Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (43)

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Volume 43 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains their correspondence from April 1868 to July 1870. Chronologically it completes the period from 1864 to 1870, an important one in the history of Marxism and the international working-class movement, which laid the basis for Marxism’s great influence on the mass working-class movement. The years 1868-1870 witnessed the formation of the first workers’ parties in a number of countries and the establishment of socialist principles in the programme documents of the International Working Men’s Association (the First International). The Association’s activity during these years took place against the background of the growing class struggle, the aggravation of economic and social contradictions in Europe, the upsurge in the national liberation struggle of the Irish people, the crisis of the Second Empire and the imminent military conflict between Bonapartist France and Bismarck’s Prussia. The international situation was also made more tense as a result of the bourgeois revolution which began in Spain in 1868.

The material in this volume, like that of the preceding one, reflects the remarkably varied activity of Marx and the General Council of the International led by him, activity aimed at strengthening the unity of the working class and educating it in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. The letters illustrate Marx’s active participation in all the theoretical discussions which took place in the Council, in drafting the resolutions of the General Council and in preparing the congresses of the International Working Men’s Association. They also throw light on Marx’s and Engels’s work on the drafting and writing of documents for the International in 1868-1870 (published in vols 20 and 21 of the present edition). The correspondence makes clear the great extent to which Engels assisted Marx in leading the International. Marx systematically discussed all important questions with him, kept him informed of the course of discussions in the Council, and of its draft resolutions, and made use of his recommendations. Engels took an active part in working out the International’s tactics, explaining it in letters to eminent members of the working-class movement, in particular the Germans (Wilhelm Liebknecht and Wilhelm Bracke) and frequently defended the position of the International Working Men’s Association on various questions in the press.

In the history of the International, the 1868-1870 period was a time of ideological and organisational strengthening. The Association’s federations and sections were active in many European countries and the USA. In Britain it was the trade unions which provided its mass base. Trade unions as class organisations of the workers also began to take shape in other countries. ‘The International Association..., as a result of conditions on the continent, ... is beginning to become a serious power,’ Marx wrote in a letter to Engels of 7 July 1868 (see this volume, p. 63). After the adoption, in November 1864, of the ‘Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association’ and the ‘Provisional Rules of the Association’, Marx was faced with the task of drawing up a united theoretical programme for the international working-class movement and substantiating and openly proclaiming the principles of scientific socialism in the International’s programme. At the same time he saw clearly that before these principles could be assimilated by the various working-class national organisations a great deal of preparatory work in the press, at congresses and in the local sections would have to be done. ‘As the stage of development reached by different sections of the workers in the same country and by the working class in different countries necessarily varies considerably, the actual movement also necessarily expresses itself in very diverse theoretical forms,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 5 March 1869. ‘The community of action the International Working Men’s Association is calling into being, the exchange of ideas by means of the different organs of the sections in all countries and, finally, the direct discussions at the general congresses would also gradually create a common theoretical programme for the general workers’ movement’ (pp. 235-36). Marx was guided by the fact that the ideological and organisational unity of action of the working class should be formed on the basis of the real class struggle. He saw this as the way to overcome reformism and sectarianism in the working-class movement.

The correspondence shows that the Association’s success in this direction was due largely to Marx’s organisational talent, his ability in the course of everyday struggle to stimulate the class consciousness of the workers and lead them to an understanding of common theoretical and practical tasks. These tactics of Marx’s were a sure pledge of the victory of scientific communism over the sectarian trends in the working-class movement.

As the correspondence in this volume shows, in 1868-1870 the General Council of the Association continued as before to give material assistance and moral support to those taking part in the strike movement, which embraced broad sections of the working class in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland (pp. 82, 203-04, and 209-10). During these years international solidarity became a most important factor in the economic struggle of the working class. The organisation of help to strikers promoted the growth of the authority and popularity of the International Working Men’s Association among the masses (pp. 8, 350).

As before, Marx participated directly in the preparation of the congresses of the International and had a decisive influence on their work. He wrote the reports of the General Council to the Brussels (September 1868) and Basle (September 1869) congresses. Particularly noteworthy is Marx’s letter of 10 September 1868 to Johann Georg Eccarius and Friedrich Lessner, in which he outlined the tactics to be adopted by the General Council’s delegates to the Brussels Congress. Here Marx also explains the position of the working class on the question of war in the concrete historical situation at the end of the 1860s in connection with the imminent war between France and Prussia. Noting the insufficient organisation of the workers, Marx nevertheless considered it necessary to state clearly in the resolution to be adopted that ‘the congress protests in the name of the working class, and denounces those who instigate war’ (p. 94). The campaign for peace was becoming one of the programme aims of the international working-class movement, and its success depended largely on the international unity of the workers.

