Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (40)

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Volume 40 of this edition contains the correspondence of Marx and Engels from 1856 to 1859. The latter half of the 1850s rounded off the period of political reaction that had set in in Europe after the Revolution of 1848-49. The first capitalist world economic crisis (1857-58) heralded a new rise of the democratic and working-class movements.

During these years, Marx and Engels continued to develop their revolutionary teaching. They set out to arm the proletarian party, then in the process of formation, with the theory for the forthcoming battles. ‘I hope to win a scientific victory for our party,’ Marx wrote to his friend Joseph Weydemeyer on 1 February 1859 concerning the main goal he had set himself in his economic research (this volume, p. 377).

The letters in this volume reflect the further development of Marxist theory, of its three component parts—political economy, philosophy and the theory of the communist transformation of society—and the advance of Marxist thought in various other fields. They give an idea of the progress Marx was making in his economic studies. In 1857, he began to collate and sum up the vast material on political economy he had accumulated over many years. In 1857 and 1858, he wrote a series of economic manuscripts which form the first rough draft of Capital. In these manuscripts Marx worked out the theory of money in general terms and outlined his theory of surplus value, which Engels called Marx’s second great discovery, the first being the materialist conception of history. These two discoveries turned socialism into a science.

The letters show what titanic labours these manuscripts cost him. The economic crisis, and the certainty that it would be followed by profound revolutionary upheavals, made him hasten the work in every way. ‘I am working like mad all night and every night collating my economic studies so that I at least get the outlines clear before the déluge,’ he wrote to Engels on 8 December 1857 (p. 217). The correspondence shows that Marx made very great demands on himself as a scholar. Grudging in his judgments of his own achievements, he wrote to Engels with satisfaction on 16 January 1858: ‘I had been overdoing very much my nocturnal labours.... I am, by the way, discovering some nice arguments. E.g. I have completely demolished the theory of profit’ (p. 249).

The Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58, also known as the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (they will be found, together with A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, 1859, in Vols. 29 and 30), testify that in his economic works too Marx was enriching other areas of social science, especially philosophy, and was also perfecting his method of research into social phenomena. Marx attached great importance to dialectics, reinterpreted in the materialist spirit on the basis of a critical understanding of Hegel’s philosophy. Marx even had the intention, which he unfortunately never carried out, of writing a book on this subject. ‘If ever the time comes when such work is again possible, I should very much like to write 2 or 3 sheets making accessible to the common reader the rational aspect of the method which Hegel not only discovered but also mystified’ (p. 249).

As Marx built up his new economic theory, he was also developing the structure of his future economic work. The letters give us an idea of the scope and comprehensive nature of the work he planned, which was to cover the economic foundations and political superstructure of the capitalist system. His letters to Ferdinand Lassalle of 22 February and to Engels of 2 April 1858, and also the letter to Joseph Weydemeyer of 1 February 1859, show that Marx intended to publish the work in six books: 1) On Capital, 2) On Landed Property, 3) On Wage Labour, 4) On the State, 5) International Trade, 6) World Market (p. 270). Even while the first book was being written, some changes had to be made in this plan. Marx was unable to fit in all the material, so he decided to divide it into two parts, the first on the commodity and money, the second specifically on capital (the production of surplus value, etc.).

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One, which came off the press on 11 June 1859, was a major event in the history of economic thought. Although, because of its limited range, the book could not include Marx’s fundamental work on the theory of surplus value, it did contain the scientific prerequisites for it in the shape of a new theory of money and value. As can be seen from the letters, Marx considered it extremely important to popularise this work. The first successful attempt in this direction was undertaken by Engels, whose review is mentioned in the correspondence.

Marx began work on the second part shortly after sending the manuscript of the first to the publishers (Marx to Engels, 21 February 1859). However, he soon realised that he would need to do more research on a number of important aspects of surplus value and its transmuted forms (profit, interest and rent). The work dragged on and grew beyond the limits initially marked out for it. Furthermore, as the letters of 1859 show, Marx repeatedly had to break off in order to attend to urgent practical matters (the publication of the newspaper Das Volk, etc.). Subsequent letters give an idea of the further stages in his work.

Marx kept Engels constantly informed of the progress and results of his economic research. Engels readily helped him with advice, gave freely of the knowledge and experience he had acquired in long commercial practice, and supplied Marx with valuable material.

The correspondence published in this volume also gives some idea of Marx’s and Engels’ work in other fields of knowledge during this period, and of the variety and scope of their interests. They exchanged opinions on world history, the history of diplomacy, the history of various countries and peoples (among them Russia, Prussia and Poland), philology (especially in connection with Engels’ study of the Slavonic languages), world literature, the natural sciences, and so on.

