the section “From the Preparatory Materials”.

Engels paid constant attention to the struggle of the working class in the United States, which assumed a particularly turbulent nature in the 1880s.

Engels maintained regular contacts with members of the American working-class movement and was well informed about its state.

Engels attached great importance to the dissemination of the ideas of scientific socialism among the American workers, and he willingly agreed to the suggestion to publish his work The Condition of the Working-Class in England in the United States, editing the translation of it himself. The present volume includes the article “The Labor Movement in America” written as a preface to this edition. It was translated into many languages at that time and was published in the socialist press of a number of European countries. Noting the exceptionally rapid development and wide scope of the struggle of the American proletariat and the growth of its class consciousness, and describing the workingclass organisations which existed at that time in the United States, Engels stressed that most of the participants in the struggle of the working class for its rights did not have a clear, scientifically based programme and were therefore easily influenced by all manner of Utopian theories which did not express their true interests. A specific feature of the working-class movement in the United States was its lack of unity, the result primarily of the diverse national composition of the proletariat. At the same time the existence of free land in the West gave the American worker illusory hopes of becoming a small proprietor. Engels made a critical analysis of the programme of the American economist Henry George, who was the leader of the United Labor Party in New York in the mid-1880s, and showed that his theory, according to which the main cause of the poverty of the broad mass of the people was private ownership of land, did not explain the essence of capitalist exploitation and could therefore not serve as a theoretical basis for the programme of a party of the working class.

Engels regarded the unification of the separate workers’ organisations into “one national Labor Army, with no matter how inadequate a provisional platform, provided it be a truly working class platform” (p. 441), as the main condition for the development of the working-class movement in the United States. He therefore showed a special interest in the activity of the Knights of Labor, and believed that this organisation, then highly influential among the working masses, could become the basis of such a unification.

Engels regarded this unification as the first step towards the creation of a mass working-class party, the programme of which “must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant working class of Europe” (p. 440), i.e. be based on the principles of scientific socialism.

Engels criticised the Socialist Labor Party of North America which, although it proclaimed Marxist programme principles, remained—being in terms of composition to a large extent the party of German émigrés—far removed from the main mass of workers, the indigenous inhabitants of the country. He urged the party to overcome sectarian tendencies and carry on work in all the mass working-class organisations.

The volume includes several articles, “The Situation”, “To the Editorial Committee of Le Socialiste”’, “On the Anniversary of the Paris Commune” and others, which characterise Engels’ relations with the working-class movement in France. His regular correspondence with Paul and Laura Lafargue, and other members of the French Workers’ Party, enabled him to keep constantly in touch with the events taking place in the country. Some of his letters were printed as articles in the French socialist press. Through his advice and reports in the press he helped the leaders of the party to solve theoretical problems and tactical tasks, to overcome errors of a sectarian nature and to struggle against opportunists.

He welcomed the actions of workers’ deputies in parliament and the formation of a socialist faction, noting that this “was sufficient to throw the ranks of all the bourgeois parties into disarray” (p. 407).

Some of the material published here characterises Engels’ attitude to the prospects for the revolutionary movement in Russia. He was deeply convinced that a democratic revolution would take place in this country in the not too distant future and would have a great influence on the whole international situation. “...Revolution ... in Russia,” he said on September 19, 1888 in an interview for the socialist newspaper New Yorker Volkszeitung, “would revolutionise the whole European political situation” (p. 627). And in a talk with the Russian revolutionary Narodnik Hermann Lopatin five years earlier he is said by the latter to have remarked as follows: “Russia is the France of the present century. The revolutionary initiative of a new social reorganisation legally and rightly belongs to it” (p. 592).

A number of articles analyse the international situation and the tasks of socialist parties in the struggle against the threat of war and the arms race. In his article “The Political Situation in Europe” Engels examined the reasons for the aggravation of relations between the major European powers, stressing that their rulers saw war as a means of preventing the coming revolution. “ They see the spectre of social revolution looming up ahead of them, and they know but one means of salvation: war” (p. 416). He urged the socialists of these countries to fight for peace.