As the letters show, Marx and Engels expressed their complete satisfaction with the success of the struggle against Proudhonism at the Brussels Congress (p. 102). The adoption by the Congress of resolutions on the need to turn the land, mines, etc., into common property was a convincing victory for socialist principles over the petty-bourgeois views of the Proudhonists. Thus, the inclusion of the demand for the socialist reorganisation of society in the programme of the International became possible only as a result of progressive workers overcoming the petty-bourgeois world outlook. It is no accident that the bourgeois press began panic-stricken talk about the communist nature of the Congress’s decisions on property (pp. 101, 107).

As can be seen from the correspondence, Marx and Engels linked the demand to abolish private ownership of land very closely with the question of the workers’ ally in the countryside, the question of the attitude to small peasant property. It was precisely from this angle that the question was considered at the Basle Congress. On 30 October 1869 Marx wrote to Engels about the need for a differentiated approach by the working class to big and small land ownership (p. 364). In his reply to Marx of 1 November 1869 Engels agreed with his point of view and paid special attention to the heterogeneity of the peasantry, the existence, alongside the big peasant proprietors who exploit day labourers and peasant tenants, of middle and small peasant proprietors. Engels pointed out that the working class should adopt a flexible policy in relation to the poor sections of the peasantry, taking their interests into account (p. 365). These ideas of Engels’ were elaborated by him in greater detail in his preface to the second edition of The Peasant War in Germany at the beginning of February 1870 (see present edition, Vol. 21).

A number of letters published in this volume reflect the struggle waged by Marx, Engels and the General Council of the International against the disorganising activity of Bakunin and his supporters in the International, against Bakunin’s anarchist views on major questions of the theory and tactics of the workers’ movement. Bakuninism, a form of anarchism, expressed the protest of the petty bourgeoisie against capitalist exploitation and ruin. It reflected the mood of petty proprietors unable to find a real way of freeing themselves from capitalist oppression. In their works and letters Marx and Engels roundly criticised the theory and practice of Bakuninism, pointing out the harm which sectarianism caused to the working-class movement.

The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy set up in the autumn of 1868 in Geneva by Bakunin claimed ideological leadership of the International and at the same time an autonomous existence within it. The leaders of the Alliance hoped to use the International to propagate anarchist ideas and establish their influence throughout the working-class movement.

Bakunin’s plans encountered strong opposition from the General Council. After receiving the documents of the Alliance and its request for membership of the International Working Men’s Association, Marx deemed it necessary to refuse this request. In a letter to Marx of 18 December 1868 Engels also expressed his strong opposition to allowing the Alliance to join the Association. ‘This would be a state within the state,’ he wrote to Marx (p. 192). Engels’ proposals contained in this letter were included by Marx in the reply compiled by him on behalf of the General Council and entitled The International Working Men’s Association and the Alliance of Socialist Democracy in which he defended the principles of setting up workers’ organisations which ensured their unity and solidarity. In this ‘elaborate document the General Council declared the ‘Alliance’ to be an instrument of disorganisation, and rejected every connexion with it’ (p. 491).

In reply to the Alliance’s repeated request, Marx drew up a circular letter, The General Council of the International Working Men’s Association to the Central Bureau of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. This document was actually based on Marx’s letter to Engels of 5 March 1869. It contains criticism of the basic precept of the Bakuninist programme—the demand for ‘the political, economic and social equalisation of the classes’. Marx showed convincingly that the demand for the ‘equalisation of the classes’ was equivalent to the bourgeois socialists’ slogan about ‘harmony of capital and labour’ and fundamentally opposed to ‘the general tendency of the International Working Men’s Association—the complete emancipation of the working classes’ (p. 236).

The history of the General Council’s struggle against subsequent attempts by Bakunin and his supporters to disorganise the International Working Men’s Association and also lengthy criticism of the main points of Bakunin’s programme are to be found in Marx’s letter to Lafargue of 19 April 1870. Describing Bakuninism as a sectarian tendency alien to the working-class movement, Marx focuses his criticism mainly on two of Bakunin’s demands: the demand to abolish the right of inheritance, which was declared to be the point of departure of social revolution and the only way to abolish private property, and the renunciation of the political activity of the working class.

The theoretical weakness of Bakunin’s recipe, Marx pointed out, lay in the fact that he did not understand the objective link between the basis and the superstructure of capitalist society. ‘The whole thing rests on a superannuated idealism, which considers the actual jurisprudence as the basis of our economical state, instead of seeing that our economical state is the basis and source of our jurisprudence!’ (p. 490). Marx also stressed the political and tactical harm of Bakunin’s thesis. Proclaiming the abolition of the right of inheritance, Marx believed, would inevitably alienate the working class from its ally, the peasantry. This demand would be ‘not a serious act, but a foolish menace, rallying the whole peasantry and the whole small middle-class round the reaction’ (ibid.).

Marx also showed how mistaken was Bakunin’s demand that the working class should be restrained from taking any part in the political struggle. It misled the workers and prevented the adoption of an independent working-class policy, the growth of class consciousness and the formation of political parties of the working class (pp. 490-91).

As their correspondence shows, Marx and Engels focused their attention on the destiny of the international working-class movement.

