1887
Herewith, registered, the English translation of Das Kapital.*[2] Last week I sent you 1 parcel—2 Commonweals, 1 To-Day, etc. More to follow. Just received the New York Herald with the beastly article about the Avelings; this is most valuable for us since the Avelings would otherwise have still been unaware of the pack of lies the bourgeois papers over there are making up about them.[3] The Avelings got back a week ago. both of them very well and cheerful. The Lafargues are also here and send you their kindest regards. Capital is going terrifically well here and supplies for America are in hand. That will soon show the Yankees what our standpoint is.
Your
F. E.
A Happy New Year.
Published in England for the first time
2. Engels to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis 11 January
My dear Friend,
I see from the newspapers that the Court of Appeal has upheld your conviction. So no doubt you will shortly have to make your way to gaol.[5] I cannot let you go without taking my leave of you and assuring you that all my sympathy will go with you when you enter your cell, and that I hope you will return to us from your solitary confinement sound in body and unbroken in spirit to resume your activities. Please let me know whether it will be possible to communicate with you while you are in gaol, either by letter or by sending printed matter, and whether you are allowed books and to engage in literary work.
The Lafargues from Paris have been over here since Christmas, and a week ago the Avelings returned from America, bringing back a great deal of encouraging news.[3] The movement over there is forging ahead in fine style and nothing can stop it. From its inevitably muddled beginnings it has evolved with amazing speed into a political labour party. True, the programme — or rather the various programmes in New York, Chicago, etc.—are still far from clear, as is only to be expected. But the action is all that it should be and that is the main thing. When I consider how long it took the workers in France, Belgium, Spain, etc., to understand that a political organisation of the working class, separate from, and opposed to all other parties, could alone lead them to victory, one must admire the action of the Americans who, six months after the birth of the movement, are operating an organised party, have received 68,000 votes in New York[6] and won important victories in the elections in the West.[7] But once the proletariat of a country has organised itself as a militant party, it will itself be driven onwards by the ups and downs of the battle, knowing as it does the conditions of its emancipation. And particularly for so eminently practical and anti-theoretical a people as the Americans, there is no other way to understanding than by trial and error, by acquiring wisdom from the consequences of their own mistakes. And that is something they will experience and master soon enough.
In other respects, too, the movement is progressing splendidly everywhere and I trust that when you get out of gaol you will find we have made a big step forward. All that can prevent us doing so is a European war, which would set us back enormously for a short while but which, like any other event, would turn out to our advantage in the end.
The English translation of Das Kapital*[2] has just come out, and at precisely the right moment for America.
And now, once again good-bye. The best wishes of us all will accom-pany you into your solitude. I hope we shall see one another again in London in a year's time.
With kindest regards from the Lafargues, the Avelings and
Your
F. Engels
3. Engels to Pasquale Martignetti 18 January
Your letter of the 9th of this month[8] was not altogether unexpected, since I knew that you were a government official and that sooner or later this would make your position untenable. Unfortunately I cannot hold out any favourable prospects for you either here or in America. If you don't speak fluent English, it will be impossible for you to find a remu-nerative occupation in either country unless you become adept in the colloquial use of the language. For educated people the usual, virtually Letters-18S7
the only, calling over here is that of language teacher, and for that very reason it is always overcrowded, even by people who speak and write the language of the country fluently. As to other kinds of teaching, there is such a large [...](1)
4. Engels to Pasquale Martignetti 26 January
I wrote to you on the 18th of this monthb in reply to your kind letter of the 9th[8] and afterwards I received yours of the 21st.
I can only confirm what I said in my last letter: neither here in England nor in the United States of North America is it possible for someone who does not speak English to earn a living other than by manual work.
The Argentine Republic would perhaps provide more favourable hunting ground; there is a strong Italian colony and you would learn Spanish without much difficulty. But it is a long way away, the voyage would be costly, and it would be difficult to come back. The country is progressing, but that is all I really know. Not being familiar with Argentinian legislation, I do not know under what conditions one can live there from teaching in an elementary school.
As for commerce. I have been out of it for 18 years and I no longer have any relations with commercial firms or factories.[9] What is more, in some cases a reference from me would be worse than none at all (if one could find a firm whose partners still know me) because people know me not so much as a businessman of the past than as an active socialist of the present. And then there is the fact that all the big cities are swarming with commercial dealers not suspected of socialism who are looking for work and who are preferred because of their commercial education. I have for long considered whether it might not be possible to find some way out of this from here, but I cannot see one.
I am writing to Vienna (Austria) and Hamburg to try and find something, though without much hope. But we can only try, and I shall let you know the outcome.
You would do well to write to Lafargue too. He was here when your letter of the 9th arrived and was informed of its contents. He said he feared there was no hope of his finding a job for you in Paris; but when he is back among his friends he might get more information and change his mind. I shall write to him at the same time on your behalf.(1)
The great problem is that we socialists are not only politically but also civilly proscribed, and for the entire bourgeoisie it is both a pleasure and a duty to see that we starve. This anathema falls principally upon educated and cultured men, whom they consider to be deserters from their own class that have passed over to the enemy camp. This problem presents itself everywhere; we faced it ourselves in 1844 and 1849. How many times did Marx and I not wish that we knew some manual trade, for even the bourgeois cannot live without the products of manual labour!
Would it not be possible for you to find work with one of the Italian socialist newspapers, in Milan or elsewhere? I do not receive them, and I am therefore not well informed of the present state of the socialist party in your country. In any case it would be preferable if you could remain in Italy.
I repeat that I shall be pleased to do everything in my power to find a way out of the difficulties you are caught up in. I only regret I cannot open better vistas. I shall not forget what you have done to make our ideas and my writings known in Italy, and rest assured that, if something comes up for you somewhere, I shall not let it escape me.
With sincere greetings,
F. Engels
5. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 27 January
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
Herewith I send you, at last, the Preface.[11]'[12] No sooner had the Avelings returned[3] when I was seized with a slight conjunctivitis which was however sufficient to prevent all regular work especially as the short time I could each day devote to writing was unavoidably taken up by urgent correspondence. Although my eye is not yet quite free from inflammation, yet I have managed to get through the Preface and hope the delay will not have inconvenienced you too much.
As I have not been able to keep a copy I must request you to return me the MS when done with. I suppose you will be good enongh to see it through the press.
I hope Dr Wischnewetzky has arrived safe after a good passage. I regret that I could not have him all to myself for a couple of hours, but he just dropped in at an evening when, for the time being, the old 'International' was made to undergo a practical revival.
The movement in America, just at this moment, is I believe best seen from across the ocean. On the spot, personal bickering and local disputes must obscure much of the grandeur of it. And the only thing that could really delay its march, would be the consolidation of these differences into established sects. To some extent, that will be unavoidable, but the less of it the better. And the Germans have most to guard against this. Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learnt by heart and to be repeated mechanically. Je weniger sie den Amerikanern von Aussen eingepaukt wird und je mehr sie sie durch eigne Erfahrung—unter dem Beistand der Deutschen—erproben, desto tiefer geht sie ihnen in Fleisch und Blut Über.* When we returned to Germany in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of gaining the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. When Marx founded the International, he drew up the General Rules(1) in such a way that all working-class socialists of that period could join it — Proudhonists, Pierre-Lerouxists, and even the more advanced section of the English Trades Unions; and it was only through this latitude that the International became what it was, the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sects, with the exception of the Anarchists whose sudden appearance in various countries was but the effect of the violent bourgeois reaction after the Commune and could therefore safely be left by us to die out of itself, as it did. Had we from 1864-73 insisted on working together only with those who openly adopted our platform — Where should we be to-day? I think all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organization, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake.
I hope you are by this time perfectly restored to health and that your husband and children are well too. Kind regards to Dr Wischnewetzky.
Very truly yours
F. Engels
Stuttgart, 1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
6. Engels to Paul Lafargue 28 January
My dear Lafargue,
My eye is at last getting slightly better, but not yet well enough to enable me to shift the mountain of work and correspondence that has accumulated in the meantime. I can only write by daylight and then not all the time, but I am at least able to read for the better part of the evening.
If the Parisians are beginning to feel bellicose just now, they would be better advised to direct their wrath against Russia, which has used them to pull her chestnuts out of the fire and, now that they've burnt their fingers, is abandoning them to their fate. Can they not see that it is Russia which, through the Paris papers in her pay (the most dissolute being, it seems, the Débats[3]-), has incited their revanchist rodomontade with the sole aim of getting Bismarck to capitulate to the Tsarb? And now she has got what she wanted; Bismarck has made his peace with Russia and has sacrificed Austria, while Russia has sacrificed her Parisian dupes to Bismarck.[14] The Russian alliance has its points!
Come to that, I do not believe that Bismarck wants a war which, no sooner begun, would become European. Once France and Germany had got to grips — and it would be a hard struggle and rather long — the Tsar would be compelled, willy-nilly, to march on the Balkans: Austro-Russian war. From that moment on, Bismarck would be at the mercy of unforeseeable circumstances, and I don't suppose he is so stupid to provoke such a situation in cold blood. But the Russian agency in Paris will continue its activities; it is in the interests of Russia to get France and Germany embroiled in a war; then she would have no one left to fight except Austria and, at most, England which would mean, in the opinion of the Russian chauvinists, who despise both England and Austria, a free hand for Russia in the East. And there lies the danger. If those gentry, Cyon & Co., succeed in pushing France into this war, they will be cutting each other's throats for the benefit of the Tsar and the perpetuation of despotism in Russia.
As to the elections in Germany, our prospects are first-rate. I think we shall get 700,000 votes in all, maybe even more.[15] But when it comes to the majority in the new Reichstag, you have to reckon with the German philistine, and he's no angel, far from it.
Here it is being said that the Daily News' scoop was a scoop for Baring on the Stock Exchange. To Bismarck it must have seemed a most unpleasant manoeuvre, making a hash as it did of his electoral manoeu-vres. He has been forced to issue a démenti.[16]
Martignetti has again written to me.(1) It seems that he in at his wits' end and he asks me to find some way out for him, putting forward the most impossible suggestions. I have written to Hamburg and Vienna on his behalf and have also promised him I would write to you. No doubt you will hear from him direct. There's nothing for him either here or in America, since he does not speak a word of English. Might there be some opening for him in France, as a teacher of Italian? As I see it, there is nothing else he could do. Or can you think of something better? He is about to be dismissed from his post. Do try and find some opening for the poor devil, either in Paris or in the provinces.
Pumps is a great deal better and her only serious complaint is intercostal rheumatism. When I saw her this morning she was quite cheerful.
Nothing's going on here among Socialists but inter-clique intrigue. According to Scheu, Champion is sick of Hyndman and would like to topple him, which accounts for his rapprochement with Bax. He ran into Aveling the other day and was as friendly as could be. We shall see how it all ends. In the meantime Aveling is going to hold up before the East End working men the example set by the Americans — that of a labour movement which is independent of the older parties, this being a method of agitation that may well be effective. Last week he spoke at a meeting in Farringdon Street, as did Tussy the day before yesterday, and this they will continue to do both there and elsewhere.
As soon as I have any time to spare I shall write to Laura. Meanwhile Nim would like to know if she has spoken to Longuet yet, and what his answer was.
Letters-
La Justice has had a copy of Capital[3] in English; if Longuet has taken it, it would save us sending him the copy we have reserved for him. Could you find out? As regards the other copies Sonnenschein is supposed to have sent, we know nothing definite as yet. H e is digging his heels in.
Yours ever,
F.E.
