Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (50)

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

The fiftieth and concluding volume of the English edition of the works of Marx and Engels contains letters written by Engels between October 1892 and July 1895.

In the last years of his life, Engels witnessed amazing changes in the politics and economics of contemporary society. Processes which began in the capitalist world in the 1870s had led, by the early 1890s, to major changes affecting every aspect of life, thereby exerting a direct impact on the working-class movement. The emergence of parliamentary government, the expansion of voting rights, the complete legalisation of trade unions and other worker organisations had created favourable conditions in which to campaign for a real improvement in the position of working people, for an increase of the influence of socialist parties and for the strengthening of their role in political life. There had also been changes in certain aspects of capitalist production, although these were not yet so obvious. As one might expect, Engels increasingly directed his thoughts to the prospects for and future of the struggle for working-class emancipation and to the ways and means of achieving its short-term and long-term goals; this is reflected in his numerous letters. His ideas on these issues were neither the result of abstract argument, nor were they the merely theoretical calculations of an academic isolated from the real world. To the end of his life, Engels maintained close contacts with the leaders of socialist parties in various European countries, with followers of Marx, with young scholars who showed an interest in his theoretical works and in Marxism, willingly sharing with them his views and ideas. A determined opponent of dogmatising, Engels revised many former concepts regarding forms and methods of proletarian struggle for workers’ rights and a radical reformation of society in the light of history and the major changes taking place in his own day. Himself an eye-witness of the first steps taken by an independent working-class movement, and an active participant in this movement for almost fifty years, he was well positioned to appreciate the undoubted successes achieved by it. He saw their successes as visible proof of the validity of the Marxist theory on the historical role of the working class.

The early 1890s were, in this respect, a sign of things to come. By this time socialist parties had been set up in most European countries. They were winning ever-wider support, and held seats in the parliaments of a number of states. As a rule, their programmes were based on Marxist theory. The most powerful of these parties, the German Social-Democratic Party, whose success had led to the annulment of the Anti-Socialist law, was securing a growing number of votes at each successive election, and there seemed to be every reason to believe that it might soon become a decisive power in the Reichstag. When the English trade-union congress decided to include in its programme the demand for the nationalisation of the means of production, when the trade union representatives were sent to international socialist congresses, and the Independent Labour Party was set up in 1892, Engels began to anticipate the emergence in the near future of a mass political party of the English working class. The viability of the new International, which had emerged in the wake of the 1889 International Congress in Paris, had been proved by the enthusiastic response to its appeal for May Day demonstrations to campaign for an 8-hour working day. Hundreds of thousands of people were now taking part in these demonstrations every year.

All these events inspired Engels with optimism. If the working-class movement in the major countries of Europe continued to develop at this rate and along these same lines, then he believed this might accelerate the crisis of the capitalist system. ‘The growth of the proletarian movement in all countries’, he wrote to Bebel in October 1893, ‘is about to precipitate a crisis ... which may not be upon us for some five or six years yet.’ This optimism was further strengthened, as letters published in this volume (pp. 172-189) reveal, by his trip to Europe in the summer of 1893, in the course of which he visited Vienna, Berlin and Prague, and attended the final session of the International Socialist Congress in Zurich.

Engels’s belief that the capitalist system—at least in Europe, to which his statements on this subject are invariably restricted—would collapse in the relatively near future was based not only on the success of the proletarian movement, but also on his theoretical analysis of new phenomena and trends in capitalist economics. In 1891, in his critique of the draft of the new programme of the German Social-Democratic Party, Engels noted that the creation of large joint-stock companies and trusts meant ‘an end not only to private production but also to planlessness (present edition, Vol. 27, p. 224). Further on he writes that ‘the material and cultural conditions’ for the transformation of capitalist production into socialist production ‘on behalf of society as a whole and according to a preconceived plan’ are being created by capitalist society itself (ibid.).

