In the article which appeared under the above heading (in the previous issue), the following note should be added at the end of the quotation from the pamphlet by Engels on universal suffrage[3]:
At that time the "President of Mankind", Bernhard Becker, bequeathed by Lassalle to the Association,[34] was heaping the vilest insults on "the Marx Party", i. e. Marx, Engels and Liebknecht(1)
Now, in his obscene screed Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle's, which lays bare his own piteous soul and is only of interest because of the suppressed documents it reproduces, the very same Becker bowdlerises Engels in the following way:
"Yet, why is there no agitation for unconditional freedom of association and assembly and freedom of the press? Why do the workers not seek to remove the fetters placed on them in the period of reaction?" (P. 133.) "...Only by further development of the democratic basis can Lassalleanism be renewed and led over into pure socialism. To this end it is necessary among other things that the interests of the Junkers or wealthy landowners should no longer be spared but that socialist theory should be supplemented and completed by applying it to the great mass of agricultural labourers who in Prussia outnumber by far the population of the towns." (P. 134.)
It can be seen that the author of the pamphlet (F. Engels) may be content with its effect on his opponents.
Endnotes
[33] Engels wrote this postscript on the advice of Marx who, in his letter to Engels of September 25, 1868 (see present edition, Vol. 43) drew his attention to Becker's pamphlet Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle's, Schleiz, 1868.
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).
[34] In his will Lassalle recommended Bernhard Becker as his heir to the post of President of the General Association of German Workers. On the title page of his Enthüllungen über das tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle's (Schleiz, 1868), Becker calls himself "heir by Lassalle's will". At a meeting of the Association's Hamburg branch on March 22, 1865, Becker slandered the International Working Men's Association and also Marx, Engels and Liebknecht (see Der Social-Demokrat, No. 39, supplement, March 26, 1865). Marx exposed this slander in his article "The President of Mankind" (see present edition, Vol. 20). The Berlin branch, expressing the growing discontent of the rank-and-file members of the General Association with Becker, resolved to expel him and recommended other organisations to follow suit. Similar meetings were held in many other branches. In June 1865 Becker was compelled provisionally to delegate his presidential powers to his deputy Fritzsche and he completely renounced them the following November.