Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (44)

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

Volume 44 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains their correspondence from July 1870 to December 1873. These years marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of the international working-class movement. The proletarian revolution in Paris of 18 March 1871 resulted in the Paris Commune, the first working-class government in the history of mankind. This daring action was a milestone, ‘a new point of departure of world-historic importance’ (this volume, p. 137), ushering in a new phase in the struggle against capitalism.

The Commune and the changes taking place in the workingclass movement created a pressing need for setting up independent proletarian parties capable of leading the class struggle of the workers in the specific conditions of each country. The activity of Marx and Engels and the First International, which they led, was of major importance in preparing the ideological and organisational prerequisites for the formation of such parties.

The letters of Marx and Engels in this volume are indispensable for the study of the activity of the International Working Men’s Association at the final stage of its development.

In September 1870 Engels moved from Manchester to London, enabling him to have continuous personal contact with Marx. Engels was immediately made a member of the General Council of the International. Here his extraordinary ability as an organiser and leader of the international working-class movement was given full scope. The circle of people with whom Marx and Engels corresponded became much wider, and included such prominent members of the International as W. Liebknecht, A. Bebel, J. P. Becker, L. Frankel, F. Boite, P. Lafargue, F. A. Sorge, T. Cuno, L. Kugelmann, N. Utin (Outine), L. Pio, J. Mesa, F. Mora and E. Bignami, and also the democratic allies of the working class, E. Beesly, E. Oswald and T. Allsop. Marx and Engels also extended their contact with Russian revolutionaries at this time.

A large number of letters in this volume concern the FrancoPrussian War of 1870-71 and its consequences. In the situation which had arisen, the General Council of the International had to provide the proletariat, the French and German workers in particular, with a clear understanding of its tasks as a class. This was the purpose of the General Council’s Address on the FrancoPrussian War, written by Marx, which, as Engels put it, was intended to ‘teach the populus of all classes that nowadays the workers are the only ones to have a real foreign policy’ (p. 18). Marx and Engels were concerned above all to prevent the workers of the belligerent countries being deceived by chauvinist propaganda, to advance their solidarity and help progressive workers realise the need for international unity and action. In his letter to the German democrat Eugen Oswald of 26 July 1870 Marx expressed the belief that ‘a genuine power of resistance to the return of national antagonisms and the entire system of presentday diplomacy can only be found in the working class’ (p. 9).

During the first stage of the war, when it was of a defensive nature for Germany, Marx and Engels distinguished clearly between Germany’s national interests and the dynastic, territorial aims of Prussian Junkerdom and the German bourgeoisie. They warned the German workers that under the leadership of the Prussian militarists the war might turn into one of territorial aggrandisement against the French people.

In a letter to Marx of 15 August 1870 Engels formulated the tasks of the German Social-Democrats at the initial stage of the war as follows: ‘I think our people can: 1) join the national movement ... insofar and for so long as it is limited to the defence of Germany...; 2) at the same time emphasise the difference between German national and dynastic-Prussian interests; 3) oppose any annexation of Alsace and Lorraine...; 4) as soon as a non-chauvinistic republican government is at the helm in Paris, work for an honourable peace with it; 5) constantly stress the unity of interests between the German and French workers, who did not approve of the war and are also not making war on each other’ (p. 47).

At the end of August in a letter to the Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Marx and Engels, anticipating a change in the character of the war with the inevitable collapse of the Second Empire, foresaw the consequent necessity for the German workers to step up the struggle against the annexationist aims of the Prussian militarists and the German bourgeoisie (pp. 79, 82).

This prediction soon proved to be correct. On 4 September 1870 the Second Empire collapsed and a new stage began in the Franco-Prussian War. The General Council’s Second Address on the Franco-Prussian War was designed to explain the changed situation and outline the new tasks of the international working class. Many letters by Marx and Engels also dealt with these matters. In defining the new tactical line of the International now that the war had lost its defensive character for Germany, Marx and Engels urged the proletariat of the European countries to resist resolutely the annexationist policy of the ruling classes (see, for example, Engels’ letter to Marx of 12 September 1870 and Marx’s letter to Engels of 14 September 1870).

Under Marx’s guidance the International conducted a campaign for recognition of the French Republic. ‘I have set everything in motion here for the workers to force their government to recognise the French Republic. (The series of meetings begins on Monday),’ Marx wrote to Engels on 10 September 1870 (p. 70). In this connection ‘detailed instructions’ were sent to Belgium, Switzerland and the United States (p. 77).

A considerable number of letters analyse the strategic plans of the belligerents, the course of the military operations, and their possible outcome. As early as 22 July 1870 Engels, in a letter to Marx, predicted the likelihood of the military defeat of Bonapartist France. In Engels’ letters one can trace how he wrote his series of articles Notes on the War, which made a new contribution to Marxism’s theory of war (see present edition, Vol. 22).

