ENGELS TO MAURICE LACHATRE™” 
[Draft] 
[London, after 14 February 1873] 
Citizen, 

I accept your proposal that I should write the life of Karl Marx, 
a work that would at the same time be the history of the German 

a F. Engels, The Housing Question.- >’ K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the 
Communist Party. -¢ See this volume, pp. 462-63. - ¢ Natalie Liebknecht 

communist party before ’48 and of the socialist party after ’52. 
Looked at from this point of view, the biography of the man 
would become the history of the party of which Marx indisputably 
is the highest personification, and would be of great interest to 
French democracy. It is this consideration that would persuade me 
to lay aside my work so as to devote myself to a task that would 
take time and call for research, if it was to be worthy of its subject. 
But I cannot agree to set to work until I have received a further 
letter from you informing me of the conditions which, no doubt 
by an oversight, you omitted to mention in your letter of 14 
February.”