FREDERICK ENGELS

ON MARX

FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS
PEKING 1975

First Edition 1975

Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo, djr@cruzio.com (January 1998)

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a collection of three articles by Engels on Marx. The English translations of the first two articles in this booklet are taken from Frederick Engels, Karl Marx ; Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1955. Engels' letter to Sorge has been taken from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans, 1848-1895, A Selection, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
The notes at the end of the book are based on those in other English editions and in the Chinese edition.

KARL MARX

Karl Marx, the man who was first to give socialism, and thereby the whole labour movement of our day, a scientific foundation, was born at Trier in 1818. He studied in Bonn and Berlin, at first taking up law, but he soon devoted himsslf exclusively to the study of history and philosophy, and in 1842 was on the point of establishing himself as an assistant professor in philosophy when the political movement which had arisen since the death of Frederick William III directed his life into a different channel. With his collaboration, the leaders of the Rhenish liberal bourgeoisie,the Camphausens, Hansemanns, etc., had founded the Rheinische Zeitung [1] in Cologne, and in the autumn of 1842, Marx, whose criticism of the proceedings of the Rhenish Landtag (or Provincial Diet) had excited very great attention, was put at the head of the paper. The Rheinische Zeitung naturally appeared under censorship, but the censorship could not cope with it.* The Rheinische

* The first censor of the Rheinische Zeitung was Police Councillor Dolleschall, the same man who once struck out an advertisement in the Kölnische Zeittung of the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy by Philalethes (later King John of Saxony) with the remark: "One must not make a comedy of divine affairs." [Note by Engels.]

Zeitung almost always got the articles which mattered through; the censor was first supplied with insignificant fodder for him to strike out, until he either gave way of himself or was compelled to give way by the threat that then the paper would not appear the next day. Ten newspapers with the same courage as the Rheinische Zeitung and whose publishers would have allowed a few hundred thalers extra to be expended on type setting -- and the censorship would have been made impossible in Germany as early as 1843. But the German newspaper-owners were petty-minded, timid philistines and the Rheinische Zeitung carried on the struggle alone. It wore out one censor after another;<"p2"> finally it came under a double censorship; after the first censorship the Regierungspräsident [2] had once more, and finally, to censor it. That also was of no avail. In the beginning of 1843, the government declared that it was impossible to keep this newspaper in check and suppressed it without more ado.

Marx, who in the meanwhile had married the sister of von Westphalen, later a reactionary minister, removed to Paris,<"p2a"> and there, in conjunction with A. Ruge, published the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,[3] in which he opened the series of his socialist writings with a Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right ; and then, together with F. Engels, The Holy Family. Against Bruno Bauer and Co., a satirical criticism of one of the latest forms blunderingly assumed by the German philosophical idealism of that time.

The study of political economy and of the history of the Great French Revolution still allowed Marx time enough for occasional attacks on the Prussian Government; the latter revenged itself in the spring of 1845 by securing from the Guizot ministry --<"p2b"> Herr Alexander von Humboldt is said to have acted as intermediary -- his expulsion from France.[4] Marx shifted his domicile to Brussels and published there in French in 1847 The Poverty of Philosophy , a criticism of Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty, and, in 1848, Discourse on Free Trade.<"p3"> At the same time he made use of the opportunity to found a German workers' society in Brussels[5] and so commenced practical agitation. The latter became still more important for him when he and his political<"p3a"> friends in 1847 joined the secret' Communist League,[6]which had already been in existence for a number of years. Its whole structure was now radically changed; this association, which previously was more or less conspiratorial, was transformed into a simple organization for communist propaganda, which was only secret because necessity compelled it to be so, the first organization of the German Social-Democratic Party. The League existed wherever German workers' societies were to be found; in almost all of these societies in England, Belgium, France and Switzerland, and in very many of the societies in Germany, the leading members belonged to the League and the share of the League in the incipient German labour movement was very considerable. Moreover, our League was the first which emphasized the international character of the whole labour movement and realized it in practice, which had Englishmen, Belgians, Hungarians, Poles, etc., as members and which organized international labour meetings, especially in London.

