"Everybody knows that Lassalle repeatedly expressed the idea that the defeat of the peasant uprising in the Fourteenth Century and the strengthening and rapid growth of the bureaucratic state in Germany that followed it were a veritable triumph for the revolution." According to Bakunin, the German communists viewed all peasants as elements of reaction."The fact is," he added, "that the Marxists cannot think otherwise; worshippers of state power at any price, they are bound to curse every people's revolution, especially a peasant revolution, which is anarchic by its very nature, and which proceeds directly to annihilate the state."When Bakunin wrote these lines, there was already in existence the second edition of Engels' work on the Peasant War, with a new preface (1870), in which the inconsistency of Liebknecht and other contemporary German social-democrats on the agrarian question was criticised.In 1875, the third edition appeared, with an addendum which emphasised still more the sharp difference between the views of Marx and Engels on the one hand, and Lassalle on the other.
It must be noted that in the last years of his life, Engels devoted much labour to the study of the Peasant War, and was about to recast his old work.
In 1882 be wrote a special addition to his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific , devoted to the history of the German peasantry.On December 31, 1884, he wrote to Sorge: "I am subjecting my Peasant War to radical reconstruction.It is going to become a cornerstone of German history.It is a great piece of work.All the preliminary work is almost ready."The work of preparing the second and third volumes of Capital for publication, prevented him from carrying out his plan.In July, 1893, he wrote to Mehring, "If I succeed in reconstructing anew the historic introduction to my Peasant War, which I hope will be possible during this winter, I will give there an exposition of my views" [concerning the conditions of the breaking up of Germany and the causes of the defeat of the German bourgeois revolution of the Sixteenth Century].
When Kautsky was writing his book on the forerunners of modern socialism -- it appeared in parts -- Engels wrote to him on May 21, 1895:
"Of your book, I can tell you that the further it proceeds, the better it becomes.Compared with the original plan, Plato and early Christianity are not sufficiently worked out.The mediaeval sects are much better, and the later ones, more so.Best of all are the Taborites, Muenzer, and the Anabaptists.I have learned much from your book.For my recasting of the Peasant War, it is an indispensable preliminary work.
"In my judgment, there are only two considerable faults:
"(1) A very insufficient insight into the development and the role of those elements entirely outside of the feudal hierarchy, which are déclassé, occupying almost the place of pariahs; elements that form the lowest stratum of the population of every medieval city, without rights and outside the rural community, the feudal dependence, the guild bonds.This is difficult, but it is the chief foundation, since gradually, with the decomposition of feudal relations, out of this stratum develops the predecessor of the proletariat which, in 1789, in the faubourgs of Paris, made the revolution.You speak of the proletarians, but this expression is not entirely exact; when you count among your 'proletarians'
the weavers, whose significance you picture very correctly, you may rightly do so, only beginning from that epoch when the déclassé non-guild journeyman weavers made their appearance and only in so far as the latter were in existence.Much work is still required in this connection.
"(2) You have not sufficiently taken into account the situation of the world market, in so far as one could speak of such a market at that time, and the international economic situation of Germany at the end of the Fifteenth Century.However, only this situation explains why the bourgeois-plebeian movement under a religious cloak, having suffered defeat in England, the Netherlands and Bohemia, could achieve a measure of success in Germany in the Sixteenth Century.This was due to its religious cloak, whereas the success of its bourgeois contents was reserved for the following century and for the countries which had utilized the development of the world market that had in the meantime taken another direction, namely, Holland and England.It is a great subject, which I hope to be able to treat briefly in the Peasant War, if I only succeed in taking it up!"Death -- Engels died several days after the writing of this letter (August 5, 1895) -- prevented him from completing this work.
D.RIAZANOV.
Moscow, July 1925.
