Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (39)

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Volume 39 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels contains their letters to each other and to third persons from 1852 to 1855.

The letters in this volume give us a glimpse of the creative methods of Marx and Engels, the background to their theoretical writings from 1852 to 1855, and of the genesis of many of their theories. These letters cover the period of political reaction that descended on Europe with the defeat of the 1848-49 revolution. From 1852 to 1855 fairly substantial changes took place in the world’s economic and political life. The economic boom that had begun at the end of the 1840s in Europe proved unstable. There were already signs, in 1853, of another economic crisis that came to a head in 1857 and reached world dimensions for the first time. The Crimean War broke out in 1853, and this substantially changed the distribution of political forces on the Continent and influenced the internal development of a number of leading European powers.

The economic and political processes that took place in this period did much to determine the nature of the scientific and practical activities undertaken by Marx and Engels. From 1851 their main objectives were the further development of economic theory and research. Marx’s scientific studies in this field were temporarily interrupted in 1852, when he and Engels concentrated on the theoretical generalisation of the results of the revolution, on the struggle against police persecution of members of the Communist League, and on the unmasking of the divisive activities of the sectarian elements in the League and the pseudo-revolutionary pronouncements of various petty-bourgeois refugee groups. From 1853 to 1855, Marx and Engels followed with intense and unflagging interest the development of the conflict over the so-called Eastern Question and the course of the Crimean War. Throughout all these years, as in the previous period, they were both still principally concerned with the struggle for the proletarian party, for the organisational and ideological unity and education of the proletarian revolutionaries, and for the preservation and development of the proletariat’s international connections.

In the personal lives of Marx and Engels, these years were among the most difficult. The harsh privations of life in emigration cost Marx and his wife Jenny the lives of two of their children, the one-year-old Franziska and the eight-year-old Edgar. Extremely difficult conditions constantly undermined Marx’s health. Engels at this period was forced to give much of his time to commerce, which compelled him to renounce many research plans; however, this work provided a living not only for himself, but for the Marx family. In addition, as we see from many of their letters, Marx and Engels were preoccupied throughout these years with their comrades and sympathisers living in poverty in emigration or languishing in German prisons.

The letters in this volume, as in Volume 38, reflect the enormous amount of work done by Marx and Engels on the theoretical analysis of the experience of the 1848-49 revolution. During the first months of 1852, Marx wrote one of his outstanding works, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11). The material in this volume makes it possible to trace clearly the story of the publication as well as of the writing of this work, set down immediately after the counter-revolutionary coup in France on 2 December 1851. In addition, the letters contain an analysis of the processes at work after The Eighteenth Brumaire was written, at a time when Louis Bonaparte had consolidated his regime and was preparing to proclaim the Empire (see Engels to Weydemeyer on 30 January, Engels to Marx on 18 March, and Marx to Engels on 23 September 1852).

Marx’s letter to Weydemeyer of 5 March 1852 is a very important document that seems directly to continue the theoretical generalisation of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In it, Marx briefly outlined the substance of his revolutionary deductions about the world historical role of the proletariat, the innovation that he introduced into the theory of the classes and the class struggle. ‘Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society’ (see this volume, pp. 62-65). Noting the enormous theoretical value of this letter, Lenin wrote: ‘In these words, Marx succeeded in expressing with striking clarity, first, the chief and radical difference between his theory and that of the foremost and most profound thinkers of the bourgeoisie; and, secondly, the essence of his theory of the state’ (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 411).

The correspondence contains much interesting information about the writing- of Engels’ work, Revolution and CounterRevolution in Germany (see present edition, Vol. 11), in which Engels examines the prerequisites, nature and motive forces of the 1848-49 revolution in the German states from the standpoint of historical materialism. The letters in this volume show clearly how much creative contact there was between Marx and Engels in the composition of this work (see, for instance, Engels’ letters to Marx of 29 January and 29 April, and Marx’s letter to Engels of 18 February 1852).

A large part in the life of Marx and Engels in 1852 and the first half of 1853 was taken up by practical revolutionary activity. In an atmosphere reflecting the general decline of the revolutionary movement, Marx and Engels had to wage an intensive struggle against ideas alien to the working class and against revolutionary adventurism; they also had to overcome the pusillanimity, apathy and ignorance of certain members of the movement.

