Page:Karl Kautsky - Frederick Engels - 1899.djvu/32

 brackets and the letters "F. E." the places where he "has taken the actual material left by Marx and developed it to the necessary conclusion in as much as possible the "Marxian spirit," yet no man can ever say which came from the spirit of Marx and which from the spirit of Engels.

Death seized upon Engels in the very midst of a mass of literary labors and plans. Only his sickness, of which he wrote on the 9th of May, "I think I shall be again in shape next week," prevented him from completing the introduction to Marx' "Literary Firstfruits," taken from the "Rheinische Zeitung" of 1842. Immediately after this he planned to publish the correspondence of Marx and Lassalle. He had also in mind a publication of a compilation of the shorter works of Marx and himself, to say nothing of still other plans. The last work he completed was the introduction to Marx' "The Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850," wherein Marx, in the midst of the political storm that was yet raging through Europe, explained from the economic conditions of the time the political events, outbreaks, victories and defeats, in which he and Marx themselves took part, and along with this gave a view into the future the complete accuracy of which present events have shown. In this introduction Engels gives a masterly and comprehensive, though short, continuation of European history up to our own time, and sets forth with his usual keenness and clearness the great difference between the "Revolution" of 1848 and the present continual "Revolution," whereby the laboring class of to-day will gain the victory over capitalism.

With merciless criticism he destroyed the fantastic representations of the all-powerful barricade and destroyed the hope of the European reaction that the laborers would be provoked to a street fight in which they could be repulsed with decimated ranks. He showed how the revolution in the art of warfare had made the old form of struggle impossible, while a new weapon had been provided for the laboring class in the new political rights, especially the right of suffrage, against which the ruling class were helpless. "The irony of the world's history," says Engels, "places everything upon its head. We the 'revolutionaries,' the 'overturners,' we succeed better with the legal means than with illegality and force. The self-named 'Party of Order' goes to pieces upon the legal conditions created by itself. They despairingly cry with Odilon Barrot, 'Legality is our death,' while we from this same legality gain strong muscles, ruddy cheeks and the