ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY 

Eastbourne, 13-14 August 1886 
4 Cavendish Place 

Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, 

My reply to your kind letter of the 9th June was delayed for the 
simple reason that overwork compelled me to suspend a// my corre- 
spondence (such as did not command immediate despatch) until the 
ms. of the translation of Das Kapital was finally ready for the print- 
er. 5° Such is now the case, and I can at last attend to the heap of 
unanswered letters before me; and you shal] have the first chance. 
Had you told me in the above letter that you had spare time on your 
hands for party work, I should at once have sent you a short reply; 
I am sorry if through my fault you were prevented from doing some 
useful work. 

I quite forgot, when proposing to you Lohknarbeit und Kapital,* 
that an English translation had already appeared in London. As this 
is offered for sale in New York it would be useless to translate it 
over again. 

* K. Marx, Wage Labour and Capital. 

Now about Der Ursprung.* The thing is more difficult to translate 
than Die Lage,” and would require comparatively greater attention 
and more time per page on your part. But if I had time left to me for 
the looking it over, that would be no obstacle, provided you could 
devote that time and attention to it, and leave me a larger margin of 
blank paper to suggest alterations. There is however another matter 
to consider. If the thing is to come out in English at all, it ought to 
be published in such a way that the public can get hold of it through 
the regular book-trade. That will not be the case, as far as I can see, 
with Die Lage. Unless the trade arrangements are very different in 
America from those in Europe, the booksellers will not deal in 
works published by outside establishments belonging to a working 
men’s party. This is why Chartist and Owenite publications are no- 
where preserved and nowhere to be had, not even in the British Mu- 
seum; and why all our German party publications are—and were, 
long before the Socialist Law *7 — not to be had through the trade, 
and remained unknown to the public outside the party. That is 
a state of things which sometimes cannot be avoided, but ought to 
be avoided wherever possible. And you will not blame me if I wish 
to avoid it for English translations of my writings having suffered 
from it in Germany for more than 40 years. The state of things in 
England is such that publishers can be got— either now or in the 
near future —for socialist works, and I have no doubt that in the 
course of next year I can have an English translation published here 
and the translator paid; and as I have, moreover, long since prom- 
ised Dr Aveling the translation of the Entwicklung and Ur- 
Sprung, if he can make it pay for himself, you see that an Ameri- 
can edition, brought out outside the regular book-trade, would only 
spoil the chance of a London edition to be brought out in the way of 
the regular trade and therefore accessible to the public generally and 
everywhere. 

Moreover I do not think that this book is exactly what is wanted 
at the present moment by the American working men. Das Kapital 
will be at their service before the year is out, that will serve them for 
a piece de résistance.“ For lighter, more popular literature, for real 
propaganda, my booklet will scarcely serve. In the present undevel- 
oped state of the movement, I think perhaps some of the French po- 

* F.Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. -> F. Engels, 
The Condition of the Working-Class in England. -° special dish 

pularisations would answer best. Deville and Lafargue have pub- 
lished two series of lectures, Cours d’économie sociale, about two 
years ago, Deville taking the economic and Lafargue the more gen- 
eral, historic side of the Marxian theory.'’° No doubt Bernstein can 
let you look at a copy and get one from Paris, and then you might 
judge for yourself. Of course I do not mean Deville’s larger work, 
the extract from Das Kapital, which in the latter half of it is very 
misleading. * 

14th August 

To return to the Ursprung. I do not mean to say that I have abso- 
lutely promised Aveling to let him have it, but I consider myself 
bound to him in case a translation is to come out in London. The fi- 
nal decision, then, would depend very much upon the nature of the 
publishing arrangements you can make in America. To a repetition 
of what Miss Foster has done with Die Lage I decidedly object.? 
When I see my way to an English edition, brought out by a firm 
known in the bourgeois trade, and not only of this book, but prob- 
ably of a collection of various other writings, with the advantage of 
having the translation done here (which saves to me a deal of time) 
you will admit that I ought to look twice before sanctioning the 
bringing out, in America, of this little book alone and thereby spoil- 
ing the whole arrangement. And with the present anti-socialist scare 
in America, I doubt whether you will find regular publishers very 
willing to associate their names with socialist works. 

A very good bit of work would be a series of pamphlets stating, in 
popular language, the contents of Das Kapital. The theory of surplus 
value No. 1; the history of the various forms of surplus value (coop- 
eration, manufacture, modern industry) No. 2; accumulation and the 
history of primitive accumulation No. 3; the development of surplus 
value making in colonies (last chapter) No. 4-—this would be espe- 
cially instructive in America, as it would give the economical history 
of that country, from a land of independent peasants to a centre of 
modern industry, and might be completed by specially American 
facts. 

In the meantime you may be sure that it will take some time yet 

* G. Deville, Le Capital de Karl Marx. Résumé... -” See this volume, p. 415. 

before the mass of the American working people will begin to read so- 
cialist literature. And for those that do read and will read, there is 
matter enough being provided, and least of all will Der Ursprung be 
missed by them. With the Anglo-Saxon mind, and especially with 
the eminently practical development it has taken in America, 
theory counts for nothing until imposed by dire necessity, and I count 
above all things upon the teaching our friends will receive by the con- 
sequences of their own blunders, to prepare them for theoretical 
schooling. 

Yours very sincerely, 
F. Engels 

I shall be in this place until 27th inst. 59; after that, in London.