Of particular interest in this connection is the correspondence with Weydemeyer and Cluss, Communist League members who had emigrated to the USA. Marx and Engels supported in every way the aspirations of these two men to organise the publication in the USA of a German-language weekly, Die Revolution. Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Engels’ article ‘England’ (see present edition, Vol. 11) were specially written for it. Seeing contributions to the magazine as an important party task, Marx, as his wife Jenny wrote to Weydemeyer on 13 February 1852, had ‘commandeered on your behalf pretty well all available communist quills’, that is to say, Wilhelm Wolff, Georg Wecth, Ferdinand Wolff, Ernest Jones, Wilhelm Pieper, Johann Eccarius and Ferdinand Freiligrath (p. 35).

For nearly three years, Cluss and Weydemeyer drew on letters from Marx and Engels when writing their own articles, which were printed in the American and German-American democratic press, and especially in the newspaper Die Reform, published in New York (see Marx’s letters to Cluss of 17 April, about 14 June, 18 October, mid-November 1853, and others).

In England, Marx and Engels actively assisted and supported the proletarian publications being brought out by Ernest Jones, leader of the Left-wing Chartists. In Ernest Jones’s Notes to the People, Marx wrote, ‘you will find all the day-to-day history of the English proletariat’ (see this volume, p. 42). They contributed to The People's Paper themselves and induced others to contribute likewise (Eccarius, Pieper, Cluss and their associates), and took part in the actual editorial work (see Marx’s letters to Engels of 2 September and 23 September 1852 and 23 November 1853).

The advanced development of capitalist industry in England and its huge working class, together with the revolutionary traditions of Chartism, gave Marx and Engels grounds to assume that conditions existed there for the creation of a mass proletarian party. As their letters show, Marx and Engels helped Jones and other Left-wing Chartist leaders during these years to reorganise the National Charter Association, believing that the struggle for the rebirth of the Chartist movement was vital for the political unification of the proletariat in England. It was only natural that they constantly followed the progress of the strike movement of the English working class (see, for example, Marx’s letter to Engels of 30 September 1853).

The struggle for the independence of the working-class movement and its freedom from other class influences was a matter of constant concern to Marx and Engels. They condemned in the strongest terms the shift towards bourgeois radicalism on the part of George Julian Harney, the former Chartist leader, and had a high opinion of the revolutionary firmness of Ernest Jones, who opposed the efforts of the reformists. ‘Jones is moving in quite the right direction,’ wrote Engels to Marx on 18 March 1852, ‘and we may well say that, without our doctrine, he would not have taken the right path’ (see this volume, p. 68). When Jones later began vacillating and seemed inclined to make concessions to the petty-bourgeois democrats, Marx reacted with much disapproval (see Marx’s letter to Engels of 13 February 1855).

The correspondence reflects the fierce ideological battle fought by Marx and Engels against the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats who were trying to divert the proletarian revolutionaries from the real objectives of the class struggle. Mazzini, Kossuth, Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc were all criticised for ignoring the objective economic laws and for their subjectivist approach to crucial decisions, as well as for their extremely limited social programmes and their Bonapartist illusions. Moreover, Marx and Engels firmly rejected the conspiratorial tactics of Mazzini and his adherents (see, in particular, Engels’ letter to Marx of 11 February and Marx’s letter to Engels of 23 February 1853).

Marx and Engels were implacably hostile to the internal squabbles of the various petty-bourgeois refugee organisations which were turning political activity into careerism and intrigue and were threatening to discredit the revolutionary movement. The letters reveal the background to their joint authorship of the richly comic satirical pamphlet, The Great Men of the Exile (see present edition, Vol. 11) in which they denounced the fatuous self-importance and the futile activities of the leaders of the German petty-bourgeois emigration (Kinkel, Rüge, Heinzen, Struve and others).

The founders of Marxism saw a particular danger at this time in the activities of the Willich-Schapper separatist group which had caused a split in the Communist League in 1850. Its pseudorevolutionary catch-phrases and adventurism brought down police repression on many League members, especially the German workers. Marx wrote angrily to Engels on 30 August 1852: ‘...from a secure hiding-place, they are playing into the hands of the German governments, especially the Prussian, for the purpose of pseudo-agitation and self-aggrandisement’ (p. 169).

