Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (42)

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Volume 42 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains their correspondence from October 1864 to March 1868. Chronologically, the volume covers the period, very important for the history of Marxism and the international working-class movement, of the founding and the early years of the International Working Men’s Association (the First International). This period was also marked by the publication of Marx’s most important work, Volume One of Capital.

With the foundation of the International the correspondence of Marx and Engels became particularly intense and ideologically rich, and the circle of people with whom they corresponded, active members of the working-class movement in various countries, grew wider. An important place in their letters is devoted to the pressing problems of the organisation and revolutionary tactics of the working class, to the theory and practice of the proletarian struggle.

Marx and Engels had countless ties with the working-class movement. This can be seen from the numerous letters published in this volume that deal with the activity of the International Working Men’s Association, an organisation set up with Marx’s direct participation. These letters are one of the most important sources revealing the history of the emergence of the International and the way that it turned under the guidance of Marx and Engels into a true centre for uniting the militant forces of the working class. All of Marx’s previous activity had prepared him for the task of leading the movement of the international proletariat, and Engels was fully justified in writing later that among those who attended the meeting in St Martin’s Hall, London, on 28 September 1864 to proclaim the International ‘there was only one person who was clear as to what was to happen and what was to be founded: it was the man who had already in 1848 issued to the world the call: “Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!”’ (see Frederick Engels, ‘Marx, Heinrich Karl’, present edition, Vol. 27).

‘Marx was the heart and soul of this organisation’ is how Lenin described the role of the founder and leader of the first international mass organisation of the proletariat (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, Moscow, 1977, p. 49).

The letters included in this volume throw light on Marx’s many-sided activity in the International Working Men’s Association, his leading role on its guiding body, the Central (General) Council, his active participation in all the discussions that took place in the Council, the drafting of its decisions and the preparation of congresses of the International, their agendas and resolutions. From the letters it is also obvious that after the founding of the International Engels constantly helped Marx in guiding it. Until his move from Manchester to London in 1870, Engels could not take part directly in the work of the General Council, but during those years too Marx discussed all important questions concerning the International with him, kept him informed of the course of discussions in the Council and of the decisions being drafted, and made use of his recommendations. Engels helped to draw up the tactical line of the International, explaining it in letters to active members of the working-class movement, particularly in Germany, and frequently wrote to the press to present the position of the International Working Men’s Association on various questions.

Marx guided the activity of the new organisation with characteristic confidence, skilfully overcoming the difficulties obstructing the path of the development of an independent proletarian movement. He constantly thwarted attempts by petty-bourgeois democrats and supporters of sectarian and reformist trends to deflect the International Working Men’s Association from a revolutionary course and to subject it to tasks and aims alien to the interests of the working-class movement.

Marx’s letters to Engels of 4 November, to Joseph Weydemeyer and Lion Philips of 29 November 1864 and others show what an effort it cost Marx, right from the foundation of the International, to counteract the constant attempts by petty-bourgeois elements to exert their influence over it. Thanks to Marx’s endeavours the new organisation acquired a truly proletarian class character. The first considerable success in this respect, of historic significance, was the adoption by the Central Council of the Inaugural Address and Provisional Rules of the International drafted by Marx. As Marx himself admitted, it was no easy task to work out a common platform for all the different contingents of the working class, with their different levels of development, that had been drawn into the ranks of the International. But Marx, author of its first programme and its associated documents, performed this task brilliantly. Without making the slightest concession of principle to sectarian trends, these documents did not shut the doors of the international organisation to the British trade unions, the French and Belgian Proudhonists, or the German Lassalleans. On learning from Marx of the content of the Inaugural Address, Engels wrote that he could not wait to see it and that ‘it must be a real masterpiece’ (see this volume, p. 20).

While guiding the International and drafting all the most important documents that set out the strategy and tactics of the proletarian movement, Marx persistently did his utmost to ensure that in the daily battles for particular and purely economic demands the workers should gain an understanding of the common tasks of their class struggle against capitalism. The establishment of firm contacts by the International with the working-class organisations in various countries, the setting up of sections of the International in the main European countries, its active support of the strike movement in 1865-67, and the victories gained by striking workers in a number of industries in Britain and France thanks to this support—all this helped to enhance the authority of the International Working Men’s Association and helped the workers to realise gradually the strength of proletarian solidarity.

As the correspondence shows, during this period Marx and Engels devoted considerable attention to the formation and ideological training of progressive militants of the working class. Marx sought to create a strong nucleus of proletarian revolutionaries on the General Council and administrative bodies of the International in various countries. Under his direct influence, the Germans Georg Eccarius, Friedrich Lessner and Karl Pfänder, the Frenchman Eugène Dupont, the Englishman Robert Shaw, the Swiss Hermann Jung and other members of the General Council acquired the necessary theoretical knowledge and became acquainted with scientific socialism. The letters from Marx and Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht, Paul Lafargue, Johann Philipp Becker, Joseph Weydemeyer and other eminent figures in the working-class and socialist movement show how patiently and persistently they taught their friends and comrades, helping them with advice, responding to their requests and criticising their shortcomings and mistakes.

