Royal Road to Science — Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 38, Marx&Engels Letters October 1844-December 1851,
Introduction
Wait a minute! Stop the presses! Why are we moving on to Volume 38 after Volume 9? What about the critique of political economy? What about the US Civil War? What about the volume of Encyclopedia entries Marx and Engels wrote? Calm down! We’ll get there…chronologically!
As I said in my very first entry, I will do my best (though some dates between volumes overlap) to roughly read and write about the 50 volumes of the MECW in chronological order. Marx and Engels letters to each other, as well as their letters to other socialists, begin at volume 38 and continue all the way to 50. By the end, they’re all Engels letters since he outlived Marx by a notable 12 years. So that means there is a certain amount of jumping around between their political writing/journalism, the economic notebooks/the Grundrisse/Capital, and their letters. So the numbers will not simply go from 1–50. Next I will most likely read Volume 10.
The MECW published all known letters from Marx and Engels — to each other and to others — but not all known letters to them. The MEGA2 does include letters to Marx and Engels as well, which is probably one reason it’s well over 100 volumes.
This entry will simply be this introduction and then highlights of what I found either most interesting, amusing, or politically notable from these 566 pages of letters and appendices, and 146(!!) pages of notes and indexes.
I noted 23 entries in the letters out of 239 that I wanted to write about, and 1 of the 17 appendices (which are mostly letters from Jenny Marx.)
Birst, let’s cover the MECW “Preface”.
A good organizational note up front: “This special group of volumes begins with Engels’ earliest surviving letter to Marx, from early October 1844. Their letters, to other people, prior to their historic meeting in Paris in August 1844, before which there was no direct connection between their intellectual development and work, are included in volumes 1–3 of the present edition, together with their separately published works of those years. From the autumn of 1844, the works of Marx and Engels increasingly arise from their close cooperation. Their letters reflect the elaboration of their ideas and their influence on the working class’s struggle for emancipation.
“Not included in these volumes are letters, appeals and statements addressed to various organisations, editors of newspapers and journals, public employees, etc. These are published in volumes 4–28 of this edition.”
The Preface also does a nice job summarizing the way their political will interacted and propelled them forward even with the intense, personal, biographical details we learn from these letters:
“There can be no better source than their letters from which to study the biographies of Marx and Engels. Readers can follow not just the story of how their works were written and published, or the stages of their theoretical and sociopolitical activity, but can observe them among their families and friends. They can gain an idea of the circumstances of their life, their everyday occupations, their personal feelings, and so forth. Their letters also show clearly the grim trials which confronted the proletarian revolutionaries in their struggle against the existing state system: police persecutions, legal proceedings, deportation, enforced emigration, publishers refusing to print their works, abuse and slander spread by their enemies, family and personal bereavement. And on top of all that — in the case of Marx — his poverty, leading to the tragic losses in his family, and his own frequent ill health.
“And yet, their letters are full of optimism. The staunchness with which they bore up under all their troubles is amazing. They drew this strength from their unswerving loyalty to their revolutionary calling, to the noble idea of serving the cause of the working people’s emancipation. It is significant that Marx, who had already experienced several tragic deaths in his family, wrote to Sigfrid Meyer on 30 April 1867: ‘I laugh at the so-called practical men with their wisdom. If one chose to be an ox, one could of course turn one’s back on the sufferings of mankind and look after one’s own skin.’”
And a general summary of what we have in terms of content in these hundreds of letters:
“Volume 38 contains Marx’s and Engels’ letters from October 1844 to December 1851, covering three stages in the development of Marxism. The first group of letters deals with the formative period and the development of Marxism as the scientific world outlook of the working class, and also shows the first practical steps taken by Marx and Engels to combine the theory of communism with the workers’ movement and organise a proletarian party. Their efforts were crowned in 1847 by the establishment of the international communist organisation of the proletariat — the Communist League — and the publication of its programme — the Manifesto of the Communist Party (February 1848). Their subsequent letters relate to the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Europe in 1848–49, which were the first historical test of Marxism, of its theoretical and tactical principles. The third group includes letters written from the end of 1849 to 1851 when priority had to be given to the work of theoretically generalising the experience of the revolutions, of further developing the strategy and tactics of the proletarian revolutionaries, of uniting them in conditions of increasing reaction, and of reorganising the Communist League.”
