(please omit Brighton from 
the address, makes the post 
office here do silly things) 

Worthing, England, 22 August 1884 
48 Marine Parade 

Dear Kautsky, 

Have just received your letters which were somewhat delayed, as 
you did not put the number of the house; also the mental faculties of 
our postal drudges over here are of the very lowest order. 

Poverty.! The manuscript I have here has now been revised. 
Apart from slight misinterpretations of those niceties of French that 
can only be properly learnt in France itself, there was not much to al- 
ter. For rapports* I usually put Verhältnis rather than ‘Beziehungen’ 
because the latter is too indefinite and also because Marx always ren- 
dered the German Verhältnis as rapport and vice versa. Moreover in 
rapport de proportionnalité, for instance, rapport, being quantitative, can 
only be rendered as Verhältnis, since Beziehung has primarily 
a qualitative meaning. I must make a few more notes on this subject. 
I await your next manuscript. The passages relating to Hegel and 
things Hegelian can only be gone through in London, as I shall need 
my Hegel for the purpose. I shall do all I can to finish it as quickly as 
possible. But Capital, Book IH, ought also to be finished at the same 

* relations 

time and there is a hell of a lot still to be done to it; and in this particu- 
lar clash of interests the latter must, after all, take precedence! How- 
ever I shall do my utmost. But when must you have the preface? 
I shall reply twice to Rodbertus, once in the preface to Capital, Book 
II,* and again in that to the Poverty.” There is no other way, since both 
works will be appearing more or less simultaneously and Rodbertus’ 
accusation was couched in such formal terms.'*’ In Capital I 
must assume an air of dignity, whereas in the preface to the Poverty 
I shall be more at liberty to speak my mind. 

If you leave Zurich, you would certainly do better to come here 
rather than go anywhere else, with the possible exception of Paris. 
Obviously the material aspect enters into it since you, having been 
duly installed as a married man, can no longer afford to take the risks 
a bachelor would. Besides, Paris is said to be just as expensive a place 
to live in as here. And for study the British Museum is, after all, in- 
comparably better; the Paris library cannot hold a candle to it so far 
as people like us are concerned, partly because of the difficulty of us- 
ing the place, shortage of catalogues, etc., etc. I trust the matter can 
be arranged. 

As to what you want to do in regard to my pamphlet, you are 
bound to be a better judge than I; so do what you think appropri- 
ate.? However I’m prepared to bet that the thing will be banned. 

Like Ede, I believe that in regard to Bebel you have allowed your- 
self to be much too much influenced by first impressions. True, his 
last letter also evinced a certain lassitude and a desire to rest. If there 
is no other way he ought to be allowed to do so for a time; but would 
he be able to, even if he were temporarily to absent himself from the 
Reichstag? This much is certain: he is irreplaceable in Germany and 
must be kept going, must, if necessary, spare himself, so as to be fit for 
action at the crucial moment. 

It also seems to me that you are too censorious about the people in 
Germany-——i.e. the masses. Since time immemorial, progress has 
been damned slow in the case of the new blood; most of them were @ 
la Geiser and Viereck. That the Anti-Socialist Law?’ does more 
harm than good in this case in certainly not in doubt. However so 
long as so much forbidden literature gets into the country, the ground 
will be prepared nevertheless and, when the air has cleared again, it 
should be possible to speed things up in this respect also, and to do so 

4 See present edition, Vol. 36.-> F. Engels, ‘Marx and Rodbertus’. 

more quickly than would have been the case had there been no inter- 
ruption. 

But now I must write to Ede. It is one o’clock and the post goes at 
two! 

Your 
F. E.