In the period of the activity of the International the need for an independent workers’ press was particularly acute. ‘It is impossible to have a movement here without its own press-organ,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 2 December 1864. From the inception of the International Working Men’s Association Marx and Engels directed their efforts towards setting up press-organs for it in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland. They endeavoured to take part personally in the production of a number of newspapers and to lend them a revolutionary character. They also concerned themselves with the composition of the editorial boards and contributors and encouraged like-minded people to work on them (see Marx’s letters to Engels of 2 December 1864, 9 May and 26 December 1865 and others). Thanks to this, the leaders of the International not only organised the widespread publication of its documents in various countries, but also trained a whole galaxy of working-class journalists who propagated its ideas.

Marx attached great importance to the establishment of close relations between the International and the British trade unions. He strongly supported the participation of their representatives in its founding, believing that this would help to disseminate the ideas of the International in Britain, then the citadel of the capitalist world and the country with the most developed and organised workingclass movement (see Marx’s letter to Ludwig Kugelmann of 29 November 1864). Marx saw the further drawing of the British trade unions into the ranks of the International as an important way of broadening its mass base in the British Isles, and also as a means of overcoming the narrow-mindedness typical of British trade unions, expressed in their efforts to limit their activity to the economic struggle. To arouse the political activity of the trade unions and turn them into real centres of resistance to the capitalist system—this was the task that Marx set before the International in including, among other things, the question of the trade unions in the agenda of the Geneva Congress (see Marx’s letter to Hermann Jung of 20 November 1865). The General Council relied on the support of the trade unions, organising campaigns to aid strikers both in Britain and on the Continent and thereby helping to kindle a spirit of proletarian solidarity in British workers.

The leaders of the large London trade unions represented a considerable force on the General Council, and from the very beginning of the International Marx sought to use the authority of these ‘real worker-kings of London’ (p. 44) in order to strengthen the position of the International in Britain. At the same time, taking into account the ideological dependence of many trade union leaders on bourgeois liberals and radicals, he did his utmost to counteract any reformist tendencies shown by them. Marx’s tactics aimed at removing obstacles to making the British working class a revolutionary force. He frequently managed to encourage reformist-minded trade union leaders to act in a revolutionary way.

One of the most striking episodes in the activity of the International in Britain was its participation in the broad movement for electoral reform that began in spring 1865. On Marx’s advice, the British members of the General Council joined with representatives of the radical bourgeoisie in the leadership of the Reform League to campaign for the demand for universal suffrage. After beginning in London, the movement gradually gained strength, spreading to the provinces, and its powerful dimensions gave Marx grounds for hoping that it would be successful. ‘If we succeed in re-electrifying the political movement of the English working class,’ he wrote to Engels on 1 May 1865, ‘our Association will already have done more for the European working class, without making any fuss, than was possible in any other way.’

Using the influence of the International on British workers, Marx strove to give the reform movement a radical nature, to turn it into a national struggle for a democratic political system in Britain, to encourage workers to stand for their own political platform, regardless of the position of the bourgeois parties (see Marx’s letters to Kugelmann of 23 February 1865 and 9 October 1866, to Engels of 13 May 1865, and others). In this connection the drawing into the struggle for reform of those strata of British trade union workers who had previously been indifferent to politics both pleased Marx and encouraged high hopes. ‘We have succeeded in attracting into the movement,’ he wrote to Ludwig Kugelmann on 15 January 1866, ‘the only really big workers’ organisation, the English “Trade Unions”, which previously concerned themselves exclusively with the wage question.’

The reform movement did not yield the expected results, however. The unity of its supporters was undermined by the bourgeois radicals who renounced the League’s original programme calling for universal suffrage. After having come ‘to a compromise with the bourgeoisie’ (Marx to Johann Philipp Becker of 31 August 1866), the reformist trade union leaders began playing up to the radicals. This enabled the ruling circles in Britain to limit themselves to introducing a moderate reform in 1867 that extended the franchise to the top strata of the working class only. The need to assert a truly proletarian world outlook and principles of revolutionary tactics of the proletariat, to counter reformist ideology and practice had now become even more evident. It was to this end that the subsequent activity of Marx and his associates in the International in Britain was directed.

As can be seen from their correspondence, Marx and Engels focused their attention also on the prospects for the development of the German working-class movement. As Corresponding Secretary for Germany on the General Council, Marx hoped that the German proletariat would become one of the leading national detachments of the International Association. The objective prerequisites for this existed. The activity of the Communist League and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung during the revolution of 1848-49 prepared the ground for the dissemination of the ideas of scientific socialism in Germany. However, the propagation of these ideas and the principles of the International came up against serious obstacles there. Reactionary legislation prevented the formation of the sections of the International. On the other hand, the very ideas of the international class solidarity of workers encountered resistance from Ferdinand Lassalle’s followers, who had inherited his sectarian dogmas and nationalistic approach to the working-class movement. ‘As long as these abominable Lassalleans rule the roost in Germany, that country will be infertile ground for the “International Association”,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 13 February 1865.

A number of Marx’s and Engels’ letters written shortly after Lassalle’s death in 1864 contain an assessment both of his services to the cause of the liberation of the German working-class movement from the tutelage of the liberal ‘patrons’ (SchulzeDelitzsch and others) and of the harm that his mistaken views and tactics had done to the development of the class consciousness of the German workers. In a letter to Kugelmann of 23 February 1865 and a number of other letters, Marx noted that Lassalle did not understand the real conditions for the liberation of the working class, had only a superficial knowledge of the ideas of scientific socialism, and tended to vulgarise economic theory. In campaigning for the solution of the social question by setting up producer associations with state help, Lassalle was fostering the illusion of the ‘social mission’ of the reactionary Prussian monarchy (see this volume, p. 101). At the same time he denied the expediency of the economic struggle of the working class and opposed the creation of trade unions, the true centres of organisation of the workers. By orienting the latter towards attaining their goals by reformist means, Lassalle began the opportunist trend in the German working-class movement.