Prominent in Engels’ work of the 1850s and early 1860s were studies in military history and the theory of warfare, for he was aware of the importance to proletarian revolutionaries of mastering military knowledge for the expected new outburst of revolutionary struggle. On 15 November 1857, Engels wrote to Marx that, should another revolution break out in Europe following the economic crisis, this would at once give ‘a more practical slant’ to his military studies (pp. 203-04).

Engels continued to publish reviews of current military events in periodicals, and also wrote a series of articles on the art of war and military history for The New American Cyclopaedia (see present edition, Vol. 18). The letters in this volume show that he did this in close cooperation with Marx. The two friends helped one another in finding sources and selecting material, and some of the articles for the Cyclopaedia were, in effect, written by them jointly. Besides doing all the articles on specifically military problems, Engels constantly helped Marx by handling the military questions in the articles that Marx wrote for the Cyclopaedia, especially in the biographical essays on military and political leaders (Barclay de Tolly, Bern, Blücher and others). Marx used some of Engels’ letters (pp. 163-64, 166-68, 178-80) as preliminary drafts of articles. For his part, Marx looked up references for Engels in the British Museum Library and copied out extracts from various sources.

Engels’ articles for The New American Cyclopaedia, especially on general subjects, such as ‘Army’, ‘Artillery’, ‘Cavalry’, ‘Fortification’ and ‘Infantry’, were an important contribution to Marxist military science. Marx believed that in them Engels had given further proof of the universal relevance of the materialist conception of history. ‘Your “Army” is capital,’ he wrote to Engels on 25 September 1857. ‘More graphically than anything else the history of the army demonstrates the Tightness of our views as to the connection between the productive forces and social relations’ (p. 186). He also praised Engels’ other articles (see, for example, his letters to Engels of 10 June and 10 October 1859).

Marx valued his friend’s ability to discuss questions of military history in the context of the political tasks that faced the proletarian revolutionaries, and to substantiate revolutionary tactics militarily. A case in point is Engels’ pamphlet Po and Rhine (1859), in which military analysis serves to prove the need for a proletarian approach to the problem of Italy’s unification, as well as to denounce the policies of the French Bonapartists and the Prussian and Austrian ruling circles. ‘Have read it all; exceedingly clever; the political side is also splendidly done and that was damned difficult,’ Marx wrote to Engels after he had gone over the pamphlet (p. 400).

Observing the spectacular development of the natural sciences in the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels considered it essential to interpret the latest scientific achievements in the light of their revolutionary world outlook. They regarded progress in these fields as expanding the scientific basis of their theories.

Engels’ letter to Marx of 14 July 1858, containing an extensive programme for the study of the latest findings of science, shows that Engels had already conceived the idea of giving a philosophical generalisation, from a dialectical materialist position, of the development of physics, chemistry, biology and the other sciences, which he eventually realised in his Dialectics of Nature.

Engels was one of the first to grasp the enormous significance of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He read On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, when the book was published, and wrote to Marx as follows: ‘Darwin ... whom I’m reading just now, is absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished, and that has now been done. Never before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature, and certainly never to such good effect’ (p. 551).

In the years covered by this volume, political journalism remained for Marx and Engels their most important means of disseminating revolutionary ideas, and substantiating proletarian revolutionary tactics on crucial social and political problems. The correspondence reflects their intensive journalistic activities during this period. In many letters they discuss the contents of articles for the New-York Daily Tribune and other periodicals. Economic processes in the capitalist world were increasingly attracting their attention. Observing the rapid growth of capitalist production, Marx compared the 1850s with the dawn of the capitalist era, which was marked by abrupt changes in economic and social relations. ‘There is no denying that bourgeois society has for the second time experienced its 16th century,’ he wrote to Engels on 8 October 1858 (p. 346). Marx and Engels also saw the reverse side of the rise of the capitalist economy: the deepening of its inherent contradictions and the inevitability of periodic economic crises. In many letters they pointed to the world-wide scale of the 1857 crisis and noted the gradual involvement of different countries in it, its spread to various spheres of the economy, and the grave effect it had on the position of the masses. Apart from the series of articles on the crisis published in the New-York Daily Tribune, Marx intended to write, jointly with Engels, a pamphlet on the subject (Marx to Engels, 18 December 1857). However, the plan did not materialise.

Marx and Engels followed current events very closely, especially the social and political shifts caused by the 1857 crisis. Although it did not lead directly to revolutionary upheavals, its revolutionising effect on society was very considerable. ‘Taken all in all, the crisis has been burrowing away like the good old mole it is,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 22 February 1858 (p. 274).