Subsequent events confirmed that Engels had correctly identified the trends appearing in the development of capitalist production. He believed, however, that these trends were leading, moreover in a relatively short historical period of time, to the collapse of the capitalist system. While appreciating that ‘those economic consequences of the capitalist system, which must bring it up to the critical point, are only just now developing’, he nonetheless considered it quite possible that this crisis in the capitalist system would occur quite soon as a result of events taking place in the major states of Europe (see this volume, pp. 59, 75-6, 273). In articles, and particularly in letters, Engels identified individual cases of corruption involving a number of prominent politicians in France, Italy and elsewhere as symptoms revealing the general inability of the bourgeois state to discharge its functions, as indications that the existing social order was on the verge of collapse. ‘... there is nothing stable about France ... a crisis of the first water in Italy...—he wrote to F. A. Sorge on January 16, 1895, ‘in short, things are growing critical throughout the whole of Europe’ (p. 424).

This crisis of bourgeois society, a crisis which Engels believed to be imminent, would also be the result, in his opinion, of the intensifying economic conflict among the major capitalist countries, caused in part by the emergence of the USA onto the world market. Developing this idea in a letter to N. F. Danielson, dated 24 February 1893, Engels wrote that economic rivalry between the USA on the one hand, and England, France and Germany on the other, could only mean that ‘the crisis must come, tout ce qu’ il y a de plus fin de siècle’ (p. 111). Clearly Engels supposed that this rivalry would provoke an acute economic crisis which would spread to the political and social spheres, and that this might well create the prerequisite conditions for the collapse of the capitalist system, a collapse which, so he believed, would occur not automatically, but as a result of the energetic actions of the working class. In December 1894, he wrote to P. Lavrov, ‘... the whole of Europe is warming up, crises are brewing everywhere, particularly in Russia’ (p. 389). Three months later, in a letter to Vaillant, he wrote: ‘The end of the century is taking a decidedly revolutionary turn’ (p. 455).

Pondering the various possible forms of that revolutionary crisis which might, in his view, create favourable conditions in which the proletariat could win political power in the countries of Europe, Engels’s hopes turned in particular to Germany, which had the strongest socialist workers’ movement and was suffering from acute internal conflicts. On 5 December 1892, he wrote to Laura Lafargue ‘the next revolution ... is preparing in Germany with a consistency and steadiness unequalled anywhere else’ (p. 59). He believed that the revolution, having begun in Germany or France, or possibly in some other country, for example in Austria or Russia, would inevitably spread to other countries. ‘If France’, he wrote to Lafargue on 27 June 1893, ‘perhaps, gives the signal, it will be in Germany—the country most profoundly influenced by socialism, and where the theory has the most deeply penetrated the masses—where the fight will be settled’ (p. 157). At the same time he believed it very likely that ‘if it does not bring the final victory, it will nevertheless make that victory a foregone conclusion’ (p.175).

As we now know, these prognostications were not fulfilled. However, this does not mean that they had no real basis. That his arguments were not groundless, and that he had accurately noted the trends is shown by the major events which marked the first decades of the 20th century. On 8 February 1895, Engels wrote to G. V. Plekhanov: And when the devil of the revolution has someone at his collar, then he has Nicholas II ’ (p. 440). Indeed, ten years later, a popular revolution developed in the Russian Empire, and if it was not then victorious, it nonetheless shook the foundations of the autocracy and made a profound impact on other countries, particularly in the East. Engels often expressed the idea that the approaching war would be pan-European, and twenty years later that war broke out. However, his main prognosis concerning the imminent collapse of capitalism proved invalid, and not only as regards the timing. Having recognised that his and Marx’s hopes that the proletariat would be victorious as early as the mid-19th century (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 533) were mistaken, Engels nonetheless remained captive to such illusions, believing that capitalism had already exhausted its potential by the end of the century, and that conditions were ripe for the emergence of new social relations. His postulates that the latest economic crisis would bring with it the collapse of bourgeois society, that capitalism had outlived itself and was at the time failing to stimulate the development of productive forces were proved mistaken by the subsequent course of history.