The transformation of the League took place at two congresses held in 1847, the second of which resolved on the elaboration and publication of the fundamental principles of the Party in a manifesto to be drawn up by Marx and Engels. Thus arose the Manifesto of the Communist Party , which first appeared in 1848, shortly before the February Revolution, and has since been translated into almost all European languages.

The Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung,[7] in which Marx participated and which mercilessly exposed the blessings of the police regime of the Fatherland, caused the Prussian Government to try to effect Marx's expulsion once more, but in vain. When, however, the February Revolution resulted in popular movements in Brussels, too, and a radical change appeared to be imminent in Belgium, the Belgian Government arrested Marx without ceremony and deported him. In the meanwhile, the French Provisional Government had sent him an invitation through Flocon to return to Paris, and he accepted this call.

In Paris he came out especially against the swindle, widespread among the Germans there, of wanting to form the German workers in France into armed legions in order to carry the revolution and the republic into Germany. On the one hand, Germany had to make her revolution herself, and, on the other hand, every revolutionary foreign legion formed in France was betrayed in advance by the Lamartines of the Provisional Government to the government which was to be overthrown, as had occurred in Belgium and Baden. <"p4a">

After the March Revolution, Marx went to Cologne and founded there the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,[8] which was in existence from June 1, 1848 to May 19, 1849 -- the only paper which represented the standpoint of the proletariat within the democratic movement of the time, as shown in its unreserved championship of the Paris June insurgents of 1848,<"p4b"> which cost the paper the defection of almost all its shareholders. In vain the Kreuz-Zeitung [9] pointed to the "Chimborazo [10] impudence" with which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung attacked everything sacred, from the king and vice-regent of the realm down to the gendarme, and that, too, in a Prussian fortress with a garrison of 8,000 at the time. In vain was the rage of the Rhenish liberal philistines, who had suddenly become reactionary. In vain was the paper suspended by martial law in Cologne for a lengthy period in the autumn of 1848. In vain the Reich Ministry of Justice in Frankfort denounced article after article to the Cologne Public Prosecutor in order that judicial proceedings should be taken. Under the very eyes of the police the paper calmly went on being edited and printed, and its distribution and reputation increased with the vehemence of its attacks on the government and the bourgeoisie. When the Prussian coup d'etat took place in November 1848, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung called upon the people, at the head of each issue, to refuse to pay taxes and to meet violence with violence. In the spring of 1849, both on this account and because of another article, it was made to face a jury, but on both occasions was acquitted. Finally, when the May risings of 1849 in Dresden and the Rhine Province had been suppressed, and the Prussian campaign against the Baden-Palatinate rising had been inaugurated by the concentration and mobilization of considerable masses of troops, the government believed itself strong enough to suppress the Neue Rheinische Zeitung by force. The last number -- printed in red ink -- appeared on May 19. <"p5">

Marx again went to Paris, but only a few weeks after the demonstration of June 13, 1849,[11] he was faced by the French Government with the choice of either shifting his residence to Brittany or leaving France. He preferred the latter and moved to London, where he has lived uninterruptedly ever since. <"p5a">

An attempt to continue issuing the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in the form of a review[12] (in Hamburg, 1850) had to be given up after a while in view of the ever-increasing violence of the reaction. Immediately after the coup d'etat in France in December 1851, Marx published The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York, 1852; second edition, Hamburg, 1869, shortly before the war). In 1853 he wrote Revelations About the Cologne Communist Trial (first printed in Basle, later in Boston, and again recently in Leipzig).

After the conviction of the members of the Communist League in Cologne, Marx withdrew from political agitation and for ten years devoted himself, on the one hand, to the study of the rich treasures offered by the library of the British Museum<"p6"> in the sphere of political economy, and, on the other hand, to writing for the New York Tribune,[13] which up to the outbreak of the American Civil War published not only contributions signed by him but also numerous leading articles from his pen on conditions in Europe and Asia. His attacks on Lord Palmerston, based on an exhaustive study of British official documents, were reprinted in London in pamphlet form.