7. Engels to Laura Lafargue 2 February
My dear Laura,
I had finished Bel Amp on Monday b night and was ruminating over the picture of Parisian journalism exhibited in it, thinking it must be exaggerated when lo — on Tuesday morning your letter and Paul's unroll to me a scene — from life — of Bel Ami, and so I must take off my hat to Guy de Maupassant. Well, this will do. Faut-il donc être canaille pour avoir un journal quotidien à Parisfb'ls
This is now the second time that our friends have made a daily paper— for others. And this time worse than the first. Lissagaray was a free lance, acting on his own hook for his own advancement, and might be left to die his own political death. But here the Possibilists[19] step into the bed ready made for them; not only do they get a daily of their own but they get it through a victory over us. And as the Cri is bought for the cancans, the scandale and the feuilletons only, and the public which decide on its success or otherwise only take in the leaders because they are not compelled to read then, the high-falutin of Pyat, the dead dull-ness of Labusquière, the arrant and arrogant ignorance of Marouck will pass muster quite as much as the leaders of Guesde. Guebhard will still be paid in hard cash for his comes* and Séverine and Labruyère auront toujours de quoi se payer de bons déjeuners.b
As to the Voie du Peuple—horrible dodging title!—I suppose it will go the way of the Citoyen after the coup d'état, and disappear after a few spasmodic efforts.[20] If there was any hope of a man with 100,000 fr., that should have been turned to account in time; now when our people arrive defeated and turned out of doors, I am afraid that individual will be still harder to find.
The lesson to be drawn from this is the same as before, that a weekly organ which belongs to us is worth ten times as much as a daily one which we make for others, to be kicked out when it suits them and to make room for M. Brousse & Co. And this seems now to be the established function of our people in the daily press, and no doubt it will be repeated for a third time and exactly with the same results. Anyhow I hope that our ex-grands hommesc from the grand journal will now condescend to pay a little more attention to the Socialiste which is after all their refuge during the entr'actes of their grand political drama.
I have given Nim your message, she thanks you very much and remains on the tiptoe of expectation, as the penny-a-liner used to say 30 years ago.
Tell Paul that I had already rummaged in my head the advisability of reducing the strength of my eye lotion, and after his letter, have doubled the quantity of water contained in it which seems to answer very well. I shall also use his hot water application and expect that between the two my remnant of conjunctivitis will disappear.
Edward was to lecture again to-night at Farringdon Hall (for the Clerkenwell Branch of the League[21]) on his American tour. He and Tussy have had there two crowded nights on Wednesdays. But he has got a sore throat, and maybe Tussy will have to replace him. He intended to speak out about the Anarchists tonight and expected a crisis.
How it will be now I do not know. He has already been invited by one Radical East Club[22] to lecture there.
The Cri affair will finally decide Hyndman & Co, if ever they were undecided with regard to the support to give to the Possibilists. Séverine's blagues* about attempts to kick out all other factions will be explained as the usual intolerance of the Marxists and no doubt the whole will be traced back to 'the hand that broke up the International', by which they mean, taking Eccarius' word for it, your humble servant. That is a thing which cannot be helped and is utterly indifferent to me. But it has been always our fate — and now our Paris friends share it — that the more we show that we are ready to work together with honest and sincere people so long as they stand on a truly working men's platform— no matter how imperfect — the rogues and adventurers whose company we decline denounce us as intolerant, domineering and exclusive. I hope that our Paris friends will have occasion to convince themselves that Brousse is no worse than Hyndman. Both have united round themselves all candidates they could lay hands upon.
Pumps is a deal better but — apart from the special troubles she has gone through — her stomach is much out of order and she suffers from sleeplessness. Nevertheless she is much more cheerful, she was on the sofa yesterday and this morning.
Fortin writes to say that he is quite agreeable to our plan and will send you the 2 last chapters of the 18th Brumaire.2i He sends me a resolution they have passed, on the war question. When the style of commercial letter-writing becomes ampoulé^ it is something terrible.
Nim and little Lili who is here for a few hours — the children are with the old Roshers — send their love, and I ditto.
Yours affectionately
F. Engels
The Prussian government papers are awfully riled at the 6,000 Mark handed over to the Election Fund out of the profits of the Sozialdemokrat, they say it's a lie: 1) such profits were never made, 2) if they had been made they would have been stolen by the managers of the paper. E pur si muove.c
[3] lies - b high-faluting - c Still it does move I enclose the cheque for £12.—which Paul writes for.
8. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 9 February[1 0]
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I reply at once to your letter, postmark 28th January. The preface[11]
was sent on January 27th, and to your telegram received Sunday, February 6th, I replied immediately per cable: 'Sent registered 27th January'.
As to the distorted passage from my letter which the irrepressible Baton could not refrain from publishing, it is no use for Rosenberg and Co. to saddle Aveling with it. The passage about the 100,000's and the millions occurred in my letter to you(1) and in no other letter. So you will know who is responsible for this indiscretion and for putting this nonsense into my mouth. As far as I am concerned, I have no objection to your publishing the whole passage, indeed the whole letter.
Your fear as to my being unduly influenced by Aveling in my view of the American movement, is groundless. As soon as there was a national American working-class movement, independent of the Germans, my standpoint was clearly indicated by the facts of the case. That great national movement, no matter what its first form, is the real starting point of American working-class development; if the Germans join it in order to help it or to hasten its development in the right direction, they may do a deal of good and play a decisive part in it; if they stand aloof, they will dwindle down into a dogmatic sect, and be brushed aside as people who do not understand their own principles. Mrs Aveling, who has seen her father at work, understood this quite as well from the beginning, and if Aveling saw it too, all the better. And all my letters to America, to Sorge, to yourself, to the Avelings, from the very beginning, have repeated this view over and over again.(2) Still I was glad to see the Avelings before writing my preface, because they gave me some new facts about the inner mysteries of the German party in New York.
You appear to take it for granted that Aveling has behaved in America simply as a swindler; and not only that; you call upon me, upon the strength of the assertions and allusions contained in your letter, to treat him as such and to do all in my power to have him excluded from the literary organs of the party.[24] Now for all these assertions you cannot have any proof because you have not been able to hear any defence. Still you are better off than we here; you have at least heard one side, while we do not even know what the distinct charge is!
In the early hole-and-corner stages of the working-class movement, when the working men are still under the influence of traditional prejudices, woe be to the man who, being of bourgeois origin or superior education, goes into the movement and in rash enough to enter into money relations with the working-class element. There is sure to be a dispute upon the cash accounts and this is at once enlarged into an attempt at exploitation. Especially so, if the 'bourgeois' happens to have views on theoretical or tactical points that disagree with those of the majority or even of a minority. This I have constantly seen for more than forty years. The worst of all were the Germans; in Germany, the growth of the movement has long since swept that failing away, but it has not died out with the Germans out of Germany. For that reason Marx and I have always tried to avoid having any money dealings with the party, no matter in what country. And when the Avelings went to America, I had very strong misgivings on that point. Only when it was arranged that the tour should be made together with Liebknecht I felt more at rest, because Liebknecht, as an old hand, would know how to deal with such complaints, and because any charges brought against him on that score would merely make the complainants ridiculous in Germany and in Europe generally. Well, the tour was arranged differently afterwards, and here is the result.
From this you will see that I look upon this matter a great deal cooler than what people seem to do in New York. But moreover, I have known Aveling for four years; I know that he has twice sacrificed his social and economical position to his convictions, and might be, had he refrained from doing so, a professor in an English university and a distinguished physiologist instead of an overworked journalist with a very uncertain income. I have had occasion to observe his capacities by working with him, and his character by seeing him pass through rather trying circumstances more than once, and it will take a good deal more than mere assertions and innuendos before I believe what some people tell about him now in New York.
But then. Had he tried to swindle the party, how could he do that during all his tour without his wife being cognisant of it? And in that case the charge includes her too. And then it becomes utterly absurd, in my eyes at least. Her I have known from a child, and for the last seven-teen years she has been constantly about me. And more than that, I have inherited from Marx the obligation to stand by his children as he would have done himself, and to see, far as lies in my power, that they are not wronged. And that I shall do, in spite of fifty Executives. The daughter of Marx swindling the working class — too rich indeed!
Then you say: 'No one here imagines that Dr Aveling put the money in his pocket, or spent it as the bills indicate. They believe that he merely tried to cover his wife's expenses,'—That is a distinct charge of forgery, and this you give as an extenuating, charitable supposition. What then, if this be the attenuated charge, what is the full charge? And on what ground is this charge made? 'The ridiculous bills which Dr Aveling sent in.' I should like to see a few of these 'ridiculous' bills. For fifteen weeks they were sent every Sunday to the Executive who gave no sign of disap-proval. Nor did they budge when the Avelings, December 19th, returned to New York. It was only on the 23rd when they were on the point of leaving, when they could no longer defend themselves against charges, real or trumped-up, that the Executive discovered these bills, to which, singly, they had never objected, were ridiculous when added up\ That is to say they object, not to the bills, but to the rules of addition. Why, then, did the Executive, instead of shortening the tour, try to extend it, and just at the close of it plan a second visit of the Avelings to Chicago which fortunately did not come off? It strikes me that in all this, it is not the bills which are ridiculous, but the Executive.
Well, at the meeting of December 23rd, the Avelings hear for the first time that their bills are ridiculous, and the Executive lay before them a statement of accounts drawn up by themselves. As soon as his statement is objected to, Aveling at once accepts that of the Executive, according to which — as I have seen myself in Rosenberg's handwriting — a balance is due to him of $176. Then, being again bullied by Walther, he refuses that balance, returns $76 at once, and sends the rest from London. And then you say that 'Dr Aveling returning the $100 has not helped matters at all.' Why what in the name of goodness do those people want then? Is Aveling to be treated as a swindler because the Executive appropriate $176 which, on their own showing, belong to him?
Then the mystery with which the Executive envelops this matter, becomes darker and darker. When the article in the New York Herald* appeared and was cabled across, the Avelings sent the enclosed circular to the sections, and, at the same time, to the Executive.[2]^ That circular— unless I take Aveling to be a liar and a swindler, which I decline doing until further conclusive evidence — is in my eyes conclusive against the Executive, at least until I see their reply. But what do the Executive do? They get infamous attacks into the Volkszeitung.[26] They spread rumours and reports behind Aveling's back, they call meetings of the sections and lay their version before them, and get them to vote resolutions in a matter which cannot be judged without an impartial audit of the whole accounts and a full defence of the absent accused. And having, as it appears, succeeded in their New York circle to slander Aveling, not as a man who has spent their money extravagantly (for such, rightly or wrongly, might be their honest conviction), but as a swindler and forger of accounts. They rise to the level of the occasion created by their own inventive genius, and promise a circular proclaiming Aveling a swindler and forger to the working-class of the whole world! And all this, mind you, behind the back of, and unknown to, the man whom they charge, and who can not only not defend himself, but not even make out the precise facts on which the charge is based! If this is the way people are to be judged in our party, then give me the Leipzig Reichsgericht[27] and the Chicago jury.[28] Fortunately we have passed that stage in the older parties in Europe. We have seen Executives rise and fall by the dozen, we know they are as fallible as any pope, and have even known more than one that lived sumptuously on the pence of the working-men, and had swindlers and forgers of accounts in its midst. In their circular, the Executive will not only have to define their charge - which perhaps will thus at last become known to us - but also to prove it. People on this side do not take the word of their own Executives for gospel, much less that of Mr Walter and Mr Rosenberg, be it ever so 'official'.
In my opinion, the Executive have placed themselves in a very uncomfortable position. Had they grumbled at the accounts as merely extravagant, they might have secured a hearing outside their own circle; for that is more or less a matter of opinion. But having never objected to the accounts sent in, they felt they had cut the ground from under their feet, and, as weak people do under circumstances, exaggerated the charge in order to cover themselves. Thus they come to the fresh charge of swindling and forgery which they can never prove and must be content to insinuate. But an infamy insinuated to cover mere weakness, remains neither more nor less an infamy. And having swelled what was originally a mere trifling matter of disputed accounting into a criminal offence, they naturally feel bound to go before the various working-class parties with it. And naturally, they do it in a sneaking underhand way, preventing the accused from even hearing the charge. One mistaken step leads to another, and at last they arrive in a complete mess and are caught in their own net. And all that not out of inborn malice, but sheer weakness.
