Equally, Marx had been drawn back to the work of Hegel in the 1870s and was the first to make the claim that the dialectical law applied to both nature and society. Like it or not, Anti-Dühring's grand theoretical system was the expression of authentic, mature Marxist opinion. For the previous thirty years Engels had given himself up to explaining and popularizing the work of his ‘first fiddle’ and there seems little reason why he would suddenly start in the 1870s, under Marx's watch, to invert, falsify or deviate from his master's voice.64 In the ensuing decades, as we shall see, others reinterpreted Engels's interpretation, but that is a misdemeanour for which he cannot be held intellectually culpable.
In the meantime, Engels had to break off from his scientific work to get on with the Herculean task of ordering Marx's literary estate. ‘Quotations from sources in no kind of order, piles of them jumbled together, collected simply with a view to future selection. Besides that there is the handwriting which certainly cannot be deciphered by anyone but me, and then only with difficulty,’ he wrote despairingly to August Bebel after wading through the Maitland Park Road archives.65 Knowing his lifelong devotion to Marx and inevitable loneliness without him, Bebel, Kautsky and Liebknecht all urged Engels to leave London after Marx's funeral and join them on the continent. Engels, who had grown affectionately accustomed to England's low barometer life, refused point blank. ‘I shall not go to any country from which one can be expelled. But that is something one can only be safe from in England and America,’ he told his young disciples. Moreover, ‘only here does one have the peace one needs if one is to go on with one's theoretical work’.66 Primrose Hill had evolved into the organizational hub of global communism and, to honour his friend's memory, Engels was determined to keep intact ‘the many threads from all over the world which spontaneously converged on Marx's study’.67 Engels now also had to play paterfamilias both to the international Marxist movement and to the leaderless Marx clan. Happily that meant taking on as housekeeper the Marx family retainer, Helene Demuth or Nim, at 122 Regent's Park Road (where the two of them nostalgically sifted through Marx's correspondence and enjoyed a mid-morning tipple), and unhappily dealing with the two grieving, warring Marx daughters. ‘I requested you, the other day, to inform me (which, as you had made a public declaration, I had a right to do) whether Mohr had told you that he wished Tussy to be his literary executrix,’ wrote an angry Laura Lafargue from Paris to Engels in June 1883, fearful that she was being carved out of Marx's intellectual inheritance.68 She had assumed that she, rather than Samuel Moore, would be translating Das Kapital and was furious that London-based Engels and Tussy were unilaterally commandeering her father's legacy. ‘You know very well there is on my part no other desire but to consider your wishes as much as possible and in every respect,’ Engels wrote back soothingly. ‘What we all of us are desirous of seeing carried out, is a befitting monument to the memory of Mohr, the first portion of which will and must be the publication of his posthumous works.’69
But that was no simple matter. ‘Had I known,’ Engels lamented to Bebel, ‘I should have pestered him day and night until it was all finished and printed.’70 To his horror and indignation, what Engels discovered when he entered Marx's study and started leafing through his papers was that the much anticipated Volume II of Das Kapital had succumbed to Marx's weakness for prevarication, evidential avarice and immersion in tangential topics. Whether deliberately or not, Marx had scuttled his masterwork. ‘Had it not been for the mass of American and Russian material (there are over two cubic metres of books of Russian statistics alone), Volume II would have long since been printed. These detailed studies held him up for years.’71 So in addition to overseeing translations of Marx's work into English, Italian, Danish and French (‘Try to be more faithful to the original,’ Engels berated Lafargue struggling with The Poverty of Philosophy, ‘Marx isn't a man with whom one can afford to take liberties’), Engels also set about supervising the German publication of Volumes II and III of Das Kapital.72