With the creation of the North German Confederation in 1867 the German working class was faced with the task of closing its ranks and setting up an independent proletarian party. Its ties with the International were of great importance for the ideological and organisational development of the German working-class movement in the latter half of the 1860s. Marx, who performed the duties of the Corresponding Secretary for Germany from the moment of the founding of the International Working Men’s Association, was very closely linked with the German workers. Certain aspects of the activity of one of the German sections, that of Solingen, are revealed by Engels’ letter of 8 February 1870 to Karl Klein and Friedrich Moll.

A serious obstacle to educating the German workers in the spirit of scientific communism and proletarian internationalism was Lassalleanism. The correspondence published in this volume enables us to trace the way in which Marx, Engels and their supporters Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, who led the revolutionary wing of the German working-class movement, opposed the Lassallean programme and tactics. In his letter of 13 October 1868 to the President of the General Association of German Workers, J. B. Schweitzer, Marx gave an objective appraisal of Lassalle’s role in the German working-class movement. It was to Lassalle’s credit, Marx wrote, that he had revived ‘after fifteen years of slumber’ an independent working-class movement in Germany free from the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie (p. 132). But Lassalle’s essentially reformist programme was an eclectic one. His overestimation of setting up workers’ co-operatives with state assistance as a means to the social transformation of society (he viewed universal suffrage as the chief way of attaining this aim), his political orientation towards an alliance with Bismarck’s government in the matter of German unification, and the sectarian nature of the organisation created by him, were at variance with the aims of the German working-class movement and laid the foundations for the opportunist trend within it (pp. 132-34).

Marx noted that the leaders of the General Association of German Workers, afraid of losing their influence with the masses, had been forced to make important additions to Lassalle’s agitational demands. In particular, the programme adopted at the Hamburg Congress (August 1868) included the following points: ‘agitation for complete political freedom, regulation of the working day and international co-operation of the working class’, i.e. ‘the starting points of any “serious” workers’ movement’ (see Marx’s letter to Engels of 26 August 1868). The questions concerning the economic struggle, which Lassalle ignored (the staging of strikes, organisation of trade unions), were considered at the general German workers’ congress in Berlin, called by the leaders of the General Association of German Workers in September 1868. However, only representatives of the Lassallean trade unions were admitted to the Berlin Congress, which testified to a continuation of the former sectarian course. In the above-mentioned letter to Schweitzer of 13 October 1868, and many other letters, Marx criticised him strongly for these tactics which led to a split in the trade-union movement and for anti-democratic methods of leadership, as well as criticising the anti-democratic way he set up trade associations. Marx told Schweitzer that the organisation created by him,’suitable as it is for secret societies and sect movements, contradicts the nature of the trade unions’ (p. 134).

From the letters it is clear how carefully Marx and Engels followed the activity of Bebel and Liebknecht at this time, giving them constant advice and supporting their struggle against the Lassalleans to unite the proletarian masses. While he fully understood the need for co-operation with the petty-bourgeois German People’s Party against Prussian reaction, Liebknecht on a number of occasions conceded too much to this party; it was precisely this that provoked the strong criticism of Liebknecht’s actions by Marx and Engels (pp. 15-16, 38, 141).

Thanks to tireless agitation by Liebknecht and Bebel there was a shift to the left in the Union of German Workers’ Associations, which gradually freed itself from bourgeois influence an d drew increasingly close to the International. In a letter to Engels of 29 July 1868 Marx noted with satisfaction that at the forthcoming Congress of the Union of German Workers’ Associations in Nuremberg in September 1868 it was certain to join the International Working Men’s Association and adopt its programme (p. 75). Marx and Engels believed that this success should be consolidated and the prerequisites created for the formation of a proletarian party in Germany by a further break with Lassalleanism and the complete overcoming by the German workers of their ideological dependence on non-proletarian elements alien to them. ‘The dissolution of the Lassallean sect and, on the other hand, the severence of the Saxon and South German workers from the leading-strings of the ‘People’s Party’ are the two fundamental conditions for the new formation of a genuine German workers’ party,’ Marx wrote to Ludwig Kugelmann on 10 July 1869 (p. 313).

In their correspondence Marx and Engels recorded the rapid ‘process of the disintegration of specific Lassalleanism’, which speeded up the withdrawal of progressive workers from the General Association of German Workers (pp. 255, 304). A number of former Lassalle’s supporters (Wilhelm Bracke, Theodor York and others) agreed to the proposal made by Bebel and Liebknecht to call a general congress of German Social-Democrats. At this Congress, which took place in Eisenach from 7 to 9 August 1869, the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was founded. The creation of an independent workers’ party in Germany was a great victory for Marxism and for the ideas of the International in the German working-class movement (see Engels’ letter to Wilhelm Bracke of 28 April 1870, pp. 498-99). As Lenin pointed out later, in Eisenach a firm foundation was laid for ‘a genuinely Social-Democratic workers’ party. And in those days the essential thing was the basis of the party’. (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 298.)