As the first fruit of his many years of study of economics, there appeared in 1859 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Part I (Berlin, Duncker). This work contains the first coherent exposition of the Marxian theory of value,<"p6a"> including the doctrine of money. During the Italian War Marx, in the German newspaper Das Volk,[14] appearing in London, attacked Bonapartism, which at that time posed as liberal and playing the part of liberator of the oppressed nationalities, and also the Prussian policy of the day, which under the cover of neutrality was seeking to fish in troubled waters. In this connection it was necessary to attack also Herr Karl Vogt, who at that time, on the commission of Prince Napoleon (Plon Plon) and in the pay of Louis Napoleon, was carrying on agitation for the neutrality, and indeed the sympathy, of Germany. When Vogt heaped upon him the most abominable and deliberately false calumnies, Marx answered with Herr Vogt (London, 1860), in which Vogt and the other gentlemen of the imperialist sham-democratic gang were exposed, and Vogt himself on the basis of both external and internal<"p7"> evidence was proved guilty of taking bribes from the December empire.[15] The confirmation came just ten years later: in the list of the Bonaparte hirelings, found in the Tuileries in 1870 and published by the September government,<"p7a"> there was the following entry under the letter V: "Vogt -- in August 1859 there were remitted to him -- Frs. 40,000."[16]

Finally, in 1861 there appeared in Hamburg Capital, a Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume I, Marx's chief work, which expounds the foundations of his economlc socialist conceptions and the main features of his criticism of existing society, the capitalist mode of production and its consequences. The second edition of this epoch-making work appeared in 1872; the author is engaged in the elaboration of the second volume.

Meanwhile the labour movement in various countries of Europe had so far regained strength that Marx could entertain the idea of realizing a long-cherished wish: the foundation of a Workers' Association embracing the most advanced countries of Europe and America, which would demonstrate bodily, so to speak, the international character of the socialist movement both to the workers themselves and to the bourgeois and the governments -- for the encouragement and strengthening of the proletariat, for striking fear into the hearts of its enemies. A mass meeting in favour of Poland, which had just then again been crushed by Russia, held on September 28, 1864 in St. Martin's Hall in London, provided the occasion for bringing forward the matter,<"p7b"> which was enthusiastically taken up. The International Working Men's Association [17] was founded; a Provisional General Council, with its seat in London, was elected at the meeting, and Marx <"p8"> was the soul of this as of all subsequent General Councils up to the Hague Congress.[18] He drafted almost every one of the documents issued by the General Council of the International, from the Inaugural Address, 1864, to the Address on the Civil War in France, 1871. To describe Marx's activity in the International is to write the history of this Association, which in any case still lives in the memory of the European workers.

The fall of the Paris Commune put the International in an impossible position. It was thrust into the forefront of European history at a moment when it had everywhere been deprived of all possibility of successful practical action.<"p8a"> The events which raised it to the position of the seventh Great Power[19] simultaneously forbade it to mobilize its fighting forces and employ them in action, on pain of inevitable defeat and the setting back of the labour movement for decades. In addition, from various sides elements were pushing themselves forward that sought to exploit the suddenly enhanced fame of the Association for the purpose of gratifying personal vanity or personal ambition, without understanding the real position of the International or without regard for it. A heroic decision had to be taken, and it was again Marx who took it and who carried it through at the Hague Congress. In a solemn resolution, the International disclaimed all responsibility for the doings of the Bakuninists, who formed the centre of those unreasonable and unsavoury elements. Then, in view of the impossibility of meeting, in the face of the general reaction, the increased demands which were being imposed upon it, and of maintaining its complete efficacy other than by a series of sacrifices which would have drained the labour movement of its life-blood -- in view of this situation, the International withdrew from the stage for the time being by transferring the General Council to America. The results have proved how correct was this decision -- which was at the time, and has been since, so often censured. On the one hand, it put a stop then and since to all attempts to make useless putsches in the name of the International, while, on the other hand, the continuing close intercourse between the socialist workers' parties of the various countries proved that the consciousness of the identity of interests and of the solidarity of the proletariat of all countries evoked by the International is able to assert itself even without the bond of a formal international association, which for the moment had become a fetter.

