The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 16
After Split in First International and Death of Marx
After the split in the International, brought about as a last straw by the Marx-Bakunin conflict, and the removal of its headquarters to New York, both Marx and Engels devoted themselves to their theoretical work, at the same time acting as advisers to the working-class and Socialist movements of Europe and America. Numerous letters, pamphlets and manifestos written by them since that time amply testify to the fact that no one who came to them with a sincere desire to learn, went away empty-handed, or, perhaps, we should say, empty-headed, after seeing them.
In 1883 Marx died, and the whole of this work fell on Engels shoulders.
When Marx died, Engels was already sixty-three years of age, but, nevertheless, not only did he continue to defend with all his wonted vigour his and Marx's theories, not only did he continue to apply the materialistic conception of history to all the important questions of the day—writing numerous pamphlets and articles—but he continued his own philosophic and historical studies, acted as general adviser to the workers and Socialists of all nations, and last, and what he considered to be most important of all, and as a first duty, he worked on the completion of the work began by Marx. Perhaps we cannot more vividly bring to the mind of the reader the life of Engels after the death of Marx than by quoting Engels' own description of it in his preface to the third volume of Capital in 1874. We shall see from it, too, how much Capital is really the work of Engels almost as much as that of Marx.
"In the first place it was a weakness of my eyes which restricted my time of writing to a minimum for years, and which permits me even now only exceptionally to do any writing by artificial light.
"There were, furthermore, other labours which I could not refuse, such as new editions and translations of earlier works of Marx and myself, revisions, prefaces, supplements, which frequently required special study, etc. There was, above all, the English edition of the first volume of this work, for whose text I am ultimately responsible and which absorbed much of my time. Whoever has followed the colossal growth of international Socialist literature during the last ten years, especially the great number of translations of earlier works of Marx and myself, will agree with me in congratulating myself that there is but a limited number of languages in which I am able to assist a translator and which compel me to accede to the request for a revision.
"This growth of literature, however, was but an evidence of a corresponding growth of the International Working-Class Movement itself. And this imposed new obligations on me. From the very first days of our public activity, a good deal of the work of negotiation between the national movements of Socialists and working people had fallen on the shoulders of Marx and myself. This movement increased to the extent that the movement, as a whole, gained in strength. Up to the time of his death, Marx had borne the brunt of this burden. But after that the ever-swelling amount of work had to be done by myself alone.
"Meanwhile, the direct intercourse between the various national Labour parties has become the rule, and fortunately it is becoming more and more so. Nevertheless, my assistance is still in demand a good deal more than is agreeable to me in view of my theoretical studies. But if a man has been active in the movement for more than fifty years, as I have, he regards the work connected with it as a duty, which must not be shirked, but immediately fulfilled. In our stirring times, as in the 16th century, mere theorizers on public affairs are found only on the side of the reactionaries, and for this reason these gentlemen are not even theoretical scientists, but simply apologists of reaction.
"The fact that I live in London implies that my intercourse with the parties is limited in winter to correspondence, while in summer time it largely takes place by personal interviews.
"This fact, and the necessity of following the course of the movement in a steadily growing number of countries and a still more rapidly increasing number of party organs, compelled me to reserve matters which brooked no interruption for the winter months of the year.
"When a man is past seventy, his brain's fibres of association work with a certain disagreeable slowness. He does not overcome interruptions of difficult theoretical problems as easily and quickly as formerly. Thus it came about that the work of one winter, if it was not completed, had to be largely done over the following winter.
"And this took place particularly in the case of the most difficult section—the fifth.
"The reader will observe by the following statements that the work of editing the third was essentially different from that of the second volume. Nothing was available for the third volume but a first draft, and it was very incomplete.
"The beginnings of the various sections were, as a rule, pretty carefully elaborated, or even polished as to style. But the farther one proceeded, the more sketchy and incomplete was the analysis, the more excursions it contained into side issues whose proper place in the argument was left for later decision, the longer and more complex became the sentences in which the rising thoughts were deposited as they came. In several places, the handwriting and the treatment of the matter clearly revealed the approach and gradual progress of those attacks of ill-health, due to overwork, which at first rendered original work more and more difficult for the author, and finally compelled him from time to time to stop work altogether. And no wonder. Between 1863 and 1867, Marx had not only completed the first draft of the last two volumes of Capital, and made the first volume ready for the printer, but had also mastered the enormous work connected with the foundation and expansion of the International Working-men's Association. The result was the appearance of the first symptoms of that ill-health which is to blame for the fact that Marx did not himself put the finishing touches to the second and third volumes."