A number of letters published in this volume reflect the desire of Marx and Engels to raise the level of the theoretical awareness of members of the German working-class movement by means of propagating in the press the ideas of scientific communism an d their criticism of Lassalleanism.

This volume also contains material concerning the preparation for publication of a short biography of Marx written by Engels (p. 76) and a new edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Peasant War in Germany, which Marx and Engels supplied with new prefaces. Marx had a very high opinion of Engels’ Preface to The Peasant War in Germany, which was published in Der Volksstaat : ‘Your introduction is very good. I know of nothing that should be altered or added...’ (p. 428).

The letters in this volume show how closely Marx and Engels followed the development of the working-class movement in France on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune. The deepening crisis of the Second Empire and the growth of revolutionary activity among the masses helped to extend the influence of the International in France. Within the French working class the characteristic Proudhonist renunciation of active forms of organising workers (economic and political) was gradually being overcome. There was a growing trend towards the emergence of a workers’ party. Alarmed by the growing influence of the International in the country, the French government tried to check the revolutionary movement with mass reprisals, and also to provoke premature action by the masses in order to strike a blow at the working class. Marx wrote to Engels on 18 November 1868: ‘In France things look very serious... The government wants to force the lads on to the streets so that chassepot and rifled cannon may then laisser “faire merveille”’ (p. 162).

In March and May of 1868 and June-July of 1870 the Bonapartist government organised three trials against the French sections of the International Working Men’s Association. Leaders of sections of the Association were arrested and accused of plotting against the Emperor. Noting the provocative character of the victimisation of French members of the International, Marx wrote to his daughter Jenny on 31 May 1870 in connection with the third trial, that the Bonapartist officials were busying themselves in Paris ‘to hatch a new complot, in which the “Intern. W. Ass.” is to play the principal part and where I, as ... “wirklicher geheimer Oberhauptchef” must of course put in my appearance’ (p. 525). He stressed that all the repressive acts of the Bonapartist government were merely leading to a growth in the International’s influence in France. ‘Our French members are demonstrating ad oculos the French Government the difference between a political secret society and a genuine workers’ association. No sooner had the government jailed all the members of the Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles etc., committees ... than committees twice as numerous announced themselves in the newspapers as their successors with the most daring and defiant declarations (and, as an added touch, with their private addresses as well). The French Government has finally done what we so long wanted it to do: transform the political question — Empire or Republic—into a question de vie ou de mort for the working class!’ (pp. 522-23).

As leader of the International Marx attached great importance to the consolidation of the truly proletarian elements in France, to their ideological and organisational strengthening. With his direct help and support the official founding of the Paris Federation of the International took place in Paris on 18 April 1870. In his letters to Paul Lafargue of 18 and 19 April 1870 Marx advised the leaders of the Federation to adopt firm class positions, not to allow sectarian tendencies and not to give way to the influence of the various petty-bourgeois Proudhonist and Bakuninist doctrines. ‘II faut éviter les “étiquettes” sectaires dans l’Association Internationale, he wrote. ‘Those who interpret best the hidden sense of the class struggle going on before our eyes—the Communists are the last to commit the blunder of affecting or fostering sectarianism’ (p. 485).

Marx’s and Engels’ letters about France included in this volume are full of hopes for a new outburst of the emancipation struggle of the working class, full of revolutionary optimism based on their belief in the inevitability of a crisis of the Bonapartist regime and major social changes, and full of the awareness that ‘the whole historic witches’ brew is simmering’ (p. 233).

The correspondence shows the deep and constant interest which Marx and Engels took in the problems of the British working-class movement. In this period, as before, Marx made use of the experience of the mass organisations of the British working class— the trade unions. Under his leadership the General Council of the International maintained constant connections with a number of the largest trade unions in Manchester, Birmingham and Salford, particularly during their struggle for the full legalisation of trade unions and their national unification. Marx linked the successful solution of these questions first and foremost with active struggle by rank-and-file trade-union members. ‘The squabble among the authorities of the trades unions,’ which in fact paralysed them for years, has at last been settled...,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 26 September 1868 in connection with the formation of the British Trades Union Congress, when the trade unions ‘have finally agreed on joint action’ (p. 114).

Some of the letters also contain criticism of the reformist leaders of the British trade unions who sought to solve social problems by means of reforms and compromises with the ruling classes (pp. 3-4, 253 and 394-95). However, the very course of the class struggle (strikes and the mass movement for electoral reform, etc.), and also the influence of the International, sometimes encouraged British trade unionists in practice to go beyond their socially pacifist and reformist ideas. This gave Marx a basis for collaborating with the trade-union leaders in the International Working Men’s Association up to the time of the Paris Commune. Simultaneously Marx fought uncompromisingly against their reformist views, urging them to rely on the masses.