The adventurism of the Willich-Schapper group took a particularly dangerous turn, since in 1852 there began in Cologne a trial trumped up by the Prussian police against the communists. This volume (and Volume 38) illustrates Marx’s and Engels’ struggle, from the very start of the investigation (in May 1851), against the provocatory nature of its preparation and conduct, and against the inhuman treatment of the detainees. Through press agitation and publicity they did all they could to protect the communists from slander and treachery and to unmask the forgeries and irregularities of the Prussian police and court authorities (see, for example, the letters of Marx to Engels of 24 January, Engels to Marx of 28 January, and Marx to Cluss of 7 and about 15 May 1852).

Marx and Engels were particularly active during the trial itself in October and November 1852, when they virtually handled the defence of the accused, supplying the lawyers with the necessary material. A picture of the tremendous work done at the time by Marx, Engels and their comrades in the Communist League is given by a letter from Jenny Marx to Cluss of 30 October 1852, published in the Appendices to this volume. The outstanding contribution to the struggle to expose the Cologne communist trial was Marx’s pamphlet, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne (see present edition, Vol. 11), the background to which can be traced in the letters in this volume. Attributing great importance to the publication and distribution of this work, which denounced the entire Prussian governmental system, Marx wrote to Cluss on 25 March 1853: ‘...at the present moment, we could deal our beloved Prussians no more telling blow’ (p. 299).

After sentence had been passed in Cologne on the Communist League members, Marx organised, through Cluss, the collection in the USA of money for assistance to the condemned men and their families. On 7 December 1852, sending Cluss a written appeal for the collection of money, Marx wrote: ‘Here it is a matter of ... a definite party aim whose fulfilment is demanded by the honour of the workers’ party’ (p. 260).

After the Cologne trial, it became clear that it would be inadvisable to continue, under conditions of reaction, the activities of the Communist League as a relatively narrow illegal organisation. On 19 November 1852, Marx informed Engels that, at his suggestion, a resolution had been passed by the London District of the Communist League on the disbanding of the organisation. After the League had been dissolved, Marx, Engels and their associates continued, in other forms, their activities in welding together the ranks of the proletariat so that the best revolutionary and internationalist traditions of the Communist League should be absorbed and spread by successive generations of participants in the proletarian struggle. Their correspondence, in particular, shows that even during the years after the Communist League ceased to exist, Marx and Engels maintained contact with representatives of the proletarian movement in various countries.

As if summing up what had been achieved, and setting up the targets for the proletarian revolutionaries in the period of reaction and the movement’s temporary decline, Engels wrote to Weydemeyer on 12 April 1853: ‘...German communism ... has passed its matriculation’ (see this volume, p. 308). Engels noted the heightened ideological level of Marx’s adherents and their preparedness for new revolutionary battles: ‘...the Marx party does do a good deal of swotting, and one only has to look at the way the other émigré jackasses snap up this or that new catchword, thereby becoming more bemused than ever, to realise that our party’s superiority has increased both absolutely and relatively. As indeed it must, for la besogne sera rude [it will be a tough business]’ (p. 309). Engels’ letter, marking out the line of conduct for the proletarian revolutionaries under the conditions of an expected upsurge in the movement, was an extremely important example of how to decide the tactics of the proletarian party in the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

After the close of the Cologne trial and the publication of Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, Marx and Engels once again concentrated their main efforts on theoretical research. Their letters from 1853 to 1855 testify to the scope and variety of their scientific interests. Apart from the works and articles published during these years, several dozen of Marx’s notebooks have been preserved with plans, copied passages and notes concerned primarily with economic problems and also with the history of Europe, the Orient and Ancient Rome, the problems of the colonial policy pursued by England and other capitalist states, and so on. Engels began studying the theory of war more intensively, and also world history, philology and other sciences.

The urgent theoretical elaboration of the problems of economics and the criticism of bourgeois political economy were not dictated by scientific interest alone, as Marx had already shown by the mid-40s, but also by the objective demands of arming the revolutionary proletariat ideologically. Economic theory was to introduce the maximum clarity into the understanding of the relationship between labour and capital. Consequently, Engels regarded the completion of Marx’s economic research as most urgent. ‘You ought to finish your Economy,’ he wrote to Marx on 11 March 1853, ‘later on, as soon as we have a newspaper, we could bring it out in WEEKLY NUMBERS... This would provide all our by then restored associations with a basis for debate’ (p. 293).

