The fourth edition required that I should establish in final form, as 
nearly as possible, both text and footnotes. The following brief expla- 
nation will show how I have fulfilled this task. 

After again comparing the French edition and Marx’s manuscript 
remarks I have made some further additions to the German text from 
that translation. They will be found on p. 80 (3rd edition, p. 88) 
[this volume, pp. 126-27], pp. 458-60 (3rd edition, pp. 509-10) 
[this volume, pp. 494-97], pp. 547-51 (3rd edition, p. 600) [this 
volume, pp. 582-83], pp. 591-93 (3rd edition, p. 644) [this volume , 
pp. 621-22] and p. 596 (3rd edition, p. 648) [this volume, 
pp. 624-26] in Note 2. I have also followed the example of the 
French and English editions by putting the long footnote on the mi- 
ners into the text (3rd edition, pp. 509-15; 4th edition, pp. 461-67) 
[this volume, pp. 498-503]. Other small alterations are of a purely 
technical nature. 

Further, I have added a few more explanatory notes, especially 
where changed historical conditions seemed to demand this. All these 
additional notes are enclosed in square brackets and marked either 
with my initials or “D.H.’ 

Meanwhile a complete revision of the numerous quotations had 
been made necessary by the publication of the English edition. For 
this edition Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, undertook to com- 
pare all the quotations with their originals, so that those taken from 


a Der Herausgeber, i.e. the editor. In the present edition all of Engels’ additions are 
given in double oblique lines and marked with “F. E.” 


38 Preface to the Fourth German Edition 


English sources, which constitute the vast majority, are given there 
not as retranslations from the German but in the original English 
form. In preparing the fourth edition it was therefore incumbent 
upon me to consult this text. The comparison revealed various small 
inaccuracies. Page numbers wrongly indicated, due partly to mis- 
takes in copying from notebooks, and partly to the accumulated mis- 
prints of three editions; misplaced quotation or omission marks, 
which cannot be avoided when a mass of quotations is copied from 
notebook extracts; here and there some rather unhappy translation of 
a word; particular passages quoted from the old Paris notebooks of 
1843-45, when Marx did not know English and was reading English 
economists in French translations, so that the double translation yield- 
ed a slightly different shade of meaning, e.g., in the case of Steuart, 
Ure, etc., where the English text had now to be used — and other sim- 
ilar instances of trifling inaccuracy or negligence. But anyone who 
compares the fourth edition with the previous ones can convince him- 
self that all this laborious process of emendation has not produced the 
smallest change in the book worth speaking of. There was only one 
quotation which could not be traced — the one from Richard Jones 
(4th edition, p. 562, note 47). Marx probably slipped up when writ- 
ing down the title of the book *°. All the other quotations retain their 
cogency in full, or have enhanced it due to their present exact form. 

Here, however, I am obliged to revert to an old story. 

I know of only one case in which the accuracy of a quotation given 
by Marx has been called in questions. But as the issue dragged 
beyond his lifetime I cannot well ignore it here.*! 

On March 7, 1872, there appeared in the Berlin Concordia, organ of 
the German Manufacturers’ Association, an anonymous article enti- 
tled: “How Karl Marx Quotes.” It was here asserted, with an effer- 
vescence of moral indignation and unparliamentary language, that 
the quotation from Gladstone’s Budget Speech of April 16, 1863 (in 
the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Associa- 
tion, 1864,*? and repeated in Capital, Vol. I, p. 617, 4th edition; 
pp. 670-71, 3rd edition) [this volume, pp. 645-46], had been falsi- 
fied; that not a single word of the sentence: “this intoxicating 
augmentation of wealth and power ... is ... entirely confined to classes 
of property” was to be found in the (semi-official) stenographic 
report in Hansard. “But this sentence is nowhere to be found in 
Gladstone’s speech. It says quite the opposite.” (In bold face): “Marx 
has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content.” 


Preface to the Fourth German Edition 39 


Marx, to whom this number of the Concordia was sent the following 
May, answered the anonymous author in the Volksstaat of June 
Ist.** As he could not recall which newspaper report he had used for 
the quotation, he limited himself to citing, first the equivalent quota- 
tion from two English publications, and then the report in The Times, 
according to which Gladstone says: 

“That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. 
I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with 
pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it 
were my belief that it was confined to classes who are in easy circum- 
stances. This takes no cognisance at all of the condition of the labour- 
ing population. The augmentation I have described, and which is 
founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely 
confined to classes of property.”? 

Thus Gladstone says here that he would be sorry if it were so, but it 
is so: this intoxicating augmentation of power and wealth is entirely 
confined to classes of property. And as to the semi-official Hansard, 
Marx goes on to say: “In the version which he afterwards manipulat- 
ed, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough to obliterate the passage that 
would be certainly compromising on the lips of an English Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. This is, incidentally, traditional English parlia- 
mentary practice, and by no means the invention of little Lasker 
versus Bebel.**”’ 

The anonymous writer gets angrier and angrier. In his answer in 
the Concordia, July 4th, he sweeps aside second-hand sources and de- 
murely suggests that it is the “custom” to quote parliamentary 
speeches from the stenographic report; insisting, however, that the 
Times report (which includes the “‘lyingly added” sentence) and the 
Hansard report (which omits it) “fully coincide materially’, while 
the Times report likewise contains “‘the direct opposite of that notori- 
ous passage in the Inaugural Address”’. This fellow carefully conceals 
the fact that the Times report explicitly includes that self-same “‘noto- 
rious passage’, alongside of its alleged ‘“‘opposite’’. Despite all this, 
however, the anonymous one feels that he is stuck fast and that only 
some new dodge can save him. Thus, whilst his article bristles, as we 
have just shown, with “impudent mendacity”’ and is interlarded with 
such edifying terms of abuse as “bad faith’, “‘dishonesty’’, “lying 


29 66 39 66 9966 


statement’, “that spurious quotation’, “impudent mendacity”’, “a quo- 


a This quotation is given in English in the German original. 


40 Preface to the Fourth German Edition 


39) 6 


tation which was completely forged”’, “this forgery”’, “simply nefari- 
ous’, etc., he finds it necessary to divert the issue to another domain 
and therefore promises ‘‘to explain in a second article the importance 
which we”’ (the non-mendacious anonymous one) “‘attach to the con- 
tent of Gladstone’s words’’. As if his particular opinion, of no decisive 
value as it is, had anything whatever to do with the matter. This sec- 
ond article was printed in the Concordia on July 11th. 

Marx replied again in the Volksstaat of August 7th now giving 
also the reports of the passage in question from The Morning Star and 
The Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. According to both reports 
Gladstone said that he would look with apprehension, etc., upon this 
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if he believed it to be 
confined to classes IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES.* But this augmentation was