You will now see that I must most distinctly decline following your advice as to 'giving Kautsky a hint, not to let the letters appear which are advertised in the name of Dr Aveling', because the Executive are going to launch 'an official circular' against Aveling, and 'his name as one of the staff can only injure any organ'. Neither Kautsky nor myself have, I believe, ever given any grounds for anyone to suppose that we would treat thus the friends we have worked with for years, upon the strength of mere assertions and innuendos. And if I was to say anything of the kind to Kautsky, I should simply drive him to the conclusion that I was either falling rapidly into dotage, or that I was no longer to be trusted across the road. Indeed I feel certain you regretted having written this passage as soon as the letter had gone.
I see very well that you wrote your letter in what you considered the interests of the party, and thus were led to represent to me the case of Aveling as hopeless and judged without appeal. But so far he is judged by nobody but the Executive who are themselves parties, accusers, judges and jury all in one; for the resolution of the New York sections, whatever it may be counts for nothing. What the other sections may say remains to be seen, but even they, if impartial, can only declare themselves incompetent until they have the full facts and until the accused has been heard. And I for one consider it utterly ruinous to the party to introduce into it, and even to outdo, the kind of justice practiced by Bismarck and by the American bourgeois, who do at least respect forms and give the prisoner at the bar a hearing — and for us to act thus at the very moment we protest against these infamous proceedings.
No doubt it may suit the Executive, under the pretence of avoiding public scandal, to shirk publicity. But that will not do. Either they must retract the dishonouring charge, reduce the case to its simple dimensions of a dispute about accounts, and settle that honourably and straightfor-wardly; or they must come out publicly with the charge and have it fought out. There has already too much of it been allowed to leak out, and it cannot remain where it is; nor is Aveling the man to leave it there. And as I cannot allow the Avelings to be accused of infamies behind their back, it was my duty to communicate your letter to Mrs Aveling (he being too ill at present) and to read to her my reply. And if at any time circumstances should require the publication of this my letter, you are at liberty to publish it in full, while I reserve to myself the same right, of course without dragging in your name, unless other people should have done so previously.
I am, dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, very truly yours
F. Engels
Stuttgart, 1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII,Moscow, 1935
9. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 12 February[2 9]
Dear Sorge,
Got your letter of 30 January yesterday, and the day before yesterday sent off sundry items to you. More to follow in a few days' time. Capital in English[11]'[2] is selling very well; the jackass of a publisher,b who had no idea what he had got hold of, is quite astonished.
I trust your health is improving. Abstemiousness is something I, too, am obliged to observe; every day brings some little physical contretemps that cannot be ignored and interferes with one's customary devil-may-care way of life. Well, that's something that can't be helped.
When Lafargue was here at Christmas he promised me to send you the Socialiste regularly. Not until after his return did I get a few extra copies of the article Situation, etc.c It has opened the eyes of the French to the fact that, for them, war would mean the end of the Republic— unless, of course, circumstances were quite exceptionally favourable, so that it might provoke a European revolution, which, however, is wanted neither by the bourgeois, the petty bourgeois nor the peasants. No one had thought of this before and now everyone's saying it. I am now reading the article in Romanian, in Revista Sociala, a muddle-headed publication, appearing in Jassy, and learning the language as I go along.
The gentlemen of the Socialist Labor Party's Executive are behaving quite outrageously towards the Avelings.[24] When, thanks to their indiscretion, if not at their instigation, the article appeared in the Herald, another quite outrageous article, for which, at the moment, I can only hold Mr Douai responsible, appeared in the Volkszeitung.[16] The Avelings' reply to the calumny in the Herald was the enclosed circular, which was sent off from here on about 18 January to all sections and also to the Executive.[25] Well, on the 28th January the latter induced someone," whom I may not name for the present and whose identity you must therefore guess, to write me an embarrassed letter in which it is stated as fact, indubitable fact, that Aveling had attempted to swindle them and that — or so their Christian charity led them to suppose — he had fiddled the accounts he submitted in order to cover his wife's hotel expenses (the party only paid Tussy's rail fares), nor did the return of the $176 alter the case, for that was in no way the point at issue, etc. Nothing but insinuations and not one solitary fact, not even a definite accusation. Then it goes on to say that a resolution had already been obtained from the New York sections and was to be endorsed by the remaining sections after which a circular denouncing Aveling would be issued to all the European parties. And I am requested to warn Kautsky against printing anything else by a blackguard like Aveling, who in to be chucked out of all the party organs!
You can imagine what kind of reply I made to these base assertions. If I can find someone to copy out the letter, I shall send it to you for, having an inflamed eye, I cannot make a third copy. These people haven't the shadow of a pretext. For on 23 December, when Aveling first learnt in a letter from Rosenberg that the Executive proposed to query some of the items in his account, he at once replied to Rosenberg, sending the following letter per special messenger:
T cannot discuss money matters with the Party, and am ready to accept anything without discussion that the National Executive of the Socialist Labor Party thinks right!'
And that was before he knew what they were going to say and how they would treat him! And then the chaps go and pocket the $176, which, by their own calculation, belongs to the Avelings, and declare, for that very reason, that not they, but Aveling, is a swindler!
Well, we shall clear the matter up all right. But unfortunately we over here don't know anyone in New York save for yourself on whom we can rely, now that even the Volkszeitung has behaved so egregiously. I should be grateful if you could let us know how Shevich and the others are behaving and whether or not they have already succumbed to the lies of the Executive. Then we should at least know to whom we could turn in New York without having to bother you. But I can't help wondering how it is that those same New Yorkers who fulminate against the Chicago jury[28] should, in this instance, outdo the jury in turpitude, and pass judgment on people without even giving them a hearing or, for that matter, telling them what they are charged with.
Your
EE.
10. Engels to Paul Lafargue 16 February
My dear Lafargue,
My congratulations to our friends on the occasion of the Vote's resus-citation[18]; let us hope that this time its way(1) will be a triumphal one. Such of the Cri as Laura has sent me to look at is deadly dull; not even Bismarck's German reptiles[30] are as capable of sending us to sleep on our feet. Let us hope that the Parisians will refuse to stomach such LEADERS, even when spiced with gossip column and feuilletonist sauce.
I have read Laura's letter about Lavrov to Tussy; she will attend to the matter, although her hands are very full just now.[31] To begin with Aveling has been suffering from QUINSY (which he himself instantly diagnosed as diphtheria) and, as a patient, he is as intractable as Pumps. Furthermore, she has had no sleep for three or four nights and has had to concern herself with the affairs of him, Edward (a Roumanian construction into which my pen has lapsed thanks to my present preoc-cupation with that language), so that she has not had time to run errands in connexion with Lavrov's books. And, on top of that, something else has happened. First, I got a long letter from la Wischnewetzky,(2) from which I gather that the idiots on the Executive Committee of the Socialist Labor Party intend to bring an action of some sort against Aveling, whom they accuse of having tried to defraud the Party over his travelling expenses, that they intend to get the sections to pass resolutions against him and, afterwards, to denounce him as a swindler in a circular addressed to the working men's parties of Europe. She even had the cheek to suggest I tell Kautsky that he would be well-advised not to print anything further of Aveling's. And, withal, never the slightest suggestion that the accused might at least have a right to be heard! You can imagine what my reply was!(3) Well, what should arrive the day before yesterday but the Executive's first circular, full of ridiculous accusations against Aveling[32]
and not very difficult to demolish. But there is no time to be lost; the American sections have got to send their votes to New York on 15 March; and the Executive has delayed sending the circular to this country so long that putting up a defence is virtually impossible. Aveling is in Hastings, whither he was sent by the doctor, and will be home on Friday. In the meantime we are sending out a circular announcing his intention of defending himself and asking that the vote be suspended until then. As soon as he returns we shall set to work on the defence. I enclose Aveling's first circular on this affair which is conclusive enough so far as fundamen-tals are concerned. It would be useful to know whether the Executive has sent its circular to the Parti ouvrier[31] or to the Germans in Paris; in Zurich Kautsky has already taken what steps are necessary. But, with all this going on you will realise how exceedingly busy Tussy is.
I no longer remember whether I wrote and told you that Fortin is satisfied with the arrangement with Laura in regard to his manuscript,[23] so all that remains to be done is to let Lavigne know that his manuscript is with you, and this I would ask you to do since I do not know whether his old address is still the right one and am therefore unable to write to him.
I do not know whether you have seen Materialismul economical lui Karl Marx de Lafargue!b I have seen a notice of it in the Jassy Revista Sociala, of December, in which there is a translation of my Socialiste articleb—pretty crude as it happens. Roumanian is a funny sort of language. Their term for 'to work' is 'lucrare'—in Latin to appropriate surplus value; the working man, on the other hand is ''muncitorul'', a word of Slav origin of which the literal and etymological equivalent is the Russian moutchitel, meaning martyr. For rebellion they use the Slav word rascaole, that is to say, ecclesiastical schism (Russian raskolnik, schis-matic, heretic). In fact, for a Latin language it is fairly difficult, since they maltreat Latin and Slav (from which many of their words and sounds are derived) with disarmingly impartial nonchalance. Bulgarian (a Bulgarian Journal has been sent to Kautsky) is much easier for anyone familiar with Russian or Serbian.
Laura will have seen our reply to Professor Menger[34], in the February number of the Neue Zeit.
From all that I have seen the French press is adopting an excellent attitude towards Bismarck's foolish provocations.[14] The man's tempera-ment is such that it's impossible to say whether he does or does not want war. But anything that forces upon him the necessity either of staying pacifically at home or of becoming an overt aggressor can only benefit ourselves. He has today reached the same stage with France as he had reached with William(4) in May 1866, after paving the way for the Austrian war[35] which the latter abhorred: 'I have succeeded in leading the old horse to water, but I cannot make him drink.' And if the French stand their ground Bismarck will be in the devil of a mess. He already hopes to attain a majority with the help of the people. The Popeb will have ensured his septennium (having voted him the new regiments for three years, they will let him have them for seven)[36] but, if the majority in the Reichstag remains in opposition on all other issues, Bismarck will not get a farthing. In the meantime everyone is agreed that all parties in Germany have reason to fear electoral defeat save for the Socialists, who are certain to have a resounding victory.
Zetkin has asked me to let him have a letter for the meeting of the 19th. I shall send it you tomorrow. I don't know yet what to say.[37]
Give Laura a kiss from me, Yours ever
F. E.
11. Engels to Nikolai Danielson 19 February
Dear Sir,
I was glad to receive your letter of 22/3rd of this month[38] because I saw from it that the publisher[1] instead of sending you a copy of the English Capital^ had merely forwarded a prospectus. There have been several of these irregularities which cause us all sorts of vexation and uncertainty as to what has been done. However I have at once forwarded to you per post a copy, registered, on February 12th, and hope you received it safely. I am glad to say the book sells uncommonly well. The high price for the first edition was an unavoidable evil, but as the book is stereotyped, a cheap edition at about one-third of the price of the first will be brought out after some time; at the present moment the high price in no great obstacle here, though it is so to a certain extent in America.
I think you will be doing a good work in showing to the public of your country the application of our author'sc theory to their circumstances. But perhaps you had better wait, as you say, until the completion of his work. The chapter on the Rent of Land,(1) although written before he had studied Russian economic conditions, and written without reference thereto, will still be very necessary to you. The 3rd volume will be taken in hand after clearing off some other accumulated work; with the exception of three Abschnitte, the greater part is almost ready for press.