In the first half of the 1850s, Marx made important progress in preparing the ground for a revolution in the science of economics—the discovery of the tendencies underlying the capitalist mode of production. However, as is shown by the above-quoted letter from Engels, and also by Marx’s letter to Cluss of 15 September 1853 (p. 367), neither Engels nor Marx himself yet realised how much ground had to be covered before the appearance of the first volume of Capital.

Meanwhile, the letters in this volume are convincing testimony that certain propositions of Marx’s political economy had become known even before the appearance of the first part of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital. Marx frequently expounded his economic views in his letters to Engels, Lassalle, and also Cluss and Weydemeyer. He endeavoured in this way to arm his associates for the battle of ideas with the petty-bourgeois democrats and their ideologues. For example, in his letter to Weydemeyer of 5 March 1852, already quoted above, in his letter to Engels of 14 June 1853 and in the letters to Cluss of 5 and 18 October 1853, Marx severely criticised the vulgar bourgeois economist Henry Charles Carey, whose views on the ‘harmony of classes’ in the USA had become fairly widespread by this time. Marx dwelt on certain peculiarities in the development of capitalism in the USA, on its place in the general system of capitalist relations, and on its competitive struggle with English capital and the resulting specific nature of development of American economic thought. Carey’s views, wrote Marx, show that ‘in the United States bourgeois society is still far too immature for the class struggle to be made perceptible and comprehensible’ (p. 62).

Marx notes in his letters the decline of bourgeois political economy, and the marked tendency among the epigones of the English classical school of economists to distort and vulgarise the teachings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Comparing the views of Ricardo and Carey on rent and wages, Marx stressed that Carey’s attacks on English political economy in the person of Ricardo expressed only Carey’s desire to gloss over the contradictions of capitalist production or to prove the possibility of abolishing those contradictions while preserving the foundations of bourgeois society.

Revealing the groundlessness of Carey’s claims about the harmony and co-operation of the classes in American society, Marx wrote: ‘It is par trop [altogether too] naive to suggest that, if the total product of labour rises, the three classes among whom it is to be shared will share equally in that growth. If profit were to rise by 20%, the workers would have to strike to obtain a 2% rise in WAGES’ (p. 384).

Marx’s critique of Carey’s views in his letters was published by Cluss as an article (‘The “Best Paper in the Union” and Its “Best Men” and Political Economists’) in the newspaper Die Reform (see present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 623-32). It thus became available to a certain section of the American readership. This material of 1852-53 subsequently served Marx as the basis for a more substantial critique of Carey’s views and vulgar bourgeois political economy in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858 and in Capital.

Marx invariably passed on to Engels the results of his economic research. Their letters show how closely they followed the economic development of the European countries and America, and how carefully they analysed the statistical material confirming the antagonistic and cyclic nature of capitalist production’s development. The elaboration of the problem of crises was of special interest to them, since they associated a new revolutionary upsurge with the end of the prosperous phase and with an inevitable economic decline (see Engels’ letter to Marx about this on 24 August 1852 and Marx’s letter to Lassalle of 23 January 1855).

From the analysis mainly of English trade and industry, they detected the symptoms of an imminent and inevitable economic crisis which could, under prevailing conditions, serve as a powerful stimulus to the revolutionary movement in Europe (see Engels to Weydemeyer on 27 February 1852, Marx to Engels on 29 January 1853, Engels to Weydemeyer on 12 April 1853, Marx to Cluss on 15 September 1853, and Engels to Marx on 29 September 1853).

Marx and Engels paid great attention to the problems of history. They were stimulated to take up historical research by the desire for a deeper understanding of the processes of social development, especially during the capitalist period, and in order to comprehend the historical factors behind the events and phenomena of their own times. This was important for the development of the correct revolutionary tactics. The letters in the present volume give an idea not only of the range of historical subjects in which Marx and Engels were interested, but of their conclusions and generalisations.

