V. I.

Lenin

The Marx-Engels Correspondence [1]

The long-promised edition of the correspondence of the famous founders of scientific socialism has at last been published. Engels
bequeathed the work of publishing it to Bebel and Bernstein, and Bebel
managed to complete his part of the editorial work shortly before his
death.

The Marx-Engels correspondence, published a few weeks ago by Dietz,
Stuttgart, consists of four big volumes. They contain in all 1,386 letters
by Marx and Engels covering an extensive period, from 1844 to 1883.

The editorial work, i.e., the writing of prefaces to the correspondence
of various periods, was done by Eduard Bernstein. As might have been
expected, this work is unsatisfactory both from the technical and the
ideological stand point. After his notorious “evolution” to extreme
opportunist views, Bernstein should never have undertaken to edit letters
which are impregnated through and through with the revolutionary
spirit. Bernstein’s prefaces are in part meaningless and in part simply
false—as, for instance, when, instead of a precise, clear and frank
characterisation of the opportunist errors of Lassalle and Schweitzer which
Marx and Engels exposed, one meets with eclectic phrases and thrusts, such
as that “Marx and Engels were not always right in opposing Lassalle”
(Vol. III, p. xviii), or that in their tactics they were “much nearer” to
Schweitzer than to Liebknecht (Vol. IV, p. x). These attacks have no
purpose except to serve as a screen and embellishment for
opportunism. Unfortunately, the eclectic attitude to Marx’s ideological
struggle against many of his opponents is becoming increasingly widespread
among present-day German Social-Democrats.

From the technical standpoint, the index is unsatisfactory—only one for
all four volumes (Kautsky and Stirling are omitted, for instance); the notes to
individual letters are too scanty and are lost in the editor’s prefaces
instead of being placed in proximity to the letters they refer to, as they were
by Sorge, and so forth.

The price of the publication is unduly high—about 20 rubles for the four
volumes. There can be no doubt that the complete correspondence could and should
have been published in a less luxurious edition at a more reasonable price, and
that, in addition, a selection of passages most important from the standpoint
of principle could and should have been published for wide distribution among
workers.

All these defects of the edition will, of course, hamper a study of the
correspondence. This is a pity, because its scientific and political value is
tremendous. Not only do Marx and Engels stand out before the reader in clear
relief in all their greatness, but the extremely rich theoretical content of
Marxism is graphically revealed, because in their letters Marx and Engels return
again and again to the most diverse aspects of their doctrine, emphasising and
explaining—at times discussing and debating—what is newest (in
relation to earlier views), most important and most difficult.

There unfolds before the reader a strikingly vivid picture of the history of the
working-class movement all over the world—at its most important junctures
and in its most essential points. Even more valuable is the history of the
politics of the working class. On the most diverse occasions, in
various countries of the Old World and the New, and at different historical
moments, Marx and Engels discuss the most important principles of the
presentation of the political tasks of the working class. And
the period covered by the correspondence was a period in which the working class
separated from bourgeois democracy, a period in which an independent
working-class movement arose, a period in which the fundamental principles of
proletarian tactics and policy were defined. The more we have occasion in our
day to observe how the working-class movement in various countries suffers from
opportunism in consequence of the stag nation and decay of the bourgeoisie, in
consequence of the attention of the labour leaders being engrossed in the
trivialities of the day, and so on—the more valuable becomes the wealth of material
contained in the correspondence, displaying as it does a most profound
comprehension of the basic aims of the proletariat in bringing
about change, and providing an unusually flexible definition of the tasks
of the tactics of the moment from the standpoint of these revolutionary
aims, without making the slightest concession to opportunism or
revolutionary phrase-mongering.

If one were to attempt to define in a single word the focus, so to
speak, of the whole correspondence, the central point at which the whole
body of ideas expressed and discussed converges—that word would be
dialectics . The application of materialist dialectics to the
reshaping of all political economy from its foundations up, its application
to history, natural science, philosophy and to the policy and tactics of
the working class—that was what interested Marx and Engels most of all,
that was where they contributed what was most essential and new, and that
was what constituted the masterly advance they made in the history of
revolutionary thought.

