THE MARX-ENGELS READER SECOND EDITION Edited by ROBERT C. TUCKER PRINCETON UNIVERSITY w . \V· NORTON & COMPANY New York· London w. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 101I0 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London, WClA lPU Copyright © 1978, 1972 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Selections from Grundriss,,: Foundations of the Critique of Political EO/lo",)', by Karl Marx, translated by Martin Nicolaus. Copyright © 1913 by Martin Nicolaus. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Penguin Books Ltd. Stlection from On Revolu.tion. by Karl Marx. edited by Saul K. Padover. Copy­ rilb.t © 1971 by Saul K. Padover. Used with permission of McGraw-Hili Book Conipany. Marx's 1831 letter to his father, and selections from Marx's doctoral �sertation. from the "Contribution to thel Critique of Hegel's Philosophy 01 Rillht, and from "Critical Marginal Notes on the Article 'The Kina of Prussia and Social Reform,''' are from Karl Marx and Frederick Enaeis. Collected Works, Volumes 1 aad 3. Copyright © 1975 by International Publishers. Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Marx-Engels reader. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Communism--Collected works. 2. Socialism-Collected works. I. Marx, Karl. 1818-1883. Selections. English. 1978. II. Engels, Fried­ rich, 1820-1895. Selections. English. 1978. III. Tucker, Robert C. HX39·5·M374 1978 . 335·4 77-16635 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA G 1 8 9 0 ISBN 0-393-09040-X Contents Preface to the Second Edition lX Chronology: The Lives of Marx and Engels xv Introduction XlX Note on Texts and Terminology XXXlX Part I. The Early IVIarx Marx on the History of His Opinions (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) 3 Discovering Hegel (Marx to his father) 7 To Make the World Philosophical (from Marx's doctoral dissertation) 9 For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (Marx to Arnold Ruge) 12 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right 16 On the Jewish Question 26 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction 53 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts -of 1844 66 Critical Marginal Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform" 126 Aliena tion and Social Classes (from T he Holy Family) 133 Society and Economy in History (Marx to P. V. Annenkov) 136 Theses on Feuerbach 143 The German Ideology: Part I 146 Part II. The Critique of Capitalism Wage Labour and Capital 203 The Coming U nheaval (From The Poverty of Philosophy) v vi . Contents Clas� Struggle and Mode of Production (Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer ) 220 The Grundrisse 221 Capital, Volume One 294 Capital, Volume Three 439 • Crisis Theory (from Theories of Surplus Value) 443 Part III. Revolutionary Program and Strategy Manifesto of the Communist Party 469 Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League 501 Inaugural Address of the Working Men's In tern a tional Associa tion 512 Economics and Politics in the Labor Movement (Marx to F. Bolte) 520 Against Personality Cults (Marx to W. Blos) 521 The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution (the Amsterdam speech) 522 �. Critique of the Gotha Program 525 Afterthe Revolution: Marx Debates Bakunin 542 Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke, and Others 549 The Tactics of Social Democracy (Engels' Introduction to Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850) 556 Part IV. Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century Speech at the Anniversary of the People's Paper 577 Working-Class Manchester (from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844) 579 . --1 The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 586 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 594 The Civil War in France 618 On Imperialism in India 653 On Social Relations in Russia 665 Europocentric World Revolution (Marx to Engels; Engels to Karl Kautsky) 676 Contents . vn Part V. The Later Engels: Elaboration and Popularization Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx 681 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 683 On the Division of Labour in Production (From Anti-Diihring) 718 On Morality (From Anti-Diihring) 725 Versus the Anarchists (Engels to Theodor Cuno) 728 On Authority 730 The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State 734 Letters on Historical Materialism 760 Bibliographic Note 769 Index 771 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte KARL l\1ARX This pamphlet, a stylistic masterpiece, shows Marx in his most brilliant form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events­ those leading up to Louis Bonaparte's coup d'etat of December 2, 1851-from the viewpoint of the materialist conception of history. In a preface to the second edition, he himself said it was the intention of the work to "demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circum­ stances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part." Since Louis Bonaparte's rise and rule have been seen as a forerunner of the phenomenon that was to become known in the twentieth century as fascism, Marx's interpretation of it is of interest, among other ways, as a sort of prologue to later Marxist thought on the nature and meaning of fascism. The Eighteenth Brumaire was written by Marx in late 1851 and early 1852, and originally appeared in 1852 in a magazine entitled Die Revolu· tion, published in New York . The most important sections-the first and the last_appear here. I Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and perso�ages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Caussidiere for Danton Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Mountain of 1848 to 1851 -for th� Mountain of 1793 to 1795, the Nephew for the Uncle. And the same caricature oCJ:urs in the circumstances in which the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire is taking place.l 1. On the Eighteenth Brumaire (ac­ second edition of the Eighteenth Bru­ cording to the calendar introduced in maire," Marx means the coup d'etat the period of the first French bourgeois accomplished by Louis Bonaparte, the revolution), or November 9, 1799, Na­ nephew of Napoleon I, on December 2 poleon I carried out the coup d'etat 1851. The "Mountain" refers to th� whereby as First Consul he concentrat­ Social Democratic bloc in the National ed supreme power in his hands; in 1804 Assembly. CR. T.] he declared himself emperor.. By "the 59'1 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 595 Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by them­ selves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmit­ ted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something entirely new, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their serv­ ice and bprrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-hon­ oured disguise and this borrowed language. Thus Luther donned the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789 to 1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, in turn, 1789 and the revolutionary tradition of 1793 to 1795. In like manner the beginner who has learnt a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can produce freely in it only when he moves in it without remembering the old and forgets in it his ancestral tongue. Consideration of this world-historical conjuring up of the dead reveals at once a salient difference. Camille Desmoulins; Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon, the heroes, as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time in Roman costume and with Roman phrases, the task of releasing and setting up modern bourgeois society. The first ones knocked the feudal basis to pieces and mowed off the feudal heads which had grown from it. The other created inside France the conditions under which free competition could first be developed, the parcelled landed property exploited, the unfettered productive power of the nation employed, and outside the French borders he everywhere swept the feudal formations away, so far as was necessary to furnish bourgeois society in France with· a suitable up-to-date environment on the European Continent. The new social formation once established, the antediluvian Colossi disappeared and with them the resurrected Romans-the Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the tribunes, the senators and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its sober reality had begotten its true interpret­ ers and mouthpieces in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind the office desks, and the hogheaded Louis XVIII was its political chief. \Vholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in the peaceful struggle of competition, it no longer comprehended that ghosts from the days of Rome had watched over its cradle. But unheroic as bourgeois society is, yet it had need of heroism, of sacrifice, of 596 Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century terror, of civil war and of national battles to bring it into being. And in the classically austere traditions of the Roman Republic its gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions that they needed in order to conceal from themselves the bourgeois limitations of the content of their struggles and to keep their pas­ sion at the height of the great historical tragedy.