Marx and Engels considered it highly important that the 1857 crisis should have hit industry and finance in England, the most economically developed country in the capitalist world of that time. In a letter to Engels dated 8 December 1857 Marx pointed out that despite all the attempts by bourgeois economists and political writers to represent England’s economy as stable and invulnerable, catastrophe had descended on this citadel of capitalism (p. 215). The economic upheaval in England was aggravating its internal situation and intensifying the dissatisfaction of the masses with the obsolete oligarchic system. As can be seen from the letters, Marx and Engels did not rule out the possibility that the economic crisis might give rise to violent political conflicts and demonstrations against the ruling class by broad social sections, especially the proletariat. As a result, England might be drawn into revolutionary events should they occur again in Continental Europe. As early as 31 March 1857, when the first symptoms of the economic difficulties appeared, Marx wrote to Engels: ‘England is entering upon a sérieuse crisis ... and if the move is resumed on the Continent, John Bull will not maintain the stance of supercilious detachment he adopted in 1848’ (p. 113).

The economic crisis had an even greater effect on France. The entrepreneurial fever prevalent in the Second Empire, the unbridled Stock Exchange speculation, the corruption at all levels of the state machinery, and the predatory policy of the banks, such as the Crédit mobilier, resulted in the economic crisis being particularly destructive. Marx wrote to Engels on 18 December 1857 about ‘the general rottenness of the bankrupt State’ (p. 225). Marx and Engels held that during the economic crisis Napoleon Ill’s empire had taken yet another step towards its inevitable collapse, as was manifest, particularly, in the growing anti Bonapartist mood everywhere. In a letter to Marx on 17 March 1858, Engels pointed to the ferment among the Paris workers, who openly displayed their republican convictions and their sympathies for Orsini, the Italian patriot executed for an attempt to assassinate Louis Napoleon. Deportations and arrests, he wrote, had borne as little fruit as the workers’ settlements and the national workshops. The government’s police measures and attempts to pose as a patron of the working class were unable to arrest the growing movement against the Bonapartist dictatorship (p. 289).

Developments in Germany, which were also considerably influenced by the crisis, seemed to give an indication of the changes that were in the offing. Marx and Engels were particularly interested in the position of Prussia. In their opinion, the virtual restoration of absolutism there after the Revolution of 1848-49, an absolutism only scantily veiled by pseudo-constitutional institutions, had been a consequence of the German bourgeoisie’s cowardly half-measures. In the 1850s, too, the bourgeoisie, with its constitutional-monarchy illusions and its fear of the masses, continued to display a timid circumspection. ‘The bourgeois and philistines have, at any rate, got even worse since 1848,’ Engels wrote to Marx on 17 March 1858. ‘...Plainly your good, honest German has not yet emerged from the hibernation that followed the strenuous exertions of 1848’ (p. 292). However, the rapid growth of industry and trade, which Marx and Engels noted in their letters more than once, was deepening the conflict between the demands of economic and social development and the semi-feudal political system and making the fragmentation of the country more and more intolerable. In Prussia and the other German states all this was sowing the seeds of further conflict between the forces of progress and reaction.

In their letters of 1858 and subsequent years, Marx and Engels noted that Russia was becoming one of the hotbeds of revolutionary ferment in Europe. The crisis of the feudal serf system, aggravated by defeat in the 1853-56 Crimean War, and growing peasant unrest which drove the ruling circles to look for a solution in peasant reform, were seen by Marx and Engels as evidence that major revolutionary events were imminent in Russia. In a letter to Engels on 29 April 1858, Marx expressed the hope that should such events take place, the Tsarist autocracy’s position would be undermined both within the country and internationally. ‘The movement for the emancipation of the serfs in Russia strikes me as important in so far as it indicates the beginning of an internal development that might run counter to the country’s traditional foreign policy’ (p. 310).

The ideologists of the working class were coming round to the idea that a revolutionary Russia was arising in opposition to the Tsarist autocracy—the revolutionary movement’s worst enemy—and they welcomed it as a powerful force for social progress and as a major factor in the struggle for the revolutionary renewal of the whole of Europe.

Events in the colonies were a further important topic of the correspondence. In the 1850s, Marx and Engels repeatedly denounced the capitalist colonial system in the press. Aware of the importance of working out a programme on the national and colonial question, and of the need to define the attitude of the working class to the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples, Marx and Engels unmasked the policy of colonial expansion, to which more and more Asian and African countries were falling victim, and the savage rule of the capitalist ‘mother countries’ in the colonies.

Engels’ letter to Marx of 23 May 1856 in which, from personal knowledge, he describes the consequences of the English landlords’ and bourgeoisie’s domination in Ireland is a powerful expression of his views. He wrote that the country had been utterly ruined by wars of conquest, by punitive police measures and by the ruthless exploitation of the working people. ‘...Through systematic oppression,’ Engels wrote, the Irish ‘have come to be a completely wretched nation...’ (p. 50). The famine of 1845-47, the mass emigration which completely depopulated the country, and the landowners’ transition to large-scale sheepbreeding, accompanied by the expulsion of small tenant farmers (the ‘clearances’), were an appalling tragedy for the Irish masses. Ireland had been reduced to an agrarian adjunct of capitalist England. Engels wrote that ‘Ireland may be regarded as the earliest English colony and one which, by reason of her proximity, is still governed in exactly the same old way; here one cannot fail to notice that the English citizen’s so-called freedom is based on the oppression of the colonies’ (p. 49).