And finally, some background on the actual material:
“Volume 38 contains 239 letters written by Marx and Engels. Of these, 172 are given in English translation for the first time; 67 letters have been published in English before, 37 of them only partially. The earlier English publications are mentioned in the Notes. Of the 17 documents included in the Appendices, only two have been published in English before…
“The results of the scientific work done when preparing for print the first volumes of Section III of Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA,), a new complete edition of the Works of Marx and Engels in the original languages, containing their correspondence during the given years, were used in the work on the text and reference material of this volume. The dates of some of the letters were ascertained on the basis of the materials contained in these volumes and also the results of additional research.”
Letters
I will be going through all of the letters from Karl and Frederick in chronological order, with an appendices letters and note at the end.
The first letter in the first collection of letter is a Letter…from Engels to Marx in Paris in 1844. It is one of only six surviving from that year. The end notes create a somewhat romantic image for me, reminding me of Marx and Engels having more than a few beers in a tavern in the movie The Young Karl Marx:
“This is the earliest extant letter of Engels to Marx, written soon after Engels’ return to Germany from England. On his way back to Germany at the end of August 1844, he stopped in Paris, where he met Marx. During the days they spent together they discovered that their theoretical views coincided, and the immediately began their first joint work, directed against the Young Hegelians. Engels finished his part before leaving Paris, while Marx continued to write his. At first they intended to call the book A Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co. But while it was being printed Marx added The Holy Family to the title.
This meeting of Marx and Engels in Paris marked the beginning of their friendship, joint scientific work and revolutionary struggle.”
Towards the end of the letter, Engels shows his enthusiasm for their friendship, Marx’s writing, and an essay Engels was writing (‘Description of Recently Founded Communist Colonies Still in Existence”):
“See to it that the material you’ve collected is soon launched into the world. It’s high time, heaven knows! I too shall settle down to work and make a start this very day. The Teutons are all still very muddled about the practicability of communism; to dispose of this absurdity I intend to write a short pamphlet showing that communism has already been put into practice and describing in popular terms how this is at present being done in England and America. The thing will take me three days or so, and should prove very enlightening for these fellows. I’ve already observed this when talking to people here.
“Down to work, then, and quickly into print! Convey my greetings to Ewerbeck, Bakunin, Guerrier and the rest, not forgetting your wife, and write very soon to tell me all the news. If this letter reaches you safely and unopened, send your reply under sealed cover to F. W. Struecker and Co., Elberfeld, with the address written in as commercial a hand as possible; otherwise, to any of the other addresses I gave Ewerbeck. I shall be curious to know whether the postal sleuth-hounds are deceived by the ladylike appearance of this letter.
“Goodbye for the present, dear Karl, and write very soon. I have not been able to recapture the mood of cheerfulness and goodwill I experienced during the ten days I spent with you. I have not as yet had any real opportunity of doing anything about the establishment we are to establish.”