The letters of Marx and Engels concerning the Paris Commune give this volume special importance.

The proletarian revolution in France was the result of the development of the whole workers’ movement of the 1860s, which was profoundly influenced by the International Working Men’s Association. The Commune, Engels wrote in a letter of 12-17 September 1874 to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, was undoubtedly a brain child of the International (present edition, Vol. 45).

From the very first days of the Paris Commune Marx set about studying its progress. Replying on 12 April 1871 to Ludwig Kugelmann, who had failed to understand the essence of the Paris uprising, comparing it with the action by the petty-bourgeois Montagne on 13 June 1849 in France, Marx explained the great historic significance of the Commune as the first attempt in history to destroy the military-bureaucratic state machine of the bourgeoisie. The destruction of this machine, Marx stressed, was an essential condition for the victory of a truly popular revolution on the Continent (this volume, p. 131). Marx wrote admiringly of the heroism and self-sacrifice of the Communards: ‘What resilience, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians! ... However that may be, the present rising in Paris—even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine and vile curs of the old society—is the most glorious deed of our Party since the June insurrection in Paris’ (ibid., pp. 131-32).

In his letters to Kugelmann of 12 and 17 April 1871 Marx for the first time expounded his understanding of the Paris Commune as the first attempt at a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx took advantage of every opportunity to contact the leaders of the Commune to help them in tactical and strategic matters. Thus, his letter of 13 May 1871 to Léo Frankel and Louis Eugène Varlin contained a plan for concrete revolutionary action and also a warning about the preparations for a counter-revolutionary attack within Paris, about the agreement against the Commune between Bismarck and the Versaillists (this volume, pp. 148-49). Already at the beginning of April, soberly assessing the alignment of forces, Marx realised that the chances of a victorious outcome for the revolution were rapidly diminishing. On 6 April in a letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht he elaborated on the mistakes made by the Communards: ‘It seems the Parisians are succumbing. It is their own fault but a fault which really was due to their too great honnêteté. The Central Committee and later the Commune gave that mischievous avorton, Thiers, time to consolidate hostile forces, in the first place by their folly of not wanting to start a civil war— as if Thiers had not already started it by his attempt at forcibly disarming Paris, as if the National Assembly ... had not immediately declared war on the Republicl Secondly, in order that the appearance of having usurped power should not attach to them they lost precious moments (they should immediately have advanced on Versailles...) by the election of the Commune, the organisation of which, etc., cost yet more time’ (p. 128).

At a time when Thiers’ government and the ruling classes of other states sought to surround the Commune with a wall of lies and slander, Marx and Engels considered it their duty to explain to the workers of all countries the historic significance of the events taking place in Paris. ‘The true character of this grand Paris revolution has been explained to workers everywhere in letters from various secretaries to sections on the Continent and in the United States,’ Marx wrote to Frankel (p. 142). ‘I have written hundreds of letters on behalf of your cause to all the corners of the earth where we have branches’ (p. 149).

After the defeat of the Commune Marx and Engels launched a vigorous campaign in the International to give assistance to the Communards. The letters show how much sympathy, attention and concern were shown by Engels, Marx and the members of his family to Commune refugees who fled to London or hid in France (Marx to Oswald, 21 July 1871; Marx to Friedrich Boite, 25 August 1871; Jenny Marx (daughter) to Kugelmann, 21-22 December 1871, and others).

One of the main aims of the International after the fall of the Commune was to make its historic experience widely available. For Marx the main objective was to analyse theoretically the lessons of the Commune and so turn spontaneous sympathy into the conscious desire and ability of the proletarian masses to carry its cause forward to victory. The Address entitled The Civil War in France, written by Marx on behalf of the General Council, was an important milestone in the elaboration of the programme and principles of the proletarian movement. On 28 July 1871 Engels wrote to the Italian socialist Carlo Cafiero that in this document the General Council had openly declared itself ‘in favour of communism’ (p. 184). The history of the writing, publication and dissemination of this programmatic work of Marxism is reflected in several letters (Marx to Kugelmann, 18 June 1871; Engels to Liebknecht, 22 June 1871; Marx to Sorge, 23 May 1872, and others).

The Paris Commune marked the high-point in the activity of the International Working Men’s Association and the beginning of a new stage in the history of the international workers’ movement as a whole. ‘The thunder of the cannon in Paris awakened the most backward sections of the proletariat from their deep slumber, and everywhere gave impetus to the growth of revolutionary socialist propaganda’ (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 143).