Marx and Engels witnessed a series of new colonial wars unleashed by the ruling classes of West European countries: the Anglo-Persian war of 1856-57, the Anglo-Franco-Chinese war of 1856-60, the Spanish-Moroccan war of 1859-60. In their letters they characterised these as wars of annexation and plunder. Engels called the British government’s colonial actions ‘military ventures’ (p. 115). Marx gives similar descriptions (see his letters to Engels of 24 March and 22 May 1857).

The correspondence gives an idea of the sympathy with which Marx and Engels followed the development of the mass struggle against foreign oppression in the colonies and dependent countries. They showed particular interest in the great popular uprising of 1857-59 in India, which shook English rule there, and made references to it in many of their letters (Marx to Engels, 6 and 14 July, 23 September, 20 October 1857 and 14 January 1858; Engels to Marx, 24 September and 29 October 1857). In the uprising, started by the sepoys in the Bengal army, Marx and Engels saw indications of a true national liberation struggle, a sign of mounting resistance to the colonialists by the oppressed peoples. Although the insurgents were defeated, Marx and Engels regarded their action as a portent of the future collapse of colonialism under the blows of the anti-colonial movement.

The Indian uprising convinced Marx of the correctness of his earlier conclusion that the national liberation movement and the proletariat’s struggle against the capitalist system were closely interlinked. The blows dealt to capitalism in the colonies were shaking its position at home and making it more difficult for capitalism to use colonial resources for strengthening its domination, and facilitating the triumph of the proletarian revolution. ‘In view of the drain of men and bullion which she will cost the English, India is now our best ally,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 16 January 1858 (p. 249).

As in the preceding years, Marx and Engels devoted much attention in their letters to a wide range of problems concerning the foreign policies pursued by the ruling classes of the European powers and the history of diplomacy. In assessing the international situation after the Crimean War of 1853-56, Marx and Engels found it fraught with new complications and wars. They saw the Bonapartist Second Empire as the main source of military danger. Its rulers combined adventurism and ambitions for conquest with blatant demagogy in the national question, their purpose being to exploit the national movements in the interests of Bonapartist France. The proletarian revolutionaries regarded the denunciation of this ‘most repulsive combination of Bonapartism and drivel about nationalities’ (Marx to Lassalle, 22 November 1859) as one of their main tasks (p. 537).

This became particularly urgent in view of the war of France and Piedmont against Austria, which broke out in April 1859. The interference of Napoleon III in Italian affairs was motivated by the desire to avert a revolutionary explosion on the Apennine Peninsula, to strengthen the Second Empire’s hegemony in Europe and, by external successes, to consolidate the shaky Bonapartist regime in France itself. The Piedmontese liberalmonarchist circles were acting in alliance with the Bonapartists, with whose aid they were trying to unify Italy under the House of Savoy, which ruled Piedmont (see Marx’s letter to Lassalle of 4 February 1859). At the same time, the war against the Austrian monarchy, Italy’s age-old oppressor, was welcomed by patriotic forces as a signal for the liberation struggle. Popular uprisings occurred in a number of Italian states. This drove Napoleon III to conclude a hasty peace with the Austrians, which Marx and Engels described as discreditable (see Engels’ letter to Marx of 15 July 1859). As a result, Italy remained fragmented.

As can be seen from their letters, Marx and Engels considered it essential to show that French Bonapartism was as big a barrier to the national liberation and unification of Italy as the Austrian Empire, that the Bonapartist regime was a threat to all progressive forces in Europe, and that it was, in particular, an obstacle to a united Germany.

During the Italian crisis, when even democrats in Europe had fallen for Bonapartist propaganda and ‘the confusion presently reigning in men’s minds has reached a curious peak’ (p. 436), Marx and Engels worked out clear-cut tactics to turn what was on both sides a dynastic war of annexation into a revolutionary war of liberation by the Italian and German peoples. They elaborated their views on the war in a number of writings published at the time (see, for example, Engels’ Po and Rhine and Marx’s ‘On Italian Unity’ in Vol. 16 of the present edition). The main points were also elucidated in the letters included in this volume.