The next I will feature is another Letter from Engels to Marx, this one written in Barmen on November 19, 1844. I found it notable for how the wheels in young Engels mind were turning, from public meetings to studies of the British proletariat to philosophical critiques of Stirner, all just in three consecutive paragraphs:
“We are at present holding public meetings all over the place to set up societies for the advancement of the workers [4] ; this causes a fine stir among the Teutons and draws the philistines’ attention to social problems. These meetings are arranged on the spur of the moment and without asking the police…
“I am up to my eyebrows in English newspapers and books upon which I am drawing for my book on the condition of the English proletarians. I expect to finish it by the middle or the end of January, having got through the arrangement of the material, the most arduous part of the work, about a week or a fortnight ago. I shall be presenting the English with a fine bill of indictment; I accuse the English bourgeoisie before the entire world of murder, robbery and other crimes on a massive scale, and I am writing an English preface which I shall have printed separately and sent to English party leaders, men of letters and members of Parliament. That’ll give those fellows something to remember me by. It need hardly be said that my blows, though aimed at the panniers, are meant for the donkey, namely the German bourgeoisie, to whom I make it plain enough that they are as bad as their English counterparts, except that their sweat-shop methods are not as bold, thorough and ingenious. — As soon as I’ve finished this, I shall make a start on the history of the social development of the English, which will be still less laborious, since I already have the material for it and have sorted it out in my head, and also because I’m perfectly clear about the matter…
“You will have heard of Stirner’s book, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum [11] , if it hasn’t reached you yet. Wigand sent me the specimen sheets, which I took with me to Cologne and left with Hess. The noble Stirner — you’ll recall Schmidt of Berlin, who wrote about the Mysteres in Buhl’s magazine — takes for his principle Bentham’s egoism, except that in one respect it is carried through more logically and in the other less so. More logically in the sense that Stirner as an atheist sets the ego above God, or rather depicts him as the be-all and end-all, whereas Bentham still allows God to remain remote and nebulous above him; that Stirner, in short, is riding on German idealism, an idealist who has turned to materialism and empiricism, whereas Bentham is simply an empiricist. Stirner is less logical in the sense that he would like to avoid the reconstruction effected by Bentham of a society reduced to atoms, but cannot do so.”
Now moving to January 1845, again from Barmen, Engels to Marx captures Engels’ frustrating with his family, and his plans to leave them in a few senses: “And though as a communist one can, no doubt, provided one doesn’t write, maintain the outward appearance of a bourgeois and a brutish huckster, it is impossible to carry on communist propaganda on a large scale and at the same time engage in huckstering and industry. Enough of that — at Easter I shall be leaving this place. In addition there is the enervating existence in this dyed-in-the-wool Christian-Prussian family — it’s intolerable; I might end up by becoming a German philistine and importing philistinism into communism.
“Well, don’t leave me so long without a letter as I have left you this time. My greetings to your wife, as yet a stranger, and to anyone else deserving of them.”
Moving on to later in 1845, another Letter from Engels to Marx, broken into segments from February and March.
Engels makes a comment and some predictions, “The fact that you should have been compelled to pay your rent in advance is the height of turpitude. But I fear that in the end you’ll be molested in Belgium too, [correct!] so that you’ll be left with no alternative but England. [eventually correct!]”
And he continues with some clearly exciting updates about the growing movement: “Here in Elberfeld wondrous things are afoot. Yesterday we held our third communist meeting in the town’s largest hall and leading inn. The first meeting was forty strong, the second 130 and the third at least 200. All Elberfeld and Barmen, from the financial aristocracy to epicerie, was represented, only the proletariat being excluded. Hess gave a lecture. Poems by Mueller and Puettmann and excerpts from Shelley were read, also an article from the Burgerbuch on existing communist colonies. The ensuing discussion lasted until one o’clock. The subject is a tremendous draw. All the talk is of communism and every day brings us new supporters.”
And finally, some charming modesty and one of many offers of Engels :
“The Critical Criticism has still not arrived! Its new title, The Holy Family, will probably get me into hot water with my pious and already highly incensed parent, though you, of course, could not have known that. I see from the announcement that you have put my name first. Why? I contributed practically nothing to it and anyone can identify your style.
“Let me know by return whether you are still in need of money. Wigand is due to send me some in about a fortnight’s time and then all you have to do is dispose of it. I fear that the outstanding subscriptions will not amount to more than 120 or 150 francs.”
Next we move on to a new year, and new writer — and new letter receiver — May 1846, with Marx To Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Marx wrote this during his exile in Brussels, working to establish a “Communist Correspondence Committee” of Germans abroad, and building links with “The League of the Just” in Paris and “The German Workers’ Educational Society” in London. Marx tries praise to bring the esteemed Proudhon into their efforts:
“So far as France is concerned, we all of us believe that we could find no better correspondent than yourself. As you know, the English and Germans have hitherto estimated you more highly than have your own compatriots.