However, the revolutionary tendencies which continued to exist in the British mass working-class movement were challenged as before by the strong reformist influence of the trade-union leaders. Explaining the failure of the first working-class candidates at the parliamentary elections in 1868, Marx and Engels pointed above all to the ideological and political dependence of the working class on liberal bourgeois leaders, to the fact that the working class did not have its own political party and its own programme. ‘Everywhere the proletariat are the rag, tag and bobtail of the official parties...,’ Engels wrote on 18 November 1868 (p. 163). Marx’s letters clearly show that the electoral defeat forced some of the London trade-union leaders who were members of the General Council to admit the soundness of his criticism and, to a certain extent, to agree with his view of the need for workers to act independently, to fight against them being turned into an appendage of the liberal bourgeoisie, ‘...the English too late but unanimously acknowledged that I had forecast literally for them, the ... highly amusing upshot of the elections,’ he wrote to Engels on 18 November 1868 (p. 161).

The letters tell the story of the International Working Men’s Association’s break with the trade-unionist newspaper The BeeHive, which had been the official organ of the General Council since 22 November 1864. Under the leadership of bourgeois liberals the newspaper adopted a conciliatory position, ignoring and distorting the documents of the International. On Marx’s initiative the General Council discussed the situation with The Bee-Hive in April 1870 and the newspaper ceased to be the International’s organ. ‘I denounced the paper as being sold to the bourgeois (S. Morley, etc.), mentioned particularly its treatment of our Irish resolutions and debates, etc.,’ Marx wrote to Engels on 28 April 1870 (pp. 497-98).

After the Basle Congress of the International the question of the abolition of large-scale land-ownership as an effective means of fighting poverty, a very topical question for Britain, was actively discussed in democratic circles and among the workers. Marx saw this as an opportunity to create in Britain an independent political workers’ organisation of a non-trade-union nature, an organisation whose programme would be originally based on the resolutions of the International’s congresses. Thus, the Land and Labour League was founded on 27 October 1869. Marx became an active member. Concerning the actual fact of the founding of the League Marx wrote to Engels on 30 October 1869: ‘The creation of the Land and Labour League (incidentally, directly inspired by the General Council) should be regarded as an outcome of the Basle Congress; here, the workers’ party makes a clean break with the bourgeoisie, nationalisation of land [being] the starting point’ (p. 364).

In the second half of the 1860s the growing national liberation movement in Ireland began to have a great influence on British social and political life.

Some of the letters in this volume give a detailed account of the course of the discussion on the Irish question which took place in autumn 1869 in the General Council on Marx’s initiative (pp. 371-72, 375-76, 386-87, 392-93) and was connected with the widespread campaign launched at that time in Britain for an amnesty for imprisoned Fenians. Marx was hoping in the course of this discussion to state in a resolution of the General Council the British working class’s internationalist attitude to its ally, the fighters for the national liberation of Ireland. Illness prevented him from realising this intention, however. Nevertheless, his point of view was reflected in other General Council documents, in particular, the ‘Confidential Communication’ (see present edition, Vol. 21) and in letters to active members of the working-class movement in Germany, France and the USA (see this volume, pp. 390-91, 449, 472-76). In these letters Marx elaborated the thesis that the abolition of the Irish people’s colonial enslavement and the granting to the Irish themselves of the right to decide their own fate was the most important condition for the emancipation of the working class in Britain. Thus he used the example of Anglo-Irish relations to illustrate a most important thesis in the national colonial question, namely, the community of interests between the participants in the national liberation struggle in the colonies and the workers’ movement in the metropolis, and their interaction as a major prerequisite for the emancipation of the working people both in the metropolis and in the colonies.

Ireland, a British colony, Marx explained in his correspondence, was the citadel of British landlordism. The landed aristocracy mercilessly exploited the Irish peasants. The colonial enslavement of Ireland was also an important source of the strength of the British bourgeoisie. Irish workers in Britain were forced to agree to any wage, thereby lowering the standard of living of British workers. This brought about a split in the working class of Great Britain and strengthened the position of the capitalists (pp. 473-75). To destroy the foundations of the rule of the British landed magnates and the financial and industrial bourgeoisie in Ireland would be to weaken the power of these classes in England itself. Consequently the liberation of Ireland would help the English working class considerably to attain its class aims (pp. 473-75). In this connection Marx wrote: ‘For a long time I believed it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy... Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. This is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general’ (p. 398).

Marx emphasised that the English working class ‘will never be able to do anything decisive here in England before they separate their attitude towards Ireland quite definitely from that of the ruling classes, and not only make common cause with the Irish, but even take the initiative in dissolving the Union established in 1801, and substituting a free federal relationship for it’ (p. 390). ‘Only by putting forward this demand was Marx really educating the English workers in the spirit of internationalism,’ stressed Lenin (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp . 149-50).

The internationalist ideas of Marx and Engels on the Irish question were the result of their deep study of the historical past and present condition of this country and the long history of Anglo-Irish relations. Engels wrote: ‘Irish history shows what a misfortune it is for one nation to subjugate another’ (p. 363).

The correspondence throws light on Engels’ work on his book on Irish history. The Franco-Prussian war which began in the summer of 1870 and the revolution which followed in Paris did not, however, allow him to complete this work.

