Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (49)

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Volume 49 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains Engels’ letters from August 1890 to September 1892.

As is clear from a number of events, including the May Day demonstrations that swept over nearly the whole of Europe, the successes of the German Social-Democrats in the elections to the Reichstag and the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law, and the foundation of new trades unions in England, the working-class and socialist movement gained considerable ground in these years. The letters in this volume give a vivid picture of the still unflagging scholarly and political activity of Engels, seventy years of age on 28 November 1890, during this period. They reflect the many problems facing the working-class movement in the early 1890s after the foundation and consolidation of the socialist parties and the formation of a new international association, the Second International. They also reflect the complications facing the spread and confirmation of Marxist ideas.

Of particular importance during the 1890s were the propagation of Marxism, the explanation of its fundamental theoretical propositions, and the safeguarding of those propositions from oversimplification and contemporary misinterpretation.

Engels gave much of his time to preparing new editions for the press and editing translations of Marx’s works and of his own writings, including those that had become virtually unobtainable by that time. Engels bore in mind the theoretical significance and poten-tial import of the work being republished and, in editing the translations, the peculiarities of the respective country. All these publications were brought out with his direct participation: he worked on the texts, wrote notes when necessary and read the proofs. As a rule, Engels wrote special introductions for them which were, in effect smallscale studies in their own right. The editions prepared by Engels influenced the views and practical activities of the Marxists and the development of the working-class parties.

During these years, Engels still regarded it as his ‘urgent duty’ (see this volume, p. 396) to prepare for publication Marx’s economic manuscripts, above all those comprising Volume III of Capital (see pp. 329, 331, 334, 379, 385, 390, 440, 450, etc.). Because of the many tasks in hand and his state of health, however, Engels was not able to begin this work until November 1891. He wrote to Karl Kautsky on 3 December 1891: ‘I have just got to the most difficult part, i. e. the last chapters (six to eight or thereabouts) on money capital, banks, credit, etc., and, once having started, I shall have to keep at it without a break and work through the relevant literature again, in short make myself completely au fait, if only so that I may — as is probable — eventually leave most of it as it stands, yet at the same time feel quite sure that I have committed no blunders either in the positive or the negative sense’ (pp. 314-15). At the beginning of 1892, he was again compelled to break off work on Volume III and was not able to resume it until September.

Of considerable interest are Engels’ letters dealing with theoretical problems and the development and deepening of certain propositions of Marxist theory that had become particularly important in the early 1890s. As the ideas of Marx and Engels spread further, they were taken up by representatives of the most diverse ideological trends. Many propositions of the theory were being digested by the members of the working-class movement in a one-sided and oversimplified manner as various slogans, and were sometimes grossly distorted. Certain members of the socialist movement, as Engels noted in his letter to Conrad Schmidt of 12 April 1890, tended to impose their own personal conjectures on the works of Marx and Engels instead of reading what they actually contained (see present edition, Vol. 48).

Particularly widespread in the early 1890s was a perverse interpretation of the materialist understanding of history in the spirit of ‘eco-nomic materialism’, according to which economics was the sole active factor in the historical process. These views were especially typical of a number of young socialists in Germany. Some of them asked Engels directly to explain certain points about the materialist interpretation of history.

In this respect, Engels’ famous letters to Conrad Schmidt of 5 August and 27 October and to Joseph Bloch of 21-22 September 1890 deserve attention. They give not only a compressed exposition of the Marxist analysis of the historical process, but take an important step forward in elaborating certain vital problems of the materialist interpretation of history (see also Engels’ letters to Paul Ernst of 5 June 1890, to Franz Mehring of 14 July 1893, and to W. Borgius of 25 January 1894 — present edition, vols 48 and 50).

In his letters to Schmidt and Bloch, Engels examines the interaction of basis and superstructure, economics and politics, the dialectics of the objective and the subjective factors of social development, and the role of the conscious activity of the masses. In his letter to Schmidt of 5 August 1890, Engels used the term ‘historical materialism’ for the first time (p. 8). In doing so, he wanted to indicate that the economic factor, definitive in the final analysis, is itself subject to feedback from the superstructure (pp. 34-35 and 59-63).

Worried about the prospects for revolution and the nature of the future society, many socialists turned to Engels for clarification. Engels considered that the level of socio-economic development in the main European capitalist countries was creating the conditions for revolutionary transformations in the relatively near future. Consciously avoiding detailed predictions about the future society, he confined himself to the most general terms.

In his letters to Conrad Schmidt of 5 August and 1 July 1890, Otto Boenigk of 21 August 1890, and Max Oppenheim of 24 March 1891, Engels expressed himself decisively against the idea of the communist society as something ‘fixed for all time’ (p. 8) and emphasised that, like any other social structure, the new society would not arise straightaway, but only by a process of gradual formation; it would develop uninterruptedly by ‘constant change and transformation’ (p. 18). He described the decisive feature of the new society as ‘the organisation of production on the basis of common ownership, initially by the nation, of all means of production’ (ibid.). In his letter to Otto Boenigk, he expressed the idea of the definite sequence of transformation of private property into public, and marked out ways for the transformation of agriculture on collective principles (pp. 18-19). An important condition for the organisation of life in the new society was the attraction of specialists in engineering, agriculture, medicine and also lawyers, teachers, etc. (pp. 19, 272).

In his letter to Schmidt of 5 August 1890, Engels gave his view on distribution in communist society. The ‘method of distribution depends almost entirely upon how much there is to distribute ... since this is likely to change as advances are made in production and social organisation’ (p. 8).