However, those same facts upon which Engels based himself when assessing the objective pre-conditions necessary for the victory of the new social order, for a socialist revolution, facts which, so it seemed to him, confirmed the inevitability of the emergence in the near future of the possibility of a radical reformation of society, were also the facts which prompted him to reassess concepts formulated in the wake of the revolutions of the 19th century as regards the ways and means by which the proletariat could achieve political power, a factor which he considered of major importance and a necessary prerequisite of any transition to new social relations

The letters published in this volume reveal the development of Engels’ thoughts on the strategy and tactics of the emancipation struggle. He realised that the methods used in those revolutions in which he himself had been actively involved were no longer applicable: ‘The era of barricades and street fighting has gone for good; if the military fight, resistance becomes madness. Hence the necessity to find new revolutionary tactics, (see this volume, p. 21) he wrote to Lafargue in November 1892. At the same time—and most importantly—by the 1890s the working class in the majority of European countries had much greater opportunity to use legal methods thanks to the emergence, albeit in differing forms, of parliamentary government. Here Engels attributed the main role to parliamentary activity by the socialists, and to universal suffrage. He did so basing himself on the experience of the German Social-Democratic Party, whose practical activity deeply influenced his thinking. A number of Engels’s letters (to Victor Adler on 11 October, to August Bebel on 12 October, and on 18 October 1893) contain ideas which received their final formulation in Engels’s last work, Introduction to Karl Marx’s ‘The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850’. Emphasising the importance of the campaign for universal suffrage then being mounted in Belgium and Austria, he wrote to August Bebel: ‘The suffrage movement won its first victory in Belgium, and now Austria is about to follow suit. At the outset this will ensure the survival of universal suffrage, but also encourage us to make further demands—in Germany no less than in France and Italy’ (p. 206). In another letter to Bebel he again emphasises the importance of legal methods of proletarian struggle, arguing that ‘governments are again coming under the control of a living political movement among the people ... it is we who determine it’, its ‘conquests in the libertarian sense, greater political power for the working man, the extension of his freedom of movement’ (p. 219).

The letters published in this volume provide manifest evidence of the pleasure which Engels felt at the successes of the socialists and their increasing influence. This is clearly seen in a letter from Engels to Julia, Bebel’s wife, about a meeting between Bebel, Lafargue and Burns at his flat: ‘That such a meeting should be possible, a meeting at which the three leading parliaments of Europe, the three dominant nations of Europe, will be represented by three Socialist Party leaders, is in itself proof of what enormous advances we have made’ (p. 131). A year later he expressed his confident belief that ‘before long there will be no European parliament without labour representatives (ibid., p. 283). ‘Today’, he wrote to E. Vandervelde in October 1894, ‘the socialist movement everywhere is more powerful than the so-called public force’ (p. 357). These successes, achieved by using exclusively ‘legal’ methods, strengthened his view that universal suffrage and other legal methods now made it possible for the working class to win political power by peaceful means. He anticipated, however, preventive actions by reactionary forces. Such counter-measures must, in his opinion, inevitably involve the violation of constitutional rights and the open use of force. This, in its turn, might compel the masses to offer direct resistance, that is, to attempt to seize power by force, by the use of arms. In other words, Engels did not exclude the possibility of using such methods, but only in response to coercive action by the ruling circles. ‘Where there is no reactionary power to be overthrown’, he wrote to Bebel on 7 October 1892, ‘there can be no question whatever of revolutionary power (p. 8). He developed this same idea further in a letter to Lafargue a month later: ‘It’s even ten to one that universal suffrage, intelligently used by the workers, will drive the rulers to overthrow legality, that is, to put us in the most favourable position to make the revolution’ (p. 29). Nonetheless he continues to see any attempt at armed uprising as foredoomed if the ruling circles still command the armed forces. He did not, it is true, exclude the possibility that in Germany, the army might become ‘ 1/3 — 2/5 socialist’ (p. 225) as a result of the growing influence of the Social-Democratic Party in the countryside, which provided the bulk of army recruits. However, as many of his letters show, he hoped in the main that the current situation would enable the socialists to become the parliamentary majority, and thus implement their immediate goals.