A number of letters in this volume show Marx’s constant and profound interest in the development of the American workingclass movement. As the General Council’s Corresponding Secretary for the German language sections in the USA, Marx corresponded with representatives of the German workers in America. He urged them to struggle to overcome sectarianism and strive for the international unity of the American working-class movement and to draw it into the sphere of activity of the International. ‘A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (naturally, also, with the English and American workers who wish to join in) is the greatest thing you could undertake now. This must be done in the name of the “International“, he wrote to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt on 9 April 1870 (p. 476). Marx wrote with profound regret of the sudden death of William Sylvis, the President of the National Labor Union of the USA, of whose achievements he thought highly, particularly of his struggle to overcome national and local separatism in the American workingclass movement (p. 351).

Some of the letters in this volume also indicate the constant interest with which Marx and Engels followed the growth of the revolutionary movement in Russia. Marx’s letter to N. F. Danielson of 7 October, 1868 marked the beginning of regular correspondence between the founders of Marxism and the leaders of the Russian revolutionary democratic movement. During this period Marx was strongly aware of the need for more detailed knowledge of life inside Russia after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. A study of the socio-economic relations of this huge peasant country which had embarked on the path of capitalist development led Marx to feel ‘deeply convinced that a ... social revolution ... is irrepressible in Russia and near at hand’ (see Marx’s letter to Laura and Paul Lafargue of 5 March 1870). Marx was convinced that the victory of a popular revolution and the overthrow of tsarism in Russia would provide a powerful impetus for the development of the revolutionary movement throughout the world. In the concrete historical conditions of the late 1860s Marx regarded the victory of the revolutionary forces in Britain and Russia as one of the main and decisive conditions for the overthrow of capitalist society and the social reorganisation of Europe.

During this period Marx and Engels also established contact with the Russian revolutionary youth educated on the ideals of the great Russian revolutionary democrats N. G. Chernyshevsky and N. A. Dobrolyubov. Early in 1870 a Russian section of the International was set up in Geneva. Concerning this Marx informed Engels on 12 February 1870: ‘In Geneva, by the by, a new colony of exiled Russian students has grown up with a programme proclaiming opposition to pan-Slavism, which should be replaced by the “International”’ (p. 430). On 12 March 1870 the members of the Russian section, one of the organisers of which was N. Utin, sent a letter to London announcing its constitution. Inviting Marx to represent their section on the General Council, they declared themselves to be in full agreement with the principles of the International (pp. 480, 493). He readily agreed to their request. ‘Enclosed, a letter from the Russian colony in Geneva,’ he wrote to Engels on 24 March 1870. ‘We have admitted them; I have accepted their commission to be their representative on the General Council, and have also sent them a short reply...’(p. 462).

The propagation and dissemination of Marxism and the overcoming of petty-bourgeois Utopias in the working class were greatly assisted by the publication in September 1867 of Volume I of Marx’s Capital After it came out Marx continued to work on its second and third books, which he intended should form Volume II. In spite of his bad health and constant financial difficulties, Marx nevertheless believed that for him ‘there could never, from the outset, have been any question of ... taking over a business before ...’the ‘book was finished’ (p. 185).

In the summer of 1868 Marx embarked upon further intensive study in the British Museum library. Resuming his work on Volume II of Capital, he decided first and foremost to rewrite and expand the preliminary draft of the second book (Manuscript I). From the end of 1868 to the middle of 1870 he wrote a new version of the whole of second book of Capital, which he later called Manuscript II. In the Preface to Volume II Engels subsequently evaluated it as ‘the only somewhat complete elaboration of Book II...’ (see present edition, Vol. 36). It was at this time that Marx made use of The Position of the Working Class in Russia by V. V. Bervi (Flerovsky), published in 1869, for his work on Volume II of Capital. Marx considered Flerovsky’s work to be the most important socio-economic study of the condition of the workers after Engels’ book The Condition of the Working-Class in England (pp. 423-24). In this connection Marx began ‘to study Russian hammer and tongs’ (p. 551) and by the beginning of February 1870 had made considerable progress in the language.

Alongside his work on Book II of Capital, Marx paid considerable attention during this period to the study of problems relating to Book III. In his letter to Engels of 30 April 1868 Marx outlined his plan for the structure and main contents of the whole of Book III (pp. 21-25).

To be well-equipped with facts Marx continued to study world economic literature. Thus, in his letter of 7 October 1868 to N. F. Danielson he wrote that he could not prepare Volume II of Capital for the press ‘until certain official enquêtes, instituted during last year (and 1866) in France, the United States and England, have been completed or published’ (p. 123).