In a number of letters Marx and Engels criticised Lassalle’s political tactics. They condemned the absolute importance that he attached to the demand for universal suffrage, which he proclaimed as the most effective way of liberating the proletariat. The example of Bonapartism in France enabled them to foresee the demagogical use of this demand by the Prussian counterrevolution. They also strongly condemned Lassalle’s policy of flirting with Bismarck and his attempt to form an alliance with the Prussian Junkers against the bourgeoisie, particularly after they learnt of Lassalle’s direct negotiations with the head of the Prussian government. ‘Objectively it was the act of a scoundrel, the betrayal of the whole workers’ movement to the Prussians,’ Engels wrote to Marx on 27 January 1865.

In opposition to the Lassalleans, Marx and Engels sought to set the German working-class movement on the revolutionary path. They attached great importance to bringing the General Association of German Workers, founded by Lassalle in 1863, into the International (see Marx’s letter to Carl Siebel of 22 December 1864). The Association had many healthy proletarian elements within its ranks, including former members of the Communist League, and Marx hoped that if the General Association of German Workers joined the International this would be an important step towards overcoming Lassalleanism and that eventually it would be possible radically to reshape this organisation, to change its programme and tactics and also its organisational principles. However, the Lassallean leaders of the Association opposed its joining the International.

In the struggle against the influence of Lassalleanism on the German working-class movement an important part was played by Engels’ pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers’ Party published in Germany in February 1865. Marx and Engels discussed its plan and content in detail in their letters. In them they denounce the social demagogy of the Prussian government and Bismarck’s use of the Bonapartist tactics of manoeuvring between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, reveal the inconsistency and cowardice of the bourgeois opposition Party of Progress and determine the tasks of the working class in the struggle for democratic transformations in Germany (see, for example, Marx’s letters to Engels of 3, 10 and 18 February 1865). The ideas expressed in their letters were developed in the pamphlet, in which Engels stressed that the main thing in the tactics of the working class was to avoid compromise with reaction, to denounce the anti-revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie and to pursue the policy of creating an independent proletarian party.

An important milestone in the break by Marx, Engels and their supporters with the Lassalleans was the cessation of their short-lived cooperation on the Berlin Social-Demokrat. The letters of Marx and Engels reflect their relations with this newspaper of the General Association of German Workers quite fully. By agreeing to contribute to it, Marx and Engels hoped to influence the German working-class movement in the spirit of the principles of the International, and later Marx intended to make use of the Social-Demokrat to propagate the ideas of Capital. On 14 November 1864 he wrote to Engels: ‘It is important for us to have a mouthpiece in Berlin, especially for the sake of the association I was involved in founding in London, and for the sake of the book I am planning to publish.’ However, the SocialDemokrat’s servile attitude to Bismarck’s government and the cult of Lassalle that was blown up out of all proportions in its columns caused Marx and Engels to review their decision. Convinced that, in spite of their warnings, the newspaper’s editor Schweitzer was still trying to justify the policies of the Prussian ruling circles and to sing the praises of Lassalle, they both announced publicly that they refused to contribute to it (pp. 96-97, 98-99, 104-05, etc.).

After the break with the Social-Demokrat Marx and Engels continued to strengthen contacts with the German workers, relying on the progressive elements who were disillusioned with Lassalle’s dogmas and the tactics of making advances to government circles, and helped a considerable section of the German proletariat to part company with Lassalleanism.

Marx and Engels gave constant support to Wilhelm Liebknecht and later to August Bebel in their struggle to consolidate the forces of the German working class on a revolutionary basis, on the platform of the International. This help was particularly great at the time when the question of the ways of the national unification of Germany was being decided and circumstances demanded that German proletarian revolutionaries should put up a firm challenge to Bismarck’s policy of uniting the country from above, under the supremacy of Prussia, by opposing to it the policy of revolutionary democratic unification from below. At that juncture, as Marx and Engels frequently stressed in their letters, it was most important to denounce the militaristic regime of the united state being created by Bismarck, to support democratic demands and to rally militant detachments of the German proletariat on a national level (pp. 297-98, 300, etc.). Marx and Engels expressed their warm approval of Liebknecht’s speeches criticising the policies of the Prussian ruling circles from the tribune of the North German Reichstag to which he was elected with Bebel in 1867. ‘Liebknecht is doing very well,’ Engels wrote to Marx on 13 October 1867 concerning one of the denunciatory speeches by this true parliamentarian of the working class. The activity of Liebknecht, Bebel and their supporters, the creation of German sections of the International, the increasing influence of its ideas among the German workers, and the growing opposition to the Lassallean leadership in the ranks of the General Association of German Workers—all this inspired Marx and Engels with the conviction that the working-class movement in Germany would take the path of revolutionary struggle and master the principles of scientific socialism.