Such an outcome, however, in Engels’ view, could only be achieved by expanding socialist influence to ever broader sections of working people, and above all, the working class. ‘A revolution in the minds’ of workers, he wrote, ‘ ... is a guarantee of a far mightier and more comprehensive revolution in the world’. (p. 296). He attached particular significance to socialist propaganda among the peasantry, ‘without which we cannot expect to be victorious’.

In his letters, Engels devotes considerable space to his thoughts on specific events in the European proletarian movement, moreover not only in Germany, France and England, as in previous years, but also in Austria, Belgium and Italy, where this movement was rapidly gaining strength. An increasing number of letters pass between Engels and Victor Adler, Filippo Turati, Antonio Labriola (most of the letters addressed to Labriola have still not been found). New names also appeared, such as E. Vandervelde, leader of the Belgian socialists. Engels’s attention was drawn in particular to facts demonstrating the success of the socialists and their practical activity, the struggle of the popular masses to extend democratic freedoms, strikes and other worker demonstrations in support of their economic demands. These letters illustrate Engels’s deep interest in internal party issues, and especially in the larger and more influential parties. In Germany these issues concerned relations between the Marxist core of the party leadership and reformist elements, particularly in matters relating to the party programme, and also to parliamentary tactics; in France the main issues were solidarity among socialist forces, ways and means of creating a single socialist party, and the role and tactics of ‘the workers’ movement in this process; in England the issues were the creation of a mass independent party of the working class, the role of existing socialist organisations in this process, their mutual relations, and also the need to support the trade unions in their desire to take an active part in the international socialist workers’ movement; in Italy the main issue was that of strengthening, both organisationally and ideologically, the young socialist party, etc.

In a number of letters Engels expressed his views on the state of and prospects for the socialist movement in the USA. He saw the sources of its weakness as lying not so much in the sectarian line being pursued by the Socialist workers’ Party, the bulk of whose membership was made up of German immigrants, as in objective circumstances, which created ‘considerable and peculiar difficulties to the steady growth of a labour party’ (p. 236).

While criticising the reformist tendency which existed in some socialist parties, Engels nonetheless considered that such differences of opinion should be solved primarily by internal party debate, but that ‘to do away with every question involving genuine controversy’, was impermissible (p. 376). Furthermore, as regards the various views among socialists on the ways and means of achieving their immediate goal—the political power of the proletariat—he wrote: ‘Once we are agreed on that, differences of opinion ... as to the ways and means of struggle are unlikely to give rise to a dispute over principles’ (p. 119).

Engels’s letters offer striking evidence of his desire to give every possible encouragement to contacts among leaders of socialist parties in different countries, and to inform his colleagues about the experience acquired in the course of the liberation struggle, about major events in the working-class movement, and about the state of affairs in socialist organisations. He informs the Lafargues in detail about the electoral successes of the German Social-Democrats (p. 154), about the state of affairs in English socialist organisations (pp. 342-44). He informs Bebel about the English miners’ strike (pp. 204-5), with Sorge he shares his views on the activities of the French Workers’ Party (p. 249), on the political situation in England (pp. 81, 229), and on the battle among various trends within the German SocialDemocratic Party (pp. 141-42). Almost every event of any significance in the European workers’ movement between 1893 and 1895 is reflected to some degree or other in his letters of this period.

The material published in this volume shows that Engels continued his contacts with Russian socialists, revealing a lively interest in the situation in Russia. Having analysed the situation in the country, he posited that it might soon become the arena of revolutionary events. How well Engels knew the situation in Russia is revealed by his letter to N. F. Danielson, who translated Das Kapitalmto Russian and with whom he corresponded for many years, up to the end of his life. In a letter written on 24 February 1893, Engels noted the acute social contradictions, in this country with a huge peasant population, where, as a result of the rapid if belated, development of capitalism, the crisis might prove ... more powerful and acute than anywhere else (p. 112).