Marx and Engels held that both Italy and Germany should be united ‘from below’, by revolutionary action on the part of the masses, and regarded the defeat of Bonapartism — the main opponent of a democratic solution to the Italian and German national problems—as the most urgent task. Hence the states in the German Confederation should not remain neutral; they should come out against Bonapartist France. According to Marx and Engels, this was in no way tantamount to supporting Austria. In their opinion, a war for the German people’s national interests was bound to assume a revolutionary character and therefore contribute to the liberation of Italy, and rouse the revolutionary forces in other European countries, including France. Disclosing the essence of this tactic, Marx wrote to Engels on 6 May 1859 that it was absolutely essential that the proletarian revolutionaries ‘do not identify’ their cause ‘with that of the present German governments’ (p. 431). They should strive for a development of events that would lead to an all-European revolution, and it was particularly important that things should ‘come to a head in Paris’ (p. 430). The ideas on the 1859 Italian crisis contained in the letters of Marx and Engels hold an important place in the tactical arsenal of proletarian parties.

This volume also throws light on the efforts of Marx and Engels to create a proletarian party. They were above all concerned with the ideological education of their followers and comrades-in-arms, the proletarian revolutionaries who had been members of the Communist League and who were to form the nucleus of the future party. Without predetermining its organisational structure, for they believed that this must depend on the actual conditions in which the working-class movement developed, Marx and Engels were working both to rally the proletarian forces internationally and, wherever possible, to unite the working class on a national scale. They thought it vital to strengthen the ties among the working-class leaders of various countries and, as can be seen from their correspondence, did everything to this end.

German workers and intellectuals wrote to Marx, seeking his advice on tactical matters. Thus, in the spring of 1856, he was approached from Germany by Johannes Miquel, a former member of the Communist League (Marx to Engels, 26 April and 7 May 1856). At the end of February that year, Gustav Levy visited Marx with a message from the workers of Düsseldorf, and Marx explained the need for meticulous organisation and propaganda, warning him of the danger of premature local uprisings in the midst of a general lull in the revolutionary movement (Marx to Engels, 5 March 1856).

Information on the state of the working-class movement in the USA was supplied to Marx and Engels by Joseph Weydemeyer. The organisers of the Communist Club in New York also kept in touch with Marx (Marx to Engels, 13 August 1858 and 9 February 1859, and Engels to Marx, 18 July 1859).

Marx and Engels pinned great hopes on the revolutionary wing of the English working-class movement, as represented by the Left Chartists led by Ernest Jones. Their activities opened up prospects for establishing a mass working-class party in England. It was with this in mind that Marx advised Jones to transfer the centre of agitation directly into the midst of the industrial proletariat. Jones ‘should begin by forming a party, for which purpose he must go to the manufacturing districts,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 24 November 1857 (p. 210).

However, these hopes were not justified. By then, the Chartist movement was steadily losing support among the masses. Jones’ ideological vacillations, especially his tendency to follow the lead of the radical bourgeoisie, were a disturbing symptom. Marx repeatedly warned the Chartist leader about his mistakes (Marx to Engels, 24 November and 22 December 1857 and 14 January 1858). At one point, Marx and Engels even temporarily broke with Jones.

Jones’ political vacillations reflected the rise of a reformist trend within the English working-class movement. Marx and Engels saw it as the result of a privileged section forming in the English working class. On 7 October 1858, Engels wrote to Marx: ‘...The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that the ultimate aim of this most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the possession, alongside the bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat. In the case of a nation which exploits the entire world this is, of course, justified to some extent’ (p. 344). This development of a labour aristocracy, a new phenomenon detected by Engels and, at the time, characteristic only of England, was made possible by England’s industrial and colonial monopoly, which enabled the English bourgeoisie to use part of its super-profits to buy off a section of the working class. ‘In both respects,’ Lenin wrote, referring to England’s vast colonies and monopoly profit in the context of this passage in Engels’ letter, ‘England at that time was an exception among capitalist countries, and Engels and Marx, analysing this exception, quite clearly and definitely indicated its connection with the (temporary) victory of opportunism in the English labour movement’ (Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 112).

However, despite the decline of Chartism, Marx and Engels were convinced that the revolutionary trend in the English working-class movement would in some form be reborn and carry on Chartism’s finest traditions. They therefore considered it essential to help to awaken the revolutionary energy of the British working class in every possible way.

The new development in the working-class movement in the late 1850s—the spread of strikes, the emergence of new professional and other organisations, and the workers’ participation in political campaigns—stimulated Marx and Engels to step up their efforts to strengthen the nucleus of the future proletarian party. The situation demanded vigorous action, the intensified propagation of revolutionary theory and closer contact with the masses. Marx in particular resumed his participation in the London German Workers’ Educational Society, in which sectarian and adventurist elements had prevailed for a period. By this time, however, Marx’s comrades had regained their influence in the society.