“So it is, you see, simply a question of establishing a regular correspondence and ensuring that it has the means to keep abreast of the social movement in the different countries, and to acquire a rich and varied interest, such as could never be achieved by the work of one single person…
Let us have an early reply and rest assured of the sincere friendship.”
But the flattery failed — the MEGA2 has the reply letter: “In his reply to Marx of 17 May 1846 Proudhon refused to collaborate and declared that he was opposed to revolutionary methods of struggle and to communism.”
Moving on to July 1846, Engels to Marx wrote one of my favorite little pieces of this collection, where Engels mentions he has been apartment hunting for Marx. Freddie goes so far as to make a budget chart for Karl:
Engels also draws a playoff little cartoon in the send off:
Jumping ahead to November 1846, we get another Engels to Marx letter from Brussels. This has one of the more amusing (to me at least!) passages from Engels’ the ladies man and occasional nationality-bigot:
“During the recent bad spell, one of my innocent, incidental pastimes, besides girls, has been to concern myself to some extent with Denmark and the other northern countries. What an abomination! Rather the smallest German than the biggest Dane!”
On a more serious note, there is some really great material in “Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov” (a Russian acquaintance he was corresponding with regarding Prodhoun.) If I were too recommend only one letter from this collection, especially on the formation of Marx’s thinking combining political economy and philosophy, it would be this one.
His much shorter review of Prodhoun (as opposed to The Poverty of Philosophy”) is this biting paragraph:
“To be frank, I must admit that I find the book on the whole poor, if not very poor. You yourself make fun in your letter of the ‘little bit of German philosophy’ paraded by Mr Proudhon in this amorphous and overweening work, but you assume that the economic argument has remained untainted by the philosophic poison. Therefore I am by no means inclined to ascribe the faults of the economic argument to Mr Proudhon’s philosophy. Mr Proudhon does not provide a false critique of political economy because his philosophy is absurd — he produces an absurd philosophy because he has not understood present social conditions in their engrènement, to use a word which Mr Proudhon borrows from Fourier, like so much else.”
After summarizing why Marx thinks Prodhoun is wrong about the division of labor, what machinery is, and so on, he turns to what is allegedly a very poor dialectics — and, by why of explanation, the situation of slavery in the global economy:
“Let me now give you an example of Mr Proudhon’s dialectics.
“Freedom and slavery constitute an antagonism. There is no need for me to speak either of the good or of the bad aspects of freedom. As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America.
“Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World. After these reflections on slavery, what will the good Mr Proudhon do? He will seek the synthesis of liberty and slavery, the true golden mean, in other words the balance between slavery and liberty.”
And a little later, “Now you will understand why Mr Proudhon is the avowed enemy of all political movements. For him, the solution of present-day problems does not consist in public action but in the dialectical rotations of his brain. Because to him the categories are the motive force, it is not necessary to change practical life in order to change the categories; on the contrary, it is necessary to change the categories, whereupon actual society will change as a result.”
Later still, a return to the same argument, “He [Prodhoun] is at one and the same time bourgeois and man of the people. In his heart of hearts he prides himself on his impartiality, on having found the correct balance, allegedly distinct from the happy medium.”
Finally, I found the postscript charming as well:
“Ever yours
Charles Marx
P.S. Perhaps you may wonder why I should be writing in bad French rather than in good German. It is because I am dealing with a French writer.
You would greatly oblige me by not keeping me waiting too long for a reply, as I am anxious to know whether you understand me wrapped up as I am in my barbarous French.”
Now arriving in a new year, 1848, we get another Engels to Marx, from Brussels, relevant for their views on Louis Blanc:
“He, of course, made some capital assertions you are tending towards despotism, you will kill the revolution in France, we have eleven million small peasants who at the same time are the most fanatical property owners, etc., etc., although he also abused the peasants, — after all, he said, our principles are too similar for us not to march together; as for us, we will give you all the support in our power, etc., etc.”
