London, 16 February 1884 

Dear Kautsky, 

I happen to have an hour or two to spare today, hence my prompt 
reply. 

Not only Deville’s Aistorical section, but also his descriptive one 
(working day, cooperation, manufacturing, large-scale industry, etc.) 
will require revision, of which you may assure yourself by going 
through a couple of chapters. All I shall do for the present, so far as 
Meissner is concerned, is to send him the French text and inform him 
that revision is under way '3’ and that I shall let him have further de- 
tails in due course. 

The Poverty is also coming out in a new French edition in Paris. 
I am writing a preface to it'; in the one to the German edition, 
I shall dispose of the myth of Rodbertus.* This stemmed from Rudolf 
Meyer '7° and has been so widely hawked around in Germany, this 
country and even America, that the thing has got to be scotched once 
and for all. I shall show, 1) that in 1850 we had had no opportunity of 
learning anything whatsoever from Mr Rodbertus, 2) that he was 

*,F. Engels, ‘Marx and Rodbertus’. 

quite unknown to us, 3) that his great discoveries had already been 
commonplaces in 1848, 4) that the remedies he specifies for use in so- 
cialist therapy had already been criticised in the Poverty, prior to Rod- 
bertus’ discovery of them. 

So as you see, there’s plenty left for you to do; but the above matters 
can only be attended to, because experienced, by me, while I am also 
the only person to possess the necessary material from the years 1840- 
50. 

Rodbertus’ theory of rent is nonsense; the first 1861-63 manuscript 
of Capital contains a detailed and somewhat ironical critique of it by 
Marx, in a very long section, Theories of Surplus Value, which I shall 
probably publish at the end of the 2nd volume or as a 3rd volume.'7! 

What I require for my preface, however, is Rodbertus’ Offener Brief 
an das Comité des Deutschen Arbeitervereins, Leipzig, 1863. Gould you or 
Ede get hold of the thing and let me have it for a few days? As soon as 
I have made extracts, you shall have it back. 

I have not yet received the Proudhon article from the old Social- 
Demokrat'*' promised me by Ede -— might arrive this evening. I shall 
probably translate it for the French edition. 

If Ede were suddenly to turn up here it would please me no end; 
I could join him in a drink, being now once again able to indulge in 
a very modest way. 

Let us now return to your last letter but one.!7? Dietz asked for the 
Condition of the Working-Class long ago, and I virtually promised he 
should have it as soon as I had found out how I stood with Wigand, its 
former publisher. For the past 15 years Liebknecht has been promis- 
ing to ascertain this through Freytag (i.e. what my legal position is 
vis-a-vis Wigand), and still I’m in the dark.’ At all events, Dietz has 
first refusal, and ultimately I shall myself take steps to find out what 
I am entitled to do. 

It would be a good thing if someone were to take the trouble to 
throw light on the proliferation of state socialism, drawing for the 
purpose on an exceedingly flourishing example of the practice in Java. 
All the material is to be found in Java, How to Manage a Colony, sy 
J.W.B. Money, Barrister at Law, London, 1861, 2 vors. Here one sees 
how the Dutch have, on the basis of the communities’ age-old com- 
munism, organised production for the benefit of the state and ensured 
that the people enjoy what is, in their own estimation, a quite com- 

* See this volume, pp. 19-20. 

fortable existence; the consequence is that the people are kept in 
a state of primitive stupidity and the Dutch exchequer rakes in 
70 million marks a year (now probably more). It’s a most interesting 
case, and conclusions as to its practical application are easy to draw. 
It also shows how there, as in India and Russia today, primitive com- 
munism (provided no modern communist element comes to stir it up) 
supplies the best and also the broadest basis for exploitation and des- 
potism, and survives in the midst of modern society as an anachro- 
nism (to be eliminated or, one might almost say, turned back on its 
course) no less glaring than the Mark communities of the original 
cantons.'73 

There is a definitive book —as definitive as Darwin’s was in the case 
of biology — on the primitive state of society; once again, of course, 
Marx was the one to discover it. It is Morgan’s Ancient Society, 1877. 
Marx mentioned it, but my head was full of other things at the time 
and he never referred to it again which was, no doubt, agreeable to 
him, wishing as he did to introduce the book to the Germans him- 
self'7*; I can see this from his very exhaustive extracts. Within the lim- 
its set by his subject, Morgan rediscovers for himself Marx’s mate- 
rialist view of history, and concludes with what are, for modern so- 
ciety, downright communist postulates. The Roman and Greek gens 
is, for the first time, fully elucidated in the light of that of savages, in 
particular the American Indians, thus providing a firm basis for the 
history of primitive times. If I had the time to spare, I would work up 
the material, together with Marx’s notes, for the feuilleton of the 
Sozialdemokrat or for the Neue Zeit, but it’s out of the question. All the 
impostures— endogamy, exogamy and whatever else the balderdash 
is called — of Tylor, Lubbock and Co. have been demolished once 
and for al].!75 These gentry are doing all they can to suppress the 
book in this country; it is printed in America and I ordered it 5 weeks 
since but cannot get hold of it, although the name of a London firm 
figures as co-publisher on the title-page! 

Kindest regards. 

Yours, 
F.E.