We intend in the following account, after giving a general review of
the correspondence, to outline the most interesting remarks and arguments
of Marx and Engels, without pretending to give an exhaustive account of the
contents of the letters.

I. GENERAL REVIEW

The correspondence opens with letters written in 1844 by the
24-year-old Engels to Marx. The situation in Germany at that time is
brought out in striking relief. The first letter is dated the end of
September 1844 and was sent from Barmen, where Engels’s family lived, and
where he was born. Engels was not quite 24 years old at the time. He was
bored with family life and was anxious to break away. His father was a
despot, a pious manufacturer, who was outraged at his son’s continual
running about to political meetings, and at his communist
convictions. Engels wrote that had it not been for his mother, of whom he
was

deeply fond, he would not have spent at home even the remaining few days
before he was due to leave. “You would never believe,” he complained to
Marx “what petty reasons, what superstitious fears were put forward by the
family against my departure.” [2]

While he was still in Barmen—where he was delayed a little longer by
a love affair—Engels gave way to his father and worked for about two
weeks in the factory office (his father was a manufacturer). “Huckstering
is too horrible,” he writes to Marx. “Barmen is too horrible, the way
they waste their time is too horrible, and above all things it is too
horrible to remain, not merely a bourgeois, but a manufacturer, a bourgeois
who actively opposes the proletariat.” He consoled himself, Engels goes on
to say, by working on his book on the condition of the working class (this
book appeared, we know, in 1845 and is one of the best works of world
socialist literature). “And perhaps one can while being a Communist remain
in one’s outward status a bourgeois and a huckstering beast as long as one
does not write, but to carry on a wide communist propaganda and at the same
time engage in huckstering and industry will not work. Enough. At Easter I
quit here. Add to this the drowsy life of a thoroughly Christian-Prussian
family—I cannot stand it any longer; I might in the, end become a German
philistine and introduce philistinism into communism. [3] Thus wrote the young Engels. After the Revolution of 1848
the exigencies of life obliged him to return to his father’s office and to
become a “huckstering beast” for many long years. But be was able to
stand firm and to create for himself, not Christian-Prussia,, surroundings,
but entirely different, comradely surroundings, and to become for the rest
of his life a relentless foe of the “introduction of philistinism into
communism”.

Social life in the German provinces in 1844 resembled Russian social
life at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the Revolution of
1905. There was a general urge for political life, a general seething
indignation in opposition to the government; the clergy fulminated against
the youth for their atheism; children in bourgeois families quarrelled with
their parents over their “aristocratic treatment of servants or workers”.

The general spirit of opposition found expression in the fact that
everybody declared himself to be a Communist. “The Police Commissary in
Barmen is a Communist,” Engels writes to Marx. He was in Cologne,
D\"usseldorf, Elberfeld—wherever he turned he stumbled upon Communists!
“One ardent Communist, a cartoonist ... named Seel, is going to Paris in
two months. I shall give him your address; you will all like him for his
enthusiastic temperament and his love of music, and he could very well be
useful as a cartoonist.” [4] “ Miracles are happening here in Elberfeld. Yesterday [this was written
on February 22, 1845], we held our third communist meeting in the largest
hall and the best restaurant of the city. The first meeting was attended by
40 people, the second by 130 and the third by at least 200. The whole of
Elberfeld and Barmen, from the moneyed aristocracy to the small
shopkeepers, was represented, all except the proletariat.”

This is literally what Engels wrote. Everybody in Germany at that time
was a Communist—except the proletariat. Communism was a form of
expression of the opposition sentiments of all, and chiefly of the
bourgeoisie. “The most stupid, the most lazy and most philistine people,
who take no interest in anything in the world, are almost becoming
enthusiastic over communism.” [5] The chief preachers of communism at that time were
people of the type of our Narodniks, “Socialist-Revolutionaries”,
“Popular
Socialists”, [6] and so forth, that is to say, well-meaning bourgeois,
some to a greater, others to a lesser degree, furious with the government.