Together with an analysis of the current state of affairs in the proletarian liberation struggle in various countries and its future prospects, Engels’s letters also contain his assessment of and ideas on the consolidation and development of international proletarian links, the activities of the new International, and relations among the socialist parties. In many cases where misunderstandings clouded these relations, Engels acted as an arbiter, seeking to mitigate the discord and to assist in finding a compromise solution. The position he adopted helped, for example, in resolving the conflict between the German Social-Democratic Party and socialists in a number of other countries over whether May 1 should be marked by ceasing work, or should be limited to demonstrations held in the evening (see volume 49, p. 115). On this issue Engels argued that every party must adhere to the international commitments it had assumed or, if that were not possible, reach agreement on its actions with the other parties to such commitments. Engels believed that complete equality and independence in resolving problems constituted the essential basis of relations among socialist parties, a belief he set out most clearly in a letter to Lafargue dated 3 January 1894: ‘A certain manner of proceeding may be excellent for one country, and utterly impossible or even disastrous in another’ (p. 254).

Engels supported the widest possible participation in international socialist congresses by working-class organisations, including those which did not pursue socialist aims. ‘These groups’, he wrote to Turati on 16 August 1894, ‘by the very fact of attending our congresses, are unconsciously drawn into the socialist lap’ (p. 341).

Not believing himself to have the right to interfere in the activities of socialist parties, Engels limited himself to advice and recommendations, and even these he sent only to those closest to him, to whom he was able to say unpalatable things with perfect frankness. To Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Adler, Sorge and others with whom he regularly corresponded, he gave his evaluations and expressed his criticisms, occasionally in quite sharp, and in some cases perhaps not altogether objective terms. However, this was not intended for the eyes of others, nor, of course, was it seen by either writer or reader as some infallible truth. Indeed, many optimistic prognostications and hopes were not intended for publication at all, were often coloured with emotion, and in many cases cannot be viewed as the result of any precise or detailed analysis.

The case is very different when it comes to letters written to people with whom Engels was little acquainted, often in reply to direct theoretical questions, or containing theoretical criticism of a particular economic, philosophical or historical work, or outspoken polemics with their authors. Here Engels is always precise, his evaluations restrained, his conclusions argued and less categorical. Such, for example, are his letters to Franz Mehring (14 July 1893) and to Borgius (25 January 1894). which are de voted to clarifying a number of fundamental questions relating to the materialist concept of history, and which conclude, as it were, a cycle of letters dealing with this subject and published in Volume 49 of the present edition. Here he returns yet again to a criticism of the vulgar interpretation of historical materialism, which denies that ideological or other non-economic factors have any influence whatsoever on the historical process. ‘An historical moment, once it is ushered into the world by other, ultimately economic, causes,’ he wrote to Mehring, ‘will react in its turn, and may exert a reciprocal influence on its environment, and even upon its own causes’ (p. 165).

These letters may be grouped together with a number of others also devoted to theoretical and historical questions: to Robert Meyer, 19 July 1893; to W. Sombart, 11 March, and to Conrad Schmidt, 12 March 1895; and also to Hirsch, 19 March, to Paul Lafargue, 3 April, to Karl Kautsky, 21 May 1895, and a few others. Of particular interest here are comments of a methodological nature, still pertinent today. Engels once again warns against a dogmatic approach to Marxism. ‘But Marx’s whole way of thinking’, he wrote to Sombart, ‘is not so much a doctrine as a method. It provides not so much ready-made dogmas as aids to further investigation, and the method for such investigation’ (p. 461). His thoughts on the objective nature of the historical process are very profound: ‘As Marx sees it, the whole of past history, so far as major events are concerned, is an unconscious process, i.e., those events and the consequences thereof are not deliberate; either the supernumeraries of history have wanted something that was the diametrical opposite of what was achieved, or else that achievement entailed consequences quite other than those that had been foreseen’ (ibid). Engels sets out his understanding of the dialectics of the necessary and the fortuitous, the concept and the phenomenon (p. 466), ideologies (p. 164), the role of the individual in history (p. 266), and also some ideas on the history of the Peasant War in Germany in the 16th century (p. ???), the communal form of ownership (pp. 214, 488) and other questions.