I thank you very much for the Fairy Tales of Scedrin which I shall take in hand as soon as ever possible; a slight conjunctivitis of the left eye prevents me reading it at present, as the Russian type very much strains my eyesight.
Up to the present no reviews of the English edition have appeared. The professional reviewers evidently do not know what to make of the book, and are afraid to burn their fingers.
Yours sincerely
P. W. Rosher[39]
12. Engels to Laura Lafargue 24 February
My dear Laura,
The Révolution en Allemagne-Prise de Berlin[3]-—does not exactly come off in the way depicted in the Way of the People. The Voie du peuple on the other side of the Vosges is not exactly along the Boulevards of beautiful Paris. Not to speak of their mistakes about seats lost and gained, etc., the success of our German friends lies in another direction than where they seek it.[41] First of all, we have so far lost seats and not gained any, but that, though a fact, counts for nothing. The decisive fact is that, while we are very slowly losing ground in the Saxon districts of hand-weaving (which is dying out) and which were our original strong-holds, we are gaining far more rapidly not only in the large towns but in all rural industrial districts. I have the exact figures of 43 districts with one deputy each, including Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Munich, Leipzig, Hanover, Magdeburg, Elberfeld, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Nürnberg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt etc, mostly large towns of course.
In these we had in all votes 408,360 in the same places in 1884 321,876 Gained 86,484
or 27 per cent on the votes of 1884, in 3 years; and these include 5 districts in which we lost votes. In a day or two I shall have more data to extend my list which comprises all districts the figures of which I know. Berlin has come out splendidly and I begin to have some confidence in that otherwise ridiculous town.
The pressure brought to bear on our people was tremendous. Not even public proclamation of their candidates was allowed. Every one who took a part in the election by distributing bulletins de vote[3]- etc. was noted — which means expulsion in the numerous towns under state of siege. Wherever possible, the manufacturers conducted them to the poll and saw that they voted for Bismarck unless they wanted immediate discharge from work. And all this will be repeated and increased on the day of ballotage where we expect to secure most of our seats.
Singer is the Lockroy[42]—le premier élu de l'Allemagne. He had 32,227 votes which no other member can boast of. Bebel is in for Hamburg, Liebknecht out for Offenbachc; had he had 50 more votes, he would have been in the ballot at Bremen and then sure of election. But there are sure to be double elections so that he will not want the place whereon to rest his hind quarters.[43] The exact number of ballots in which we are interested I do not know; 16 at the least. These we shall almost all carry, as far as I can see — and unless we are left in the lurch by the Centre[44] or Progressists,[45] which is quite on the cards.
While ordinarily but 55 to 65% of the voters polled, this time the philistine came up in force; 85 to 90% of the number on the list. And this accounts for many defeats.
I am extremely glad of the Alsatian vote.[46] That will help us to get rid of these non-descripts — neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring — all the easier.
In a day or two you will get a printed circular with Aveling's reply to the charges of the New York Executive.[47] If this circular has not been sent to the German club in Paris, then it has not been sent to Paris at all. It is nothing but the usual complaint of KnotenA against Gelehrte* that they lived extravagantly on the pence of the working man. Fortunately we have a good reply.
Tell Paul that his discovery about Oriental Circumcision* shares the fate of many of my discoveries in natural science viz. that it had been made before. I have read the same thing long ago in German books and should not wonder if it was already in old Creuzer's Symbolik^[1] which is as old as the battle of Waterloo.
Poor Edward had an awful shock about these ridiculous accusations, so soon after his quinsy. He is not over-endowed with power of resistance to malady, and so this threw him back very much. He has been off and on at Hastings and is going off again to-night.
The last page of the Voie to-dayc looks rather queer, all Bel Amid and no advertisements.[48] Rather too much for one dose, I should think.
Half past five—Postscblusse—and Dinner Bell! So farewell for to-day.
Very affectionately yours
F. Engels
13. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 3 March
Dear Sorge,
I am sending off simultaneously with this a package containing 1 Commonweal, 1 To-Day, 3 Gleichheits and 4 copies in German, 4 copies in English of Aveling's second circular.[47] The Executive over there is going to the most amazing lengths to obtain approval for its puerile action against Aveling. You will see from Aveling's circular (no doubt you will also have had a look at that of the Executive) what they tried on with the sections. But since then, and without waiting for the sections' vote, they have handed over the whole business to the Board of Supervisors in the hope that the latter may get them out of the soup. Aveling, of course, is also taking it up with the Board of Supervisors, to which he is now sending all the documents, and we shall see how things turn out.
The Executive is wisely confining itself to the age-old and, to German expatriates, eternally new story of squandering the workers' pence; so presumably the additional charges of attempted embezzlement, etc., are only being disseminated in private. No doubt you will find some opportunity of putting the circulars to use.
We have good reason to be satisfied with the elections in Germany.[15]
The increase in the number of votes is marvellous, especially considering how much pressure is being exerted not only by the government but also by the industrialists who, wherever feasible, presented the workers with the choice either of being dismissed or of voting compulsorily for a Bismarckian. I fear this will again be in evidence in the second ballot, the results of which are not yet known over here. The Pope[3] is forbid-ding Catholics to vote for us, the men of Progress[45] voluntarily prefer a Bismarckian to a Socialist, while the industrialists exercise outright coercion — so if in these circumstances we capture one or two more seats it will be a victory truly won.[50] But it's not the number of seats that matter, only the statistical demonstration of the party's irresistible growth.
You suggest that our people have made fools of themselves in electing such men as Geiser, Frohme, Viereck, etc. There's no alternative. They have to take the candidates as and where they find them. That is a fate shared by all workers' parties in parliaments where there is no remuner-ation. Nor does it matter. The chaps are under no illusion regarding their representatives; of this the best proof is the total defeat of the 'parliamentary group' in its trial of strength with the Sozialdemokrat.[51] And the deputies are well aware of it; the gentlemen of the right wing know that, if they are still tolerated, it is only by reason of the Anti-Socialist Law[52] and that they will instantly be thrown out on the day the party regains its freedom of movement. Even then, all will be by no means well with the representation but I think I'd rather see the party superior to its parliamentary heroes than the other way round.
Nor need you worry about Liebknecht. They realise perfectly well what he's like in Germany. I have seldom known a man about whom the opinions of the most diverse people are so closely agreed as they are about Liebknecht. While he imagines he's got them all eating out of his hand, they are sizing him up quite critically. His incorrigible optimism, particularly about anything in which he himself has a hand, his firm belief that he is the life and soul of the movement, the chap who does everything and manages everything for the best and that it's only the other 'jackasses' who spoil things, his urge to create order everywhere and to cover up all contradictions by resolving them into commonplaces, his yearning for outward and momentary successes, even at the expense of enduring losses — all this is very well known. But our people also know that all these failings are only the obverse of most valuable quali-ties and that without those foibles he simply could not achieve what he does in fact achieve. So long as he has Bebel at his side he won't perpetrate any serious blunders although he may cause a lot of unnecessary trouble and strife. And when it comes to parting from the philistines, he will defend them up to the very last, but at the crucial moment will be found in the right place.
I hope that your health will improve with the coming of spring.
Your
R E .
XXVII, Moscow, 1935
14. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 10 March[5 3]
Dear Sorge,
Postcard of the 22nd and letter of the 25th of February received. You guessed rightly. It would have been useless to send a copy of the long letter, since the wording of the complaints in the Executive's circular is not only milder but differs materially, while everything else up till now has been private tittle-tattle. The way people in Europe view the affair is evident from Singer's reply to the circular sent him by Aveling.[47] 'It's the old story though it's a pity that the Avelings also have to suffer through it.'(1) I sent you 4 copies of this circular in English and 4 in German; no doubt you will have received them, as also my letter of about a week ago.b
La Wischnewetzky is incapable of translating the Manifesto. Only one person can do that, namely Sam Moore, and he is working on it at this moment; I already have the first section in ms.[54] In this connection, however, it should be remembered that the Manifesto, like virtually all the shorter items by Marx and myself, is still much too abstruse for America. The workers over there are only now entering the movement; they are still quite raw and, particularly as regards theory, tremendously backward, owing to their generally Anglo-Saxon and particularly American nature and upbringing — hence it is to practice that the lever must be directly applied and for this purpose entirely new literature is required. I have already suggested to la Wischnewetzky that she bring out separately a popular digest of the main points in Capital in the form of short pamphlets.c Once the chaps are more or less on the right path, the Manifesto cannot fail to make an impact; just now the impact will only be felt by a few.
Your remarks about Das Kapital in English have been passed on to the publisher/-[55] who came back with a very practical answer to the effect that a favourable article in the North American Review would be enough to create a demand for an American edition and, for that reason, he would like to skim the cream off first. As it is, the thing is selling very well in America too; another big bookseller besides Bordollo has been ordering away merrily,[56] while sales over here have been so brisk that all but 50 copies of the first edition have been snapped up and the second— still at the same price — is printing. And this despite very little advertising and before any of the large papers mentioned it. The first serious review appeared in the Athenaeum of 5 March — very favourable.[57] The rest will now follow suit and help us sell the second edition, after which the cheap edition can doubtless come out.[58]
Irrespective of what the Socialist Labor Party[3] may purport to be and however much it may take the credit for the successes achieved by the work of its predecessors, it is the only labour organisation in America which by and large stands on our basis, it is distributed in more than 70 sections over the whole of the North and West and as such, and only as such, have I recognised it. I have expressly stated that it is a party only in name.[59] And I'm convinced that the gentlemen of the Executive were very disappointed by my prefaceb and would rather have done without it. After all, they themselves belong to the school of which I have said that it will ruin the party if it gains the upper hand. And they seem to be intent on doing so. Injustice here, Rosenberg has attacked the Knights of Labor on account of the longshoremen's strike[60]; though he may not be altogether wrong about individual facts, he shows insufficient awareness of the course the movement is taking, a course that will quickly destroy the party if these chaps remain in control. It is precisely the follies of the place-seeking leaders of the Knights of Labor and their inevitable conflicts with the Central Labor Unions[61] in the big cities of the East that must provoke a crisis within the Knights of Labor and bring it to a head. But the blockhead doesn't see it.
Over here the unemployed agitation by the Social Democratic Federation[62] has also proved to be a complete flop; the church parade in St Paul's was a silly attempt to ape the Chartists and was likewise a flop,[63] in short nothing has happened yet. Next autumn things may get better; It would be desirable if, in the meanwhile, the rascals at the head of the Social Democratic Federation were to fade away and disappear.
Your
F. E.
1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol.
XXVII, Moscow, 1935
15. Engels to Laura Lafargue 10 March
My dear Laura,
Pleasant news. The first edition of Capital* 500 copies, is sold with the exception of about 50 copies and the 2nd edition is in preparation. Nearly half the edition, as far as I can calculate, has gone to Americab
and the 2nd edition will still find a good market there unless a piratical edition is brought out which however will not probably be undertaken before the success of the book in America is manifest and moreover it will take some time. As the clichés are there, the 2nd edition will soon be in the market, and on that we shall have 3/9 in every copy instead of 3/-as on the first. It will again be a 30/- edition.[58]
We saw the article in the Athenaeum[57] and Tussy will send you a copy. It is very fortunate that the press begins to speak of the book just as the 1st edition is sold out, and the Athenaeum article is worth a good deal to us. The gentlemen of the press evidently did not know exactly how to speak of the book, hence the delay, but now the Athenaeum has given them the key-note, the others are sure to follow suit.