After the Hague Congress, Marx at last found peace and leisure again for resuming his theoretical work, and it is to be hoped he will be able before long to have the second volume of Capital ready for the press.

Of the many important discoveries through which Marx has inscribed his name in the annals of science, we can here dwell on only two.

The first is the revolution brought about by him in the whole conception of world history. The whole previous view of history was based on the conception that the ultimate causes of all historical changes are to be looked for in the changing ideas of human beings, and that of all historical changes political changes are the most important and dominate the whole of history. But the question was not asked as to whence the ideas come into men's minds and what the driving causes of the political changes are. Only upon the newer school of French, and partly also of English, historians had the conviction forced itself that, since the Middle Ages at least, the driving force in European history was the struggle of the developing bourgeoisie with the feudal aristocracy for social and political domination. Now Marx has proved that the whole of previous history is a history of class struggles, that in all the manifold and complicated political struggles the only thing at issue has been the social and political rule of social classes, the maintenance of domination by older classes and the conquest of domination by newly arising classes. To what, however, do these classes owe their origin and their continued existence? They owe it to the particular material, physically sensible conditions in which society at a given period produces and exchanges its means of subsistence. The feudal rule of the Middle Ages rested on the self-sufficient economy of small peasant communities, which themselves produced almost all their requirements, in which there was almost no exchange and to which the arms-bearing nobility lent protection from without and national or at least political cohesion. When the towns arose and with them a separate handicraft industry and commercial intercourse, at first internal and later international, the urban bourgeoisie developed, and already during the Middle Ages achieved, in struggle with the nobility, its inclusion in the feudal order as likewise a privileged estate. But with the discovery of the extra-European world, from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, this bourgeoisie acquired a far more extensive sphere of trade and therewith a new spur for its industry; in the most important branches handicrafts were supplanted by manufacture, now on a factory scale, and this again was supplanted by large-scale industry, which had become possible owing to the discoveries of the previous century, especially that of the steam-engine. Large-scale industry, in its turn, reacted on trade by driving out the old manual labour in backward countries, and creating the present-day new means of communication: steam-engines, railways, electric telegraphy, in the more developed ones. Thus the bourgeoisie came more and more to combine social wealth

and social power in its hands, while it still for a long period remained excluded from political power, which was in the hands of the nobility and the monarchy supported by the nobility. But at a certain stage -- in France since the Great Revolution -- it also conquered political power, and now in turn became the ruling class over the proletariat and small peasants. From this point of view all historical phenomena are explicable in the simplest possible way -- with sufficient knowledge of the particular economic condition of society, which it is true is totally lacking in our professional historians, and in the same way the conceptions and ideas of each historical period are most simply to be explained from the economic conditions of life and from the social and political relations of the period, which are in turn determined by these economic conditions. History was for the first time placed on its real basis; the palpable but previously totally overlooked fact that men must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, and therefore must work, before they can fight for domination, pursue politics, religion, philosophy and so on -- this palpable fact at last came into its historical rights.

This new conception of history, however, was of supreme significance for the socialist outlook. It showed that all previous history had moved in class antagonisms and class struggles, that there have always existed ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited classes, and that the great majority of mankind has always been condemned to arduous labour and little enjoyment. Why is this? Simply because in all earlier stages of development of mankind production was so little developed that the historical development could proceed only in this antagonistic form, that historical progress as a whole was assigned to the activity of a small privileged minority, while the great mass remained condemned to producing by their labour their own meagre means of subsistence and also the increasingly rich means of the privileged. But the same investigation of history, which in this way provides a natural and reasonable explanation of the previous class rule, otherwise only explicable by the wickedness of man, also leads to the realization that, in consequence of the tremendously increased productive forces of the present time, even the last pretext has vanished for a division of mankind into ruIers and ruled, exploiters and exploited, at least in the most advanced countries; that the ruling big bourgeoisie has fulfilled its historic mission, that it is no longer capable of the leadership of society and has even become a hindranceto the development of production, as the trade crises, and especially the last great collapse,[20] and the depressed condition of industry in all countries have proved; that historical leadership has passed to the proletariat, a class which, owing to its whole position in society, can only free itself by abolishing altogether all class rule, all servitude and all exploitation; and that the social productive forces, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, are only waiting for the associated proletariat to take possession of them in order to bring about a state of things in which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in production but also in the distribution and administration of social wealth, and which so increases the social productive forces and their yield by planned operation of the whole of production that the satisfaction of all reasonable needs will be assured to everyone in an ever-increasing measure.