In his study at Regent's Park Road, from the summer of 1883 to the spring of 1885, he worked feverishly to collate and decipher the myriad revisions, statistical charts, discontinued lines of thought and incomprehensible jottings which would become the first German edition of Das Kapital Volume II, ‘The Process of Circulation of Capital’. It was an arduous, frustrating task, and yet Engels revelled in the sensation that ‘I can truly say that while I work at this book, I am living in communion with him [Marx].’73 Enjoyable as it was to be conversing with his old comrade, the line by line editing of Marx's impenetrable, cramped handwriting was endangering Engels's health. And the manuscripts, according to Paul Lafargue, were in a terrible state: ‘they contain abbreviations which have to be guessed at, crossings-out and innumerable corrections which have to be deciphered; it is as difficult to read as a Greek palimpsest with ligatures’.74 By the mid-1880s Engels's eyes were weakening under the strain as he showed signs of conjunctivitis and myopia. To ease the strain, he was forced to initiate a new generation – ‘two competent gentlemen’, Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein – into the hieroglyphic mysteries of Marx's handwriting before then employing a German socialist typesetter, Oskar Eisengarten, to take dictation. But Engels still had to check Marx's manuscript over and by 1887 he had developed chronic ophthalmia which was severely constricting his ability to read with anything other than natural light. Thankfully, after much trial and error the scientifically minded Engels found a remedy. ‘Last year and up till August I used cocaine and, as this grew less effective (on account of habituation), went on to ZnCl2, which works very well,’ he informed his physician friend Ludwig Kugelmann.75 But when it came to his progressively ageing body, his real worry was a doctor's warning that ‘I'm unlikely to be able to mount a horse again – hence unfit for active service, dammit!’76
True to his conscientious nature, Engels released Volume II of Das Kapital in May 1885 barely two years after Marx's death. Its publication allowed Engels to continue the battle against the usual range of bourgeois critics – notably, the German economist Johann Karl Rodbertus who had accused Marx of plagiarism – and once again position Marxism and the theory of surplus value as part of the nineteenth century's scientific paradigm-shift. ‘Marx stands in the same relation to his predecessors in the theory of surplus value as Lavoisier stood to Priestley and Scheele,’ Engels's introduction declared, using one of his favourite chemistry analogies. ‘The existence of that part of the value of products which we now call surplus value had been ascertained long before Marx… But they did not get any further… He saw that this was a case neither of dephlogisticated air nor of fire-air, but of oxygen…’77 However, what Volume II didn't solve was the problem which Engels had first identified in 1867 and Marx had promised to answer at a later stage, namely the question of whether constant capital (machinery) was able to generate profits through surplus value and, given the different ratios of variable to constant capital (of labour to machinery), how could profit rates be equal across different capitals? In other words, in Meghnad Desai's formulation, ‘was (non-labour) capital relevant to profitability or not?’ Rather than solving the conundrum, Engels weakly threw the issue back at Marx's critics: ‘If they can show how an equal average rate of profit can and must come about, not only without a violation of the law of value, but rather on the very basis of it, we are willing to discuss the matter further with them.’78
Even with the publication in 1894 of the third and final volume of Das Kapital, the problems remained unresolved. Engels was not overly exercised. He regarded the third volume of Marx's masterwork as even more influential and significant than the first. ‘Our theory is thereby provided for the first time with an unassailable basis while we ourselves are enabled to hold our own successfully on all fronts,’ he wrote confidently to August Bebel. ‘As soon as this [volume] appears, the philistines in the party will again be dealt a blow that will give them something to think about.’79 However, the book was in an even worse shape than the prev
ious editions, with a dizzying paper trail of notes, drafts, paraphrasing and equations jumbled together. But in contrast to his frustrations with the editing of Volume I, Engels at last, in the absence of Marx, had the freedom to mould the text as he saw fit, filleting the illustrations and eliminating the literary carbuncles. ‘As this crowning volume is such a splendid and totally unanswerable work, I consider myself bound to bring it out in a shape in which the whole line of argument stands forth clearly and in bold relief,’ he told Nikolai Danielson.80
