Letter to Karl Kautsky, January 7, 1891

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 January 1891


MECW vol 49

Dear Kautsky,

Yesterday I sent to you by registered post Marx's ms. which will have given you much pleasure.[1] I doubt whether it will be able to appear in the Holy German Empire as it stands. Take a look at it and delete the objectionable bits wherever feasible, replacing them with dots. Where the context does not permit of this, however, kindly mark the passages for me in the proofs and, if possible, inform me in a couple of lines of the reasons for the objection and I shall then do what I can. I should then place the amended bits in brackets and point out in my introductory note that these are amended passages. So let me have your corrections on the galleys, please.

But there may well be other people, apart from the bigwigs in the police, who will be displeased when it appears. Should you feel it necessary to take this into account, I would ask you to send the ms. registered to Adler. In Vienna it will doubtless be possible to print it (with the exception, alas, of the splendid passage on religious needs) in its entirety and printed it will be, whatever happens. I should imagine, however, that this very positive intention of mine, of which I herewith notify you, will afford you complete protection against whatever lamentations may arise. For after all, since none of you can stop its being printed, it would be far better for it to appear in Germany itself and in the Neue Zeit, the party organ founded expressly for such purposes.

I have stopped work on the Brentano[2] so as to get this thing ready for you; for I want to make good use of the passages it contains on the iron law of wages[3] and it would have been pointless not to have got this thing ready for the press at the same time. I had intended to polish off Brentano this week but once again so many disturbances and so much correspondence have intervened that it will be virtually impossible to do so.

So if you come up against any snags, be so good as to let me know.

Over here it's still freezing hard. Poor Schorlemmer has a cold and is temporarily deaf; he was unable to come for Christmas. Sam Moore is seriously ill in Asaba and I am anxiously awaiting further news.

Your
F. Engels

Regards to Tauscher.

  1. ↑ On December 2, 1851 a counter-revolutionary coup d'état in France was carried out by Louis Bonaparte and his adherents. — 95, 99, 120, 254, 264, 287, 393, 653
  2. ↑ Brentano refers to a manuscript by Marx on the history of the peasant war in Germany, which Engels was preparing for publication.
  3. ↑ The "iron law of wages" is a theory developed by classical economists, notably David Ricardo, stating that wages tend to fall to the minimum level necessary for workers to survive.