Marx was seeking new ways of popularising the principles of the proletarian party then being formed. He thought it possible also to use Europe’s progressive bourgeois press to this end. ‘Times have changed,’ he wrote to Lassalle on 28 March 1859, ‘and I now consider it essential that our party should secure positions wherever possible, even if only for a time, so that others should not gain possession of the terrain’ (p. 409). The long negotiations Marx held with the editors of the Viennese liberal newspaper Die Presse on work as a correspondent reflect this attitude, as do the ideas he expressed on the terms under which a journalist committed to the cause of the proletariat could contribute to a bourgeois press organ (Marx to Engels, 16 April and 16 and 18 May” 1859; to Lassalle, 22 February 1858, 28 March and 5 May 1859, and to Friedländer, 16 May 1859). Marx’s main stipulation was the right to express his own views on political issues, without adapting to editorial policies.

It was at this time that Marx endeavoured to start a proletarian paper. From the letters published in this volume it can be seen how much energy he spent on converting the newspaper Das Volk, which had been published by the German Workers’ Educational Society and other German workers’ organisations in London from May 1859, into a mouthpiece of the proletarian party (see, in particular, his letters to Engels of 18 May and 10 June 1859).

From the beginning of July, Marx was its de facto editor, handling all administrative and business matters, whose management until then had left ‘a great deal to be desired’, as he had earlier written to Engels (p. 457). Under Marx’s management, and thanks also to Engels’ cooperation, the paper became a real communist propaganda organ, a medium for explaining the principles of the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolutionaries. However, it proved impossible to regularise its finances, and, after the sixteenth issue on 10 August 1859, the paper ceased publication.

The process of forming a working-class party inevitably involved the dissociation of the proletarian revolutionaries from the proponents of sectarian and reformist ideologies alien to them. Marx’s and Engels’ relationship with Ferdinand Lassalle, the father of a special brand of petty-bourgeois socialism and of an opportunist trend in the German working-class movement, provides a good illustration of this, and their correspondence with him is most revealing in this respect.

Lassalle first met Marx and Engels in Germany during the Revolution of 1848-49 and kept in touch with them in the years that followed. In his letters to Marx he called himself the latter’s pupil. For some time, Marx and Engels considered him a man close to their own circle, though they had been hearing about the dissatisfaction of workers in the Rhine Province with Lassalle’s arrogance and overweening behaviour (Marx to Engels, 5 March and 10 April 1856). However, they valued his energy and his talent as a propagandist and orator, and hoped that he would overcome these failings.

Early in 1858, after reading Lassalle’s two-volume work, Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos, Marx came to the conclusion that Lassalle’s views were far removed from the revolutionary materialist world outlook. ‘Heraclitus, the Dark Philosopher by Lassalle the Luminous One is, au fond, a very silly concoction,’ he wrote to Engels on 1 February, stressing that essentially Lassalle confined himself to restating some of the propositions of Hegel’s idealistic philosophy, of which, moreover, he only had a superficial understanding (p. 259). In a letter to Lassalle, on 31 May 1858, Marx tried to explain the need for a critical mastery of Hegel’s dialectics, for a review of its idealistic basis, for divesting it of the ‘mystical aura’ given it by Hegel (p. 316).

It soon turned out that Lassalle also had differences with Marx and Engels on politics and tactics. In March 1859, he sent them his historical drama, Franz von Sickingen, which dealt with the uprising of the Swabian and Rhenish knights against their feudal lords in 1522-23, on the eve of the great Peasant War (1525). In analysing the drama Marx and Engels formulated some cardinal propositions of Marxist aesthetics. The letters to Lassalle from Marx on 19 April and from Engels on 18 May 1859 disclosed the essence of realism as the most progressive method of portraying life in art. Discussing the faults and merits of Lassalle’s work, Marx and Engels reproached him above all for his departure from realism, for using abstract rhetoric in place of a truthful and visual portrayal of the characters, thus turning them into ‘mere mouthpieces for the spirit of the times’ (p. 420). The main character, Sickingen, has none of the traits of a rebellious knight. He epitomises the insoluble and therefore tragic contradiction between the leaders and the masses, a contradiction which Lassalle held to be a feature of any revolution. Lassalle’s drama, in Engels’ words, was ‘too abstract, not realistic enough’ (p. 444). Marx and Engels also held that Lassalle’s inability to give a true picture of the historical situation betrayed itself in the way he virtually ignored the social background of the events he depicted—the peasants and the plebs in the grip of revolutionary ferment.

According to Marx and Engels, the characters in realistic works should be both individual and typical, and should reflect the nature of the class to which they belong. Moreover, realist authors should not express their ideas as reasoned arguments, but through full-blooded characters and lively action. In Marx’s and Engels’ view, Lassalle shared, in an exaggerated form, a weakness of the great poet and dramatist Schiller—his inclination to abstract didacticism. A realist writer, however, should, as Engels pointed out, try for ‘the complete fusion of greater intellectual profundity, of a consciously historical content’, typical of Schiller’s dramas, ‘with Shakespearean vivacity and wealth of action’, with Shakespeare’s ability to portray true human passion and suffering, the complexity and contradictory aspects of human nature (p. 442).

