Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/30

 volume would only present technical difficulties. This was indeed true, but I had no conception of the difficulties that this most important section of all would give me, and still less of the other hindrances that finally delayed the preparation of the work so much.

"In the first place, I was troubled by a continual weakness of the eyes, which for a number of years shortened my time for writing to a minimum, and which even yet only permits me on exceptional occasions to take a pen in my hand by artificial light. Along with this came other unavoidable work—new editions and translations of earlier works of Marx and myself, and revisions, prefaces and supplements which often required new study, etc. First of all came the English edition of the first volume, which has taken much time, and for the text of which I am primarily responsible. Whoever has followed the colossal growth of international socialist literature in the last ten years, and particularly the number of translations of the works of Marx and myself, will agree with me when I congratulate myself on the limited number of languages in which I can be of use to the translators and so be required to revise the work with my own hand.

"This growth of the literature is only one sign of the corresponding growth of the international labor movement itself, which also continually gave me new duties. From the beginning of our public activity a large portion of the work of adjustment of the national movements of the socialists and laborers of different countries fell upon Marx and myself. This work increased in proportion to the strength of the united movement. While even up to his very death Marx had assumed the greater part of this load, after his death the constantly increasing burden fell upon me alone. Although now the direct communication of the individual national labor parties among themselves has become the rule, and, fortunately, is growing to be more so each day, nevertheless my help is still often demanded—a fact which is very helpful to me in my theoretical work. But whoever, like myself, has been active in this movement for over fifty years considers the labor springing out of such a movement an unavoidable immediate duty to be fulfilled. As in the sixteenth century, so in this agitated time there are those on the side of the reaction who are merely theorizers, and for this very reason such persons are not true theorists, but simply apologists for the reaction.

"The fact that I lived in London caused most of this