After the defeat of the Paris Commune the ruling classes instigated drastic reprisals against members of the International and its organisations. These were initiated by the French minister Jules Favre, who appealed to all European governments on 6 June 1871 to destroy the International. Marx and Engels fought resolutely against the persecution of the International, against attempts to distort its principles and aims and undermine its prestige. Against this background their letters to leading members of the International took on a special significance. In many cases they were essentially official documents of the General Council. Passages were often read out at meetings of sections and Federal Councils and sometimes published in the form of articles and reports in the working-class press. Thus the correspondence of Marx and Engels took on an importance as a means of disseminating the ideas of scientific socialism in the organisations of the Association and of educating proletarian revolutionaries.

After the Paris Commune Marx and Engels regarded as one of the International’s most important tasks the further elaboration of its political programme. The experience of the Commune made it possible to augment the socialist principles of the future social system proclaimed in the resolutions of the Brussels and Basle congresses, and specify the ways and means of carrying out the socialist transformation of society. The lessons of the Commune were generalised in the resolutions of the London Conference held in September 1871. Its convocation was necessary because, to quote Engels, there were ‘several important questions to deal with before proceeding further’ (p. 187). The Conference adopted an historic resolution on the creation in each country of an independent proletarian party, whose aim should be to prepare the working class for revolutionary battles for political power. Marx rated the importance of the Conference highly, noting that at this one ‘more was done than at all the previous Congresses put together’ (p. 220).

As the correspondence shows, Marx and Engels devoted much attention to explaining the importance of the London Conference resolutions. In a letter to Bolte of 23 November 1871, discussing the role of a proletarian party in the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx wrote: ‘The political movement of the working class naturally has as its final object the conquest of political power for this class, and this requires, of course, a previous organisation of the working class developed up to a certain point, which arises from the economic struggles themselves’ (p. 258).

The work of the London Conference took place amid an acute ideological struggle between the proletarian-revolutionary trend led by Marx and Engels, and Bakuninism. The Paris Commune had drawn a clear dividing line between the proletarian revolutionaries and the representatives of Bakuninist anarchism.

The Bakuninists furiously attacked the basic theses of the political programme set out in the resolutions of the London Conference. In their circular issued in Sonvillier in November 1871 they denied the need for the proletariat to gain political power, for the creation of a proletarian party and for discipline and centralisation, and demanded the ‘abolition of all authority’, suggesting as a practical step in this direction that the governing body of the International, the General Council, should be turned into a bureau for statistics and correspondence. On 2 January 1872 Engels wrote to Liebknecht with reference to the circular: ‘That is really the last straw and we shall now take action’ (p. 289). The Bakuninists were answered in the joint works by Marx and Engels mentioned in the letters, Fictitious Splits in the International and The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men’s Association (present edition, Vol. 23).

In their numerous letters to working-class activists in different countries Marx and Engels subjected the main theses of anarchism to criticism. They exposed the idealism of Bakunin, who regarded as the main source of all social evils not the exploiting nature of the social system, but the state, and who saw the abolition of the latter as the way to get rid of capitalism (Engels to Theodor Cuno, 24 January 1872, this volume, pp. 305-07); they emphasised that abstention from politics turned workers into the blind instrument of bourgeois politicians; and they demonstrated the untenability of the anarchist rejection of authority. Engels wrote: ‘...for the struggle we need to gather all our forces into a single band and concentrate them on the same point of attack. And when people speak to me about authority and centralisation as if they were two things to be condemned in all possible circumstances, it seems to me that those who talk like this, either do not know what a revolution is, or are revolutionaries in name only’ (Engels to Carlo Terzaghi, 14[-15] January 1872, this volume, p. 295). Marx and Engels condemned the Bakuninists’ denial of the need for a proletarian state. In a letter to Paul Lafargue of 30 December 1871 Engels showed for the first time, before writing his work On Authority, that the conditions of large-scale machine production insistently demanded state management and regulation. In the above-mentioned letter to Terzaghi he also drew attention to the experience of the Commune, which confirmed the need for the proletarian state to take measures in the struggle against counter-revolution. ‘It was the lack of centralisation and authority that cost the life of the Paris Commune’ (p. 295).

In their letters to members of the International Marx and Engels argued that the organisational doctrines of anarchism were incompatible with the Rules and the very spirit of the International and were disorganising and splitting the movement at a time when solidarity and unity of action by the workers were vital in the face of the offensive mounted by the reactionary forces. Sending Lafargue in Madrid the section of the Fictitious Splits dealing with the functions of the General Council, Marx wrote in his covering letter: ‘...our Association is the militant organisation of the proletariat... To destroy our organisation just now would be to abdicate. Bourgeois and governments combined could ask for nothing more’ (p. 346). In the struggle against Bakuninism Marx and Engels consistently upheld the principles of proletarian party commitment. As one of the conditions for ensuring the unity of the international proletarian organisation Marx and Engels advanced the principle of party discipline, the bowing of the minority to the will of the majority, or, as Engels wrote, ‘the authority of the majority over the minority’ (p. 307).