Marx made an intensive study of new material on agricultural development and agrarian relations in a number of countries. He sent various requests for the necessary literature to his comrades and his daughter Laura, who had moved to Paris after her marriage (pp. 9 and 97). Thus, Marx requested De Paepe to let him have the titles of the main works on the structure of land holding in Belgium and Belgian agriculture (p. 412). He wrote to Sigfrid Meyer, one of the leaders of the German and American working-class movement, on 4 July 1868 asking him to send him American newspapers from time to time. ‘In particular, it would be of great value to me,’ Marx wrote, ‘if you could dig up some anti-bourgeois material about land-ownership and agrarian relations in the United States.’ Marx needed this material, inter alia, for his polemic with the American economist H. Ch. Carey on the question of land rent. Engels’ letters of 9 and 19 November to Marx and Marx’s letter to Engels of 26 November 1869 contain a critical examination of Carey’s mistaken ideas, and also point out errors in Ricardo’s theory of.land rent. Marx and Engels substantiate their views on the emergence of land rent, quoting convincing examples and facts in support of their theory.

As can be seen from Marx’s letters, the agrarian system in Russia was of considerable interest to him in his treatment of the genesis of capitalist land rent in Book III of Capital In the middle of 1868 Marx embarked upon a careful study of Russian sources, in the belief that in ‘dealing with the land question, it has become essential to study Russian land-owning relationships from primary sources’ (Marx to Kugelmann, 27 June 1870).

Describing Marx’s studies of a large number of Russian sources in the 1870s, Engels noted later in the Preface to Volume III of Capital that according to Marx’s plan Russia ‘was to play the same role in the part dealing with rent in land that England played in Book I in connection with industrial wage-labour’ (see present edition, Vol. 37).

As well as continuing to elaborate economic theory Marx and Engels devoted considerable attention in this period to circulating Volume I of Capital and propagating its ideas. Some of the letters in this volume refer to the steps taken by Marx and Engels to popularise the work. Engels rendered great service in this respect. Thus, besides some reviews of the volume for German newspapers, in 1868 Engels also wrote a review for the English bourgeois journal The Fortnightly Review (see present edition, Vol. 20).

In a number of letters Marx and Engels touch upon reviews and comments by bourgeois economists on Volume I of Capital Here, alongside a critical appraisal of the views expressed by the authors of these reviews (‘specialist mandarins’, as Marx so aptly puts it) (p. 213), they set out in clear and concise form the most important theses of Marx’s economic theory (see, for example, Marx’s letter to Ludwig Kugelmann of 11 July 1868).

The main aim behind the efforts by Marx and Engels to disseminate the ideas of Capital was to equip the working class with a scientific revolutionary economic theory in its struggle to free itself from capitalist exploitation. Linking the elaboration of an economic theory very closely with practical aims, Marx attached great importance to the propagation of his views to a working-class audience. He delivered a lecture on wages for German workers in London, about which he wrote to Engels on 23 May 1868 (see p. 40). Engels constantly showed genuine concern for the fate of the working-class movement and the practical application of the conclusions of Marx’s political economy. He intended to write a popular brochure on the contents of Volume I of Capital for the workers (see Engels’ letter to Marx of 16 September 1868, this volume, p. 100).

The correspondence of Marx and Engels in this period also illustrates the great importance they attached to the publication of Capital in different languages (French, Russian and English). In October 1869 Charles Keller, a member of the Paris section of the First International, began work on a translation of Capital (pp. 399, 546), greatly assisted by Marx (p. 359). The work was not completed, however. One of the leaders of revolutionary Chartism, George Harney, a companion-in-arms and friend of Marx and Engels, offered his services for the publication of Volume I of Capital in English in New York (p. 276).

Marx was delighted to hear that his book was being translated into Russian (p. 130), and wrote on 7 October 1868 to one of the translators, N. F. Danielson. It was the first translation of Capital, and appeared in 1872.

The letters indicate the truly encyclopaedic knowledge possessed by Marx and Engels, the breadth and variety of their scholarly interests. During this period they devoted considerable attention to philosophical problems. In a number of letters Marx criticises Eugen Dühring and F. A. Lange for their deprecatory attitude to Hegelian dialectics.

In October-November 1868 Marx and Engels read and discussed in detail the manuscript of the book entitled Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit by the German leather-worker Joseph Dietzgen. They stressed Dietzgen’s considerable learning and his independent discovery of the laws of the materialist theory of knowledge. On 28 October 1868, in direct response to the impression which the manuscript had made upon him, Marx wrote: ‘He is one of the most gifted workers I know’ (p. 149).

The correspondence also bears witness to the constant interest which Marx and Engels took in the development of the natural sciences, physics, chemistry and biology, and their study of the most important discoveries in these areas (pp. 33 and 246). As can be seen from Marx’s letter to Engels of 18 November 1868, Marx was interested in the problem of the origin of life on earth in connection with research by the Viennese Professor Gustav Jäger and the German scientist Ernst Haeckel, followers of Darwin’s theory of evolution (p. 162).

In his letter to Kugelmann of 27 June 1870, Marx sharply criticised the book On the Workers’ Question by one of the so-called social Darwinists, F. A. Lange, who automatically transferred the law of the struggle for existence discovered by Darwin in the animal and plant world to the history of mankind. There is also sharp criticism of ‘social Darwinism’ in Marx’s letter to Paul and Laura Lafargue of 15 February 1869.