The second important discovery of Marx is the final elucidation of the relation between capital and labour, in other words, the demonstration how, within present society and under the existing capitalist mode of production, the exploita- tion of the worker by the capitalist takes place. Ever since political economy put forward the proposition that labour is the source of all wealth and of all value, the question has become inevitable: How is this, then, to be reconciled with the fact that the wage-worker does not receive the whole sum of value created by his labour but has to surrender a part of it to the capitalist? Both the bourgeois economists and the socialists exerted themselves to give a scientifically valid answer to this question, but in vain, until at last Marx came forward with the solution. This solution is as follows: The present day capitalist mode of production presupposes the existence of two social classes -- on the one hand, that of the capitalists, who are in possession of the means of production and subsistence, and, on the other hand, that of the proletarians, who, being excluded from this possession, have only a single commodity for sale, their labour power, and who therefore have to sell this labour power of theirs in order to obtain possession of means of subsistence. The value of a commodity is, however, determined by the socially necessary quantity of labour embodied in its production, and, therefore, also in its reproduction; the value of the labour power of an average human being during a day, month or year is determined, therefore, by the quantity of labour embodied in the quantity of means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of this labour power during a day, month or year. Let us assume that the means of subsistence of a worker for one day require six hours of labour for their production, or, what is the same thing, that the labour contained in them represents a quantity of labour of six hours; then the value of labour power for one day will be expressed in a sum of money which also embodies six hours of labour. Let us assume further that the capitalist who employs our worker pays him this sum in return, pays him, there- fore, the full value of his labour power. If now the worker works six hours of the day for the capitalist, he has completely replaced the latter's outlay -- six hours' labour for six hours' labour. But then there would be nothing in it for the capitalist, and the latter therefore looks at the matter quite differently. He says: I have bought the labour power of this worker not for six hours but for a whole day, and accordingly he makes the worker work 8, 10, 12, 14 or more hours, according to circumstances, so that the product of the seventh, eighth and following hours is a product of unpaid labour and wanders, to begin with, into the pocket of the capitalist. Thus the worker in the service of the capitalist not only reproduces the value of his labour power, for which he receives pay, but over and above that he also produces a surplus value which, appropriated in the first place by the capitalist, is in its further course divided according to definite economic laws among the whole capitalist class and forms the basic stock from which arise ground rent, profit, accumulation of capital, in short, all the wealth consumed or accumulated by the non-labouring classes. This, however, proved that the acquisition of riches by the present-day capitalists consists just as much in the appropriation of the unpaid labour of others as that of the slave-owner or the feudal lord exploiting serf labour, and that all these forms of exploitation are only to be distinguished by the difference in manner and method by which the unpaid labour is appropriated. This, however, also removed the last justification for all the hypocritical phrases of the possessing classes to the effect that in the present social order right and justice, equality of rights and duties and a general harmony of interests prevail, and exposed present-day bourgeois society, no less than its predecessors, as a grandiose institution for the exploitation of the huge majority of the people by a small, ever-diminishing minority.

Modern, scientific socialism is based on these two important facts. In the second volume of Capital these and other hardly less important scientific discoveries concerning the capitalist system of society will be further developed, and thereby those aspects of political economy not touched upon in the first volume will also undergo revolutionization. May it be vouch safed to Marx to be able soon to have it ready for the press.