In the summer of 1872 Marx and Engels began to receive information to the effect that the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, which the Bakuninists had declared dissolved, was in fact being retained as a strictly conspiratorial society. The existence within the International of a secret international organisation of Bakuninists with its own Rules and programme meant that Bakunin and his supporters were in practice attempting to split the International Working Men’s Association. ‘Bakunin retained the Alliance de la démocratie socialiste, which you know of from the Scissions, as a secret society in order to obtain control of the International,’ Engels wrote to Adolf Hepner on 4 August 1872 (p. 415).

Marx and Engels attached particular importance to exposing the Bakuninists to the workers of Spain and Italy, where their position was especially strong.

On Marx’s proposal the General Council on 11 June 1871 passed a resolution to convene a Congress of the Association at The Hague on 2 September 1872. It was to take stock of the International’s activity since the Basle Congress, incorporate the resolutions of the London Conference into the General Rules and Administrative Regulations, complete the drawing up of a political programme and put an end to the disorganising activity of the anarchists. In letters to Sorge and Kugelmann Marx stressed that the question of the life or death of the International would be decided at the Congress (pp. 398, 413).

The Congress was the scene of a fierce struggle between the supporters of the revolutionary proletarian line and the anarchist delegates, backed by the reformists. The latter joined with the Bakuninists, who were against public recognition as essential to the programme of the International, of the idea of winning state power by the proletariat and of the need to form mass political parties of the working class independent of the bourgeoisie. The resolution adopted was based on proposals put forward by Marx and Engels and their comrades-in-arms.

With the exacerbation of ideological differences after the Congress, Marx and Engels attached special importance to the widespread propagation of the Congress decisions and the struggle for their acceptance.

In fighting for international unity of the working class Marx and Engels were at the same time concerned to promote the development of the proletarian movement in individual countries.

They gave special attention to the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. In the period following the first proletarian revolution of 1871 Marx’s prediction that the centre of gravity of the working-class movement would shift from France to Germany proved to be true. In the workers’ press and in their letters Marx and Engels popularised the experience of this most advanced organised detachment of the proletariat. They applauded the brilliant defence of the principles of the Commune by their comrades-in-arms in Germany. ‘The German workers,’ Engels wrote to Liebknecht on 22 June 1871, ‘have behaved themselves quite splendidly in this last great crisis, better than anyone else. And Bebel has been an outstanding spokesman on their behalf; his speech on the Commune went through the entire English press and made a great impression here’ (p. 160). The movement in support of the Commune promoted the class solidarity of the German workers and their political education in the spirit of proletarian internationalism.

Marx and Engels spoke proudly of the courageous behaviour of Liebknecht, Bebel and other representatives of German SocialDemocracy who, during the trials, made use of the court as a tribune to agitate for the principles of the International. ‘Dear Liebknecht,’ Engels wrote on 23 April 1872, ‘we all send you our congratulations on your performance in court. After the trial of the Brunswickers it was essential for someone to stand up to that gang and you have fairly done so’ (p. 360).

In their letters to party leaders Marx and Engels persistently stressed the need for delegates from Germany to take part in the Hague Congress (pp. 376-77). They attached special importance to support at the Congress for the General Council’s line by the most powerful and best organised detachment of the International, the Eisenach Party.

Whilst they were aware of the need for the unity of the working-class movement in Germany, Marx and Engels feared that, if a united party were set up, leadership of it might be seized by the Lassalleans, because certain of the Eisenach leaders were prepared to sacrifice programme and principle for the sake of unity. On 20 June 1873 Engels wrote to Bebel giving his views on overcoming the split in the working-class movement in general, and in Germany in particular. The tactics of the struggle against the influence of the Lassalleans, he wrote, lay not in winning over individual members of their organisation. It presupposed, first and foremost, acting upon the broad mass of workers, propagating the ideas of scientific socialism among them. The unification of the Eisenach Party with the Lassallean General Association of German Workers should be brought about on the basis of a revolutionary programme, and in such a way as to prevent the subversion of the movement’s socialist principles and aims by reformist and sectarian dogmas. ‘There are circumstances in which one must have the courage to sacrifice momentary success for more important things’ (p. 512).

In their letters to the leaders of the German working-class movement Marx and Engels stressed the need to fight for the ideological soundness of the party, to overcome ideological vacillations and accept responsibilities towards the international working-class movement (Engels to Liebknecht, 18-22 May 1872, and other letters).