At the same time, Engels repeatedly stressed the impossibility of determining in full detail how precisely the communist transformation of society was going to develop. This ‘must depend on local conditions at the time, nor can anything of a general nature be said about them beforehand,’ he wrote to Max Oppenheim on 24 March 1891 (p. 153). The problem of stages in the development of the communist society and the specific measures which the workers must take when they have taken over state power is ‘the most difficult subject on earth’ (p. 212).

The letters in this volume show the many-sidedness of Engels’ activity in co-ordinating the international working-class and socialist movement. Correspondence was an important source of information for him about the state of the working-class movement in various countries, and it was also his principal means of passing on revolutionary experience and of exerting an ideological influence on the activities of the members of the socialist parties and organisations.

The organisation of the working-class movement, the efforts of the socialist parties to consolidate their ranks and opposition to dogmatism and sectarian trends have an important place in Engels’ letters. Since they were not intended for publication, his assessments of reformist and ‘left-wing’ sectarian elements in the working-class movement were often very harsh. He emphasised that the ‘class-conscious continental proletariat has no intention of placing itself under the leadership of people who regard the wage system as an eternal and immutable universal institution’ (p. 524). On the other hand, those who, ‘more or less, have the correct theory as to the dogmatic side of it, become a mere sect because they cannot conceive that living theory of action, of working with the working class at every possible stage of its development, otherwise than as a collection of dogmas to be learnt by heart and recited’ like a conjurer’s formula or a Catholic prayer’ (p. 186). Advocating independence from the bourgeois influences of the class policy of the workers’ parties and considering that unity of views and party discipline should be based on the high awareness and activity of its members and on the participation of each one in working out party policy and tactics, Engels nevertheless admitted: ‘That ...doesn’t preclude our failure to agree on many points. But these again are points where in course of time agreement is automatically reached as a result of discussion or of new events’ (p. 158). Engels considered the development of broad party democracy and the free exchange of opinions as an indispensable condition, with the reminder that ‘discipline in a big party cannot be anything like as strict as it is in a small sect’ (p. 182), but that the criticism must be made within the framework of the programme and with the strict observance of party ethics. Engels drew attention to the inalienable right of the rankand-file members to influence the activity of their leaders and prevent them from breaking away from the grass roots of the party. In his letter to Karl Kautsky on 11 February 1891 Engels wrote: ‘It is also imperative that the chaps should at long last throw off the habit of handling the party officials — their servants — with kid gloves and kow-towing to them as infallible bureaucrats, instead of confronting them critically’ (p. 131).

It can be seen from the letters how much Engels did to widen and strengthen international ties, including personal contacts between socialists of various countries, to arrange for the exchange of information between the socialist parties about their activities and to encourage co-operation in the press. Engels considered it highly important for the information to be comprehensive and fully objective.

From Engels’ letters, and also from those of Eleanor Marx-Aveling printed in the Appendices to this volume, it is clear that he himself initiated a number of international meetings between the socialists. He used his seventieth birthday celebrations for the organisation of a meeting of socialists from the leading European countries and for the discussion of problems in common (see pp. 76-77). It was also at Engels’ suggestion that an international conference of socialists was held during the Congress of German Social-Democrats at Halle in the autumn of 1890 to prepare the Congress of the Second International in Brussels in 1891 (see pp. 24, 29 and 42).

Engels devoted much attention to the recently formed new international socialist association — the Second International. The letters published in the present volume make it possible to reconstruct the entire course of preparations for the Second and Third congresses of the Second International and Engels’ own part in their convocation.

He endeavoured to widen as much as possible the number of the congresses’ participants, especially such mass working-class organisations as the British trades unions (pp. 24, 28, 29, 42-43, 46, 74, 229, 238, 520-21, 523-24, 533-34, 545-46, 548).

A number of letters contain fundamental ideas on the stand the socialists took because of the threat, intensified in the early 1890s, of an all-European war. Engels continued developing the idea, expressed many times in the preceding years, of the profound interest of the working class in the preservation of peace, stressing this as one of the most important conditions for the future success of the workers’ movement. From his letters to Sorge, Bebel and others, it is clear that the rapidly growing influence of Social-Democracy, especially in Germany, had given him hope that the proletariat might gain political power in that country in a relatively short historical period. Engels wrote to Bebel on 24-26 October 1891: ‘I ... hope and pray that this splendid, unerring progress of ours, evolving with the impassivity and inexorability of a natural process, will continue along its appointed course’ (p. 272).

Should war break out (at that time, this meant the possibility of France, in alliance with Tsarist Russia, waging war on Germany), the socialist parties should proceed from the interests of the workers’ struggle for emancipation. But since a victory by Russian Tsarism in such a war would mean not only a threat to Germany’s national unity, but the total destruction of German Social-Democracy, at that time the vanguard of the European working-class movement, Engels considered that the German socialists must endeavour to fight the war by ‘revolutionary means’ (p. 271). These ideas of Engels were stated in great detail in his letters to Bebel and Sorge (pp. 242-46, 258, 266-67, 270-72, 327) and were finally formulated in his article ‘Socialism in Germany’ (present edition, Vol. 27).

Of particular importance in Engels’ correspondence during these, as in the preceding years, are the letters to the leaders of German Social-Democrats— August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring and others. Many problems associated with the German working-class movement were also reflected in Engels’ letters to