Written in mid-June 1877

First published in the Volkska-
lender, an almanac which
appeared in Brunswick in 1878

SPEECH AT THE GRAVESIDE OF
KARL MARX[21]

On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.

An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.

Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such I discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.

Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.

For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion,<"p18"> a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorzwärts! (1844),[22] the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organizations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.

And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents he had hardly one personal enemy.

His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!

ENGELS TO SORGE

in Hoboken

London, March 15, 1883, 11:45 p.m.

Dear Sorge:

Your telegram arrived tonight. Heartfelt thanks!

It was not possible to keep you regularly informed about Marx's state of health because it was constantly changing. Here, briefly, are the main facts: Shortly before his wife's death he had an attack of pleurisy, in October '81. After he recovered, he was sent to Algiers in February '82; he encountered cold, wet weather on the journey and arrived with another attack of pleurisy. The atrocious weather continued, and when he got better, he was sent to Monte Carlo (Monaco) to avoid the heat of the approaching summer. Again he arrived with a milder attack of pleurisy. Again abominable weather. Cured at last, he went to Argenteuil near Paris to stay with his daughter, Mme. Longuet. He took the sulphur springs nearby at Enghien for the bronchitis he had had for so long. Here again the weather was frightful, but the treatment did some good. Then he went to Vevey for

six weeks and came back in September, apparently almost fully recovered. He was allowed to spend the winter on the south coast of England, and he himself was so tired of wandering about with nothing to do that another period of exile to the south of Europe would probably have harmed him in spirit as much as it would have benefited him in health. When the foggy season commenced in London, he was sent to the Isle of Wight. There it did nothing but rain; he caught another cold.<"p20"> Schorlemmer and I were planning to pay him a visit on New Year's Day when news came that made it necessary for Tussy[23] to join him at once. Then followed the death of Jenny[24] and he came back with another attack of bronchitis. After all that had gone before, and at his age, this was dangerous. A number of complications set in, particularly an abscess of the lung and a terribly rapid loss of strength. Despite this the general course of the illness was progressing favourably, and last Friday the chief physician in attendance on him, one of the foremost young doctors in London and specially recommended to him by Ray Lankester, gave us the most brilliant hope for his recovery. Yet anyone who has ever examined lung tissue under the microscope knows how great is the danger of a blood vessel being broken through in a suppurating lung. And that is why I had a deathly fear, every morning for the past six weeks, of finding the shades down when I turned the corner of the street. Yesterday afternoon at 2:30, the best time for visiting him, I arrived to find the house in tears. It seemed that the end was near. I asked what had happened, tried to get at the bottom of the matter, to offer comfort. There had been a slight hemorrhage, but suddenly he had begun to sink rapidly. Our good old Lenchen, who had looked after him better than any mother cares for a child, went upstairs and came down again. He was half-asleep, she said, I might

come in. When we entered the room he lay there asleep, but never to wake again. His pulse and breathing had stopped. In those two minutes he had passed away, peacefully and without pain.

All events occurring with natural necessity bring their own consolation with them, however dreadful they may be. So, in this case. Medical skill might have been able to assure him a few more years of vegetative existence, the life of a helpless being, dying -- to the triumph of the doctors' art -- not suddenly, but inch by inch. But our Marx would never have borne that. To live, with all the unfinished works before him, tantalized by the desire to complete them and unable to do so, would have been a thousand times more bitter than the gentle death that overtook him. "Death is not a misfortune for him who dies, but for him who survives," he used to say, quoting Epicurus. And to see this mighty genius lingering on as a physical wreck for the greater glory of medicine and the mockery of the philistines whom he had so often annihilated in the prime of his strength -- no, it is a thousand times better as it is, a thousand times better that we bear him, the day after tomorrow, to the grave where his wife lies at rest.

And after what had gone before, and what even the doctors do not know as well as I do, there was in my opinion no other alternative.