The fate of the working-class movement in England, the opportunities and prospects for the creation of a proletarian party in the British Isles, was of constant concern to Marx and Engels. In the early 1870s a reformist outlook was dominant in the English working class. Its main vehicle was the labour aristocracy, an influential and considerable section of the working class in England. Marx and Engels were quick to understand the consequences of reformism’s domination of the working-class movement (see Engels’ letter to Hepner of 30 December 1872). The labour aristocracy’s ideological dependence on the liberal bourgeoisie was shown clearly in its attitude to the Paris Commune: the English members of the General Council George Odger and Benjamin Lucraft refused to show solidarity with the Commune. Engels informed Cafiero of this on 28 July 1871: ‘... two English members of the Council, who had been getting on too close terms with the bourgeoisie, found our address on the civil war too strong and they withdrew’ (p. 186). A considerable number of trades-union leaders, including several English working-class members of the International, were becoming typical liberal politicians, many aspiring to parliamentary, state and administrative posts.

Marx and Engels were sharply perceptive of the processes taking place in the English working-class movement, and were the first to note the presence of the two tendencies, reformist and revolutionary, and the growing influence of the bourgeoisified upper layers of the proletariat. This added urgency to their persistent efforts for an independent proletarian party that would withstand the influence of reformism. The correspondence of these years shows how consistently they continued to work in England for the ideas and the influence of the International, ‘to render it independent of the aristocracy of the working classes and its acknowledged leaders’ (p. 147).

Marx and Engels had great hopes for the British Federal Council of the International, set up in the autumn of 1871, which they believed should become the nucleus of a future working-class party. They criticised strongly the reformist wing of the British Federation, which sought to limit the political struggle of the working class exclusively to the struggle for parliamentary representation, and denounced the so-called ‘acknowledged leaders’ of the working class, ‘all of whom either have been bought by the middle class or are begging them to make them an offer’ (p. 383). Engels’ letters to Sorge of 21 September and 5 October 1872 give a vivid description of the bitter struggle which was taking place between the revolutionary and reformist wings in the English sections of the International.

A large group of letters by Marx and Engels forms an important source on the history of the International in the United States of America.

In this period the working class in the USA continued to be formed mostly by immigrants arriving from various European countries. Its multinational composition and the differences in language, traditions, customs, views and level of education made the political cohesion of the proletariat difficult. The existing organisation of the International was dominated by the German and French sections, in which Lassallean and Proudhonist influences were strong. In time the first sections of Americanborn workers and members of the petty bourgeoisie appeared, and also several Irish sections. Marx and Engels corresponded with Friedrich Adolph Sorge, Carl Speyer, Friedrich Bolte and other members of the International in the USA. The prime task of the American socialists, in the opinion of Marx and Engels, consisted in overcoming national separateness and isolation from the broad mass of workers which inevitably led to sectarianism. In a letter to Bolte of 23 November 1871 Marx stressed: ‘The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real labour movement always stand in indirect proportion to each other’ (p. 252). Marx believed that the way to get rid of sectarianism was, first and foremost, to work with the proletarian masses in the trades unions. ‘You must strive to win the support of the Trades Unions at all costs,’ he wrote in a letter to Speyer of 10 November 1871 (P- 244).

In his letter to Bolte Marx also touched on the problem of creating a mass political organisation of the working class in America: ‘Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e. the political power, of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against, and a hostile attitude towards, the policies of the ruling classes’ (p. 258). Marx and Engels supported Sorge and other proletarian revolutionaries in the USA in their struggle against bourgeois reformers’ attempts to make use of the International’s organisations in America for their own purposes.

The transfer of the General Council to New York in the autumn of 1872 greatly stimulated the working-class movement in the USA and contributed to the spread of Marxism on the American continent.

The defeat of the Paris Commune and the subsequent persecution of members of the International considerably reduced the number of Marx’s and Engels’ correspondents in France. Government reprisals dealt a severe blow to the working-class organisations and sections of the International Working Men’s Association. Nevertheless, at the beginning of August 1871 the General Council began to receive information about the renewal of sections and the activity of syndicalist chambers. The ties of local sections with Commune refugees who were members of the General Council were being resumed.

The London Conference of 1871 gave new impetus to the revival of the French sections, providing a realistic programme of action to unite and reorganise the ranks of the working class. On 19 January 1872 Engels wrote to Lafargue: ‘In France Serraillier is being amazingly active. Needless to say, the results he has obtained are not for publication, but they are very good.

Everywhere the sections are reforming under different names’ (p. 302). In his letter to Lafargue of 21 March Marx also remarked upon the success of the International in France following the London Conference (p. 346).

The majority of the French members of the International, except Bakunin’s supporters and the Blanquists, who had broken with the International Working Men’s Association, approved the resolutions of the Hague Congress of 1872. ‘Despite the intrigues of the Jurassians and the Blanquists things are going well in the South,’ Engels wrote to Sorge on 7 December 1872 (p. 454). But in February 1873 the organisation of the International was again crushed, after which it did not manage to recover. Analysing the causes for the defeat of the French sections, Marx and Engels in their letters to Sorge, Auguste Serraillier and others criticised the voluntarist views of the Blanquists, discussed the prospects for the development of the working-class movement in France and expressed their conviction that it would be reborn in new forms.