And under such conditions, amidst countless pseudo-socialist trends and
factions, Engels was able to find his way to proletarian
socialism, without fearing to break off relations with a mass of
well-intentioned people, who were ardent revolutionaries but bad
Communists.

In 1846 Engels was in Paris. Paris was then seething with politics and
the discussion of various socialist theories. Engels eagerly studied
socialism, made the acquaintance of Cabet, Louis Blanc and other prominent
socialists, and ran from editorial office to editorial office and from
circle to circle.

His attention was chiefly focussed on the most important and most
widespread socialist doctrine of the time—Proudhonism. And even
before the publication of Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty (October 1846; Marx’s famous reply, The Poverty of Philosophy , appeared in 1847), Engels, with ruthless sarcasm and
remarkable profundity, criticised Proudhon’s basic ideas, which were then
being particularly advocated by the German Socialist Gr\"un. His excellent
knowledge of English (which Marx mastered much later) and of English
literature enabled Engels at once (letter of September 16, 1846) to point
to the example of the bankruptcy of the notorious Proudhonist “labour
bazaars”  [7] in England. Proudhon disgraces socialism, Engels
exclaims indignantly—it follows from Proudhon that the workers must
buy out capital.

The 26-year-old Engels simply annihilates “true socialism”. We meet
this expression in his letter of October 23, 1846, long before the
Communist Manifesto , and Gr\"un is mentioned as its chief
exponent. An “anti-proletarian, petty-bourgeois, philistine” doctrine,
“sheer phrase-mongering”, all kinds of “humanitarian” aspirations,
“superstitious fear of ‘crude’ communism” (L\"offel-Kommunismus,
literally: “spoon communism” or “belly communism”), “peaceful plans to
bestow happiness” upon mankind—these are some of Engels’s epithets,
which apply to all species of pre-Marxist socialism.

“ The Proudhon plan of association,” writes Engels, “was discussed
for three evenings. At first I had nearly the whole clique with Gr\"un at
their head against me.... The chief point was to prove the necessity for
revolution by force.” (October 23, 1846). In the end he got furious, he
writes, and drove his opponents so hard that they were obliged to make an
open attack on communism. He demanded a vote on whether they were
Communists or not. This caused great indignation among the Gr\"unites, who
began to argue that they had come together to discuss “the good of man
kind “and that they must know what communism really was . Engels
gave them an extremely simple definition so as to permit no opportunity for
evasions. “I therefore defined,” Engels writes, “the objects of the
Communists in this way:
(1) to achieve the interests of the proletariat in opposition to those of the bourgeoisie;
(2) to do this through the abolition of private property and its
replacement by community of goods; (3) to recognise no means of carrying out these objects other than a
democratic revolution by force.” [8] (Written a year and a half before the 1848 Revolution.)

The discussion ended with the meeting’s adopting Engels’s definition by
thirteen votes against the votes of two Gr\"unites. These meetings were
attended by some twenty journeymen carpenters. Thus the foundations of the
Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany were laid in Paris sixty-seven
years ago.

A year later, in his letter of November 23, 1847, Engels informed Marx
that he had prepared a draft of the Communist Manifesto ,
incidentally declaring himself opposed to the catechism form originally
proposed. “I begin: What is Communism?” writes Engels. “And then
straight to the proletariat—history of its origin, difference from former
workmen, development of the contradiction between proletariat and
bourgeoisie, crises, results.... In conclusion the Party policy of the
Communists.”

This historical letter of Engels’s on the first draft of a work which
has travelled all over the world and which to this (lay is true in all its
fundamentals and as actual and topical as though it were written yesterday,
clearly proves that Marx and Engels are justly named side by side as the
founders of modern socialism.