Seeking to consolidate the position of the International in France, Marx did his utmost to counter the claims of bourgeois republicans to leadership of its local organisations. To this end, on his initiative the Central Council adopted decisions on the conflict in the Paris section (see Marx’s letters to Engels of 25 February and 7 March 1865 and to Hermann Jung of 13 March 1865). At the same time Marx was constantly searching for ways of overcoming the belief of a section of French workers in Utopian Proudhonist doctrines. This is why in the letters published in this volume so much space is devoted to criticism of Proudhon’s petty-bourgeois views that had a perceptible influence during this period not only on the French, but also on the Belgian and to some extent on the Swiss working-class movement. A generalised criticism of Proudhon’s views was provided by Marx in his letter to Kugelmann of 9 October 1866 where he sums up the results of the Geneva Congress at which the difference between Proudhon’s views and the revolutionary line of the leadership of the International became particularly evident: ‘Beneath the cloak of freedom and anti-governmentalism or anti-authoritarian individualism these gentlemen, who for 16 years now have so quietly endured the most wretched despotism, and are still enduring it, are in actuality preaching vulgar bourgeois economics, only in the guise of Proudhonist idealism!’

Analysing the causes of the spread of Proudhonist Utopias, Marx points to Proudhon’s ‘pseudo-critique’ of the bourgeois system, to his outwardly radical phraseology that impressed the ‘jeunesse brillante’ (brilliant youth) and students, and also the backward, semi-artisan strata of workers engaged in small-scale production (p. 326). Marx strongly condemns the Proudhonists for their disparaging attitude to ‘all revolutionary action, i.e. arising from the class struggle itself, every concentrated social movement, and therefore also that which can be achieved by political means (e.g., such as limitation of the working day by law)’ (ibid.). In a letter to Engels of 20 June 1866 Marx describes the sharp reproof which, in the course of a discussion on the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, he delivered to a number of French members of the General Council of the International who were seeking in a spirit of Proudhonist nihilism to call nations and nationalities ‘obsolete prejudices’.

Marx’s letters in this volume also show what importance he attached to the setting up of sections of the International in countries like Belgium (see his letters to Léon Fontaine of 15 April and 25 July 1865) and Switzerland (see his letters to Johann Philipp Becker of 13 January, Kugelmann of 15 January 1866 and others). For propagating the principles of the International Working Men’s Association and founding its sections in the USA Marx made use of contacts with Joseph Weydemeyer, Sigfrid Meyer and other participants in the European revolutionary movement who emigrated to America. Marx and Engels followed closely the development of the working-class movement in the USA, noting each of its successes with pleasure. Thus, Marx rated the results of the workers’ congress in Baltimore very highly: ‘The watchword there was organisation for the struggle against capital, and, remarkably enough, most of the demands I had put up for Geneva were put up there, too, by the correct instinct of the workers’ (p. 326).

During this period Marx and Engels paid great attention to drafting the platform of the International on the national question. They substantiated the tactics of the international proletarian organisation in relation to the national liberation movement, regarding the support of the working class for the liberation struggle of the oppressed nations as one of the most important conditions of its own liberation. The correspondence of Marx and Engels reveals how much energy Marx spent on organising public meetings and gatherings in defence of the fighters for Poland’s independence. Unlike the Proudhonists, the leaders of the International regarded the demand that Poland should be reorganised on a democratic basis as an integral part of the struggle for the democratic transformation of Europe, in which the working class had a vital interest. Marx’s consistently internationalist standpoint on the Polish question was also reflected in his polemic with the English radical journalist Peter Fox, one of the leaders of the British National League for the Independence of Poland. Although supporting Poland’s national sovereignty, Fox shared the Francophile attitudes of the English radicals and the illusions of the Right bourgeois-aristocratic wing of the Polish national movement concerning ‘assistance’ to it from the ruling circles of the Western powers (see Marx’s letters to Engels of 10 December 1864, 25 February and 4 March 1865, to Jung of 13 April 1865, and others). In his polemic with Fox Marx argued that the Polish revolutionaries should look not to the Western powers, who had treacherously betrayed the interests of insurgent Poland, but to the European proletariat, its true and selfless ally. ‘In the opinion of Marx and Engels, the prime role in the liberation of Poland should be played by the united efforts of the representatives of the Polish national liberation and Russian revolutionary movements, their joint struggle against the common foe—Tsarist autocracy.

An important contribution to the elaboration of the national and colonial question and the substantiation of the principles of proletarian internationalism was made by Marx and Engels in connection with determining the International’s position on the liberation struggle of the Irish people. Their letters that deal with this problem formulate a number of fruitful ideas concerning the interdependence and inter-connection of the national liberation and proletarian movements. The national liberation of Ireland and the revolutionary democratic transformation of its agrarian structure was regarded by Marx as an essential prerequisite for the successful development of the British proletarian movement and for ridding the British workers of reformist and chauvinistic prejudices. In his letters to Engels of 2 and 30 November 1867, he set out the basic demands of his proposed programme on the Irish question, which he trusted would receive the support of the British working class. The main ones were: Irish self-government and independence from Britain, an agrarian revolution and the introduction of protective tariffs to ensure the country’s economic independence. Noting that the British ruling classes had virtually established colonial rule in Ireland, introducing the practice of ‘clearing’ estates, i.e. evicting Irish peasants from the land in the interests of English landlords and capitalists, Marx in a letter to Engels described this as a blatant manifestation of national enslavement mixed with social oppression: ‘In no other European country has foreign rule assumed this form of direct expropriation of the natives’ (p. 461).

