*4IO KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
ditions in America and especially Russia, the money market and banking
institutions, and finally natural sciences, such as geology and physiology.
Independent mathematical studies also form a large part of the numerous
manuscripts of this period.'^37
A study of the evolution of agriculture in Russia was intended to
illuminate Marx's ideas on ground-rent in Volume Three of Capital in the
same way as English industrial development provided the practical
examples to the ideas expounded in Volume One. Marx had learnt Russian
specifically to be able to study the original sources. As in the 1850 s and
1860s, Marx amassed a huge amount of material but he now lacked the
power of synthesis and the driving force to make something of it. After
his death Engels was amazed to find among Marx's papers more than two
cubic metres of documents containing nothing but Russian statistics.
During these years Marx filled in his microscopic handwriting almost
three thousand pages - these manuscripts comprising almost exclusively
notes on his reading. In his later years this reading became obsessional:
he no longer had the power to create, but at least he could absorb. Thus
the manuscripts for Volume Three of Capital remained virtually in the
state in which they had been since 1864-65. Marx had rewritten almost
half of Volume Two in 1870 , but thereafter made only minor additions
and revisions - realising, as he said to Eleanor shortly before his death,
that it would be up to Engels 'to make something of it'.^38 Marx kept the
state of his manuscripts a secret from everyone, including Engels, who
wrote later to Bebel that 'if I had been aware of this, I would not have
let him rest day or night until everything had been finished and printed.
Marx himself knew this better than anyone. .. .'i<> In fact, the state of the
manuscripts was so chaotic that Engels could publish Volume Three of
Capital only eleven years after Marx's death.
Marx's inherent reluctance to complete any of his economic work was
abetted by other distracting tasks imposed on him during the 1870s. He
collaborated on two shortened versions of Capital, Volume One, in
German by Johannes Most and in Dutch by Domela Nieuwenhuis. Not
only did he help Eleanor translate Lissagaray's book into English but he
also supervised in great detail the German translation. His aversion to
Lissagaray as a possible son-in-law was more than balanced by his admir-
ation for his History of the Commune. During the mid-1870s Marx gave
some of his time to assisting Engels write Anti-Diihring which, by virtue
of its systematisation and clarity, was to become the best-known textbook
in Marxist circles with a circulation much wider than Capital.*^0 In the
Preface to the second edition, written after Marx's death, Engels says that
he read all the manuscript to Marx and that Marx actually wrote a chapter
consisting of a review of Diihring's Critical History of Political Economy.