However, since the publication in 1993 of Marx's Volume II manuscript of 1864–5, it has become clear just how liberal this editorial initiative was. In order to get the line of argument clear, Engels markedly changed Marx's original intent on numerous occasions by integrating footnotes into the text, amalgamating sections, adding subdivisions and inserting his own thoughts. This was most obviously the case when it came to the much debated Part III, ‘The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’, in which Marx outlined how profits tend to decline under capitalism as labour-saving technology progressively reduces the scope for extracting surplus value from living labour. Marx then connected this falling tendency of profitability within companies to the probability of the survival of capitalism itself.81 The question was, at what rate? Whereas Marx's original manuscript spoke of the ‘shaking’ of capitalist production, perhaps with an eye to the quantitative–qualitative shifts explored in Anti-Dühring, Engels spoke more definitively – in terms reminiscent of the youthful Communist Manifesto – of the ‘collapse’ of capitalism. A small change, but one with far-reaching consequences for twentieth-century Marxists who repeatedly looked for a systemic ‘crisis’ or ‘breakdown’ of capitalism to usher in the communist dawn. Momentarily, Marx's bulldog had slipped the leash, but it was all for the greater good of the cause. ‘Engels wanted to be not just editor, but curator of Marx's legacy and editor all in one,’ in the words of a recent study. ‘Engels produced a readable version of Marx's manuscript for the users for whom it was meant, a group that ranged from theoretically aware workers to philologically interested academics.’82 And, with the publication of Volume III, he felt at last the job was done, Marx's memory honoured. ‘I am glad your long voyage with Marx's Capital is nearly ended,’ Engels's old Chartist friend Julian Harney wrote to him in 1893. ‘Never, I think, at least in modern times, has any man found so faithful, so devoted a friend and champion, as Marx has found in you.’83
Engels's fragile health had not been the only obstacle to the speedy publication of Marx's papers. The unshakeable presence of the leeching, tragicomic Roshers was another drain on Engels's emotions. To no one's great surprise, Pumps's slow-witted and increasingly deaf husband, Percy Rosher, was not proving a great success as a chartered accountant. So as Engels wrestled with dialectical materialism, new editions of Das Kapital, and marshalling the forces of international socialism, he also had to deal with the Roshers’ family finances. By December 1888 Engels was warning the other recidivist sponger on his books, Paul Lafargue, that Percy's affairs were ‘going rather badly’ and it could shape up to be a tight financial year. As feared, the following autumn saw the hapless Percy ‘completely smashed up’ and it was left to Engels to negotiate on Percy's behalf with his brother and father to avoid an outright bankruptcy. ‘However it may end,’ Engels sagely predicted, ‘it's sure to cost me a lot of money.’84 And so it did as Pumps and Percy never ceased touching kind Uncle Engels for cash – much to the annoyance of the Lafargues. ‘I am sorry to come pestering you just when you have so many worries and troubles over Percy's affairs, but I am compelled to do so, for we have exhausted our means,’ Paul Lafargue wrote to Engels in November 1889 as he saw worrying signs of Engels's resources being diverted.85
Over the next five years Engels, the most revered Marxist theoretician and communist strategist of his day, was dragged ever deeper into the farcical world of the Roshers and their various schemes for making money – from ‘The Rainbow Engineering Company’ to ‘The Rosher System for Swimming Baths’. The worst of it was having to deal with Percy's father, Charles Rosher, and his demands for loans and ‘investments’ in various business projects couched in a series of brazen letters. ‘No one with whom he [Percy] is connected has a deeper sense of your kindness and generosity to Percy – than I have,’ began one ludicrous correspondence. ‘Personally I have to be very careful… to make ends meet… I venture to say that Percy with his allowance from you, plus salary is [having] more income than I am.’ Charles Rosher went on to intimate in very clear language that he would only pay Percy a salary if Engels agreed to bankroll the company. ‘So far as I have had opportunity of judging it will be a long time before he will be worth much in my business,’ Charles shamefacedly concluded of his son's singularly unimpressive abilities.86 And when Engels demurred at providing Rosher with more resources, Percy was duly sacked.