Be that as it may. Mankind is shorter by a head, and the greatest head of our time. The movement of the proletariat goes on, but gone is the central point to which Frenchmen, Russians, Americans and Germans spontaneously turned at decisive moments to receive always that clear incontestable counsel which only genius and a perfect knowledge of the situation could give. Local lights and small talents, if not the humbugs, obtain a free hand. The final victory is certain, but

the detours, the temporary and local errors -- even now so unavoidable -- will grow more than ever. Well, we must see it through; what else are we here for? And we are far from losing courage because of it.

Yours,
F. Engels

NOTES

^<"en1">[1] Rheinische Zeitung für Politik, Handel und Gewerbe (Rhine Gazette, for Politics, Trade and Industry ) -- a daily published in Cologne from January 1, 1847 to March 31, 1843. It was founded by members of the bourgeoisie in the Rhine Province who were opposed to Prussian absolutism. Marx became a contributor in April 1845 and chief editor in the following October. Its revolutionary and democratic character became more pronounced under his editorship. The government established a specially strict censorship over the paper, and subsequently closed it down. [p.1]

^<"en2">[2] Regierungspräsident -- in Prussia, the regional representative of the central executive. [p.2]

^<"en3">[3] Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Yearbooks ) -- a German publication edited by Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge. Actually, only one issue, a double number, came out in February 1844. In addition to Marx's "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung" ("A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction"), the issue contained other essays by Marx and Engels, which marked the authors' adoption of a materialist and communist standpoint. [p.2]

^<"en4">[4] Here Engels refers to the order to deport Marx and other contributors to Vorwärts! issued by the French Government on January 16, 1845 under the pressure of the Prussian Government. [p.2]

^<"en5">[5] The German Workers' Association was founded by Marx and Engels towards the end of August 1847. Its aim was the politcal education of German workers living in Belgium and the propagation of scientific communism. [p.3]

^<"en6">[6] The Communist League was the first international organization of the revolutionary proletariat, founded in the summer of 1847 in London at a congress of delegates from proletarian revolutionary organizations. The League was organized and guided by Marx and Engels, who on its instructions wrote its programme -- the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The League existed until 1852. Later its foremost members played a leading part in the First International. See Engels' article "On the History of the Communist League" (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1951, Vol. II, pp. 306-23). [p.3]

^<"en7">[7] Deutsche-Brusseler-Zeitung (German Brussels Gazette ) -- a paper founded by German political emigrants in Brussels, published from January 1847 to February 1848. Originally its guiding line was determined by the publisher and editor Adalbert von Bornstedt, a petty-bourgeois democrat, who sought to reconcile the various trends among the radical and democratic parties. However, under the influence of Marx and Engels and their comrades-in-arms, from the summer of 1847 the paper increasingly became a mouthpiece for revolutionary-democratic and communist ideas. From September 1847 on, Marx and Engels were regular contributors and exerted a strong influence on editorial policy. In the last months of 1847 the paper was actually guided by them and became the organ of the Communist League. [p.4]

^<"en8">[8] Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhine Gazette ) -- a daily published in Cologne from June 1, 1848, to May 19, 1849, which was the militant organ of the proletarian wing of the democratic movement. Marx was its editor-in-chief; Marx and Engels wrote leading articles which determined its attitude to the principal problems of the revolution in Germany and Europe. After the defeat of the German revolution the paper ceased publication. Lenin said that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung "to this very day remains the best and the unsurpassed organ of the revolutionary proletariat." (V. I. Lenin, Karl Marx, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1974, p. 50.) [p.4]

^<"en9">[9] Kreuz-Zeitung (Gazette of the Cross ) -- a name used for the German daily the Neue Preussische Zeitung (New Prussian Gazette ), because its masthead bore a cross, the emblem of the Landwehr, the military reserves. Published in Berlin from June 1848, it was the organ of the counter-revolutionary court camarilla and the Prussian Junkers. [p.4]

^<"en10">[10] Chimborazo -- one of the highest peaks of the Andes Mountains in South America. [p.4]