Between the above and what follows lies a long-winded visit from old Jakins the house agent who took the rent and payment for coals and two glasses of gin and a cigar — a repeated ringing of the dinner-bell to drive the old fellow away — successful at the third repetition — then a rather heavy dinner with Nim's potato-cakes as a wind-up, and so I am wound up, but not for letter-writing. I think you will not be sorry if under these circumstances I make no further attempt, but proceed at once to subscribe myself.
Yours affectionately
F. Engels
16. Engels to Julie Bebel 12 March
Dear Mrs Bebel,
I am taking'the liberty of writing to you today in the hope that you will be able to give me news of how my friend Bebel is getting on at the charitable institution in Zwickau.[64] I have heard nothing further of Bebel since Singer was over here in December. I know, of course, that deten-tion will have no effect whatever on his intellectual powers, but I should also be very glad to learn that it is not adversely affecting his physical health. He must have found it very hard to be behind bars with nothing to do during the election campaign, but that is all the more reason why he should have been pleased with the results; they tally exactly with the prediction he gave me months ago: a big gain in votes but a drop in mandates.[15] The latter is not only easily borne — only Liebknecht's absence is a real loss — but in many ways is also an advantage. Indeed this is now being admitted by people of whom one would least expect it; people who themselves took a quiet pleasure in parliamentarism are now loudly proclaiming to all and sundry what a good thing it is that the party and, in particular, the parliamentary group should no longer be in danger of lapsing into parliamentarism! All to the good if grapes are sour now and again. On the other hand, the 225,000 new votes we have gained, despite the most cruel oppression, are a step forward which has made itself felt throughout Europe and America and has even soured the momentary triumph of the gentlemen in power. This very lack of undue haste, this measured but nonetheless inexorable advance, has about it something tremendously impressive which cannot but arouse in the rulers the same sense of dread as was experienced by the prisoners of the state inquisition in that room in Venice where the walls moved inwards an inch each day, so that as time went on they were able to estimate the day on which the walls must squash them.
Throughout the past autumn and winter Russian and Prussian diplo-macy has been at pains to engineer a localised war and prevent a European one. The Russians would have liked to crush Austria alone, the Prussians France alone, while the rest were supposed to look on.[14]
Unfortunately these well-intentioned endeavours were mutually incompatible in that whoever attacked first would have provoked a world war. That the days of localised wars were over was, of course, obvious to any child, but not to the clever men who govern Europe; only now are the great statesmen finding this out and they really are somewhat afraid of a world conflagration, for its effects would be incalculable and more than even the Prussian and Russian armies could cope with. And so far as I'm concerned herein lies the only remaining guarantee of peace we have.
Would you please be kind enough to tell Bebel when you see him that the first edition of the English translation of Das Kapital* was sold out in 2 months and that the second is printing. And this before any of the bigger papers had devoted an article to the book!
Trusting you will be so good as to let me have early news of how Bebel is getting on,
I am,
Yours very truly,
F. Engels
17. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 16 March[2 9]
Dear Sorge,
Very many thanks for your letters of 28 February and 2 March along with enclosures, and also for all the trouble you have taken. I return herewith the Executive's circular[32] as we have got a copy. Concerning the Volkszeitung's article (so the charming Jonas had suppressed Aveling's answer for a whole month before deciding to print it), we promptly sent Jonas the enclosed reply today. Should he not print it and if you could then put some sort of pressure on him, that would be splendid.[65] But his article does seem to indicate a partial retraction.
The great controversy over the dubious items in Aveling's accounts will no doubt have now been resolved by our circular of 26 February.[47]
Nevertheless it is strange that people should make a fuss about details such as these which cannot possibly be understood except in context— that these people haven't said to themselves that they ought first to hear what the other side has to say about that context before permitting themselves to pass judgment. Every one of these items would also have appeared in Liebknecht's accounts if he had ever submitted any. But what he said was this: the party must meet all my expenses and I shan't put down anything at all. And with that they were satisfied. The fact that Aveling subsequently met virtually all the expenses incurred, e.g. in Boston, not only by Liebknecht, but also by his daughter,(1) is not mentioned by the Executive, although these are shown in the accounts and we were decent enough not to put it in the circular. Thus, during the time they were travelling together, Liebknecht ordered all their wine, etc., to be sent up to Aveling's room and hence charged to Aveling's account. The Executive knows all about it and is keeping it dark. But shabbiest of all is their failure to send us their circular, released over there on 7 January, until 3 February, so that they had a clear month in which to spread their slanderous stories at their leisure before we so much as discovered what Aveling was actually accused of.
Pending further information, I don't believe that the resolution was accepted by the majority of the sections. If I am to go by what Aveling and Tussy say, the Knights of Labor[60] attitude is directly opposed to the views of all the sections in the West. And if this should nevertheless prove to be the case, the whole 'party' can go to the devil.
It is truly fortunate that you should send me the Sozialist. Hitherto I have been able to pass on my second copy, which I get from the Executive, to Kautsky or the Avelings, so that it has been turned to good account. This week no paper has arrived from those charming people, from which I can only conclude that the next Nos will contain more scurrilities about Aveling.
A letter has been sent to Müller in St Paul asking him if he would also publish the 2nd circular of 26 February.[66] While the Executive, covertly, as is its wont, makes the most of every journalistic ploy, it evidently intends to push the responsibilities onto Aveling should he himself be the first to go into print.
To us over here it seemed quite natural that Aveling should not reply to the New York Herald. The article was quite abysmally absurd, on top of which they both say that it is not the custom in America to reply seriously to such tomfooleries. From my own knowledge of the Herald it is most unlikely that the paper would have accepted it. And when the article was reprinted over here, Aveling replied at once.[25] But even if Aveling had replied to the Herald article, how would that have helped him vis-à-vis the Executive} It sounds to me like a lame excuse by Shevich. All in all I'm surprised at the utter spinelessness of most of the people in New York as revealed by this affair. The Executive spreads whopping lies and everyone believes them — from Jonas to Shevich and the Wischnewetzky's! So the Executive would appear to be a great authority in New York after all.
No more time now, alas, to send you various newspapers today; they will leave tomorrow — post about to go,
Your
RE.
18. Engels to Hermann Schluter 19 March
It is truly fortunate that our people no longer constitute a 'faction' in the Reichstag — for the next few years, at any rate, this will be just as well.[68]1 also like the way so many have all of a sudden come to regard 'parliamentarism' as discreditable. Irresistible, gradually accelerating growth in the number of votes — that is the main thing. Our struggle is a form of siege warfare and so long as the approach trenches keep moving forward, all will be well. We are already close to the second parallel, where we shall be able to establish our dismounting batteries and silence the enemy's guns. And, if we get as far without the besieged's gaining temporary respite from a world war, we shall then be able to estimate when it will be possible to establish breaching batteries on the crest of the glacis, make a breach with our guns and mount an assault. Until then the quiet, unhurried advance of our siege-works is the best safeguard against an overhasty assault and unnecessary casual-ties. The nicest touch of all is that the besieged say that we the besiegers, are in a state of siege!
Kindest regards to you all. Yours,
Engels
Volks-Kalender für 1902, New York, 1901 Published in English for the first time
19. Engels to Laura Lafargue 21 March
My dear Laura,
I have received Fortin 's Ms.[23] which, I am afraid, will have to rest a bit in my drawer, as I must still nurse my eye. Of course the inflammation was merely symptomatic of the real affliction, a weakness brought on by over-exertion of the eye especially at night-time, and that can be cured by nothing but the removal of the cause; in consequence Nim and I pass our evenings now at card-playing and I find it acts, but has to be continued yet a bit. If Paul continues his work at the Bibliothèque etc. in the usual way, I am afraid he will have to suffer for it, though of course his doctor ought to know.
To settle business first: I enclose cheque for £12, and further inform you that nothing has been heard here from Longuet. I sent him a postcard[69] about the copy of Capital addressed to La Justice, asking if he had got it; no reply either.
The gifles[3]- between the Voie and the Cri may amuse the Parisians but I should be very sorry to see our friends there sinking to the level of saltimbanques at foires^ forcing themselves upon the attention of the public by quarrels and fights provoked for that purpose. If that will go down in Paris, it will certainly not anywhere else, and it is certainly not the way to raise our Parisian friends in the esteem of the working class out of France. I can conceive Goullé boxing Labruyère's ears while they had the Voie to give their own account of the affair,c but the repe-tition by Goullé and Deville after the paper was dead, and they had to take refuge in the Radical, seems to me utterly out of all common sense. The version of the Cri reaches all the foreign socialist papers; that of the Radical does not, unless forwarded express. And whether or not, this mode of settling disputes after the manner of the German Knotend before 1848 will give foreigners a very poor idea of the leaders of French Socialism and makes one almost regret the duelling prac-tices of the Second Empire journalists, as being only ridiculous. The sooner the whole affair is forgotten, the better it will be for our people.[70]
Old William, if not actually dead, seems to be dying—vide enclosed cut from the Weekly Dispatch.[71] And the dynamite shells of St Petersburg seem after all not to have missed their aim. Vide the abject declaration which through Reuter (!!) the Russian government have sent round Europe.[72] The Czare goes on his knees before revolution, and even the Russophile Daily Newsi says this abject document can be compared only to the abject telegram of Alexander Battenberg to the Czar.[73] This thing looks indeed like the beginning of the end in Russia, and that would be the beginning of the end in Europe too. What a fool that Czar must be! Not to see that when he ordered the plot to kidnap and, if necessary, to kill that poor ass Alexander Battenberg, he justified the same proceedings against himself, and called upon his own enemies to apply to him his own methods!
Pumps is expected back from Eastbourne to-morrow. Edward lectured yesterday morning — for the first time since his quinsy — in an East-End Radical Club[22]; he is making a very useful and probably successful campaign amongst the East-End Radicals to engage them to cut loose from the Great Liberal Party and form a Working Men's party after the American fashion. If he succeeds he will get both Socialist Associations[3] into his wake; for here he gets hold of the real spontaneous working men's organisations and gets at the heart of the working class. So far his prospects are good. Tussy and he are going to move this week into their new place in Chancery Lane but as they must clear out from 38 St George Square to-morrow, they will perhaps have to stay a few days with us.
Love from Nim.
Affectionately yours
F. Engels
20. Engels to Gerson Trier 23 March
Dear Mr Trier.
The three copybooks of your MS. just received with thanks, though I regret that it will not be possible for me to have a look at them before the end of this week. I shall, however, set about it as soon as the slight inflammation of the eyes, from which I am now suffering, permits and shall be glad if you will come and see me on your return from Copenhagen.
Yours very sincerely,
F. Engels
21. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 6 April
Dear Sorge,
Have received postcard together with the Dietzgen cutting, 24 March, and letter of 25 ditto. Hepner could hardly be in a position to judge from those few disconnected facts whether Aveling ought to have been 'more frank'.[75] I myself wouldn't venture to say so; all I know is that Aveling is as unfortunate in money matters as Hepner himself. Both have an enviable talent for getting mixed up in money squabbles through no fault of their own.
Whoever told you that Kautsky had become restive was either lying or had been lied to. I would trust Kautsky as I would trust myself; like most young men he is sometimes apt to be a bit opinionated, but if he harboured any doubts I would be the first to whom he would confide them. Anyway, I shall ask him this evening to what, if anything, the statement can refer.
Wilhelm,(1) having first shrouded himself in silence, can now scarcely contain himself. He writes as follows (this between ourselves; please don't pass on the exact wording, but only as much of the contents as you think fit) (25 March):
'The New Yorkers will probably toe the line. I had already — weeks ago — written and told them in no uncertain terms that, no matter what the circumstances, I refused to allow myself to be played off against Aveling and Tussy. I have categorically insisted upon a full apology and, as I have said, I think they will comply. It's a great pity Aveling didn't write to me immediately after his return.'
