Eleanor did not live long and under mysterious circumstances she committed suicide in 1898. Therefore, like Engels, she also could not undertake the writing of Marx'sbiography. Further, as per the terms of Engel'sWill, perhaps, Marx-Engels correspondence was also not available to her. This could be surmised from the fact that in 1896 Eleanor published in a book form the series of articles on Revolution and counter revolution in Germany 1848, which were originally published in the NYDT (during 1851-52) under the authorship of Karl Marx. For, these articles were actually written by Engels. It was not until 1913, when Marx-Engels correspondence edited by Babel and Bernstein was published in Germany, that Engels? authorship became known.
Here, we must trace the journey of Marx-Engels correspondence from London to Germany. As mentioned above, Engels had willed his correspondence with Marx to Babel and Bernstein, the leaders of the German Social Democrate Party. Franz Mehring, a junior contemporary of Marx and Engels, and had joined the Social Democratic Party in 1880 was destined to be the first biographer of Karl Marx. The German edition of his Karl Marx: The Story of His Life gives the following valuable information,
?When a proposal was made to publish the correspondence which had passed between Marx and Engels, Marx'sdaughter Madame Laura Lafargue, made it a condition of her agreement that I should take part in the editorial work as her representative. In a letter from Draveil dated November 10, 1910 she authorised me to make what notes, explanations or deletions I might consider necessary…
?However, during the long work I did in connection with the publication of the correspondence, the knowledge which I had gained of Karl Marx during many years of study was rounded off, and involuntarily I felt the wish to give it a biographical frame, particularly as I knew that Madame Lafargue would be delighted at the idea…. Unfortunately this noble woman died long before the correspondence between her father and Engels could be published. A few hours before she voluntarily took leave of life she sent me a last, warm message of friendship.? (Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of his life, original German edition, first published in 1918, English translation of its 1933 edition by Edward Fitzgerald, London 1936, Author'sIntroduction, p. XI)
The German edition of Marx-Engels Correspondence edited by Babel and Bernstein was published in 4 volumes from Dietz, Stuttgart in the year 1913, two years after Laura Lafargue had died in 1911. Here, the mention of Laura and her signing an agreement for the publication of the MEC is very significant. It shows that she had acquired some legal authority in the literary heritage of her father, Karl Marx. It could have been possible only after the death of her younger sister Eleanor in 1898. Being the sole surviving heir to Karl Marx, she had taken possession of all the Marx papers and shifted them from London to Europe where she lived. Engels papers had already been shifted to Germany as per his Will. Thus by the beginning of the twentieth century Marx-Engels papers had travelled from London to Germany. According to one source the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam was the final resting place of Marx'sletters and manuscripts as well as many other socialist archives of the period. (Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, London 1999.)
Before the so-called Russian Revolution of November 1917, Germany had emerged as the main playground of a vigorous and vibrant socialist movement. Towering socialist intellectuals as August Babel (1840-1913), Edward Bernstein (1850-1932), Karl Kautsky (1854-1936), Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), Franz Mehring (1846-1919), F.A. Sorge (1828-1908), Conrad Schimdt (1863-1932) and many other German intellectuals were the key players in this movement. They were involved in intense polemical debates about the philosophy and practice of socialism, about the methology and organisation of revolution. Marxism had gradually occupied the centre stage in this debate. Formulations by Marx-Engels were put to microscopic screening. Their unpublished writings were dug out, their authenticity was challenged or proved. Besides the German socialists, Russian emigrant revolutionaries as George Plekhanov (1816-1918), Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), D.B. Ryazanov (1870-1937), also played an important role in this intellectual movement. To prove one'sbonafide as a true Marxist, the opponent was dubbed as a ?revisionist? or a ?reformist?. Periodicals like Dei Sozialdemokrat edited by Bernstein, Die Neue Zeit, edited by Kautsky, Lenin and Plakhonov'sIskra (started in December 1900 from Munich) and Bor?ba, an independent intellectual group headed by Ryazanov were the main vehicles of this debate.
The publication of Marx-Engels Correspondence by Babel and Bernstein in 1913 and of the first comprehensive biography of Karl Marx by Franz Mehring in March 1918 were the fruits of this quest to know Marxism. Almost at the same time in 1917 D. Ryazanov edited and published in two volumes the articles contributed by Marx and Engels between 1852 and 1867 in the New York Daily, Tribune, The People'sPaper (London) and Neue Oderzesitung (Germany). Marx-Engels correspondence was available to both these scholars (Mehring and Ryazanov) but nowhere they mention anything written by Marx and Engels on 1857 Revolt. Their writings on German revolution, French politics, Eastern Question, Crimean War, Spanish problem, Slavic question are mentioned and discussed but not a word about 1857. Should we believe that Marx and Engels? letters on 1857, some of them two-three pages long had escaped their attention? Could we term it as a conspiracy of silence on their part? Significantly Mehring and Ryazanov were often critics of each other. Ryazanov in a sixty page long article in Kautsky'sDie Neue Zeit had dubbed Mehring as a betrayer of Marx.
Marx and Engels journalistic contribution was not confined to NYDT only. They were simultaneously contributing to many other papers. Amongst them, The Peoples Paper (London) edited the Chartist leader Ernest Jones during 1857 Revolt stood boldly on India'sside and published a lot of sympathetic material on it. This paper since it birth had Marx'spatronage also, although some differences had cropped up later around 1857. But how could it be that being a staunch supporter of India, Jones did not invite Marx to write on 1857 or reproduced his published articles from the NYDT?
(To be continued)
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