^<"en11">[11] On June 13, 1849, the petty-bourgeois party of Montagnards organized a peaceful demonstration in Paris to protest against the dispatch of French troops to Italy to suppress the revolution in violation of the Constitution of the French Republic which prohibited the sending of French forces abroad to interfere with the freedom of foreign peoples. The demonstration was dispersed by troops. Its failure testified to the bankruptcy of French petty-bourgeois democracy. From that day, the French authorities launched persecutions of democrats, including foreigners residing in France. [p.5]

^<"en12">[12] Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue (New Rhine Gazette. Political and Economic Review ) -- a journal projected by Marx and Engels late in 1849 and published in the course of 1850. It was the theoretical and political organ of the Communist League, continuing the work of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung published by Marx and Engels during the revolution of 1848-49. Altogether six issues appeared, from March to November 1850. Most of the contributions were by Marx and Engels. They included Marx's "The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850" and Engels' "The Campaign for the Imperial Constitution in Germany" and "The Peasant War in Germany." These writings summed up the revolution of 1848-49 and formulated further the theory and tactics of the revolutionary proletarian party. [p.5]

^<"en13">[13] New York Daily Tribune -- an American newspaper published from 1841 to 1924. Marx was a contributor from August 1851 to March 1862. At Marx's request, many of the articles were written by Engels. [p.6]

^<"en14">[14] Das Volk (The People ) -- a German-language weekly which appeared in London between May and August 1859. It was set up as the official organ of the London Communist Educational Society of German Workers. Marx was a close collaborator from the second issue and soon became the actual editor. [p.6]

^<"en15">[15] The December Empire refers to Second Empire of France (1852-70) set up in December 2, 1852 and headed by Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III). [p.7]

^<"en16">[16] Papiers et correspondance de la famille impériale (Papers and Letters of the Imperial Family ). Tome I-II, Paris, 1870-1871. [p.7]

^<"en17">[17] The International Working Men's Association, known as the First International, was formed by Marx, in London, in the autumn of 1864. Headed by Marx and Engels, it guided the economic and political struggles of theworkers of different countries, fought vigorously against Proudhonism, Bakuninism, trade-unionism, Lassaleaism and other anti-

Marxist trends, and strengthened the international solidarity of the workers. After the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872 it practically ceased to exist and in 1876 prociaimed itself dissolved. The historical importance of the First International is, as Lenin put it, that "it laid the foundation of the international organization of the workers in order to prepare for their revolutionary onslaught on capital." [p.7]

^<"en18">[18] The Hague Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held between September 2 and 7, 1872. Compared with several previous congresses, it was the most broadly representative. The 65 delegates from 15 national organizations attending included Marx and Engels, who directed its entire work. This Congress marked the culmination of the struggle which Marx, Engels and their comrades-in-arms had waged for many years against various kinds of petty-bourgeois sectarianism in the working-class movement. It condemned the splitting activities of the anarchists and expelled their leaders from the International. The decisions of the Hague Congress paved the way for the founding of independent political parties of the working class in a number of countries. [p.8]

^<"en19">[19] In the nineteenth century the so-called six European powers were Russia, Germany, Austria, England, France and Italy. [p.8]

^<"en20">[20] A reference to the violent and profound economic crisis of 1873, which swept the capitalist countries of Europe and America. [p.12]

^<"en21">[21] Speech originally delivered in English by Engels at Highgate Cemetery, London, on March 17, 1883. Published in German in the Sozialdemokrat on March 22, 1883. The version here is based on the newspaper text, with title added by editor. [p.16]

^<"en22">[22] Vorwärts! (Forward! ) -- a German-language biweekly issued in Paris from January to December 1844. Marx and Engels were among the contributors. Influenced by Marx, who became one of the editors in the summer of the same year, the paper began to assume a communist character and launched vigorous attacks against Prussian reaction. On the demand of the Prussian Government, the Guizot cabinet deported Marx and other contributors to Vorwärts! from France in January 1845. As a result, the paper ceased publication. [p.18]

^<"en23">[23] This refers to Eleanor, youngest daughter of Karl Marx. [p.20]

^<"en24">[24] This refers to Jenny Longuet, Marx's eldest daughter, who died on January 11, 1883. [p.20]