As in previous years, questions of foreign policy were often touched upon in Engels’ correspondence, primarily in terms of ascertaining the position of the socialist parties with respect to the threat of war. Engels was more certain than ever that ‘the next war, if it comes at all, will not permit of being localised in any way’, that ‘given the enormous armies of today and the appalling consequences for the vanquished, a localised war is no longer possible’ (p. 100). He repeated again and again that the socialist workers’ movement had no interest whatsoever in war. ‘At the moment a war would be utterly useless to us; we have a sure means of making progress which a war could only disrupt’, he wrote to Sorge, on 18 January 1893 (p. 84). In his letters there is a reference to a series of articles entitled ‘Can Europe Disarm?’, written with the aim of helping the German SocialDemocratic Party determine its position on the draft new military law (p. 107). He also used these articles when the French socialists turned to him for advice during the drafting of a law to replace a standing army with a militia system (p. 253).

Right up to the end of 1894, Engels’ letters reveal the enormous work he had to undertake in order to prepare for the press the manuscripts of the third volume of Das Kapital. Having returned to this work in the autumn of 1892, he continued it, with only brief interruptions, up to the publication of the book at the beginning of December 1894. Almost every letter during these years contains at least one brief reference to his work on the manuscript, and then on the proofs. ‘I have been compelled to decline all outside work, though ever so tempting, unless absolutely necessary’, he wrote in March 1893 (p. 123). More than a year later, having sent the last part of the manuscript to the printers, he summed up the situation in a letter to Nikolai Danielson: ‘Everything not absolutely necessary had to be put back in order to finish Vol. 3rd’ (p. 309).

Following the publication of the book, Engels immediately began to carry through his own plans. On 17 December 1894 he described to Laura Lafargue a detailed plan for re-editions and new works, a plan amazing in its scope. ‘That is my position’, he wrote, ‘74 years, which I am beginning to feel, and work enough for two men of 40 ... But as it is, all I can do is to work on with what is before me and get through it as far and as well as I can’ (p. 387). He did not abandon the idea of new editions of the earlier works of Marx, which had become virtually unobtainable, and, as he wrote to R. Fischer on 15 April 1895, ‘I have a scheme for again presenting Marx’s and my lesser writings to the public in a complete edition’ (p. 497). However he succeeded in carrying through only a small part of this project.

The contents of this volume reveal the attention which Engels gave, regardless of his occupation with other affairs, to new editions of Marx’s works and of his own, and their translation into other languages. He wrote the introductions for new editions, edited or read through translations. He willingly assisted followers of Marx who published articles popularising Marx’s theory and seeking to apply the materialist concept of history to the study of specific facts and events.

The volume contains a wealth of material revealing Engels’s character, his responsiveness and willingness to reply to any question, provide any assistance not only to those close to him, but on occasion even to people he barely knew or did not know at all. His rigorous adherence to principle combined with a desire to listen to, understand and seek to convince his opponent, his readiness to engage in any discussion, but his intolerance of pretence and deliberate falsehood. Many of his letters are full of concern for Marx’s daughters, his friends and supporters, in whose affairs he always took an active interest.

Special mention must be made of those of Engels’s letters which speak about his trip to the continent in August-September 1893. In them he describes his impressions of what he saw and the changes that had taken place in Europe over the previous two decades, the state of affairs in the workers’ movement in Germany and Austria, and his assessment of the International Socialist Congress in Zurich. Everything in these letters is of interest: the details of daily life noted by his sharp eye, his stories, full of humour and good will, about people he met, and his optimistic impressions of meetings with workers—members of the Social-Democratic Party.

Some of the letters contain references to the writing and publication of Engels’ last works—The Peasant Question in France and Germany (pp. 367-68), and Introduction to Karl Marx’s ‘The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 (pp. 444; 457-58, 489-90), and to the polemics they provoked.