On April 5th, there is Engels to Emil Blank. This captures the excitement we spent a lot of time on in volumes 7 and 8 especially regarding the revolutionary activities of 1848:
“The panic here is ineffable. The bourgeoisie are calling for confidence but confidence has gone. Most of them are fighting for existence, as they themselves put it. This doesn’t fill the workers’ bellies, however, and from time to time they rebel a little. General dissolution, ruin, anarchy, despair, fear, rage, constitutional enthusiasm, hatred of the Republic, etc., are rampant, and the fact is, for the time being, the richest people are the most tormented and frightened. And the exaggerations, the lies, the ranting and the railing, are enough to drive one out of one’s mind.”
On a little historical publishing note, Engels to Marx in Cologne in April 1848, talks about translating the Manifesto:
“Ewerbeck is having the Manifesto translated into Italian and Spanish in Paris and to that end wants us to send him 60 fr. which he has undertaken to pay. Yet another of those schemes of his. They will be splendid translations.
“I am working on the English translation, which presents more difficulties than I thought. However, I’m over half way through, and before long the whole thing will be finished.”
So what happened to these early Spanish and Italian translations? I am not sure, the end notes say there was no versions until 1872 and 1889. As for the English translation, Engels did not finish it himself — Helen Macfarlane worked with Engels to translate and release it in “The Red Republican” in November 1850.
“Marx To Ferdinand Lassalle” in November 1848 is remarkable to me — Marx essentially insults Lasalle, then tells him what political program to take at an upcoming program, and then asks for money! And Lasalle indeed adopt Marx’s program!
Here is the entire, short letter:
“Dear Lassalle,
At your democratic-monarchist club you should resolve the following:
1. General refusal to pay taxes — to be advocated specially in rural areas;
2. Dispatch of volunteer corps to Berlin;
3. Cash remittance to the Democratic Central Committee in
Berlin.
For the Rhenish Democratic Provincial Committee
K. Marx
(Private)
Dear Lassalle,
If you could send me some money, whether it be the 200 talers or the amount for the loan certificates, you would greatly oblige me. Send it to my wife, Cecilienstrasse 7. I have had a summons today and it is generally believed that I shall be arrested tomorrow.
Your
Marx”
After this date, the amount of digital publishing available on History is a Weapon’s website (mirrored from Marxists.org, who had to take it down for copyright reasons) decreases greatly, so I won’t have additional links to share for each entry, except to end notes.
On June 27th of 1850, Marx wrote to Heinrich Burgers that Cologne could “declare itself a Centre” (of the Communist League in Germany) in the sense of Spinoza’s dictum that “the periphery coincidences with the centre.” I had fun trying to find this Spinoza letter, the best I could find was this though:
“[t]he common definition of a circle is this: A circle is a plane figure consisting of one line, which is called the periphery, in which the straight lines posited inside the figure as falling from one common point are equal. And this is one of those definitions which provides an unknown property. For it is not easy to see whether it is possible to find such a figure in nature, which has a single point inside itself from which all straight lines drawn from its terminus are equal to each other. For it is always possible to doubt whether some line from those infinitely many lines has the same measure as the rest. It will therefore be better for us to proceed with the circle having been defined in the same way which Euclid found useful in the definition of a sphere, [and] in which there is no difficulty. And it is not possible to doubt whether there is a figure in nature which has equal distances from the center to the circumference, since it is clearly posited in the definition that it follows from that very figure, both in the description and the construction. For the same line was revolved around the center, and since it is always of the same measure, it necessarily creates distances from the center to the circumference that are equal to each other.”
Anyway, the most depressing letter (and sadly with their children, there will be more such news) of the collection is from Marx to Engels on November 19th 1850 from London:
“Dear Engels,
Just a line or two to let you know that our little gunpowder plotter, Fawksy*, died at ten o’clock this morning. Suddenly, from one of the convulsions he had often had. A few minutes before, he was still laughing and joking. The thing happened quite unexpectedly. You can imagine what it is like here. Your absence at this particular moment makes us feel very lonely.”
[*In mid-November 1850, Engels left London for Manchester…Marx’s son, Heinrich Guido, nicknamed because he was born on Guy Fawkes Day, 5 November 1849, marking the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.]