On the initiative of Marx the General Council of the International conducted a campaign of support for the Irish people, while Marx himself in his public statements constantly defended the fighters for Irish independence, the Fenians. He stressed that the activity of these petty-bourgeois revolutionaries reflected the protest by the mass of the peasantry against the policy of eviction from the land, and also the discontent of the urban poor with the colonial regime. Describing Fenianism, Marx pointed out that it ‘is characterised by socialist (in the negative sense, as directed against the appropriation of the soil) leanings and as a lower orders movement’ (p. 486).

At the same time Marx and Engels were clearly aware of the weaknesses of Fenianism and emphasised that conspiratorial, adventurist tactics, and the use of terroristic methods of struggle did harm to the national liberation movement and prevented the establishment of international unity of action between the British proletariat and the Irish working people (see Marx’s letters to Engels of 28 November and 14 December 1867 and of Engels to Marx of 29 November and 19 December 1867).

Commenting on the importance of the struggle to liberate Ireland and the participation of English workers in this struggle expressed in the letters of Marx and Engels, Lenin wrote in 1914: ‘In the Irish question, too, Marx and Engels pursued a consistently proletarian policy, which really educated the masses in a spirit of democracy and socialism. Only such a policy could have saved both Ireland and England half a century of delay in introducing the necessary reforms, and prevented these reforms from being mutilated by the Liberals to please the reactionaries’ (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, Moscow, 1977, pp. 441-42).

The correspondence of Marx and Engels illustrates Marx’s truly colossal work on his main life’s work, Capital. In a number of cases letters alone enable us to ascertain precisely what problems of economic theory were of interest to him at this or that point in time, to date the different preliminary versions of Capital and to determine the nature of non-extant manuscripts. From the letters we can get an idea of the way in which Engels helped Marx during the writing of Capital, of their constant exchange of views on problems of political economy, and of Engels’ part in collecting factual material, determining the specific features of capitalist production and the influence of the economic situation, crises, etc., on it (see, for example, Engels’ letters to Marx of 12 April 1865, 26 and 27 August 1867 and others).

Aware of the role that his work would have to play in the development of scientific socialism and the proletarian movement, Marx devoted all his energies to it, ‘studying by day and writing by night’. ‘I have not an hour to spare,’ he wrote during this period (pp. 263 and 214). Marx hoped to ‘deal the bourgeoisie a theoretical blow from which it will never recover’ (letter to Carl Klings of 4 October 1864). Explaining to Ludwig Kugelmann the reasons for his refusal to attend the Geneva Congress of the International, Marx wrote on 23 August 1866: ‘I consider that what I am doing through this work is far more important for the working class than anything I might be able to do personally at any congrès quelconque [congress whatsoever].’

In January 1866 Marx began to prepare Volume One of Capital for publication on the basis of the manuscripts of 1863-65. At first he assumed that it would contain the first two books ‘The Process of Production of Capital’ and ‘The Process of Circulation of Capital’, but already in the course of the work he decided that it would contain only the first book. And although he himself wrote that he had begun recopying it and ‘polishing the style’ (Marx to Engels of 13 February 1866), much more than that was involved. Some chapters were considerably expanded by introducing new material. Thus, for the sections on the working day, machinery and the general law of capitalist accumulation, Marx made extensive use of factual data in the recently published Blue Books (containing the reports of parliamentary commissions, such as the Children’s Employment Commission), about which he informed Engels on 21 July 1866 and in a number of other letters (p. 296).

The extreme exhaustion resulting from his scientific work and the performance of his numerous duties as a leader of the International and the constant material hardships had a serious effect on Marx’s health. As can be seen from many letters, the preparation of the manuscript of the first volume of Capital for the publishers was frequently interrupted by acute bouts of ill health which forced Marx to put aside the work. ‘Dear Mr Kugelmann, you can believe me when I tell you there can be few books that have been written in more difficult circumstances,’ Jenny Marx confided in Kugelmann in a letter of 24 December 1867, ‘and I am sure I could write a secret history of it which would tell of many, extremely many unspoken troubles and anxieties and torments’ (p. 578). Nevertheless, in November 1866 Marx was able to send the first part of the manuscript to Hamburg, and on 2 April 1867 he informed Engels that he had completed the book and would take the manuscript to the publisher himself in a few days’ time.

The Marx-Engels correspondence from May to August 1867 reflects the work of proof-reading the first volume. Marx systematically sent sheets of print to his friend in Manchester. Thus Engels was the first reader and most competent reviewer of Marx’s great masterpiece. After reading the greater part of it, he congratulated the author on elucidating the most complex economic problems ‘simply and almost sensuously merely by arranging them suitably and by placing them in the right context’ (p. 405). ‘The theoretical side is quite splendid,’ Engels remarked in his letter of 1 September 1867, adding: ‘The résumé on the expropriation of the expropriators is most brilliant and will create quite an effect.’

At the same time Engels made certain suggestions for improving the structure of the book and expounding a number of questions. In this respect, his letters to Marx of 16 and 26 June and 23 August and Marx’s letters to Engels of 3, 22 and 27 June and 24 August 1867 are of considerable interest. Taking account of Engels’ suggestions, Marx wrote a special appendix on the form of value.

