Page:Zelda Kahan - The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels (1920).pdf/18

14 resign their power, and help the workers to emancipate the whole of society from the shackles of capitalist production for profit. But no one in their senses would set to work now on such an assumption.

The Conditions of the Working Classes was to have been only the first part of an all embracing history of the English people. At the same time Engels was planning a monthly Socialist paper, to be edited together with Moses Hess, and also the publication of an encyclopædia of Socialist literature abroad, the publication of a criticism of List, and so on. The latter work he left to Marx, who had also intended doing it. The stress of the coming years, however, did not allow of the completion of all these plans.

The first letter Engels wrote Marx after returning from Paris to Barmen was at the end of September, 1844. It is full of the eagerness of youth and enthusiasm for their common work.

He describes the progress made by their Communist teaching in Cologne, and he says: "Our people are very active, but the lack of a proper foundation is very evident. So long as our principles have not been developed in a few works, historically and logically, from our prevailing philosophy (anschauungsweise) and history, and shown to be the necessary corollary of these, so long shall we continue for the most part to grope blindly in the dark. … Best of all I like my Elberfeld boys, in whom the human philosophy has, indeed, passed into their flesh and blood. These fellows have really begun to revolutionise their families economically, and they read their elders a lesson whenever these attempt to treat their servants or workers aristocratically. And this is, indeed, a great deal in patriarchal Elberfeld. …" He describes bourgeois society at home in Barmen and district, and points out that the discontent of the workers is growing and is manifesting itself by the increase of crime and individual terrorist acts, and says: "And if the proletariat of this country develops according to the same law as the English, they will soon become convinced that to protest against the social order in this violent way, as individuals, is quite useless, and they will learn to protest as human beings in their collective capacity through Communism. It only we could show them the way. But this is impossible"” (The Communists could not then work in the open for fear of arrest.) And he ends the letter thus:—"Well, now, see to it that the material you have collected is sent forth into the world as soon as possible—it is devilishly high time I, too, set to work in earnest. … And so let us work well and publish quickly. … Good-bye, dear fellow, and write soon. I have never since been in such a cheerful good-humoured mood as I was during the ten days I stopped with you."

This letter not only characterises the young Engels, but it also shows how close were already the relations existing between himself and Marx. In this letter they are already on quite familiar terms, Engels using the familiar "du" (thou) in addressing Marx. It way be as well to