German Social Democrats neglected and censored Marx and Engels’ papers

Evidence

Engels had bequeathed his own and Marx’s unpublished works to Eduard Bernstein and August Bebel, or rather to German Social Democracy as a whole. The party members entrusted with the editing of these papers, Bernstein, Mehring and Kautsky, made no effort to go through them systematically or edit them conscientiously. They did, however, take the trouble, in their incomplete edition of the letters, to undertake countless excisions and alterations. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 116

Categorization

• QUESTION: What specific excisions and alterations did Bernstein, Mehring and Kautsky make to the Marx-Engels letters? This could be worth tracing further.
• XREF: Connects to the general theme of how political parties manage the archival legacy of their intellectual founders — parallels the editing traditions in other movements and institutions. — connects to: Horkheimer censored explicit political language in Institute publications — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 865; Key continental Marxist texts remained inaccessible to English-language readers; German Social Democrats were intellectually Marxist yet programmatically Ricardian in economics — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 529 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Zeitschrift editors censored Adorno’s Marxian vocabulary to avoid appearing doctrinaire #exemplifies (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 355
• Ryazanov’s Moscow institute acquired rights to publish Marx-Engels manuscripts #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 116
• German Social Democrats were intellectually Marxist yet programmatically Ricardian in economics #qualifies (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 529
• German social democracy abandoned Marxism more slowly than its rivals #qualifies (0.75) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 568
• Weimar-era liberal opinion tolerated Marxism as theory while condemning its practice #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 124