Marx greatly appreciated Engels’ opinion of Capital. He wrote: ‘That you have been satisfied with it so far is more important to me than anything the rest of the world may say of it’ (p. 383). A striking document revealing the collaboration between the two great thinkers and revolutionaries, and a moving testimony to Marx’s profound gratitude to his friend, is Marx’s letter to Engels written on 16 August 1867 at 2.0. a.m. when he had just finished correcting the last sheet of Volume One of Capital. ‘So, this volume is finished. I owe it to you alone that it was possible! Without your selfsacrifice for me I could not possibly have managed the immense labour demanded by the 3 volumes. I embrace you, full of thanks!’

The publication of Volume One of Capital (September 1867) became an outstanding event in the history of human thought. As Lenin said, in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and particularly in Capital Marx ‘revolutionised’ political economy (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, Moscow, 1978, p. 49). Volume One of Capital contains a thorough analysis and explanation of the essence of capitalist exploitation, reveals and expounds the economic laws of the motion of bourgeois society and shows the inevitability of capitalism being replaced by a new social system as a result of a revolution carried out by the working class. In this work Marx gave the proletariat a mighty ideological weapon in its struggle for the socialist transformation of society. ‘Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism,’ stressed Lenin (Collected Works, Vol. 19, Moscow, 1977, p. 28). History has confirmed the correctness of Marx’s comparison of Volume One of Capital with ‘the most terrible missile that has yet been hurled at the heads of the bourgeoisie (landowners included)’ (p. 358).

The letters included in this volume also deal with the steps taken by Marx and Engels to popularise Volume One of Capital and its main ideas. On 27 April 1867 Engels wrote to Marx: ‘I am convinced that the book will create a real stir from the moment it appears, but it will be very necessary to help the enthusiasm of the scientifically-inclined burghers and officials on to its feet and not to despise petty stratagems.’ To attract attention to Capital Marx and Engels sent copies to their comrades and acquaintances, circulated notices through the publisher Otto Meissner announcing its publication, wrote reviews for various press organs and published extracts from the preface to Volume One in various periodicals.

Engels played a most important part in propagating Volume One of Capital. In order to thwart a possible ‘conspiracy of silence’ by bourgeois scholars, Engels suggested attacking ‘the book from the bourgeois point of view’. Marx fully approved of his friend’s plan, describing it as ‘the best tactic’ (p. 427).

Engels prepared a series of brilliantly written reviews for liberal and democratic newspapers (see present edition, Vol. 20). Their publication made it impossible for bourgeois ideologists to ignore Capital and helped to expose attempts to belittle the importance of Marx’s work and distort its content.

However, the main aim behind all the efforts by Marx and Engels to disseminate and propagate Capital was to equip the working-class movement with a revolutionary economic theory, to introduce workers to truly scientific ideas concerning ways of getting rid of capitalist exploitation. It is no accident that in his letter of 30 November 1867 Marx asked Kugelmann to explain to Liebknecht ‘that it really is his duty to draw attention to my book at workers’ meetings’. Engels in his turn wrote to Hermann Meyer on 18 October 1867: ‘I hope you will be able to bring Marx’s book to the attention of the German-American press and of the workers. With the 8-hour-agitation that is in progress in America now, this book with its chapter on the working day will come at just the right time for you over there, and, in other respects too, it is likely to clarify people’s minds on a variety of issues.’ Other letters in this volume also testify to the true party concern for the working-class movement and the practical application of the conclusions of Marx’s economic theory.

The correspondence of Marx and Engels for this period shows what great importance they attached to the publication of Capital in other languages. Already on 31 July 1865, when the book was only being prepared for publication, Marx expressed the idea of making an English translation straightaway from the proofs of the German text. Subsequently, Marx and Engels returned frequently to the discussion of this question, looking for a translator and a publisher (see Engels’ letters to Marx of 24 June and 23 August 1867; Marx’s letters to Engels of 27 June and to Kugelmann of 11 October 1867 and 6 March 1868). Unfortunately, the English edition of Volume One of Marx’s main work did not come out during his lifetime.

At the same time efforts were made to prepare a French translation of Volume One. Marx believed that a French edition of Capital would help the French workers to realise how invalid Proudhon’s reformist projects were for solving the social question. ‘I consider it to be of the greatest importance to emancipate the French from the erroneous views under which Proudhon with his idealised petty-bourgeoisie has buried them,’ he wrote to Ludwig Büchner on 1 May 1867. The search for a translator and publisher, as several letters show (including those of Marx to Engels of 28 November 1867 and to Victor Schily of 30 November 1867), turned out to be no easy matter in this case too. Marx was not able to realise his intention of bringing out a French translation of Volume One of Capital until 1872-75.

The publication of Volume One of Capital was, as Marx intended and the publisher insisted, to be followed by that of the two other volumes. Marx immediately set about revising his manuscripts of the second and third books of Capital, elaborating certain problems in greater detail as he went along. Thus, in his correspondence with Engels the question of the replacement of fixed capital is discussed (pp. 409-13); ‘for the chapter on ground rent’ (pp. 507-08) Marx asks Engels for help in selecting books and consultations on agro-chemistry, etc. ‘We must keep a close watch on the recent and very latest in agriculture...,’ he writes to Engels on 25 March 1868.

Marx showed a rare conscientiousness in his studies. Again and again he would return to what might appear to be sufficiently studied problems, making use of new material. This was one of the reasons for the delay in the preparation of the subsequent volumes of Capital. It was Engels who completed this task after Marx’s death on the basis of Marx’s manuscripts.