The contents of this volume provide an insight into the work Marx and Engels were doing to assist the proletarian movement in Italy and Spain. The establishment of ties with the Italian and Spanish working-class organisations involved a sharp ideological struggle against the influence of anarchists and bourgeois republicans. The main burden was shouldered by Engels, who was the Corresponding Secretary of the General Council for Italy and Spain. Following the transfer of the Council to New York in the autumn of 1872, Engels continued as its representative to maintain contacts with progressive members of the socialist and workingclass movement in these countries.

Engels’ correspondence with Italian revolutionaries was important as a means of conveying the ideas of scientific socialism to Italy. His letters to the Italian socialist Carlo Cafiero were important. In them Engels explained the nature of the International as a broadly-based mass workers’ organisation alien to all sectarianism, stressing that the task of the Association was to unite the workers and draw up, by means of theoretical discussions, a truly revolutionary programme.

In his letter to Cafiero of 28 July 1871 Engels defined the main issues over which there was a struggle in the International and contrasted the fundamental propositions of scientific socialism with Bakuninist dogma and Mazzinist petty-bourgeois views. In explaining the programmatic aims of the proletarian movement and arguing the need for the working class to win state power, Engels pointed out: ‘We must free ourselves from landowners and capitalists, and for this end promote the development of the associated classes of agricultural and industrial workers and all the means of production, land, tools, machines, raw materials and whatever means exist to support life during the time necessary for production. ...And to bring this about we need the political supremacy of the proletariat’ (p. 184). A considerable part of this letter is devoted to a detailed criticism of Mazzinism as one of the trends of ‘vulgar democracy’, which strove to give the workers some political rights ‘in order to preserve intact the social privileges of the middle and upper classes’ (p. 185).

In criticising Mazzini’s views and condemning his attacks on the International and the Paris Commune, Engels contrasted him with another fighter for Italy’s national liberation, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who openly sympathised with the International Working Men’s Association and the Paris Communards (see Engels’ letter to Cuno, 13 November 1871).

Of considerable interest is Engels’ correspondence with the German Social-Democrat Theodor Cuno, the organiser of a section of the International in Milan. The comprehensive critique of Bakuninism contained in Engels’ letter of 24 January 1872 was of great help to Cuno in fighting the anarchists.

At this time Engels conducted a regular correspondence with Enrico Bignami and Cesare Bert, helping them to activate the sections of the International in Lodi and Turin. In a letter to the Italian democrat and member of the workers’ movement Gennaro Bovio of 16 April 1872, Engels expressed the profound idea that the proletariat’s national and international tasks formed an organic unity. He argued that ‘in the working-class movement true national ideas, i.e. ideas corresponding to the economic realities, both in industry and in agriculture, to the realities that are dominant in the country in question, are, at the same time, true international ideas’ (p. 355).

Engels’ ties with Spanish internationalists, first established even before the Paris Commune, grew much stronger during the period of the Commune and immediately after. Before the London Conference Engels considered it his responsibility to strengthen these contacts and keep his correspondents informed about the International and the activity of the General Council. He was greatly assisted in this by Lafargue, who moved to Madrid in December 1871. Lafargue played an invaluable part in criticising anarchist views, a struggle which became Engels’ main preoccupation after the London Conference.

A result of the influence exerted on the leading representatives of the Spanish working-class movement by Marx and Engels was the emergence of a group of proletarian revolutionaries (José Mesa, Francisco Mora and others), who spread the ideas of scientific socialism and resisted the influence of the anarchists. Its newspaper was La Emancipacion and its organisational centre the New Madrid Federation, founded in the summer of 1872.

Marx and Engels attached great importance to the revolutionary movement in Russia, and made a deep study of the socio-economic and political situation there. The letters reveal their connections with progressive social and political figures and representatives of different circles of Russian revolutionaries.

As the General Council’s Corresponding Secretary for Russia, Marx gave continuous assistance to the Russian section of the International in Switzerland. He informed the Russian revolutionaries of the situation in the Association and the decisions of its Council and sent them the necessary documents. Marx greatly valued the fact that during the bitter struggle against anarchism the Russian section came out strongly against Bakunin and supported the revolutionary-proletarian wing of the International. In his regular correspondence with Nikolai Utin (Outine), one of the leaders of the Russian section, Marx discussed the essence of the ideological differences with the anarchists and the splitting activities of Bakunin’s Alliance.