In his “Introduction to Sigismund Borkheim’s pamphlet In Memory of the German Blood-and-Thunder Patriots. 1806-1807”, Engels made a prophetic prediction of the nature, scale and consequences of the future war on the basis of an analysis of inter-state contradictions and the alignment of forces in Europe. It would be “a world war, moreover, of an extent and violence hitherto unimagined,” he wrote. “Eight to ten million soldiers will be at each other’s throats and in the process they will strip Europe barer than a swarm of locusts. The depredations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed into three to four years and extended over the entire continent; famine, disease, the universal lapse into barbarism, both of the armies and the people, in the wake of acute misery; irretrievable dislocation of our artificial system of trade, industry and credit, ending in universal bankruptcy; collapse of the old states and their conventional political wisdom to the point where crowns will roll into the gutters by the dozen, and no one will be around to pick them up; the absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it will all end and who will emerge as victor from the battle” (p. 451).

In drawing this terrible picture of the consequences of the future war, Engels never for a moment lost his historical optimism. He foresaw that the universal exhaustion caused by the war would aggravate the contradictions inherent in capitalism and could create the conditions for the victory of the working class. Thirty years later this prediction of his found confirmation in the Great October Revolution in Russia.

Engels devoted much energy to strengthening the international relations of socialists of different countries. He took a most active part in the preparation of the International Socialist Labour Congress held in Paris in 1889. Largely thanks to his efforts the attempts of opportunist elements—the French Possibilists and the leaders of the English Social-Democratic Federation—to take over leadership of the international working-class movement were thwarted. Materials published in this volume (the article “Possibilist Credentials” and a letter to the editors of The Labour Elector) reflect this activity of his.

* * *

The present volume contains 41 works by Engels, six of which are published in English for the first time, including the articles “The Situation”, “The Political Situation in Europe”, “Real Imperial Russian Privy Dynamiters” and others. All eight documents in the section entitled “From the Preparatory Materials” are published in English for the first time, as are six of the eight documents in the Appendices.

The material in the volume is arranged in chronological order.

In cases where an edition other than the first is taken as the basis for publication, points of divergence with the first edition are given in the footnotes.

In cases where there are different language versions of this or that work by Engels the English text is taken as the basis for publication and points of divergence are set out in the footnotes.

The explanatory words in square brackets belong to the editors.

Misprints in proper names, geographical names, statistical data, dates, etc., have, as a rule, been corrected without comment on the basis of checking the sources used by Engels. The relevant literary and documentary sources are mentioned in the footnotes and in the index of quoted and mentioned literature.

The compilation of the volume, preparation of the text and writing of the notes was by Tatiana Andrushchenko. The preface was written by Boris Tartakovsky and Tatiana Andrushchenko. Engels’ manuscripts On the Early History of the Germans, The Frankish Period and the notes for them were prepared by Valentina Ostrikova and edited by Valentina Smirnova.

The name index, the index of periodicals and the glossary of geographical names were compiled by Georgy Volovik.

The index of quoted and mentioned literature was compiled by Tatiana Andrushchenko.

The indexes for the manuscripts On the Early History of the Germans and The Frankish Period were prepared by Yelena Kofanova.

The volume was edited by Boris Tartakovsky (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The translations were made by Nicholas Jacobs, R. S. Livingstone, Barbara Ruhemann, Barrie Selman, Joan and Trevor Walmsly (Lawrence & Wishart), K. M. Cook, Salo Ryazanskaya and Stephen Smith (Progress Publishers) and edited by Yelena Chistyakova, Yelena Kalinina, Margarita Lopukhina, Victor Schnittke, Stephen Smith, Yelena Vorotnikova (Progress Publishers) and Norire Ter-Akopyan, scientific editor (USSR Academy of Sciences).

The volume was prepared for the press by Yelena Vorotnikova (Progress Publishers).