A subject of constant attention for Marx and Engels during the period under review was not only the state and level of development of the working-class movement in different countries, but also the general economic and political position of these countries, and the international situation. All this had to be taken into account in elaborating the tactics of the international working-class movement at different stages. Therefore, many of the letters in this volume contain a description of the most important events that took place during these years in Europe and beyond the Continent, new phenomena in economics, including those related to the economic crisis of 1866, and in political life. Marx and Engels discussed with each other and their acquaintances the details of the struggle of the political parties in England, the symptoms of the imminent bankruptcy of the Bonapartist regime in France, the situation in Germany produced by the growing rivalry between Prussia and Austria, Prussia’s victory in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the first steps to carry out Bismarck’s plan for uniting the country by ‘blood and iron’. The founders of Marxism made a thorough examination of the alignment of forces in the international arena, and of the positions of the European powers in the conflicts that followed one after another (the Luxemburg crisis of 1867, the international complications arising from the Rome expedition of Garibaldi and his followers, the Crete uprising, etc.) and testified to the growing danger of a new war. The assessments made by Marx and Engels of all these events are remarkable for their historical accuracy and depth. They were based on a dialectical-materialist analysis of the phenomena in question, which made it possible to reveal their class roots and essence, to expose the contradictory aspects, to determine the possible consequences and to conclude from this what tasks confronted the working class.

Marx and Engels made a close study of the course of the US Civil War, which entered its final stage during this period. Their letters contain assessments of military operations and forecasts on the future development of events, a profound “ analysis of which enabled Marx and Engels to conclude that things were coming to a head and that the economic, moral and political advantages of the North would lead to the defeat of the slave-owning South.

The revolutionising influence of the US Civil War on the development of the democratic and working-class movement was obvious to Marx and Engels. At the same time they also saw the limitations of the bourgeois democracy of the Northern states, and also the anti-democratic, sometimes downright counterrevolutionary trends in the policies of the bourgeois ruling circles of the North. Criticising President Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, Marx and Engels noted that his policies reflected the desire of the big bourgeoisie in the North to ally with the defeated planters of the Southern states, and to continue the system of racial discrimination against the ‘liberated’ Black people, etc. Engels wrote to Marx on 15 July 1865 that renewed hatred towards blacks was ‘coming out more and more violently’ and that Johnson ‘is relinquishing all his power vis-à-vis the old lords in the South.... Without coloured suffrage nothing can be done, and Johnson is leaving it up to the defeated, the ex-slaveowners, to decide on that. It is absurd.’ That is why when Johnson was defeated in the 1866 elections Marx gave the main reason for this in a letter to François Lafargue in a single sentence: ‘The workers in the North have at last fully understood that white labour will never be emancipated so long as black labour is still stigmatised’ (p. 334).

This statement by Marx is yet further confirmation that the events of his day, including questions of international politics, were seen by him and Engels primarily from the viewpoint of the interests of the revolutionary proletariat. Already during the founding of the International Marx called on the working class to proclaim its own independent policy opposed to that of the ruling classes. In his letter of 25 February 1865 to Engels he emphasized: ‘The working class has its own foreign policy, which is most certainly not determined by what the middle class considers opportune.’

It was from this standpoint that Marx and Engels elaborated the tactics of the working class in connection with the growing threat of war in Europe. They condemned with severity the wars unleashed by the ruling classes for territorial, dynastic and anti-popular ends, and linked the struggle against such wars and against militarism in general with the liberation movement of the proletariat against the capitalist exploitatory system. It is no accident that when the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 broke out, Marx did his utmost to see that the International dissociated itself from the aggressive, expansionist tendencies introduced by the ruling circles of Germany and Italy into the struggle for the national unification of these countries, which was objectively progressive in the given historical situation. Marx and Engels saw these tendencies as a source of further aggravation of international contradictions, of fresh military conflicts. They predicted that the war of 1866 would be fraught with new, even more extensive military conflicts, first and foremost between Prussia and France. In a letter to Engels of 27 July 1866 Marx stressed that the end of the war would not lead to a lasting peace in Europe. ‘That we shall soon be back to bashing is clear enough,’ Engels replied to him on 6 August 1866. All this required the further mobilisation of the forces of the working class for the struggle against the threat of war.

Criticising the pacifist illusions of the bourgeois-democratic League of Peace and Freedom, Marx and Engels at the same time supported the idea of joint action by the working class with all truly anti-militarist forces prepared to stand up for peace between nations in deeds and not just in words. Guided by Marx the International tirelessly carried on an energetic struggle for peace, consistently denouncing the foreign policy and diplomacy of the ruling classes in the capitalist countries.

From this volume it is clear that from 1864 to 1868 Marx and Engels continued to study the natural and social sciences, in particular world history, philology, ethnography and philosophy. Marx’s letter to Engels testifying to Marx’s interest in higher mathematics and his study of differential calculus was written at the end of 1865. In their letters Marx and Engels exchange views on books they have read, talk about discoveries in various spheres of science and assess new scientific hypotheses (see, for example, pp. 7-8, 184-85, 212, 232, 291-92, 304-05, 320-25, 495, 547-49, 557-59).