The close attention Marx and Engels paid to Russia and their friendly contacts with progressive people there are exemplified by Marx’s letters to Nikolai Danielson and Engels’ to Pyotr Lavrov published in this volume. By this time Marx could read Russian scientific and socio-political literature in the original sufficiently to delve more deeply into the problems of Russia’s social and political development. He wrote to Sigfrid Meyer on 21 January 1871: ‘The result was worth the effort that a man of my age must make to master a language differing so greatly from the classical, Germanic and Romance languages. The intellectual movement now taking place in Russia testifies to the fact that things are seething deep below the surface. Minds are always connected by invisible threads with the body of the people’ (p. 105). Through Danielson Marx sent General Council documents to Russia and received essential material, books and journals. From Marx’s letters it is clear that he studied the works of N. Flerovsky (pseudonym of Vasily Bervi) and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, for whom he had the deepest respect. He referred to Chernyshevsky’s economic works as excellent (p. 105). On receiving from Danielson the manuscript of Chernyshevsky’s Letters Without an Address Marx tried to get it printed, regarding it as an extremely important work (p. 457). It was at this time that Marx conceived the idea, as can be seen from his letters to Danielson of 12 December 1872 and 18 January 1873, of writing a biography of the great Russian revolutionary democrat and socialist. Marx also highly valued the work of Chernyshevsky’s comrade-in-arms, Nikolai Dobrolyubov (see his letter to Danielson of 9 November 1871, p. 238).

Marx and Engels established particularly close relations with the Russian revolutionary Hermann Lopatin, a member of the General Council of the International, whom they also greatly respected. Very often in his letters to Danielson Marx enquired anxiously about Lopatin, who was arrested at the beginning of the 1870s in connection with the attempt to help Chernyshevsky escape from exile in Siberia. ‘The fate of our dear “mutual friend” has been of the very greatest interest to my entire family,’ Marx wrote on 12 December 1872 (p. 456). The news that Lopatin had succeeded in escaping from prison in Irkutsk in the summer of 1873 was received joyfully in Marx’s home.

The revolutionary movement in Russia, which was steadily gaining strength, was regarded by Marx and Engels as an important indication of the maturing in that country of a popular revolution against tsarism. They saw the participants in this movement as the direct allies of the European proletariat. ‘In Russia,’ Marx wrote to Thomas Allsop on 23 December 1873, ‘...the elements of a general convulsion are accumulating’ (p. 551). Convinced of the inevitability of a Russian revolution, Marx and Engels believed that it would lead to a radical change in the international situation and help the working class of the capitalist countries to achieve its aims.

The Hague Congress of 1872 was in fact the last congress of the International Working Men’s Association. Later some of the federations temporarily followed the anarchists, who set up their own short-lived international association; the majority of the federations, however, now had to tackle the complex task of creating a proletarian party in their respective countries. In its former organisational forms the International had exhausted its role; it had created a firm ideological basis for the formation of proletarian parties bound together by a common ultimate aim and an understanding of the need for the international unity of the working class. ‘As I view European conditions,’ Marx wrote to Sorge on 27 September 1873, ‘it is quite useful to let the formal organisation of the International recede into the background for the time being... Events and the inevitable development and intertwining of things will of themselves see to it that the International rises again in an improved form’ (p. 535).

By the end of 1873 the International had in effect retired from this historical arena. The activity of its organisations had ceased almost everywhere, although the final decision as to its dissolution was taken at the conference in Philadelphia on 15 July 1876. One of the finest phases of Marx’s activity ended. Commenting on the historic role played by the International, Engels wrote to Sorge on 12-17 September 1874 that for ten years the International had dominated one side of European history, that which moulded the future, and it could look back to its work with pride (see present edition, Vol. 45).

Lenin also frequently stressed the tremendous significance of the International in the history of the struggle of the proletariat. The First International, he pointed out, ‘laid the foundation of an international organisation of the workers for the preparation of their revolutionary attack on capital’ (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 306).

In spite of’ the heavy burden of International business, Marx and Engels continued their intense theoretical activity. The correspondence in this volume enables one to trace the writing by Marx and Engels of several important works. Apart from those mentioned above, they include the preface by Marx and Engels to the 1872 German edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party and Engels’ work The Housing Question. Engels’ letter to Marx of 30 May 1873 contains the first outline of the philosophical work planned by him, Dialectics of Nature (see this volume, pp. 500-03).

As can be seen from the letters, Marx attached particular importance to the completion of his major work, Capital, and the perfecting of Volume I of it, which had been published in 1867. In the 1870s the demand for Capital among the workers grew. The influence of the ideas of scientific socialism amongst the working class, particularly after the Paris Commune, as well as the need to counteract petty-bourgeois ideology, impelled Marx to prepare a second German edition of Capital (see Engels’ letters to Liebknecht and Lafargue of 15 and 30 December 1871, this volume, pp. 282, 286).

