Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/16

 The majority of the leading members of the Communist League, as well as the majority of the German "great men" of 1848, found themselves in the fall together in London. They undertook to form a new organization for the purpose of taking up again the propagandist activity. While the revolutionary uprising had not yet been entirely suppressed, it appeared necessary to prepare for a new revolution. But how completely different Marx and Engels comprehended these preparations from the majority of the Democratic emigrants! While to these the solution of the problem at which they had just failed appeared a child's play, and while their illusions grew ever more chimerical and their manifestos more bombastic as they lost all actual connections with the home relations, Marx and Engels labored with tireless energy to perfect the organization of the Communist League, and to work in Germany with propaganda and criticism, at the same time advancing themselves intellectually.

The results of their criticism and scientific activity at that time are set forth in a monthly paper which they published in 1850, giving it the name of the paper suppressed in Cologne—the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung." It appeared in Hamburg. Marx published in it a critical history of the French movement of 1848–49, which formed the foundation of his later pamphlet—"The Eighteenth Brumaire." Engels described the imperial plan of campaign in a series of articles, a portion of which was cited above. The most notable of his other works was a series of articles on the "The English Ten-Hour Bill," which are to-day only of historical interest, since the conditions from which he proceeded no longer exist. As one reads the articles he at once understands the industrial revolution that has since taken place. One of the most important of Engels' productions was a series of articles on the German Peasants' War, which later appeared in the form of a brochure. This work is the first historical description of the pre-capitalistic relations from the standpoint of the materialistic conception of history. Meanwhile the development of actual relations showed to those who carefully observed facts, instead of living in a self-created dream world, that the raising of an immediate revolution was impossible. However disagreeable this knowledge was, Marx and Engels determined not only to accept it themselves but they had the courage to publish it, as they held it to be their task to destroy illusions, not to nourish them.

In their review of the events from May to October, written