In January 1851, Marx wrote to Engels from London to Manchester. I felt like this is an important letter I would probably be better able to understand after I (re-, mostly) read some of the later works by Marx on rent. The general thinking seems to be its the area of political economy where Marx was most tentative. I recommend reading the whole piece.
After summarizing three Ricardo prepositions, refuting each with historical example, he draws new conclusions as follows:
“1. Rent may rise although the price of agricultural produce falls, and yet Ricardo’s law still holds good.
2. The law of rent, as laid down by Ricardo in its simplest form and leaving aside its exposition, does not presuppose the diminishing fertility of the land, but only — and this despite the general increase in fertility that accompanies the development of society — the varying fertility of fields or the varying results obtained by the capital successively employed on the same land.
3. The more general the improvement in the land, the greater the variety of the fields it will embrace, and the country’s overall rental may rise, although there is a general fall in the price of corn. E. g., given the above example, it is simply a question of the number of fields producing over 26 bushels at 5 shillings without actually having to go as high as 30, i.e. of the extent to which the quality of the land varies as between the best and the poorest. This has nothing to do with the ratio of rent of the best land. In fact it has nothing to do directly with the ratio of rent at all. [emphasis in bold is Marx’s original.]
“As you know, the real joke where rent is concerned is that it is generated by evening out the price for the resultants of varying production costs, but that this law of market price is nothing other than the law of bourgeois competition. Even after the elimination of bourgeois production, however, there remains the snag that the soil would become relatively more infertile, that, with the same amount of labour, successively less would be achieved, although the best land would no longer, as under bourgeois rule, yield as dear a product as the poorest. The foregoing would do away with this objection.
I should like to have your views on the matter.”
In April 1851, Marx wrote to Engels, again from London to Manchester. At this point, Marx has settled in to the British Museum’s library to put in full work days pouring over their materials, especially on political economy:
“The worst of it is that I now suddenly find myself hampered in my work at the library. I am so far advanced that I will have finished with the whole economic stuff in 5 weeks’ time. Et cela fait [and having done that] I shall complete the political economy at home and apply myself to another branch of learning at the Museum. ja commence de m’ennuyer [it’s beginning to bore me]. Au fond [basically], this science has made no progress since A. Smith and D. Ricardo, however much has been done in the way of individual research, often extremely discerning.”
On May Day 1851, I was amused that Engels returns to his travel writer mode to tell Wilhelm Wolff that he could save a lot of money by simply walking across large swaths of Italy on foot, perhaps contacting captains by writing letters to the address of their ship (!) to hop a ride as well. Frugal! This reminds me that in this volume, Engels also recommends Marx take the “parliamentary train” from London to Manchester, which was only a penny by declaration of parliament (though it also, by law, could only travel 12 miles per hour.)
He concluded by telling Wolff to drop his dreams of becoming a teacher in St. Louis or American journalist: “Sooner a galley-slave in Turkey than a journalist in America!”
Later in May of 1851, Marx wrote that “Communists must demonstrate that technological truths already attained can only become practicable under communist relations.” This single line is all that remains of Marx’s letter to Roland Daniels. Daniels was arrested shortly after. Marx and Engels had just discussed Foucault’s pendulum (the first exhibit of his concept in 1851), and electricity.
In Marx’s letter to Weydemeyer on June 27th 1851, he gives us his usual schedule at the British Museum: 9 am to 7 pm, and with 6–8 weeks being “unrealistic” for him to finish his criticism of political economy (in reality it would take him decades to “finish”; or from another perspective, it was never finished of course!)
Marx wrote to Engels on July 31st of 1851 to say he had tried to contact Americans to see if there is a chance of setting up some work as a journalist for their newspapers as well. Marx notes his desperate situation, that it is “IMPOSSIBLE to go on living like this.” It’s bleak stuff— he “feels sorry for my wife. The main burden is on her.” It is, from my understanding, a hint of more of the misery Marx would bear to come.