The study of world history enabled Marx and Engels to elucidate certain characteristics in the development of capitalism and also of precapitalist social-economic formations. Thus, dealing with the history of Ancient Rome, Marx disclosed the material causes of the class struggle in ancient society. In his letter to Engels of 8 March 1855, he wrote: ‘Internal history resolves itself PLAINLY into the struggle between small and large landed property, specifically modified, of course, by slavery relations’ (p. 527). In his letter to Engels of 27 July 1854, analysing the distinguished French historian Thierry’s Essai sur l’histoire de la formation et du progrès du tiers état he traces how the elements of the future capitalist system emerged and developed in the bowels of feudalism, and he notes the part played by the struggle of the Third Estate against the feudal aristocracy during the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism. While acknowledging Thierry’s merits, Marx points out the limitations of his views, and his inability to understand the material roots of class contradictions or the nature and character of class antagonisms under capitalism. ‘Had Mr Thierry read our stuff, he would know that the decisive opposition between bourgeoisie and peuple does not, of course, crystallise until the former ceases, as tiers-état, to oppose the clergé and the noblesse’(p. 474). This letter of Marx’s is of fundamental importance for pinpointing the general methodological shortcomings in the views common to French bourgeois historians during the Restoration and to bourgeois historiographers in general.

The letter also contains an important formulation on the decisive significance of the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the peasantry in the struggle against feudalism. Lenin laid special emphasis on this idea of Marx’s:’The French bourgeoisie won when it decided to go with the peasants’ (‘Conspectus of “The Correspondence of K. Marx and F. Engels. 1844-1883’”, Moscow, 1968, Russian edition, p. 7). In connection with the revolutionary events in Spain in 1854,

Marx studied the history of the revolutionary movement of the Spanish people in order to ‘discover exactly the springs behind developments’ (p. 480).

On the eve of the Crimean War, when inter-state contradictions became suddenly prominent in Asia Minor and the Balkans, Marx and Engels devoted special attention to analysing the history of Turkey, Persia and the countries of the Arabian peninsula, especially their social and political development, the role of communal landownership, their way of life, culture and religious trends (see Engels to Marx on about 26 May, Marx to Engels on 2 and 14 June, and Engels to Marx on 6 June 1853). These letters illustrate the formation of Marx’s and Engels’ materialist interpretation of religious movements in the East, showing their connection with the material conditions of life as a result of the transition from the nomadic to the settled life, the changes in trade routes, and so on. The letters in this volume also show the special attention Marx devoted at this time to India, then Great Britain’s most important imperial possession.

Studying the history of these countries enabled Marx and Engels to bring out the salient characteristics of their social development. ‘The absence of landed property is indeed the key to the whole of the East. Therein lies its political and religious history,’ remarked Engels in a letter to Marx of 6 June 1853 (p. 339). In the same letter, he disclosed the reasons for the weak development of private landownership in all the Eastern countries, especially during the Middle Ages: the natural conditions in these countries necessitated the building and maintenance of irrigation works, and this was only possible within the scope of the central authority. ‘In the East, the government has always consisted of 3 departments only: Finance (pillage at home), War (pillage at home and abroad), and travaux publics [public works], provision for reproduction’ (p. 339). Marx used this idea and developed it in his article ‘The British Rule in India’ (see present edition, Vol. 12). The concentration of considerable means of production in the hands of despotic governments, the closed and isolated position of the village commune, the chief economic and social unit of Asiatic societies— these, concluded Marx and Engels, were behind the more retarded historical development of the Eastern countries when the transition from feudalism to capitalism was being accomplished in the West.

Marx and Engels sharply denounced England’s system of colonial domination in India, underlining its destructive consequences. By preserving the worst features of Eastern despotism in the conquered countries, the English had ceased to worry about maintaining irrigation, as a result of which, Engels pointed out, ‘Indian agriculture is going to wrack and ruin’ (p. 340).

The process by which the colonial and dependent countries were drawn into the orbit of world capitalism led Marx and Engels to the conclusion that there was a deep mutual relationship and mutual dependence between the destiny of the capitalist countries and that of the colonial world. They became increasingly convinced that the proletarian movement in the metropolitan countries could find its own natural ally in the maturing national liberation movement.

