ENGELS TO MARX” 

Ramsgate, 28 May 1876 

Dear Moor, 

It’s all very well for you to talk. You can lie in a warm 
bed—study Russian agrarian relations in particular and rent in 
general without anything to interrupt you—but I have to sit on a 
hard bench, drink cold wine, and all of a sudden drop everything 
else and break a lance with the tedious Dihring.”’ However, it 
can’t be helped, I suppose, even if it means letting myself in for a 
controversy to which there is no foreseeable end; for otherwise [li 
get no peace, and anyway, amicus* Most’s panegyric on Dithring’s 
Cursus der Philosophie'? has shown me exactly from what quarter 
and how the attack must be made. It’s essential to include that 
book as well because in many crucial points it reveals the weak 
sides and foundations of the arguments contained in the Okono- 
mie more clearly.’ I shall order it straight away. For there’s no 
philosophy proper— formal logic, dialectics, metaphysics, etc.—in it 
at all, rather it’s supposed to present a course in general knowledge 
in which nature, history, society, state, law, etc., are discussed in what 
purports to be an internal relation. Again, there is a whole chapter 
in which the future, or so-called ‘free’, society is depicted in its less 
economic aspects and, inter alia, a syllabus is already laid down for 
the primary and secondary schools of the future. Here, then, one 
finds platitudinousness in an even simpler form than in the 
political economy, so that, by taking both books together, one can 
kill two birds with one stone by exposing that side of the fellow as 
well. As regards the magnanimous chap’s view of history—that it 
was nothing but rubbish till Dihring came along—the book 
affords one the additional advantage of being able to quote his 
own preposterous words. Anynow, I HAVE HiM ON THE HIP Now.” My plan 
is laid—j’ai mon plan. I shall begin by taking a wholly objective 
and apparently serious look at the stuff; then, as evidence of its 
nonsensicality on the one hand and platitudinousness on the other 
begins to mount up, my treatment of it will become correspond- 
ingly severe until eventually I come down on it like a ton of bricks. 

@ friend - > Paraphrased words from Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice, 
Act. IV, Scene 1, 

In this way Most & Co. will be deprived of the plea of 
‘uncharitableness’, etc., while Duhring will still get his deserts. 
These gentlemen ought to be shown that we have more ways than 
one of dealing with such folk. 

I hope Wilhelm will print Most’s article in the Neue Welt, for 
which it was evidently written. As always, Most is incapable of 
copying and has Dühring write the most absurd nonsense about 
natural science, e.g. the detachment of rings (according to Kant’s 
theory) from fixed stars! 

The trouble with Wilhelm isn’t simply a want of manuscripts, 
something that could be overcome by printing more articles on 
topical questions, etc., as was done in Hepner’s and Blos’ time. It is 
Wilhelm’s urge to make good the shortcomings of our theory, to 
have an answer to every philistine objection and to have a picture 
of future society, because that’s another thing about which your 
philistine is always pestering them with questions; he is, besides, 
intent on being as independent of us theoretically as possible, and 
in this, considering his complete ignorance of theory, he has 
always been far more successful than he himself is aware. But he 
has thus put me in the position of having to remind myself that, 
compared with the theoretical bunglers on the Volksstaat, Diithring 
is at least an educated man and his opera’ are better at any rate 
than the products of these subjectively and objectively obscure 
gentlemen. 

You were absolutely right about the Turkish business and I only 
hope the affair will proceed satisfactorily; during the past week it 
appears to have hung fire somewhat and an oriental revolution, 
more than any other, calls for a prompt decision. The Sultan ‘— 
and this is the reason for the complaints about his constant 
requests for money—has accumulated a vast Hoarp in the palace, 
so vast that the softas' have demanded that he hand over 
£5,000,000 of it, which means that there must be far more. The 
presentation of the Gorchakov Note of 3 emperors 168 will, one 
may hope, bring the matter to a head. 

Please convey my best thanks to Jenny and Longuet for the 
honour they have done me; I shall try and show myself worthy of 
it. I trust the little boy with the three potent names is all right 
again.“ 

My re-reading of early history and my studies in the field of 
natural science have rendered me yeoman service where Diihr- 

4 Wilhelm Liebknecht - > works - © Abdul Aziz - 4 See this volume, pp. 120-21.