(this is an empty excuse, since I had already informed him of the essentials round about 20 January,[76] in so far as they were known to ourselves at the time)
—'it was from you I first learnt about the whole thing and by then we were in the midst of the electoral hurly-burly which, of course, claimed my whole attention. And so a lot of time was lost. But everything's bound to come out all right. If the New Yorkers dig their heels in, I shall attack them publicly. You can tell Aveling and Tussy so.'
O n the whole the tide seems to be turning very much against the gentlemen of the Executive. Aveling has received sympathetic letters from several private quarters in New York; the American Rochester section has expressed its continuing confidence in him, the German Cleveland (or Buffalo? I forget) section has come out unanimously in his favour. And as much as a month ago the Executive — without waiting for the sections' votes — submitted all the files to the Board of Supervisors for a decision — i.e. appealed to another tribunal! We, of course, immediately wrote to them as well, sending documents and insisting that they examine certain letters, etc.
You will have had a copy of Aveling's reply to the second and, indeed, even more infamousq article in the Volkszeitung.[65]
Our Parisians have again got themselves into a fix. They had lost the Cri du Peuple,™ and now the Socialiste has also died for want of funds. The Paris working men have so spoilt their digestions with 50 years of sectarian and phrase-mongering socialism that they cannot at present stomach wholesome fare. Paris, le centre des lumières, la ville de l'idée, est dégoûté d'idées.* 78
In Russia, on the other hand, a crisis would seem imminent. The recent assassination attempts[77] were just about the last straw, everything's at sixes and sevens and, furthermore — circumstances being what they are in Russia — compulsory military service has ruined the Russian army. This was inevitable. As I myself pointed out as much as ten years ago.
Kindest regards, Your Engels
and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
22. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 9 April
Dear Sorge,
I wrote to you on the 6th(1) and have had your letter of 29 March. Many thanks for your efforts re Jonas.[79] I think they will bear fruit.
So the Executive intends to reply. That will mean a further suppression of facts. But the decision to reply is in itself proof of how base and silly it was to try and worm a verdict out of the sections merely on the strength of the Executive's first allegations. First the sections were supposed to decide. Then, even before the expiry of the time limit they had been set, the Executive goes and implores the Board of Supervisors for a verdict. And now the Executive itself admits that further investiga-tions will be necessary before a decision can be reached.
At all events, the chaps have cut their own throats. And if the Wischnewetzkys who, throughout, have behaved more like Dishragskis,[3] have been forced to describe them as liars, etc., things must have come to a pretty pass. The very fact that Wischnewetzky decided to show you my letterb is proof of the quandary these two people are in. As much as a year ago, however, I was 'humane' enough to dismiss the Executive as true German louts.
I'm glad in as much as I can now hope to be relieved of Mrs Wischnewetzky's importunities in the matter of translations. In the first place she translates mechanically, leaving all the real work to me, in the second, having delayed publicationc in the most deplorable way, she let the thing fall into the hands of the said louts.[80] But we are now no longer in the position of having to hawk around our manuscripts. And now that I've written a prefacec" for her into the bargain, something's evidently amiss just because the said preface is not to the liking of the Executive!
The Avelings have also had sympathetic messages and resolutions from the section in Springfield, Massachusetts; no doubt others will be coming in from the West during the next few days.
The Swiss government would seem — according to conservative English reports — to be preparing to move against the Zurich Sozialdemokrat.[81] I have been expecting this ever since the war-like hubbub first arose; endanger his neutrality and your Swiss turns really nasty. However, it may yet blow over.
On the other hand it looks very much as though the 2 latest assassination attempts in Russia[77] have been the last straw. For a long time no one has had any faith in the government, and now they've lost faith in the Tsar as well. The army is full of discontented, conspiring officers. The Pan-Slavs[82] want to place the half-brothere of the present Tsar/ the eldest son of Alexander II and la Dolgoruky on the throne. And the police are powerless against the Nihilists.[83] According to the Frankfurter Zeitung, 482 officers were sent from Moscow via Odessa to the convict settlement on Sakhalin in the Pacific. I don't believe that it will last out the year, unless war provides a loophole, and even that might come too late. And once the fun begins in Russia, then hurrah!
Aveling's campaign among the Radical Clubs in London's East End is making good progress.[84] The relatively successful results obtained in the recent elections in Chicago and Cincinnati[85] have been of great assistance to him here — John Bull has no wish to see himself outstripped by those fellows. It's the only foreign influence that is at all effective in this country. At the big Anti-Coercion meeting in Hyde Park the day after tomorrow, Aveling will be speaking from two and Tussy from one of the fifteen platforms.[86] It promises to be one of those big meetings whereby the London working men make manifest a crisis in English politics. Incidentally, the German elections,[15] too, have not failed to make an impact over here.
Are you moving to Rochester, or where?
Your
F. Engels
XXVII, Moscow, 1935
23. Engels to Paul Lafargue 11 April
My dear Lafargue,
You ask me, as the person charged with the execution of Karl Marx's last wishes in regard to his works, to give you formal authorisation to negotiate the publication of a new edition of Misere de la philosophie and his other works written in French.[88] Although this seems hardly necessary as between you and me, it goes without saying that I grant this with pleasure.
Yours ever,
F. Engels
24. Engels to Paul Lafargue 13 April
My dear Lafargue,
Herewith the letter for your publisher.* I hope you will be successful this time but in any case make sure the copy is returned to you since I have no other to send you.[88] Also negotiate for 20 to 25 free copies for us; we shall be sorely in need of them.
I shall send you the Daily Telegraph's report on the meeting of the day before yesterday, in which there in much talk of Tussy.[86]
Schorlemmer was there. It was undoubtedly the biggest meeting we have ever held here.
The New York affair[24] is going very well. The gentlemen of the Executive Committee have done so many silly things that they have already scuppered themselves. It has been a very long business and a very tortuous one, but we no longer have anything to fear from that quarter.
You must have a high opinion of Mr Sonnenschein if you suppose that we have at our disposal copies of the article by Aveling and Tussy. I have only seen the proofs, but I shall ask Tussy to have a copy sent me for you.[89] They'll have to pay for it; Sonnenschein treats his authors as though they were mere clerks.
The day before yesterday the great anarchist Kropotkin accepted the hospitality of the Social Democratic Federation[62] and was with them and Davitt on their waggonnette. Typically, when someone suggested taking Davitt to see Aveling, Davitt said: I cannot meet him because he is an atheist!
Impossible to press for the appearance of your article in Time—Price is in the midst of leaving Swan & Sonnenschein, says it is his partner Lowrey who is running the review — a man we have never set eyes on. If only you knew the confusion and disorder that reign in that business, you'd be far more patient.
Put yourself forward as candidate in any case, whether or no you stand a chance.[90] It is something you have got to go through, especially in Paris and especially now that you have managed once again to kill off all your periodicals.[91] There's nothing else you can do, for agitation involves keeping oneself in the public eye. With 10,000 francs you can maintain a weekly paper for a long time, and you ought to be able to raise that sum. Come to that, I hope that revolution in Russia will relieve your difficulties and will set Europe in motion. Three assassination attempts in thirty days[92]—enough, I should have thought, even for a Tsar.(1) According to the English press, even the pro-Russian, everything is topsy-turvy in Russia; faith in the power of the administration has been shattered, the army teems with Nihilists[83]—482 officers exiled to the island of Sakhalin (Pacific)b—, while the peasants, crushed by emancipation,[93] taxation and usury, have been dealt a mortal blow in the shape of compulsory military service on the Prussian system.[78] Add to that the permanent financial crisis, the paper ruble worth 2 fr. 8 or 9 centimes instead of 4, American and Indian competition in corn and not a banker in Europe prepared to lend — such a state of affairs cannot last out the year!
Schorlemmer sends his regards. A kiss to Laura, to whom I shall be writing,
Yours ever, F.E.
25. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 23 April[5 3]
Dear Sorge,
I wrote to you on the 9th inst.(1) Postcard and packages received with thanks. The publication in the Volkszeitung of my preface[12] in a translation made over there is doubly scandalous. Firstly because I wish to have nothing to do with the paper so long as it goes on behaving so despicably towards Aveling. Secondly, however, because I cannot approve of my English works being rendered into German by a stranger, especially when the said stranger makes a mass of mistakes and misconstrues the most important passages. The person[13] has had my preface since the beginning of February (posted on 27 January)c and in the only letter I have received since then, dated 19 March, postmarked 8 April, she merely mentions her intention of bringing out a German edition and asks for my assent — she knew I had no copy here. I wrote at once[76] asking her to return me the original so that I could translate it; there are passages in it where every word must be meticulously weighed. And meanwhile she has been conniving with Jonas & Co. behind my back.
I immediately protested. You should ask her to show you my letter.[76]
This is the last straw. It's utterly impossible to work with someone who keeps on playing such tricks.
But there's one more thing she's got coming to her. Her last long letter about the Aveling affair[24] may be summed up in one word: abominable. An attempt by someone who is weak, who is swayed by every puff of wind, to uphold the Tightness of a cause she herself knows to be rotten. I shall reply to her next week con amore. A person like that mustn't imagine that I can be bamboozled like a baby.
Hyndman's letter to The Standard^ is both pitiful and pusillanimous.
He wants to remain in George's good graces when the latter is becoming ever more embroiled with his hobby-horse, land,[94] and hence must suppress everything of a socialist nature. He is down on his luck again. The sensational effects have vanished into thin air, nor are new ones to be had every day. Without them, however, Hyndman cannot sustain his role. On the other hand the Avelings have begun agitating to considerable effect in the Radical Clubs[22] of the East End and in so doing are laying special emphasis on the example of an independent labour party set by the Americans.[84] And the American example is the only one that has any pull here — along with that of the German elections.[15] The cause is progressing well and may — if things go on in America as they have been doing — cost the Liberals the entire East End of London before the year is out.
In the Socialist League, too, matters are slowly approaching a crisis. At Whitsun the delegates hold their conference when a decision will, I hope, be reached in the struggle with the anarchist elements who have wormed their way in and have Morris as a supporter.[95]
In Germany there are reprisals upon reprisals.[96] It's as though Bismarck wants to get everything ready so that when revolution breaks out in Russia, in what is now probably only a matter of months, the fun can likewise begin in Germany.
Your
F. E.
Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
26. Engels to Nikolai Danielson 24 April
Dear Sir,
I write these few lines to inform you — in haste — of the safe arrival of the 2 packages registered with letters[3] and your letter of the 7th April old style to advise us of their having been forwarded. There was no hurry in sending them, yet I am thankful to you for having entrusted me with these valuable relics which I shall read with the greatest interest, make use of for ulterior purposes, and always hold at your disposal.
Yours faithfully
P. W. Rosher[39]
27. Engels to Laura Lafargue 26 April[4 0]
My dear Laura,
My congratulations to Paul le candidat du Jardin des Plantes—et des animaux. Being, in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.[90] Let us hope the animaux will have the best of it in this struggle against the bêtes.* I am rather surprised at Baslu's holding back, but if a set of men succeeds in being excluded from the press altogether,[91] what can they expect? Fom Mesa's letter in the Spanish Socialista I see that the Blanquists too are making volte-face and approaching the Possibilists[19]—another bad sign. A little success — even relative — at the elections would therefore be very welcome when our people are under such a momentary cloud. I know very well that that cloud will pass, that Parisian party life is a continual change of ups and downs, but at the same time I cannot but wish that next time they will cherish their own little weekly paper a little more than those disreputable dailies to which they work hard to give a reputation in order to be kicked out as soon as they have succeeded.