During these years, Engels’ gifts as military theoretician of the proletarian party came to the fore. He gave great attention to the history of the revolutionary wars of 1848-49, intending to write a book on the subject. ‘I should like to have time before the next revolution,’ he wrote to Weydemeyer on 12 April 1853, ‘to study and describe thoroughly at least the campaigns of 1848 and 1849 in Italy and Hungary’ (p. 309). He did not carry out this intention, and this gives all the more significance to his letters to Marx of 6 July 1852, 10 June 1854, and a number of others in which he gives a critical analysis of the military operations of the revolutionary armies in 1848 and 1849. A number of letters contain fundamental observations by Engels on military and military-historical science and its theoreticians, Clausewitz, Napier, Jomini, Willisen, and about the generalship of Napoleon, Wellington and others. Engels outlined his approach to the analysis of military operations and military science in a letter to the editor of The Daily News, 30 March 1854. His extensive knowledge of military history and his use of dialectical materialist methodology were demonstrated in his articles for the New-York Daily Tribune during the Crimean War. ‘Your military articles,’ wrote Marx to Engels on 5 January 1854, ‘have created a great stir. A rumour is circulating in New York that they were written by General Scott’ (p. 407).

Philological studies were always among the scientific interests pursued by Marx and Engels. During these years Marx studied Spanish, reading Calderon and Cervantes in the original. Engels studied the Slavonic (including Russian) and Oriental languages, especially Persian, showing outstanding linguistic abilities. Of considerable interest is Engels’ outline of the principles of translation when he was analysing a translation of the first chapter of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte done from German into English by Wilhelm Pieper (see Engels’ letter to Marx of 23 September 1852).

The period from 1852 to 1855 was one of intensive political journalism on the part of Marx and Engels. Their articles provide rich and often witty insights into and valuable analyses of the capitalist world of their times. Their journalistic activity was closely bound up with their theoretical studies. Research helped them to understand the underlying causes of current events, and important theoretical generalisations frequently emerged from articles on specific subjects. This mutual interaction of the various sides of their work is clearly reflected in their correspondence.

A recurrent idea in the letters of Marx and Engels is that of the necessity for using any opportunity during the years of reaction to promote the revolutionary point of view on the most important political questions in order to influence public opinion in the interests of the working class. ‘We are not doing our enemies a favour by writting for them. Tout au contraire [Quite the contrary]. We could hardly play them a worse trick...” wrote Marx to Cluss on 14 June 1853 (p. 350).

Marx and Engels, who began contributing to the New-York Daily Tribune in 1851, continued writing for it in 1852-55. Marx was the official correspondent for the newspaper, but many articles were written at Marx’s request by Engels. At first, as can be seen from the letters in this volume, Marx wrote his articles in German and sent them to Engels in Manchester for translation. In January 1853, Marx himself began writing in English. This enabled him to keep his work as correspondent very much up-to-date. From 1853 to 1855, Marx sent to New York nearly every week or twice weekly his own or Engels’ articles, devoted to the most topical and varied problems of the time.

The articles by Marx and Engels for this bourgeois newspaper are a model combination of sober analysis and high principles. Frequently, Marx and Engels even managed to publicise ideas opposed to the views of the newspaper’s editors (see Marx’s letters to Engels about this on 14 June 1853 and 3 May 1854). The articles aroused great interest among the reading public and Marx’s services were frequently acknowledged by the newspaper itself (see, for example, Marx’s letter to Engels of 26 April 1853).

However, writing for this newspaper, for all its progressiveness, was not easy. The editors treated the articles with scant ceremony, arbitrary interpolations were frequently allowed, and many articles were printed as unsigned leaders. Marx wrote to Engels on 14 December 1853: ‘Needless to say, the Tribune is making a great splash with your articles, POOR Dana, no doubt, being regarded as their author. At the same time they have appropriated “Palmerston” [Marx’s work ‘Lord Palmerston’], which means that, for 8 weeks past, Marx-Engels have virtually constituted the EDITORIAL STAFF of the Tribune’ (see this volume, p. 404). Marx frequently protested against these irregularities (see Marx to Engels on 2 November 1853, 5 January, and 22 April 1854).

From the end of December 1854, a great deal of Marx’s journalistic writing went on contributions to the German Neue Oder-Zeitung, one of the few German opposition papers to continue appearing during the years of the reaction. The invitation to contribute to this newspaper gave Marx and Engels the chance of direct contact with the German public, including the proletarian readership. A description of the Neue Oder-Zeitung is contained in Marx’s letter to Moritz Eisner, the editor, on 11 September 1855: ‘Considering the difficult circumstances and the limited space at your disposal, your paper is, in my opinion, edited with great skill and tact, and in such a way that the intelligent reader may read between the lines’ (p. 553).

