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Correspondence of Frederick Engels and Paul and Laura Lafargue #1
Correspondence, Volume 1: 1868 - 1886
The first of three volumes published in English in Moscow based on the French edition published by Éditions Sociales.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
22 people want to read
About the author
Friedrich Engels
1,885 books1,534 followersGerman social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on
The Communist Manifesto
in 1848 and on numerous other works.
With the help of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894).
Friedrich Engels, a philosopher, political, historian, journalist, revolutionary, and also a businessman, closest befriended his lifelong colleague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...
With the help of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894).
Friedrich Engels, a philosopher, political, historian, journalist, revolutionary, and also a businessman, closest befriended his lifelong colleague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 28, 2013
I was really impressed with this book and would recommend it to anyone involved in the Occupy movement. It chronicles the long struggles and arrests of Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, author of the influential essay, "The Right to Be Lazy," which was integral in the founding of the forty hour, five day work week. In fact, I got this book from Brooklyn Public Library when trying to obtain that book and not finding it in the catalog. This is volume 1 of 3, and they have only another copy of volume 1. Although printed in 1959, the book's cover has proven very brittle, and I hope I don't get blamed for trying to fix ripped cloth with tape. Perhaps, having been published in Moscow, quality of work suffered under the Soviet Union's perversion of Marxism. I have books published before 1930 that are sturdier. BPL keeps this book in storage, apparently from lack of demand, and I had to wait so long for it to be processed for me to check out that I missed a soup kitchen where I was planning to have lunch.
Much of the content of the letters is familial, dealing with travel, weather, and health, along with plenty of requests from the Lafargues for money from Engels, who supported them in his old age. This really humanizes the material and shows what a struggle for justice life was for them. Paul was a white collar worker, and unlike the American perversion of Marxism, communism is not about lionizing blue collar workers over white, it is about lionizing those who work for their money, no matter what sort of work, and wresting control away from those who live on their investments.
The book is a compelling read for those who don't need everything spoon-fed to them. I had to look up the first names of many of the personages depicted in the letters, and reference to correspondences with other people (not included, with the exception of #140A by Nikolai Danielson, whose first name is never given once between the covers--I had to look it up just to give him credit here with my librarian privileges--this one is included because it was sent as an enclosure in letter 140 and explicitly referenced in Lafargue's letter as being pertinent). The first word of the text is "Mohr," which I didn't realize until about halfway through was a nickname for Marx, a key bit of information that affects all understanding of the narrative! (I kept thinking of the lyricist who wrote "Stille Nacht.") The letters were written in a mix of German, French, and English. Sometimes the translator prefers to leave the material in the original language and translate it in a footnote, suggesting lack of true translatability of those passages. The translated letters have a different character from the English letters, and it is sometimes harder to tell the author without looking then when we get the writer's actual words. Laura is very much a 19th century woman, which is not always clear in the translated portions. Some of what she says is flightly and allusive and suggestive of Jo March, while other portions are deadly serious, so I would not consider her a frivolous woman by any means.
The book begins with the courtship of Paul and Laura with the assistance of Engels, "The General." There are letters Paul Lafargue has written from prison, and a whole series of letters near the end that deal with another legal case against him, which is primarily in letters from Laura, which pulls suspense and ultimately leads to a happy ending with the celebration of Chrismas 1886 as the end of the book, followed by an appendix of a published letter of reassurance to the working class.
Although much of the book deals with the difficulty of translating Marx (Laura's father), the police actions against socialists in Paris and the fate of those involved kept the pages turning for me, even though I already know how and when the Lafargues died, and it's not until much later (and two more volumes I now have to find). There is also a long letter, originally published an article, dealing with the details of 19th century European war, much of it dealing with the countries that became Yugoslavia from after World War I until the 1990s.
I am definitely interested in reading the remainder of the correspondence. Perhaps a new edition of the book will be published with better footnotes for someone who doesn't know the identities of all involved without having to do an Internet search for each one. Now, I really must read Dracula, a novel in epistolary form. Even though there are footnotes with each letter referring you back to threads in earlier letters, real letters show how the epistolary form can really involve the reader in reconstructing the story from such artifacts.
Much of the content of the letters is familial, dealing with travel, weather, and health, along with plenty of requests from the Lafargues for money from Engels, who supported them in his old age. This really humanizes the material and shows what a struggle for justice life was for them. Paul was a white collar worker, and unlike the American perversion of Marxism, communism is not about lionizing blue collar workers over white, it is about lionizing those who work for their money, no matter what sort of work, and wresting control away from those who live on their investments.
The book is a compelling read for those who don't need everything spoon-fed to them. I had to look up the first names of many of the personages depicted in the letters, and reference to correspondences with other people (not included, with the exception of #140A by Nikolai Danielson, whose first name is never given once between the covers--I had to look it up just to give him credit here with my librarian privileges--this one is included because it was sent as an enclosure in letter 140 and explicitly referenced in Lafargue's letter as being pertinent). The first word of the text is "Mohr," which I didn't realize until about halfway through was a nickname for Marx, a key bit of information that affects all understanding of the narrative! (I kept thinking of the lyricist who wrote "Stille Nacht.") The letters were written in a mix of German, French, and English. Sometimes the translator prefers to leave the material in the original language and translate it in a footnote, suggesting lack of true translatability of those passages. The translated letters have a different character from the English letters, and it is sometimes harder to tell the author without looking then when we get the writer's actual words. Laura is very much a 19th century woman, which is not always clear in the translated portions. Some of what she says is flightly and allusive and suggestive of Jo March, while other portions are deadly serious, so I would not consider her a frivolous woman by any means.
The book begins with the courtship of Paul and Laura with the assistance of Engels, "The General." There are letters Paul Lafargue has written from prison, and a whole series of letters near the end that deal with another legal case against him, which is primarily in letters from Laura, which pulls suspense and ultimately leads to a happy ending with the celebration of Chrismas 1886 as the end of the book, followed by an appendix of a published letter of reassurance to the working class.
Although much of the book deals with the difficulty of translating Marx (Laura's father), the police actions against socialists in Paris and the fate of those involved kept the pages turning for me, even though I already know how and when the Lafargues died, and it's not until much later (and two more volumes I now have to find). There is also a long letter, originally published an article, dealing with the details of 19th century European war, much of it dealing with the countries that became Yugoslavia from after World War I until the 1990s.
I am definitely interested in reading the remainder of the correspondence. Perhaps a new edition of the book will be published with better footnotes for someone who doesn't know the identities of all involved without having to do an Internet search for each one. Now, I really must read Dracula, a novel in epistolary form. Even though there are footnotes with each letter referring you back to threads in earlier letters, real letters show how the epistolary form can really involve the reader in reconstructing the story from such artifacts.
Displaying 1 of 1 review