Letter to Johann Philipp Becker, June 20, 1884

ENGELS TO JOHANN PHILIPP BECKER

IN GENEVA

London, 20 June 1884

Dear Old Man,

I hereby notify you that I have today taken out a £5 money order on your behalf and hope the post office will have advised you of its re- ceipt by the time this letter arrives — it goes off by the next post. I have long looked forward to being able to make the above available and am glad that the moment has now come.

However, I cannot, alas, write you a long letter since, in my par- ticular condition, prolonged sitting at my desk is bad for me and conse- quently prohibited. Unfortunately I have again knocked myself up a bit by doing so, for I have had a great deal of work to get through; but resting in a prone position, as I have again been doing most assid- uously for the past few days, will soon put me to rights again. I am now dictating the 2nd volume of Capital,^[1] and so far it has been go- ing quite quickly, but it's the devil of a job and will demand a great deal of time and, in parts, much brain-racking. Luckily my brain is in pretty good shape and quite up to the mark where work is concerned as you will, I hope, be able to see from a little book on the origin of the family, private property and the state soon to be published. The second book of Capital will also, I think, come out before the end of the year, and the third next year.

At Whitsuntide I spent a week with Borkheim 239; he is still laid up, with one side half paralysed, gets up three times a day for meals and to do some writing, is writing his biography,^[2] and is in good spirits and surprisingly cheerful for one in his condition, but some- times suffers terribly from boredom. Moreover, he cannot read any- thing that demands much effort — not that he ever really has done. I send him books and the like every so often. He asked fondly after you and, in fact, we talked a great deal about you and about the old days.

Amongst Marx's papers I have found a few military campaign journals and the like relating to German columns in Switzerland which, no doubt, form part of the papers you mention. ' 2 6 Some more may turn up. Everything is safely here, but is still in a state of com- plete disorder. For the time being I shall have to lock away all corres- pondence, etc., in a large trunk until I have time to sort the stuff out and put it in order. But now it is absolutely essential that a text, both printable and written in a legible hand, be produced of the final vol- umes of Capital. Neither of these things can be done by any one now alive save for myself. If I were to kick the bucket first, no one else could possibly decipher the things which Marx himself was often un- able to read, although his wife and I could do so. The letters, on the other hand, are written in such a way that others can read them.

In three or four months' time we shall be having elections in Ger- many. 194 I am extremely optimistic. There are many milksops amongst the leaders, but my faith in the masses is unshakable.

Your old friend

F. Engels