The letters show the extent of Marx’s and Engels’ creative rapport and day-to-day collaboration. For instance, the details on the activities of the Aberdeen coalition cabinet as given in Marx’s letter to Engels of 31 January 1855, were used by Engels for his article ‘The Late British Government’ (see present edition, Vol. 13). They often edited each other’s articles. Engels frequently wrote dispatches instead of Marx, who was busy with urgent party matters (for instance, during the period of the Cologne trial) or was unable to work owing to illness or domestic problems.

In their letters, Marx and Engels paid much attention to England’s economic and political position, to describing the various classes of English society and to the struggle of the political parties. Acknowledging that the English political system was at that time more progressive than those of other European countries, Marx nevertheless unmasked the myth of England as a bulwark of constitutional freedoms and civic equality. He tried to show the real class nature of the English constitutional monarchy—the oligarchic domination, tricked out in parliamentary forms, of the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. In a series of letters, Marx stressed the anti-democratic nature of the English electoral system, which deprived the majority of the people of voting rights (see, for example, Marx’s letter to Cluss of 20 July 1852).

As far back as 1852, Marx had detected signs of crisis in the English oligarchic system of government—a system which helped the ruling classes give their domination the semblance of free rivalry between two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories. From the formation of the Aberdeen coalition government at the end of 1852 until its fall in 1855, Marx and Engels observed the disintegration of these old bourgeois-aristocratic parties of the ruling oligarchy. Marx’s letter to Cluss on 20 July 1852 and one from Engels to Weydemeyer on 12 April 1853 developed the idea that the reform of the state system had become urgently necessary and that the crisis of the existing political parties could be overcome only ‘from without by the pressure of the masses’ and that it would ‘no longer be possible to govern England without considerably extending the pays légal [franchise]’ (pp. 136 and 306-07). In this way, Marx and Engels drew attention to the fact that the English working class, despite the decline of its political activities in the first half of the 1850s in comparison with the period of Chartism at its height, was stepping into the arena of the country’s political life as a force without whose participation no progressive changes would be possible.

Marx and Engels showed great interest in the economic and political development of France because they set great store by the revolutionary traditions of the French people and the French working class and did not lose their faith in its vigour and heroism. They foresaw the dangerous consequences for the French and for the whole European proletariat in the consolidation of the Bonapartist dictatorship. The letters disclose the essence of the anti-popular regime of the Second Empire and note the most characteristic feature of Bonapartism—the combination of the traditional policy of crude police and military terror towards the oppressed classes with broad demagogy in social and national questions both in home and foreign policy. The correspondence gives a vivid picture of the stock exchange machinations and speculative ventures of the bourgeoisie during the Second Empire, the corruption and adventurism in the country’s economic life as well as in government circles. In 1853, Marx and Engels had already predicted a short life for French industrial ‘prosperity’, stressing that the government’s policy would inevitably plunge the French economy into chaos. They noted with delight the awakening dissatisfaction with the Bonapartist regime on the part of the broad masses and forecast the inevitable collapse of Napoleon Ill’s empire (see Engels to Weydemeyer on 12 April and to Marx on 26 April 1853; Marx to Engels on 12 October 1853 and to Eisner on 8 November 1855).

The main power which was destined to play a decisive role in the struggle with the Bonapartist regime was, in the opinion of Marx and Engels, the French proletariat. ‘So you can see,’ wrote Marx to Cluss on 25 March 1853, ‘that the proletarian lion isn’t dead’—thus drawing attention to the mass anti-Bonapartist demonstration at the funeral of Madame Raspail, wife of the famous revolutionary (this volume, p. 300). At the same time, they also bore in mind the demoralising influence on the workers of Bonapartism’s social demagogy. ‘They will have to be severely chastened by crises if they are to be good for anything again soon,’ wrote Engels to Marx on 24 September 1852 (pp. 196-97).

