ENGELS TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON | 

IN ST. PETERSBURG 

London, 24 February 1893 
My dear Sir, 

Pardon my long silence. It was not voluntary, I have to make an effort—a 
supreme effort—to finish Vol. II I‘ this winter and spring. In order to attain 
that, I have to forbid myself all extra-work and even all correspondence that 
is not absolutely necessary. Otherwise nothing would have detained me from 
continuing with you the discussion of our highly interesting and important 
problem. ‘© 

I have now finished—all but a few formal matters—the rédaction of 
Section V (Banks and Credit), the most difficult of all, both from the state of 
the subject and from the state of the manuscript. Now remain but two 
sections—1/3 of the whole—of these the one—rent of land—is 

* See this volume, p. 102 -° A play of words in the original: the name Wachs is derived from the 
word ‘wichsern’ meaning ‘waxen’. See this volume, p. 101 - ° jocular name for Louise Kautsky 
- * of Marx’s Capital -° editing 

upon a very difficult subject too, but as far as I recollect the Ms." is far more 
finished than that of Section V. So that I still hope to be able to complete my 
task in the allotted time. The great difficulty was, to get 3-5 months absolute 
freedom from all interruption, so as to devote the whole time to Section V, 
and that is now fortunately done. In working, I have often thought of the 
immense pleasure this volume will give to you when it appears. I shall send 
you advance-sheets as I did for Vol. II. 

Maintenant revenons a nos moutons.” 

We seem to be agreed upon all points except one, which you tackle in 
both your letters of 3d October and 27 January, though in each from a 
different point of view. 

In the first you ask: was the economic change, which after 1854 had 
become unavoidable, ‘°° of such a nature that it must, instead of developing 
the historical institutions of Russia, on the contrary attack them in their root? 
In other words, could not the rural commune be taken for the basis of the 
new economic development? 

And, January 27", you express the same idea in this form: the grande 
industrie’ had become a necessity for Russia, but was it unavoidable that it 
was developed in a capitalistic form? 

Well, in, or about, 1854 Russia started with the commune on the one hand, 
and the necessity of the grande industrie on the other. Now, if you take the 
whole state of your country into account, as it was at that date, do you see 
any possibility of the grande industrie being grafted on the peasants’ 
commune in a form which would, on the one hand, make the development 
ofthat grande industrie possible, and on the other hand raise the primitive 
commune to the rank of a social institution superior to anything the world 
has yet seen? And that while the whole Occident! was still living under the 
capitalist régime?. It strikes me that such an evolution, which would have 
surpassed anything known in history, required other economical, political 
and intellectual conditions than were present at that time in Russia. 

No doubt the commune and to a certain extent the artel, contained germs 
which under certain conditions might have developed and saved Russia the 
necessity of passing through the torments of the capitalistic ré- 

* of Section VI (see present edition, Vol. 37) - > Literally: let’s return to our muttons; an 

expression from the French medieval farce, meaning: let’s return to the subject of our 
conversation. - ° large-scale industry - ‘ West 

gime. | fully subscribe to our author’s letter about Zhukovsky.” But in his, as 
well as in my opinion, the first condition required to bring this about, was the 
impulse from without, the change of economic system in the Occident of 
Europe, the destruction of the capitalist system in the countries where it had 
originated. Our author said in a certain preface to a certain old manifesto, in 
January 1882, replying to the question whether the Russian commune might 
not be the starting-point of a higher social development”: if the change of 
economic system in Russia coincides with a change of economic system in 
the West—so that the two complement each other, the present Russian 
common ownership of land may serve as the starting-point for communist 
development.‘ 

If we in the West had been quicker in our own economic development, if 
we had been able to upset the capitalistic regime some ten or twenty years 
ago, there might have been time yet for Russia to cut short the tendency of 
her own evolution towards capitalism. Unfortunately we are too slow, and 
those economic consequences of the capitalistic system which must bring it 
up to the critical point, are only just now developing in the various countries 
about us: while England is fast losing her industrial monopoly, France and 
Germany are approaching the industrial level of England, and America bids 
fair to drive them all out of the world’s market both for industrial and for 
agricultural produce. The introduction of an, at least relative, free trade policy 
in America is sure to complete the ruin of England’s industrial monopoly, 
and to destroy, at the same time, the industrial export trade of Germany and 
France; then the crisis must come, tout ce qu’il y a de plus fin de siécle.“ But 
in the meantime, with you, the commune fades away, and we can only hope 
that the change to a better system, with us, may come soon enough to save, at 
least in some of the remoter portions of your country, institutions which may, 
under these circumstances, be called upon to fulfil a great future, But facts 
are facts, and we must not forget that these chances are getting less and less 
every year. 

For the rest I grant you that the circumstance of Russia being the /ast 
country seized upon by the grande capitalist grande industrie, and at the 

*“ The reference is to the letter Marx wrote to the editors of the Otechestvennive Zapiski (see 
present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 196-201). - ° K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Preface to the Second Russian 
Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (see present edition, Vol. 24, p. 426). - ° Phrase 
in Russian in the original. - “ which signifies better than anything else the end of the world 

same time the country with by far the largest peasant population, are such as 
must render the bouleversement ’ caused by this economic change, more 
acute than it has been anywhere else. The process of replacing some 500,000 
landowners,” and some 80 million peasants by a new class of bourgeois 
landed proprietors cannot be carried out but under fearful sufferings and 
convulsions. But history is about the most cruel of all goddesses,” and she 
leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in 
‘peaceful’ economic development. And we men and women are 
unfortunately so stupid that we never can pluck up courage to a real progress 
unless urged to it by sufferings that seem almost out of proportion. 

Always yours 
P.W.R 167 

Address Mrs Kautsky, please, not Mrs Roscher.