In their letters, Marx and Engels touch on the problem of the writer’s political position, and on the connection of literature and art with life. Believing that a definite ideological and political orientation is inherent in any work of art, the founders of Marxism always deplored attempts to separate art and politics— the theory of ‘art for art’s sake’. It was at that time that they condemned the tendency of the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath to oppose literary interests to party obligations (Engels to Marx, 28 November 1859, Marx to Engels, 10 December 1859). In the opinion of Marx and Engels, it was the organic combination of ideology and artistic mastery which made art and literature such a powerful lever of social progress.

Marx and Engels regarded as quite legitimate Lassalle’s endeavour to make his drama topical, to link it with the vital task of uniting Germany, but they held that its political tendency was profoundly wrong. It was obvious to them that Sickingen, the knight, was in effect a reactionary whose movement aimed at a return to the era of feudal injustice and club-law, and that Lassalle was aggrandising the historical predecessor of the German Junkers, representing him as the true champion of national unification. Marx pointed this out to Lassalle: ‘Have not you yourself—like your Franz von Sickingen — succumbed, to some extent, to the diplomatic error of regarding the Lutheran-knightly opposition as superior to the plebeian-Münzerian?’ (p. 420).

The preference for chivalry and the burgher opposition Lassalle showed in his drama reflected his view of the part played by their historical successors—the Junkers and the bourgeoisie—in the cause of German unity. He underestimated the role of the masses in this process and had a nihilistic attitude to the peasants, whom he attributed to the reactionary mass. In contrast, Marx and Engels considered that only vigorous action by the working class and its ally, the peasantry, could give the struggle for national unity a truly democratic revolutionary character, and that the consolidation of this alliance would open up prospects for a transition to the socialist stage of revolution. ‘The whole thing in Germany will depend on whether it is possible to back the Proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasants’ War’ (p. 41).

Lassalle’s position on the unification of Germany was laid wide open when in May 1859 he published the pamphlet Der italienische Krieg und die Aufgabe Preußens. By aligning himself with the Prussophile bourgeoisie and the Junkers, Lassalle was virtually urging Prussia to avail itself of Austria’s defeat to carry out its plans for unification, plans which envisaged no changes in the political or social system. Meanwhile, Lassalle depicted Napoleon Ill’s Italian policy as objectively progressive.

These views were completely at odds with those of Marx and Engels. Characterising the essence of their political differences, Lenin wrote: ‘Lassalle was adapting himself to the victory of Prussia and Bismarck, to the lack of sufficient strength in the democratic national movements of Italy and Germany. Thus Lassalle deviated towards a national-liberal labour policy, whereas Marx encouraged and developed an independent, consistently democratic policy hostile to national-liberal cowardice’ (Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 141).

‘Lassalle’s pamphlet is an enormous blunder,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 18 May 1859 (p. 435). In a letter of 10 June that year, he told Lassalle that the pamphlet ‘in no way corresponds with my own view or that of my party friends in England’ (p. 460). Marx was particularly angered by Lassalle’s posing as the spokesman of the party. He regarded it as a breach of party discipline to make statements in the press on behalf of the party without ascertaining the views of other members (p. 435).

Marx saw that Lassalle’s position was very close to that of the liberal bourgeoisie, and also of pro-Bonaparte and Prussophile vulgar democrats such as Karl Vogt. Lassalle ‘in point of fact was piping the same tune as Vogt’, he wrote to Engels on 26 November 1859 (p. 542). Marx considered that Lassalle attempted to obstruct the public denunciation of Vogt as a Bonapartist agent and a slanderer of the proletarian revolutionaries because Vogt and Lassalle held identical views. In his work Herr Vogt, published in 1860 (this edition, Vol. 17), he therefore not only dealt a crushing blow at the political concepts of Vogt but, without mentioning Lassalle by name, attacked his views too.

Lassalle’s literary and political activities were making his unreliability as a comrade-in-arms increasingly clear to Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, they had not yet finally lost hope of setting him on the right road, of stimulating him to act at least as a fellow-traveller of the proletarian revolutionaries. Subsequent events, however, widened the rift and led to a final rupture.

The letters in this volume contain valuable biographical material on the life of Marx and his family and of Engels in these years.