That Stanton of yours seems to be an out-and-out Yankee. But the cutest Yankee in Europe is as often and as much out of his element as the toughest Polish Jew. They misjudge the people they have to deal with.[97]
The New York Executive have launched in their despair another circular against Aveling saying that his statements are lies, yet making very important admissions in our favour.[98] We shall of course reply. But the affair is practically ended, the Executive are themselves accused in New York as swindlers and liars in another affair and on their trial before the New York sections; so that whatever they have said, say, or may say, loses all importance. In the meantime the Aufsichtsbehörde^ of the American party appeals to them (to Edward and Tussy) to let the matter drop, and from very many places they receive very nice letters both from Americans and Germans. So that matter is virtually settled.
Edward and Tussy's agitation in the East End clubs is going on very favourably. The American example has its effects; it at last offers a handle to stir up the English working people.[84]
In the League[21] the Anarchists are on the decline, as everywhere when they are seriously handled instead of being trifled with. Their last proposal yesterday in the Council was, that at the Conference of Delegates[95] all vérification des mandats should be suppressed and anybody accepted who said he was a delegate — to allow them to manufacture their usual bogus votes. This however was too much even for Morris; yet a minority of five was found to vote for such nonsense!
The Pagny affair" is not quite clear to me yet. The gist of the matter lies in Art. 4, No. 1, of the German Penal Code:
'Pourra être poursuivi selon les lois pénales de l'empire allemand: 1) un étranger qui aura commis, à l'étranger {en pays étranger) un acte de haute trahison contre l'empire allemand ou contre un des états fédérés, ou qui aura fait de la fausse monnaie.'*
To apply this article to anybody but a political refugee not naturalised abroad, must produce a collision with the country of the man prosecuted. No nation in its senses will stand such treatment and if they tried it upon an Englishman, the most peaceable minister would be compelled to send at once the British fleet to the German coast. Therefore this looks as if Bismarck wanted to place France between war or humiliation. For that he was ignorant of the warrant against Schnaebelé is impossible. And yet the state of Europe is such that a war would be, for Bismarck, to play va banque. The man must be completely mad to act thus. Perhaps a few days more will give a clue. I really cannot imagine him to be such a consummate ass.
Enclosed the cheque Paul writes for £12. Nim is well — was at the theatre last night with Pumps — going again this week to the Princess's — with Edward's ticket. Beer is flowing plen-tiful — I consume fully 2 bottles a day and march three miles, and for the last few Sundays have taken a glass of Port—voila, du progrès^
Bien à vous, je vous embrasse
F. Engels
28. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 4 May
Dear Sorge,
I trust you are feeling better and that your fears about becoming quite incapable of writing will not be realised. I too have found writing difficult; since the New Year I have had chronic ophthalmia, which has greatly restricted my reading and particularly my writing. Next week I shall be consulting one of the leading ophthalmologists here.
What you say about the New York louts in your letter of 20 April last[101] is certainly quite right, but you mustn't forget that I can only answer the points you yourself raise, not those about which you say nothing.
The Manifesto has been translated, and only these damned eyes of mine are preventing me from going through it. In my desk I have one French, one Italian and one Danish ms. which are also waiting to be gone through![102] Besides, you were Germans 40 years ago, with a German sense of theory, and that was why the Manifesto was effective, whereas it had no effect at all on other peoples, although it had been translated into French, English, Flemish, Danish, etc. And for the untheoretical, matter of fact Americans different, plainer fare will, I believe, be more wholesome, since we took part in the events depicted in the Manifesto while they did not.
As to my book,[3] the business has been well and truly bungled by la Wischnewetzky, who gave Miss Foster plein pouvoir}[1] which Miss Foster then gave to the Executive.[80]—I immediately protested, but the thing had been done. Up till now la Wischnewetzky has bungled everything she has laid her hands on and I'll never give her anything again; she can do as she pleases and I shall be happy if she accomplishes something, but I've had enough and she must leave me in peace in the future. I replied to her last letter a week ago today.[76] At Liebknecht's request I have sent him the copy of the circular you sent me, but on condition he returns it. He has promised to send the necessary piece for publication.[98]
Aveling is doing famously with his agitation in the East End of London.[84] The American example is proving a draw there and the Radical Clubs — which the Liberals have to thank for their 12 seats out of 69 in London — have approached him about lectures on the American movement and he and Tussy are hard at work. The immediate intention is to found an English labour party with an independent class programme. This would, if all went well, push both the Social Democratic Federation[62] and the Socialist League[21] into the background, which would be the best way of resolving the impending rows. Hyndman knows that it is a matter of life or death to him, especially as he has made enemies of nearly all his people. He has therefore taken up injustice the Executive's charge against Aveling.[103] This is just as well, as it will put an end to the backbiting, while Aveling will have an opportunity to air the matter in public. At Whitsuntide the attitude of the Socialist League will also be clarified, I hope; the Anarchists must be chucked out, or the whole business will be ruined.[95]
The Avelings arranged to send you Time with their articles on America. I imagine you must have got them (March, April, May numbers)." Even the Tory Standard praises them! At the moment the Avelings are doing more and to much better effect than anyone else over here and yet I'm supposed to reply to Mother Wischnewetzky about her childish misgivings over the grave charge under which Dr Aveling will stand until he has disproved the circular of the Executive! Surrounded as she is by her tongue-wagging German sisters, Madame has evidently lost sight of the fact that it is not for Aveling to disprove but rather for the Executive to prove.
Commonweal, Gleichheit and To-Day are going off to you by today's steamer. You will be amused by De Paepe's tall stories in Gleichheit about the Belgian socialists.(1) The movement over there is doing very well, now that the Flemings and the Ghent people have taken matters out of the hands of the Walloons and the Brussels people respectively, but the little chap can't stop telling tall stories. The funniest thing about it is that, whereas the Brussels people would like to found a new International in which they would be the General Council, Powderly has suggested that they join the Knights of Labor.[60] So it's Pope Powderly competing against Pope De Paepe!
This comes with my best wishes and my hopes for your speedy recovery. Yesterday the Avelings and I were in America, i.e. in Buffalo Bill's camp[104]—very nice.
Your
F. Engels
XXVII, Moscow, 1935
29. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 5 May
Dear Ede,
You're the most incorrigible Hamlet I have ever come across. You are aware that Kautsky and I keep completely aloof from the local German goings-on here[105] and have to do so if all our time is not to be wasted on piffling tittle-tattle. You are aware that we haven't got a single spokesman in the local association because all these people are involved in embittered feuds of the pettiest kind.[106] So if we do anything at all in this matter, it will cause a stir, the chaps will want to know the whys and wherefores, and the next day it will be the gossip of all the anarchist clubs. If you were to come over here, a visit to the club and a chat there would at once put you in a position to find out all you want within the space of two or three days, and without causing any stir at all. So in addition to depriving us of a pleasure if you stay away, you would fulfil only half the purpose of your journey. The only person we could bring into play would be old Lessner, and he has grown so rusty that he'd make a pauvre* diplomat.
There's nothing about the Babeuf affair in Avenel's Lundis*b or Anarchasis Cloots.—Yes, there is — pp. 42 and 94.[107]—So I shall send you the Lundis by registered post. Please let me have it back soon, i.e. in about a fortnight, since I need the book for reference and can't very well dispense with it. I used to have the main source, namely Buonarroti's Conspiration de Babeuf, in an English translationb brought out by the Chartists but, like so much else, it has been pinched; I have had another good look for it, but without result.
As regards the Russians, there is a point that ought now to be stressed but of which I have nowhere seen any mention.[108] All over Europe reactionaries are fuming about Nihilist regicide[83] and the use of dynamite in particular, special objects of odium being Russian revolutionaries, whose extradition to Russia they are demanding not without success, even in America. But what is the Russian government up to? In Sofia it gets Alexander Battenberg deposed and, if he wasn't shot in the process, this was thanks solely to his own ineptitude.[109] In Bucharest it instigates assassination attempts on Bulgarian civil governors.d And, lastly — some four weeks ago in Sofia — it gets a dynamite bomb thrown at the house of Major Popoff,e the commandant or whatever he is.[110] So everything the Russian government reproaches the Nihilists with and for which it demands their extradition as common criminals, it is itself doing through the medium of its notorious agents in Bulgaria. We must demand that, in respect of these specifically Russian modes of procedure, the same stan-dards should be applied to revolutionaries and government alike. This is already felt fairly generally, but it is important that it be said — and pretty loudly at that.
The Schnaebelé affair" was obviously a put-up job to get Boulanger into difficulties. The only person to have got the story right, and this as much as a fortnight ago, was Mother Crawford, the Paris correspondent of the Daily News and the Weekly Dispatch, as is confirmed by Bismarck's dispatch.
Whether or not you people in Switzerland are harassed depends solely on how much warlike hubbub there is. If it grows less, the Federal Council will take heart, but if it increases, then woe betide its trousers.
In confidence. Should la Schack return to Switzerland, it might be better not to confide in her too much. She is endowed with an excess of energy which is not always channeled in the right direction. On the one hand she seeks out the liberals from amongst her former acquaintances, on the other her chosen companions are the anarchists among the English workers over here. I personally have no objection to her moving in any circle she pleases, and she herself is a very nice, intelligent and amusing person, but the very fact of her choosing just now, on the eve of a clash with the anarchists in the League (at the Whitsun delegates' conference[95]), to consort with the latter — so much so that the others already call her the Anarchist Countess — is something that must be taken into account. Strictly between ourselves, however, I think she is, all in all, pretty innocuous.
Aveling and Tussy are conducting a splendid propaganda campaign in the East End Radical Clubs,[84] which have been galvanised into life by the example of America and are now seriously thinking of forming an independent labour party. The chaps came to Aveling of their own accord and that's an excellent sign. Should we succeed in gaining a firm foothold there, the Social Democratic Federation[62] and the Socialist League[21] will both be pushed into the background, and a start will have been made on the conquest of London. What is immediately at stake in this instance is a dozen parliamentary seats — these clubs have hitherto been a source of strength to the Liberals here. And even Hyndman has seen the red light, which is why he is repeating in Justice the calumnies levelled against Aveling by the New York Executive.[103] This is just what we want for the furtherance of our campaign. But you can see how difficult our work over here is being made by the lubberly calumnies of the wretched New York Executive.
Mumma,[1] who is here at the moment, sends her regards.
Your
F. E.
30. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 7 May
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I have received your note of April 25 with thanks but no preface; if I receive it per next steamer on Monday I shall send you word at once. In the meantime as I received no copy of the book" as yet, will you please see that I get at least something to work upon, a proof-sheet or whatever it is, as the Volkszeitung translation[12] cannot pass under any circumstances, I shall work at the translation as fast as my inflamed eye will allow. I am only sorry you did not send the ms. or a proof as soon as the idea of a separate German edition occurred to you.[111]
Sorge writes to me:
'Wischnewetzky's bedauern sehr, durch die Verheimlichungen und Unterschlagungen der Executive zur Absendung des bekannten Briefs an Dich veranlasst worden zu sein, und haben sich alle erdankliche Mühe gegebeng, Aveling in der New Yorker Sektion Gerechtigkeit zu verschaffen.'(1)'[112]
If this, as I must suppose, was written with your consent, then I am perfectly satisfied, and have no desire whatever to return to that subject in a spirit of controversy.
Nobody was more rejoiced than I when I learnt that the book was finally out of the hand of that despicable Executive and of the Socialist Labor Party[80] generally. Forty years' experience have shown me how useless and literally thrown away are all these publications, by small cliques, that by their very mode of publication are excluded from the general book-market, and thereby from literary cognizance. It was the same thing even with the party publications in Germany up to 1878; and only since the Sozialistengesetz*'[52] which forced our people to organize a book trade of their own.b in opposition both to the government and to the officially organized Leipzig book-trade, has this been overcome. And I do not see why in America where the movement begins with such gigantic and imposing force, the same mistakes, with the same draw-backs in their wake, should be quite unnecessarily gone through over again. The whole Socialist, and, in England, Chartist literature has thereby been made so extinct that even the British Museum cannot now procure copies at any price!