Their letters show the leaders of the proletariat to be men with an extraordinarily wide range of interests, capable of discerning and assessing fruitful ideas and discoveries marking the steady advance of science. These discoveries, as Marx and Engels so rightly assumed, served as further proof of the correctness of the proletarian revolutionary world outlook and dialectical-materialist views on the development of nature and society. Thus, in the research on the social system of ancient and mediaeval Germany by the German historian Georg Maurer, Marx saw the ‘Mark theory’ as factual confirmation of the view, expressed earlier by Marx himself, that communal property in land came first, that everywhere it preceded the emergence of private property in land (see his letter to Engels of 14 March 1868). The striving of Marx and Engels to make full use of the latest achievements of the various sciences shows that Marxism, both during its formation and throughout its subsequent development, rested on the finest achievements of human thought.

The biographical material contained in the letters in this volume gives a clear picture of the great thinkers and revolutionaries, and enables the reader to form a clear idea of the conditions in which they lived and struggled and the characteristic features of the theoretical and practical activity at the time when, after the founding of the International, they virtually became the leaders of the mass international proletarian movement. An important document in this respect that supplements the correspondence, is Marx’s ‘Confession’ (answers to questions in a semi-humorous questionnaire) which reveals the richness and integrity of his personality (see Appendices).

From the material in the volume it is clear that both Marx and Engels were extremely high-principled and unwavering on scientific and political questions, yet possessed the necessary flexibility in solving the urgent tasks of the working-class movement, and also that they were exceptionally modest and lacked any trace of personal vanity. Marx who frequently wrote that the whole burden of the leadership of the International lay virtually on him, stated in a letter to Liebknecht of 21 November 1865 that he could not read out his report on the German working-class movement at the London Conference because, as he wrote, ‘I was too personally introduced in it’. Resolute and high-principled in criticising the errors of friends and comrades, Marx and Engels were always ready to encourage and support them and to come to their assistance. On 8 December 1864 Marx wrote to Engels: ‘Apropos Liebknecht... I have sent him money several times in the course of the last six months and now I want to send his wife something ... since I know they are in dire straits. I would appreciate it if you would make a contribution, too.’

Marx’s service to the cause of the working class is exemplary. In a letter to Kugelmann of 9 October 1866, for example, he writes that if he were prepared ‘to take up a practical trade’ he could dispose of his pecuniary troubles entirely. But Marx never strove for personal well-being, although the hardships endured by his family caused him no little suffering. ‘Working for the cause’, for the party, for the liberation of the working class and the whole of the working people, that was Marx’s aim throughout his life. ‘I laugh at the so-called “practical” men and their wisdom,’ he wrote on 30 April 1867 to Sigfrid Meyer, admitting what sacrifices the writing of Capital had cost him. ‘If one wanted to be an ox, one could, of course, turn one’s back on the sufferings of humanity and look after one’s own hide. But I should really have thought myself unpractical if I had pegged out without finally completing my book....’ And to his future son-in-law Paul Lafargue Marx wrote: ‘You know that I have sacrificed my whole fortune to the revolutionary struggle. I do not regret it. Quite the contrary. If I had to begin my life over again, I would do the same’ (p. 308).

The letters in this volume supplement the works written by Marx and Engels in the period in question. They provide an important source for studying Marxist ideas and the creative and revolutionary biographies of Marx and Engels, and for elucidating their leading role in the development of the working-class liberation movement at the stage when the foundations of the international proletarian struggle for socialism were being laid.

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Volume 42 contains 344 letters from Marx and Engels, of which 159 are published in English for the first time and 185 were published earlier, most of them in part only. These publications are mentioned in the Notes. Of the 12 items included in the Appendices, two were written in English and the rest are published for the first time in this language.

During the work on the text of the volume and the notes and indexes to it the dating of some of the letters was established more accurately as a result of additional research. The two letters from Marx to Engels of 6 February 1865, printed earlier as independent ones, are published in this volume as one letter.

Obvious slips of the pen are corrected without comment. Proper names, geographical names and individual words contracted by the authors are given in full, except when these contractions were made for the sake of conspiracy or cannot be deciphered. Defects in the manuscript are indicated in the footnotes and passages with missing or illegible words are marked 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 given in square brackets. Passages crossed out by the authors are reproduced in the footnotes only in cases where there is a significant discrepancy. If a letter is a rough copy or a draft, a postscript to a letter of another person, or a fragment quoted elsewhere, this is marked either in the text itself or in the Notes.

Foreign words and expressions are retained in the form in which they were used by the authors with a translation where necessary in the footnotes and are italicised (if underlined by the authors, they are given in spaced italics). English words and expressions used by Marx and Engels in texts originally written in German, French and other languages are printed in small caps. Longer passages written in English in the original are placed in asterisks. Some of the words are now somewhat archaic or have undergone changes in usage. For example, the term ‘nigger’, which has acquired generally—but especially in the USA—a more profane and unacceptable status than it had in Europe during the 19th century.

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.

The volume was compiled, the text prepared and the Preface, Notes and the Subject Index written by Vladimir Sazonov and edited by Lev Golman (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.C. C.P.S.U.). The Name Index, the Index of Quoted and Mentioned Literature and the Index of Periodicals were prepared by Natalya Kalennikova (Institute of Marxism-Leninism).

The translations were made by Christopher Upward and John Peet and edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Nicholas Jacobs (Lawrence & Wishart), Glenys Ann Kozlov, Lydia Belyakova, Elena Kalinina and Margarita Lopukhina (Progress Publishers), and Larisa Miskievich, scientific editor (Institute of Marxism-Leninism).

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