Page:Zelda Kahan - The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels (1920).pdf/35

of Friedrich Engels manuscript to him before publication, and the tenth chapter of the section on economics was written by Marx, and, apart from some superficial observation, was merely abridged by me. It was always our custom to assist each other reciprocally in our special fields."

Engels wrote an enormous number of articles and pamphlets on current controversies and questions of interest which we cannot even enumerate here. But many of them are not only of interest historically, but are even applicable to present-day problems. Such, for instance, is his historic treatment of the "Housing Question" which appeared originally in 1872, as a series of articles in the Volkstaat. It was a polemic against the small bourgeois followers of Proudhon and Muhlberger, and afterwards went through several publications in pamphlet form. Much of it is even applicable at the present time, and has actually been adopted by our comrades in Russia, as the following extract will show:—

This passage is a very good illustration of Engels' forcible, clear, and popular style. It is also interesting to note, as illustrating the concrete way in which both Marx and Engels founded and tested their theories, that already in this work, as in all the subsequent work of Marx and Engels, he takes into account the experience of the Commune, the first attempt at full emancipation made by the working class, checking his theories, deductions, and predictions thereby. or

In 1875 Engels published his famous Anti-Dühring as a scientific supplement to the Vorwaerts. The following year it was published in book form, and later, a popular edition was issued under the title