As before, linguistics remained the special sphere of Engels’ scientific interests. In spring 1869 he resumed his studies of the Friesian and Old Irish languages (pp. 247, 257, 410, 501, 514, 517-18).

The correspondence published in this volume contains extensive biographical material on Marx and Engels and gives a clear picture of their everyday life and struggle, their process of creation and their practical activity during this period, when they were in effect leading the mass international working-class movement. The letters fully reflect the growing friendship between the two men over the years, their constant collaboration both in the elaboration of theory and in leading the workers’ revolutionary struggle, and their touching affection for each other. For Marx Engels was the person with whom he shared his most intimate thoughts and new scientific ideas. Engels’ attachment to Marx extended to the members of his family, especially his daughters for whom he showed a truly paternal concern.

As the correspondence shows, Marx and Engels devoted considerable attention to the training and ideological education of progressive fighters from the working class. In the General Council and the administrative bodies of the International in the various countries Marx sought to create a firm backbone of proletarian revolutionaries. Under the direct influence of Marx, with the assistance of veterans of the working-class movement who had been members of the Communist League and taken part in the Revolution of 1848-49, such as Johann Becker, Johann Georg Eccarius, Friedrich Lessner, Karl Pfänder, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Victor Schily, young members of the working-class movement, such as César de Paepe, Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, were introduced to scientific socialism. The letters published show how patiently and determinedly Marx and Engels sought to educate their comrades-in-arms, helping them with advice, responding to their requests and criticising their errors and shortcomings.

An example of the considerate and comradely attitude of Marx and Engels to their friends and comrades-in-arms is the help which they gave to Eugene Dupont, a General Council member, when he was in great need after his wife died and he lost his job (p. 481). Marx also gave financial assistance to the German worker Eccarius (pp. 284-85).

The correspondence presents us with vivid portraits of Marx’s and Engels’ comrades-in-arms and friends, active members of the working-class movement, such as Friedrich Lessner, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Ernest Jones.

It also shows us the new generation of revolutionaries—Paul Lafargue; the French ethnographer Gustave Flourens, a man of unusual bravery and courage; the Russian naturalist and revolutionary Hermann Lopatin, whom Marx considered as ‘a very wide-awake critical brain’ (p. 530), and the young August Bebel. Marx and Engels spoke with affection and respect of the German chemist and Social-Democrat Carl Schorlemmer; of the English lawyer, member of the International and future translator of Volume I of Capital, Samuel Moore; the English geologist Dakyns, who joined the socialist movement under the influence of Marx and Engels; the German doctor Ludwig Kugelmann and others.

In addition to the correspondence there is Engels’ ‘Confession’ (answers to questions on a semi-humorous questionnaire) which reveals his personal merits, his warm sense of humour and his well-balanced personality.

* * *

Volume 43 contains 347 letters by Marx and Engels. The majority were written in German, 21 in English, 6 in French and several in a combination of two or three languages. Most of the letters are published in English for the first time; 125 letters have been published in English before, 87 of these in part only. All previous publications are indicated in the notes. Engels’ letter of 26 November 1868 to W. Holzenhauer is published here for the first time. The Appendices contain 11 letters and documents, which are published in English for the first time.

During work on the text and other sections of this volume the dating of certain letters was established more accurately as a result of additional research.

The text of earlier English publications has been checked and verified against the originals. Obvious errors have been silently corrected. Abbreviated proper names, geographical names and individual words are given in full, except when these abbreviations were made for conspiratorial reasons or cannot be deciphered. Defects in the manuscript are indicated in the footnotes, and passages where the text is lost or illegible are indicated by dots. If the context makes it possible to provide a hypothetical reconstruction of the lost or illegible passages, this is given in square brackets. Passages deleted by the authors are reproduced at the bottom of the page in cases where there is a significant discrepancy. The special nature of certain letters which were drafts or fragments reproduced in other documents is indicated either in the text itself or in the notes.

Foreign words and expressions in the text of the letters are retained in the form in which they were used by the authors, with a translation where necessary in the footnotes and italicised (if they were underlined by the authors they are italicised and spaced out).

English words and expressions used by Marx and Engels in texts originally written in German, French or other languages are printed in small caps. Whole passages originally written in English are marked by 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.

The numbering of the notes relating to one and the same fact or event in the texts of different letters is duplicated.

The volume was compiled, the texts of the letters and notes prepared by Irina Shikanyan (letters from April 1868 to April 1869 inclusive) and Alexander Vatutin (letters from May 1869 to July 1870). The Preface was written by Irina Shikanyan and Alexander Vatutin. The volume was edited by Velta Pospelova.

The name index and the index of periodicals were prepared by Alexander Vatutin, the index of quoted and mentioned literature jointly by Irina Shikanyan and Alexander Vatutin (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The translations were done by John Peet (Lawrence & Wishart),