Did Engels betray the Communist Manifesto in his later years?

There is now a rumor on the Internet that Engels betrayed the basic ideas of the Communist Manifesto that he had co-written with Marx in his later years, overthrown the bourgeoisie, established the dictatorship of the proletariat, and especially overthrown the bourgeoisie through violent, revolutionary means, so that Engels could be made a reformist.

It is said that this view is very popular.

Moreover, because it is using the content of Engels's own article, it is logical that there can be no mistake. This is even more confusing.

Engels's essay is an introduction to The Class Struggle in France, 1848-1850 by Karl Marx.

If you don't read the background of this article, then you will really be intimidated by this rumor.

Chinese edition of volume 22 of the Complete Works of Marne publishes the full text of this article, but its annotations to this article are particularly important, and I now excerpt the following in its entirety:

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The introduction to Marx's "Class Struggle in France between 1848 and 1850" (see The Complete Works of Marx and Engels Chinese, Vol. 7, vol. 7, pp. 9-125) was written by Engels for the publication of the book in Berlin between 14 February and 6 March 1895.

It can be seen from Fisher's letter to Engels of 6 March 1895 that, in issuing this introduction, the Executive Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party insisted that Engels dilute the tone of this work which seemed to the Executive Committee to be excessively revolutionary and to give it a more cautious form; Fisher's excuse at the time was that tension had arisen in the country as a result of the reichstag discussing the new anti-socialist law (the so-called draft "Coup d'état Act", which the government had proposed to the Reichstag in December 1894, had been discussed between January and April 1895; In May of the same year the draft was rejected).

In his reply to Fisher (which has not yet been found, but its contents can be inferred from Fisher's letter to Engels of 14 March 1895), Engels criticized the unsteady position of the Party's leadership and its efforts to "carry out its activities only within the limits of lawfulness". However, Engels had to take into account the opinion of the Executive Committee and agreed to delete some places and change some references in the proof, and as a result, in his view, the original version of the introduction "suffered some damage". (In this edition, these deletions are noted in footnotes.) As the articles and the manuscript of the introduction, where these changes have been made, have been preserved, it is possible to fully restore the original manuscript to its original form. ）

On the basis of this work, individual leaders of the Social-Democracy tried to present Engels as a supporter of the working class who could only gain power through peaceful means under any circumstances. On 30 March 1895, the Forward, the organ of the Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party, published an editorial entitled "How the Present Revolution Should Be Carried Out", which, without Engels's consent, took several excerpts from his introduction, thus creating the impression that Engels was the defender of "law-abiding in any case". Feeling very indignant, Engels lodged a firm protest with Liebknecht, the editor of the Forward newspaper, against this distortion of his views. In a letter to Kautsky of 1 April 1895, Engels stressed the importance of publishing the full text of the introduction in the magazine New Age to "dispel this shameful impression." Engels, in a letter dated 3 April 1895 to Paul Lafarge, also informed him of the disgraceful practice of the Forward in issuing its introduction.

Shortly before marx's work was published in a single edition, at the insistence of Engels, the 27th and 28th issues of the magazine "New Era" in 1895 contained a special introduction to Engels, but retained the abridgements that the author had to make in the above-mentioned monograph. The full text of the introduction has not been published after the danger of a new anti-socialist law was no longer in danger of being enacted in Germany.

However, even the abridged introduction preserves its revolutionary character intact. To interpret this document in a reformist spirit, it is necessary to crudely falsify Engels's views, as I.E. Bernstein (in the book "The Premises of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy") and other revisionist and opportunist thinkers did after Engels's death. Bernstein and other revisionists, though in possession of the manuscript of the introduction, did not allow the reader to see the full text of the introduction, and they did not mention anything about the objective circumstances that forced Engels to make certain abridgements in proof and to distort the published text of the introduction, and by all these means they made defamatory assertions about what Engels re-examined his past views in his introduction (which they described as Engels's "political will"), almost from a reformist standpoint. The revisionists tried to conceal their betrayal of Marxism and their attack on revolutionary principles by falsely quoting Engels.

Engels's introduction was published in abridged form based on the text of the magazine "New Era" in the 9th issue of the magazine "Social Review" in 1895 and the Bulgarian "Cause" in 1895 ("Д?"). ло) magazine, volume 1.

In 1930, the full text of Engels's Introduction was first published in the Soviet-published book Ka Marx's Class Struggle in France, 1848-1850. - p. 591.

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From this commentary we see, first, the desire to use Engels's own words to express reformism, so that Engels would appear as a reformist, thus attaining the bad intentions of those revisionists to extinguish the revolution, which did not exist today, but appeared when Engels was alive. Today some people just use it again.

Second, the articles published that year are not the same as the articles we see now. After all, Engels's original manuscript was there, so what we see now is the original manuscript.

Again, Engels's attitude toward this article, and two important letters, which I have appended below.

The first was addressed to Karl Kautsky of 1 April 1895

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Postcards were received. To my astonishment today I discovered that the Forward had published an excerpt from my Introduction without notice, and in this embellished excerpt I appeared as a peace-loving, law-abiding admirer in any case. In particular, I hope that the Introduction will now be published in its entirety in New Age in order to dispel this shameful impression. I will tell Liebknecht very clearly my opinion on the matter, and to those who (whoever) have given him this opportunity to distort my views without giving me a word in advance.

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The second letter, naturally addressed to Lafarge a day later, on 3 April, in which Engels said:

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Liebknecht had just made a wonderful joke with me. From the prefaces I wrote to Marx in several articles on France in 1848-1850, he quoted everything that could justify his, however peaceful and anti-violent tactics. Recently, especially when Berlin is preparing for extraordinary law, he likes to promote this strategy. But the strategy I am talking about is only aimed at today's Germany, and it has significant strings attached. For France, Belgium, Italy, and Austria, this strategy cannot be adopted in its entirety. Even for Germany, tomorrow it may not apply. So I ask you to wait until the whole article is published before commenting (the article will probably be published in the New Era), and I wait every day for the sample booklet. Unfortunately, Liebknecht saw only white or black, and the difference in tone was non-existent for him.

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Engels here says that Liebknecht's joke is the above quotation from Engels's introduction out of context.

However Chinese first edition of the Complete Works of Marne after April 1895, It was not seen that Engels gave it to Liebknecht alone. But the current data is enough to prove that Engels has nothing to do with reformism, but is only a farce of people with ulterior motives.

As for whether Engels betrayed the Communist Manifesto after Marx's death? Engels, in his preface to Feuerbach's treatise in 1888, made it clear that neither he nor Marx had returned to discuss these fundamental questions since the foundation of the basic theoretical framework of Marxism, The German Ideology. This is, of course, the basic principle of the Communist Manifesto. However, they later developed, enriched the previous principles, individually revised some details, made the principles richer, and they also saw that the road of revolution was more complicated, but the basic principles were always correct, and they never doubted this.

And from the course of the long and brutal struggle since the death of Engels, we have once again seen that the basic principles formulated by Marx and Engels are correct and shine with the brilliance of truth.

The present theoretical game has reached the point where it is necessary to familiarize oneself with the history of the struggle in Engels's later years and in the period of the Second International.

Reformism and revisionism in this period were the most rampant periods, and the positive and negative theories and experiences of struggle are of great reference significance to us today.

I didn't eat pork and mutton, and I had to see pigs and sheep run.

If you are interested, you have to see the original text of Engels for yourself.