The second half of the 1850s were hard years for Marx. As before, he was in serious financial difficulties and fighting for his very existence. ‘I would not wish my worst enemy to have to wade through the quagmire in which I’ve been trapped for the past two months, fuming the while over the innumerable vexations that are ruining my intellect and destroying my capacity for work,’ he wrote to Engels at a moment of extreme distress (p. 331). The moral and political atmosphere that surrounded the revolutionary refugees was also oppressive. After Orsini’s assassination attempt, refugees in England were put under political surveillance and their letters were opened (see the letters of Marx to Engels of 2 and 5 March and Engels’ letter to Marx of 4 March 1858). They had to face repeated insinuations in the bourgeois press, slanderous allegations by their enemies among the vulgar democrats (Kinkel, Heinzen, Vogt), the cowardly apostasy of their allies (Blind) and the withdrawal from politics of former friends (Dronke, Cluss and Freiligrath).

Marx, however, bore all his trials with courage and remarkable fortitude. The letters in this volume are permeated with optimism and the expectation of new revolutionary events.

The letters show vividly how the unique friendship between Marx and Engels strengthened with the years and how great was their mutual attachment. In Engels this manifested itself in his selfless willingness time and again to come to the aid of Marx and his family, to spend his energies on ‘accursed commerce’ (Engels to Marx, 17 November 1856) in order to be able to give Marx material support, and to take upon himself a considerable part of Marx’s journalistic work so as to free him for economic research; while on Marx’s part, it expressed itself in infinite gratitude, respect and trust. Whenever anything went amiss with Engels, Marx would be seriously alarmed. His friend’s illness in the summer of 1857 caused him a great deal of worry. ‘Nothing could please me more than to hear that your health is progressing,’ he wrote to Engels on 21 September that year, having heard that there were signs of an improvement (p. 173).

Marx and Engels treated their comrades-in-arms with touching attention and great sensitivity. They grieved over the losses unavoidable under the harsh conditions of life in emigration, and especially over the death of the proletarian poet Georg Weerth (see, in particular, the letter from Engels to Marx, written not before 27 September 1856, and the letters from Marx to Lassalle, 21 December 1857 and 22 February 1858). On the death of Conrad Schramm, an eminent member of the working-class movement, Engels wrote in sorrow to Marx on 25 January 1858: ‘Our old guard is rapidly dwindling away during this long spell of peace’ (p. 253). Marx and Engels showed unfailing concern for their old comrades in the Communist League, and kept up friendly relations with Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus), Friedrich Lessner, Georg Eccarius, Joseph Weydemeyer, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Peter Imandt and others.

The outstanding quality of Marx’s relationship with his wife is illustrated by his remarkable love letter to Jenny Marx (21 June 1856) in Trier, where she had gone to visit her dying mother.

* * *

Volume 40 contains 317 letters by Marx and Engels, of which 307 were written in German and 10 in English. The great majority of the letters are being published in English for the first time. Only 73 appeared in English before (53 of these in incomplete form). These publications are indicated in the notes. The 11 letters by Jenny Marx included in the Appendix are given in English translation for the first time. The two letters by Karl Marx to Collet Dobson Collet written in June 1857 and Jenny Marx’s letter to Engels of 31 July 1857 have never been published in any language before.

The dating of some of the letters was ascertained in the course of the preparation of this volume. Information on undiscovered letters mentioned in the text will be found in the notes. If a fact or event is referred to in several letters, the same note number is used each time.

Obvious slips in the text are corrected without comment. The authors’ contractions of proper and geographical names and individual words are given in full. Defects in the manuscripts, where the text is missing or illegible, are indicated by three dots in square brackets. If the text allows a reconstruction of the missing or illegible passages, this is also given in square brackets. Anything crossed out by the authors is reproduced in the footnotes only where the disparity in meaning is considerable. If a letter is a rough copy, an extract quoted elsewhere, etc., this is marked either in the text itself or in the notes.

Foreign words and phrases in the letters are given in italics. If they were underlined by the authors they are in spaced italics. Words written in English in the original are given in small caps. Longer passages written in English in the original are placed in asterisks.

The volume was compiled, the text prepared and the notes written by Stanislav Nikonenko (letters from January 1856 to mid-February 1858), Natalia Martynova (letters from midFebruary 1858 to early February 1859) and Tatyana Andrushchenko (letters from early February to December 1859 and the Appendix). Tatyana Andrushchenko also wrote the Preface. The volume was edited by Lev Golman and Tatyana Yeremeyeva (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). The name index and the index of periodicals were prepared by Yelena Vashchenko, the index of quoted and mentioned literature by Natalia Martynova, and the subject index by Tatyana Andrushchenko (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The translations were made by Peter and Betty Ross and edited by E. J. Hobsbawm, Nicholas Jacobs (Lawrence & Wishart), Richard Dixon, Lydia Belyakova and Victor Schnittke (Progress Publishers), and Larisa Miskievich, scientific editor (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The volume was prepared for the press by the editor Mzia Pitskhelauri.

Note: The name of the late Margaret Mynatt was unfortunately omitted from the list of editors who worked on Volume 38, the first of the thirteen volumes devoted to the correspondence of Marx and Engels.