From Marx’s correspondence for this period it is clear that he invested a great deal of work making changes both in the structure and in the subject matter itself.

With respect to Marx’s work on the second German edition of Volume I of Capital, his daughter Jenny wrote on 22 January 1872 to Kugelmann: ‘In the first chapter he has made great alterations, and what is more important, he himself is satisfied (which does not happen often) with these alterations. The work he has done these last few weeks is immense, and it is really a wonder that his health ... has not given way under it’ (p. 574). The second German edition of Volume I of Capital, which came out in 1872-73, in a large edition for those days (three thousand copies), was a most important event.

The authorised edition of Volume I of Capital in French was intended to make Marx’s economic theory accessible to the workers not only of France, but also of other Romance countries.

The French edition of Capital was published in instalments over the period 17 September 1872 to November 1875. The letters testify to Marx’s intense, painstaking work to polish the translation made by Joseph Roy, and also to revise in part the original itself. ‘He [Mr Roy] has often translated too literally,’ Marx wrote to Danielson on 28 May 1872. ‘I have therefore found myself compelled to re-write whole passages in French, to make them palatable to the French public. It will be all the easier later on to translate the book from French into English and the Romance languages’ (p. 385).

Marx gave serious attention to the preparation of a Russian edition of Volume I of Capital Its publication in March 1872 had great impact on the development of progressive social thought in Russia. The Russian edition was the first translation into a foreign language of this brilliant work, and Marx had a very high opinion of it. On 28 May 1872 he wrote to Danielson: ‘First of all, my best thanks for the beautifully bound copy. The translation is masterly. I would be grateful if you could let me have a second, unbound copy—for the British Museum’ (p. 385). Engels also praised the Russian translation. He considered this edition highly important for educating Russian revolutionaries. ‘As far as talent and character are concerned some of these are absolutely among the very best in our party,’ he stressed in a letter to Johann Philipp Becker of 14 June 1872 (p. 396).

The volume concludes the publication of that section of Marx’s and Engels’ correspondence (begun in Volume 42) which belongs to the period of their activity as leaders of the First International.

The letters bring out characteristic features of the creative collaboration of Marx and Engels, and also their relations with followers and associates. Engels’ letter to his mother of 21 October 1871 testifies to his unshakable loyalty to his revolutionary

convictions and readiness to defend them come what may. The reader can learn much about the lives of Marx’s daughters. Thus, a number of letters describe the dangers and deprivations endured by Marx’s middle daughter, Laura, the wife of Paul Lafargue, who shared her husband’s fate as a political exile; and the police harassment of his eldest and youngest daughters, Jenny and Eleanor, during their stay in the south of France. This biographical material is supplemented by letters from the members of Marx’s family contained in the Appendices.

* * *

Volume 44 contains 326 letters of Marx and Engels, of which 197 are published in English for the first time and 131 were published in this language earlier, 52 of them in part only. Of the documents published in the Appendices, 10 appear in English for the first time. Previous English publications are mentioned in the Notes.

Obvious slips of the pen have been corrected without special mention. Proper names, geographical names and individual words contracted by the authors are given in full, except in cases 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 lost or illegible words are denoted by omission marks. If the text makes it possible to give a hypothetical reconstruction of the lost or illegible words, this reconstruction is given in square brackets. Passages crossed out by the authors are reproduced—in the footnotes—only when they represent important variant readings. If a letter is a draft or a fragment reproduced in another document, this is marked 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 are italicised (if underlined by the authors, they are given in spaced italics). English words and expressions used by Marx and Engels in texts written in German, French and other languages are printed in small caps. Longer passages written in English in the original are placed in asterisks.

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

In the course of work on the text and apparatus of this volume

the dating of certain letters has been clarified as a result of additional research.

The text and Notes were prepared by Galina Kostryukova (letters from 20 July 1870 to 4 May 1871), Galina Voitenkova (letters from 5 May 1871 to 30 December 1871) and Natalia Sayenko (letters from January 1872 to December 1873 and also the letters in the Appendices) (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). The Preface was written by Natalia Sayenko. The volume was edited by Lev Golman, Velta Pospelova, and Tatiana Yeremeyeva, the Name Index, the Index of Quoted and Mentioned Literature and the Index of Periodicals were prepared by Andrei Pozdnyakov (Institute of Marxism-Leninism).

The translations were made by Rodney Livingstone and edited by Nicholas Jacobs (Lawrence & Wishart), K. M. Cook, Stephen Smith, Elena Chistyakova, Svetlana Gerasimenko and Victor Schnittke (Progress Publishers) and scientific editors Vladimir Mosolov (Institute of Marxism-Leninism) and Norire Ter-Akopyan (USSR Academy of Sciences).

The volume was prepared for the press by the editor Elena Krishtof (Progress Publishers).