It was no better with brother Howard, for whom Percy then went to work in a cement, builders' and gardeners' materials company on the Isle of Wight. Demands for bridging loans, cash injections and even commercial advice appeared to arrive with every post by the early 1890s. ‘My dear Mr Engels, I much regret having to ask if you could kindly oblige us again with an exchange cheque,’ was a familiar request from Howard Rosher.87 Engels knew his good nature was being abused by a bunch of chancers, yet he stoically put up with it so he could enjoy the beery company of Pumps, the memory of the Burnses and seaside holidays with her and the children in their house at Ryde. ‘He does love the tipsy Pumps,’ Tussy explained to her sister. ‘He rages against Pumps – and loves her.’88 But by 1894 his patience had finally snapped after Percy junked his job, ‘spent a lot of money (not his own)’, gave Engels's name in surety for a loan and turned up destitute on his doorstep at Primrose Hill. ‘After all I have done for them, I am not going to quietly submit to such treatment, and did not receive them very heartily,’ he told Laura Lafargue. ‘What Percy is going to do and how this is to end, is more than I know.’89 And that, thankfully, is the last we hear of Percy Rosher.*
Amidst the piles of letters, jottings and unfinished essays which Engels brought over to Regent's Park Road from Marx's study was one set of notes which particularly sparked his interest. Out from the morass of Russian statistical tables was an inspiring collection of thoughts on the nature of prehistoric society. In the early 1880s Marx had drawn up a detailed synopsis of a voguish work by the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, entitled Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization (1877). A hybrid mixture of Darwinism and materialism, Morgan's book sought to trace the evolution of human society from the primitive state of social organization to modern civilization. With much of his primary research drawn from the habits of the Iroquois confederacy of tribes in northern New York state, Morgan charted the impact of technological development and changing conceptions of property rights on the tribal and then family form. In terms of family structure, Morgan thought progress from savagery to civilization meant the inexorable move from consanguineous tribes to a patriarchal-based, ‘monogamian’ (or nuclear) family household.
As Marx's extensive ‘Ethnological Notebooks’ have since revealed, this was a topic of wide-ranging dialogue between him and Engels who now added anthropology to his broadening range of scientific enthusiasms. In the mid-1860s the two had disagreed over the significance of Pierre Tremaux's The Origin and Transformation of Man and Other Beings, with its cack-handed causational theory about the function of geology and soil in the formation of race. In early 1882, as Marx was fighting off his chest infection in the Isle of Wight, Engels had written to him, ‘in order finally to get clear about the parallel between the Germans of Tacitus and the American Redskins’.90 This followed the publication of Hubert Howe Bancroft's The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America (1875), which seemed to stress less the means of production and more the role of blood bonds in shaping early American primitive communities.
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On the eve of Marx's death, in February 1883, an essay by Karl Kautsky on early sexual relations – which anachronistically applied notions of sexual jealousy to ‘primitive’ societies and failed to connect ancient patterns of shared land with the practice of shared wives – revived Engels's interest in the topic. The discovery of Marx's notes on Morgan then convinced him of the need to write something in order to ward off further ideological deviation. When Bernstein stayed at Regent's Park Road in early 1884, Engels ‘read to me, night after night, until the small hours of the morning, passages from Marx's manuscripts, and the synopsis of a book with which he connected Marx's extracts from the American writer Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society’.91 The project was, Engels hoped, to be the ‘fulfilment of a behest’: to connect Morgan's researches with Marx's materialist reading of history. And, in the process, extend some of his own biological insights from the world of butterflies and insects to womanhood and gender relations. Somewhat unexpectedly, the womanizing Engels ended up authoring the foundation text of socialist feminism.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in Light of the Researches by Lewis H. Morgan (1884) began with what Engels clearly regarded as a progressive feminist principle: ‘According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life.’92 At a stroke, he placed female production of human life on the same theoretical plane as the production of the means of existence – of which, in the communist canon, there was no higher virtue. His next move was, in Hegelian fashion, to historicize the family form by showing its fluid nature over the preceding epochs and point to its future incarnation under communist governance. Just as the proletariat had to understand capitalism was a transitory state, so women could rejoice that current gender inequalities were a passing interlude.
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