***

Volume 50 contains 320 of Engels’s letters, of which 229 are here published in English for the first time. Of the 89 letters already published, 38 were previously printed in abridged form. Previous publications are indicated in the notes. This volume also includes the first publication in English of Engels’s will and the supplements to it, and also five letters by Marx and Engels written between 1842 and 1859 but not included in the corresponding volumes of their correspondence.

Obvious slips of the pen in the texts of the letters have been corrected without indication. Abbreviated proper names, geographical names and individual words are given in full. Defects in the manuscript are indicated in footnotes, while lost or illegible passages of the text are indicated by omission points. If occasional reconstruction is possible it is given in square brackets. Any passages deleted by the author are reproduced at the bottom of the page in cases where there is a significant discrepancy. Rough drafts of letters or fragments reproduced in some other documents, etc., are indicated either in the text itself, or in the notes.

Foreign words and expressions in the text of the letters are left as given by the author, with a translation where necessary; Russian (cyrillic) words are noted but printed in English. English words and expressions used by Engels in text written in German and French are printed in small caps; (large caps if capitalized in original).

In the case of references to one and the same fact or event in the texts of different letters, the endnote number is duplicated.

The texts of the letters and notes were prepared by Oksana Matkovskaya (letters from October 1892 to August 1893), Yevgeniya Dakhina (letters from September 1893 to December 1894), and Natalia Kalennikova (letters from 1895 onwards and supplements). The Preface was written by Boris Tartakovsky. The volume was edited by Irina Shikanyan, Valerija Kunina and Boris Tartakovsky. The Name Index and the Index of Periodicals were prepared Vera Popova; index of quoted and mentioned literature by Alexander Panfilov (Russian Independent Institute of Social and National Problems).

This volume, including the Subject Index, was prepared for the press by International Publishers, New York, from the manuscript materials available.

To The Reader

Volume 50 completes the first and, as yet, the only edition of the works and correspondence of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in English known as the Collected Works.

This edition of the works of Marx and Engels was undertaken on the request of Marxist scholars in England and the USA by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism (now the Russian Independent Institute of Social and National Problems, and is published jointly by Lawrence and Wishart (Great Britain), International Publishers (USA) and ‘Progress’ (now Progress Publishing Group Corporation), Moscow. The idea of publishing this unique English-language edition of the Collected Works of the founders of Marxism was supported by scholars not only in Englishspeaking countries, but also in a number of other countries in Europe and Asia. The high level of scholarship and the quality of the publication have repeatedly won commendation in the international press. The present edition is the most complete of all those issued to date. It offers the reader a comprehensive review of the written legacy of Marx and Engels, reveals the development of Marx’s theory from the moment of its inception, and sets the works in their historical context.

This edition comprises 1,968 works, including those which remained unfinished, or which were not published during the lifetime of their authors, as well as other documents written by them. Approximately half of these (805) are here published in English for the first time. Thirteen volumes (volumes 38-50) are devoted to the enormous epistolary output of Marx and Engels—3,957 letters—of which most (2,283) have hitherto never been published in English.

This edition also offers English-speaking readers their first opportunity to acquaint themselves with a newly comprehensive way of publishing Marx’s economic works, including the three volumes of Capital and two preparatory manuscripts (volumes 30-37).

Great changes have taken place since Marx and Engels wrote their works, changes which could not be anticipated in their day, and many postulates in their theory now inevitably require critical reassessment. One thing, however, remains indisputable, and that is the enormous contribution they made to the development of socialist thought. The unbiased reader can appreciate the scale of their intellectual influence.

There can be no doubt that the publication of the theoretical and epistolary work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels has enriched man’s scientific and cultural legacy.

The editors wish to express their thanks to subscribers and readers for their co-operation over a period of some 29 years (the first volume was published in 1975), during which they have expressed both criticism and unwavering interest, and also commendable patience in awaiting publication of the final volumes.