The last letter in the main section of Volume 38 (this from Marx to Engels again) I will mention is from September of 1851. It includes some fascinating conclusions written about the revolutions of 1848–49:
“1. Force can be resisted only by force.
2. A revolution can only be victorious if it becomes general, i.e., if it is kindled in the larger centres of the movement (Bavaria-Palatinate, Baden) and if, furthermore, it is not the expression of one single oppositional faction. (Example: the June insurrection of 1848.)
3. National struggles cannot be decisive because they are divisive.
4. Fighting on the barricades has no significance other than to signal a population’s resistance and to put the power of governments, i.e., the troops’ frame of mind, to the test by confronting them with that resistance. Whatever the outcome of this test, the first and most important step in revolution always remains organisation for war, the raising of disciplined armies. For this alone makes an offensive possible and it is only in the offensive that victory lies.
5. National constituent assemblies are not capable of organising for war. They invariably waste time on questions of internal politics, the time for whose solution does not come till after victory has been won.
6. In order to be able to organise for war, a revolution must gain time and space. Hence it must attack politically, i.e. bring into its domain as many stretches of country as possible, since militarily it is at first always restricted to the defensive.
7. In the republican, no less than in the royalist, camp organisation for war can only be based on compulsion. No pitched battle has ever been won by political enthusiasm or fantastically bedizened volunteers against disciplined and well-led soldiers. Military enthusiasm only sets in after a series of successes. — Initially there can be no better basis for such successes than the iron rigour of discipline. In armies, even more so than in the internal organisation of a country, democratic principles can only apply after the victory of the revolution.
8. By its nature the coming war will be a war of extermination of peoples or princes. From this follows the recognition of the political and military solidarity of all peoples, i.e. of intervention.
9. Spatially the area of the coming revolution falls within the boundaries of that of the defeated ones: France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland.”
The bold is only my own emphasis, and not an editorial comment about what does or doesn’t apply today — I am marking some things that seemed very current to the failures of 1849.
Finally, from the appendices, is this third and final letter that I will recommend anyone read in full, from Jenny Marx to Karl in March 1846 from Trier.
This is downright lovely:
“A thousand thanks, my dearly beloved Karl, for your long, dear letter of yesterday. How I longed for news of you all during those days of anxiety and sorrow when my heart scarcely dared to hope any more, and how long, how very long, did my yearning breast remain unsatisfied. Every hour contained in itself an eternity of fear and worry. Your letters are the only gleams of light in my life just now. Dear Karl, pray let them shine for me more often and cheer me. But maybe I shall not need them much longer, for my dear mother’s condition has taken such a turn for the better that the possibility of her recovery has become almost a probability. This time we all of us hope that the improvement that has set in is not an illusory one as is so often the case in insidious afflictions such as nervous disorders. She is recovering her strength and her mind is no longer oppressed by worries and fears, real or imaginary. I had composed myself for any eventuality and, had the worst happened, should have found comfort and solace enough, but nevertheless my heart is now jubilant with all the joy and rapture of spring. It’s a strange thing about the life of someone you love. It is not so readily relinquished. You cling to it with every fibre of your being and, when the other’s breathing falters, feel as though those fibres have been abruptly severed. I believe that recovery is now on the way and will rapidly accomplish its task. Now it is a matter of banishing all gloomy thoughts while constantly conjuring up cheerful images before her mind’s eye. I now have to think up all kinds of tales which must nonetheless have about them some semblance of truth. All this is most difficult and is rendered easier only by the love I bear my dear mother and the blessed hope that, when all this is over, I shall be able to hasten back again and rejoin you, my darling, and my dear, sweet, little ones. Stay fit and well, all you my dear ones, and keep a careful watch over their sweet little heads. How I look forward to seeing the children’s little faces again!”
She later makes some amusing comments about Mary Burns as Lady MacBeth and encourages Marx to focus on his book against Stirner.
Lastly, not mirrored at hiaw.org is Engels’ mother writing to him to say how distressed she was to see a warrant out for his arrest. Reminder to readers who opened this entry quickly: this Sunday is mother’s day.