As a result of the preparations for and outbreak of the Crimean War, there was a considerable widening of the range of questions with which Marx and Engels were concerned. Above all, they became aware of the need to study seriously the foreign policy of the ruling classes. Marx wrote to Engels on 2 November 1853: ‘I am glad that chance should have led me to take a closer look at 1853 and 18 May 1855). It was very much under the influence of Herzen’s books that Marx and Engels arrived at the opinion that internal contradictions in Russia were growing and resistance to the Tsarist regime was stiffening in that country. On 12 April 1853, Engels wrote to Weydemeyer that should a European revolutionary war break out against Tsarism, ‘an aristocratic-bourgeois revolution in Petersburg with a resulting civil war in the interior is a possibility’ (pp. 305-06). The letters also contain a number of critical comments on Herzen’s conception of ‘Russian socialism’, which was based on the Utopian idea of the ‘rejuvenation’ of Europe by means of the Russian peasant commune (see, for instance, this volume, p. 523).

At the same time, Marx and Engels clarified their position concerning the plans of certain circles of the Polish emigration to wrest Byelorussian and Ukrainian lands from Russia. The above-mentioned letter by Engels to Weydemeyer contains the following: ‘As to the former Polish provinces on this side of the Dvina and Dnieper, I want to hear nothing more of them, knowing as I do that the peasants there are all Ukrainians, only the aristocracy and some of the people in the towns being Polish, and that to the peasant there ... the restoration of Poland is synonymous with the restoration of the old ruling aristocracy, its powers unimpaired’ (p. 306).

The period 1852-55 was one of the most difficult in the lives of Marx and Engels, and their letters to each other clearly show how they were helped to survive their tribulations by the friendship which they maintained throughout their lives. This was expressed very touchingly by Marx at a moment of great personal loss: ‘Amid all the fearful torments I have recently had to endure, the thought of you and your friendship has always sustained me, as has the hope that there is still something sensible for us to do together in the world’ (p. 533).

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Volume 39 contains, printed in chronological order, 293 letters written by Marx and Engels from 1852 to 1855. By no means all their letters have been preserved, in particular, Engels’ letters for 1855, of which only one survives. The letters were written mainly in German, apart from three in English. Twelve were written in two languages—German and English, German and French, and German and Italian. The overwhelming majority are being published in English for the first time. Only 43 letters (of which 39 in incomplete form) have been published before in English. All these publications are indicated in the notes. The text of former English publications has been checked and improved where necessary.

The Appendices contain letters written by Jenny Marx on her husband’s instructions, and also extracts from the letters of Cluss to Weydemeyer giving the contents of a number of letters from Marx to Cluss which have not come down to us. Most of the material in the Appendices is also being published in English for the first time.

In the course of work on this volume, the earlier dating of certain letters has been corrected. The letter from Marx to Cluss of 3 September 1852, previously published as a single document, has been divided in this volume into two, dated 3 September and [after 5 September] 1852.

Study of the correspondence for 1852-55 has made it possible to attribute certain articles to Marx and Engels, and also to date the writing of certain already known articles of that period more accurately. All such attributions and details of dates are mentioned in the notes.

The authors’ own contraction of proper and geographical names and of certain words have been reproduced vh full. Obvious errors and inaccuracies have been corrected. Defects in the manuscripts, when the text is missing or illegible, are indicated by three dots in square brackets. If the context allows a presumable reconstruction to be made of the missing or illegible words, these words are also in square brackets. Passages struck out by the authors have, as a rule, not been reproduced, except where they represent variant readings which are given in the footnotes.

Foreign words and expressions have been retained in the original language and are given in italics; if they were underlined by the authors they are set in spaced italics.

In the letters written in German, words used by Marx and Engels in English are printed in small caps. Longer passages written in English in the original are placed in asterisks. If a fact or event is referred to in several letters, the same note number is used every time.

The volume was compiled, the texts of the letters and appendices for 1852-53 prepared, . and the preface and the relevant notes written by Velta Pospelova; the texts of the letters and appendices for 1854-55 were prepared and the relevant notes written by Irina Shikanyan; the volume was edited by Valentina Smirnova. The index of quoted and mentioned literature was prepared by Irina Shikanyan, the name index and index of periodicals by Nina Loiko; Vassily Kuznetsov assisted with the references and in compiling a glossary of geographical names. The subject index was prepared by Vassily Kuznetsov (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The translations were done by Peter and Betty Ross and edited by E. J. Hobsbawm (Lawrence and Wishart), Richard Dixon, Natalia Karmanova and Margarita Lopukhina (Progress Publishers) and Norire Ter-Akopyan, scientific editor (USSR Academy of Sciences).

The volume was prepared for the press by the editors Anna Vladimirova and Svetlana Gerasimenko (Progress Publishers).