Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/10

 descriptions are of real significance, giving typical and historical facts and not merely pedantic accumulations of disconnected details, they rest upon the basis of Marx' "Capital" and the "Condition of the Laboring Class" of Engels. But only a few like Sax had the courage or the honesty to confess this.

The present German economic "Science" only lives as it similtaneously plunders, snarls at or pretends to refute Marx and Engels. And the more one has secretly plundered the louder he snarls.

We have gone somewhat into details concerning the "Condition," partly because it is the first book of scientific socialism and partly because the edition is exhausted, and it is no longer accessible to the greater number of our comrades. We need not linger so long with the other writings of Engels. They can be more easily obtained, and we dare say the greater part of our readers know them already and others will be led to a nearer acquaintance with them through this sketch. In his following writings he maintains the same position that he took in the "Condition," and which was for the first time symmetrically and completely set forth in the "Communist Manifesto" of 1847.

The "Condition" was worked out in Barmen after his return from Manchester. But at the same time Engels saw that with his present views an abode in pious Barmen, in the bosom of an orthodox and highly conservative family, was unendurable. Once for all he gave up mercantile life and went to Brussels, where Marx had also betaken himself, after he was expelled from France through the instigation of the Prussian government. And now began an active mutual labor for both. The theoretical foundation of their work was soon acquired. It was necessary for them, on the one hand, to establish a new scientific system; on the other hand to place the existing labor movement on this foundation and bring it to self-consciousness. This intimate union of practical and theoretical work, of such deep significance for Marx and Engels, became now a fixed plan and remained so for life. From this time on they systematically concentrated all their strength upon this subject.

Their first scientific task was to break definitely with the contemporary German philosophy and also with the remnants of the younger Hegelian school. They wrote together a criticism of the later Hegelian philosophy (Stirner, Feuerbach, Bauer), which was not published, however. But as Engels