I remain, dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
very sincerely yours
F. Engels
Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F, Reproduced from the original A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906
31. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 7 May
Dear Sorge,
I wrote to you on the 4thc and have received yours of 26 April. Very many thanks for your reports, which I feel sure must have been written while you were suffering from severe physical tribulations. As to the bit about la Wischnewetzky and her sorrow over the denunciatory letter* she sent, I can only assume that you wrote it with her consent in order that she be spared an outright pater peccavi!b I had to write to her today and therefore told her: if that, as I must suppose, was written with her consent, I was perfectly satisfied and had no longer any reason to revert to that subject in a spirit of controversy. So you see, I want to make things as easy as possible for her. However she's not only inept, but a Jonah if ever there was one. She has written to say that she wants to bring out my preface in German.[111] Naturally I have no objection to that. But though aware that I hadn't got a copy, she nevertheless omitted to send me the ms. at the same time so that I could translate it. Nor have I received either the book itself or a proof-sheet of the preface— instead, the preface was handed over to the Volkszeitung for translation. This last has proved to be a thoroughly insipid affair and, what's more, the mistakes it contains almost lead me to imagine that she has not even made an accurate copy of my English ms.[12] Well, she now writes to say that the ms. has at last gone off (not a word about the Volkszeitung translation)—but there' s still no sign of the ms.!
I'm particularly pleased that Mr Jonas has had to eat humble pie.[113]
Considering his jealousy of the Executive in the business sphere, he was the last person one would have expected to bestir himself on their behalf and, precisely because he knew he had burnt his fingers, he has behaved as shabbily as could be throughout the whole episode.
Friend Liebknecht, too, is suddenly proving reluctant 'to break with the Executive'. As to the $8,000 that has been sent, the Executive is trying to use it as a bribe, nor could the Germans possibly stand up to such people! However I have put a pistol to the head of the worthy Liebknecht, who has grown anxious all of a sudden not to fall out with either side, and he'll come round all right. If he hadn't made such fools of us, our reply to Circular II would have long since been ready.[98] But it is not really so urgent and should clinch the matter. We have won, thanks to your support and all you have done; without you we should still be a long way from where we are now. What a good thing that we old chaps can still depend on one another.
Your
F. Engels First published, slightly abridged, in and in full in: Marx and Engels, Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Works, First Russian Edition. Vol. Joh. Phil. Becker, Joss Dietzgen, XXVII, Moscow, 1935 Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A, Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 Printed according to the original
32. Engels to Pasquale Martignetti 21 May
Dear Citizen Martignetti,
I'm glad to be able to inform you that my efforts on your behalf have not been entirely unsuccessful.[8] Johannes Wedde, editor of the (soc.) Bürger-Zeitung in Hamburg, has written to me as follows:
'A businessman here (cotton firm), who is a personal friend of mine and has no political prejudices, may perhaps have an opening for Martignetti, though only a modest one to begin with. However he would like Martignetti to send a photograph first. I find this rather odd — as does my friend himself — but it is necessary on practical grounds. It would be a good idea if the photograph were sent to this gentleman by Martignetti in person, together with a letter of recom-mendation. His name is Johannes Paul, of the firm of Paul & Steinberg, Alterwall 58.'
So if you want to find out whether a post is available there, you would be well-advised to send Mr Paul your photograph. Overleaf is the draft of a letter for you to send him, worded in conformity with German commercial usage. I would remind you not to engage in any overt political activity while in Hamburg, because if you do you will certainly be expelled. The position of socialists in Germany gets worse every day and further coercive legislation is in the offing. O n the other hand this may give you a chance to find an opening in commerce and thus embark on a new career.
My eye seems to be getting better at last. But I can't yet turn my mind to serious work, so your manuscript* is still in abeyance.
With kindest regards,
Ever yours,
F. Engels
To Johannes Paul, Hamburg.
I was pleased to learn through Mr Joh. Wedde that there is a prospect of my securing employment with your esteemed firm but that you would like to see my photograph first. I enclose same herewith and would mention that for the past (il numéro degli annib) ... years I have been employed in the Royal Notary's Office here. I should be greatly obliged if you would be so good as to furnish me with particulars of the work I should be required to do and of any other conditions. Were the prospect of this post to materialise, I should gladly do all in my power to discharge my new duties in accordance with your wishes. With sincere thanks for your sympathetic interest.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant, P.M.
E l'indirizzo esteriorec
Herrn Johannes Paul in Firma Paul & Steinberg Alterwall 58 Hamburg Germania
33. Engels to Laura Lafargue 21 May
My dear Laura,
A few words in a hurry. There is hope of a place for Martignetti in Hamburg — correspondence about this has kept me busy to-day.a You will have seen injustice how Hyndman has tried to bring out Edward's American bother,[103] but has apparently got more than he expectedb—his retreat in this week's No. is undignified enough.[114] A 3rd Circular on this affair is in the printer's hands.[115]1 have had some droll correspondence with Liebknecht about the letter from him it will publish. In New York we are completely victorious and that is the chief point; and our final circular I hope will settle the business.
Paul's success is though externally negative, still quite satisfactory.[90]
Only the ballotage seems to have been attempted on rather too Parisian grounds. However it gives him a better standing for the future.
I confess the success of Brousse and Co. is inconceivable to me.[116] It is no use crying after a new 'journal quotidien c after having been kicked out of ever so many and after having secured so little permanent effect out of it while our friends had it.[91] But all the same the next best thing to a victory of our people is the entry of Brousse and Co. into the City Council — there they will have to show what they are. Cremer, Howell and Co. were never lower in London than now since they are in Parliament.
My congratulations to Paul for having cudgelled one of his electors. Ça doit avoir produit un effete
My eye is considerably better since I have taken to smoke different cigars. There was the determining cause of the whole affair. You may laugh but I shall as soon as I have time explain to Paul medicinally that the thing was entirely caused by applying too much guano to the tobacco-fields of the Vuelta Abajo, Of course I have to be very careful still, limit reading and writing. I am rather curious to see how the Ministerial crisis in France will end[117]—unless it brings in Clemenceau,
[1] See previous letter - b See 'Dr Aveling and the Socialist Labour Party in America', Justice, No. 174, 14 May 1887 - c daily newspaper - d This must have created a stir it will be the old affair over again, and I doubt whether Clemenceau will go in just now. He is the last resource of the bourgeois republic and would be soft to go in without a dissolution.
Edward and Tussy speak to-day in an open air meeting in Victoria Park, Hackney; the weather was boisterous and wet though, showery up to 4 p.m., now better. Don't know the hour of meeting, but hope it's late in the afternoon. Their agitation in the East End is going on quietly and steadily.[84] Next Sunday Delegate Conference of the League.[95] Will decide its fate. Both League and Federation[62] are in a bad way; Hyndman is in very bad odour again amongst his lot, has fallen out with Champion, and Burns goes about preaching an independent union of the working men of both societies leaving Hyndman, Morris, Aveling and Co. to fight out their quarrels themselves.
So much for to-day - the implacable Nim calls with the dinner-bell.
Affectionately yours
F. Engels
34. Engels to Karl Kautsky 27 May[118]
I shall finish the translation of the preface to the English Lage, etc. tomorrow.[111] If you would like to have it and can get a copy done by Tuesday evening, I shall gladly place it at your disposal. A good part of it can be picked up early tomorrow, Saturday, if necessary — Nim will know what to do, should early prove to be all too early.
Your
F. E.
35. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 28 May
For heaven's sake please don't publish Jonas' deplorable translation of my preface[12] in the Sozialdemokrat. Have just done one myself, having with much difficulty finally retrieved the ms. of the English original from America. But I've also offered it to the Baron(1)—the Baron has just been here. He will surrender to you my translation of the preface and is getting a copy done with all speed, as my ms. must go off to America at once to oust the Jonasiad. Singer has been over here; told of C. A. Schramm's latest heroic deed in regard to yourself — what next? Tomorrow's conference of the delegates of the Socialist League will decide its fate.[95] I have still not received a single copy of the English Lage}' while K. Kautsky has been sent 18, so I'll finally get one tomorrow. Fine goings-on! My eye is improving slowly.
Your
F. E.
36. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 28 May
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I find both Injustice and Sozialdemokrat of this week a notice of the English Lage,[11] but have myself up to now not received a single copy, nor even seen the book. There seems to be some queer management somewhere, which may want looking into by you.—Just this moment Karl Kautsky comes in and says he has received a box with 18 copies, of which he kindly places a few at my disposal, so that I have at least a chance of a look at the book.
I am informed that the London Agentb of Mr Lovell is the firm which specially represents Bismarckism in the London Book Trades. This cannot of course be helped but is an unfortunate circumstance for us. Translation of preface[111] just too late for this Steamer, per next mail certain.
Yours faithfully
F. E.
37. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 31 May
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I have just mailed to you, registered, the translation of the preface.[111]
It will also be published in the Sozialdemokrat.[3]-
To-day I received per post 12 copies of the book(1) which I was very glad of and for which please accept my best thanks. The book looks better than I was led to expect, I have not as yet had time to look at the contents.
Very truly yours — in haste
F. Engels
38. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 4 June
Dear Sorge,
No movement causes so much fruitless work as one that is still at the sectarian stage. You know that as well as I do. For everything then still revolves round tittle-tattle. As will this letter about English affairs.
Well, last Sunday the conference of the Socialist League was held.[95] The anarchist elements which had gained admission to it were victorious, being supported by Morris, who has a mortal hatred of all things parliamentary, is generally muddle-headed and, as a poet, considers himself above science. Resolution — in itself quite innocuous as there can after all be no question of parliamentary action here and now—adopted by 17 votes to 11 (see Commonweal, 4 June(1)). Of these one was cast by an ad hoc reconstituted bogus branch (three men, their three wives and — Mrs Schack!) and three by London delegates with mandates from the provinces, which, however, involved an obligation to vote against any such pro-abstention resolution. Hence three stolen votes and one invalid one.
What really clinched the matter was Morris' declaration that he would quit the moment any parliamentary action was accepted in principle. And since Morris makes good the Commonweal's deficit to the tune of £4 a week, this was for many the decisive factor.
Our people now intend to get the provinces organised, which they are at present well on the way to doing, and to call an extraordinary conference in about three or four months' time with a view to quashing the above. But it's unlikely to succeed; in the fabrication of voting sections, the anarchists are vastly superior to ourselves and can make eight enfranchised sections out of seven men. But nevertheless the farce is not without its good points and, having regard to the mood of the working men in the League, it was unavoidable. Bax is for us, of course, and, of the working men, Donald, Binning and Mahon amongst others — the best. None of ours stood for election to the Executive Council. The anarchists, by the way, may shortly throw our people out, and that might be all to the good.
The main thing is that, with the emergence of a genuine labour movement in the offing, our people should not be shackled with an organisation which lays claim to the leadership of the whole — à la Executive in New York and the Social Democratic Federation[62] over here. Everywhere in the provinces the workers are organising local associations (socialist) independently of London. They have a tremendous contempt for everything that hails from London.
Now for some further tittle-tattle. Hardly had we finished dealing with the New York Executive[115] than Mother Schack wrote to say she could no longer frequent my house because unable to meet Aveling, against whom there were grave imputations far more serious than the charges made in America, etc. On my request that she should specify and provide evidence, she replied with mysterious insinuations worthy of the most inveterate scandalmonger, refused to provide any details or evidence, suggested that I should myself make inquiries in London about Aveling's antecedents and promised her help! I, of course, replied[76] saying that / felt neither obliged nor inclined to supply proof of anything she might assert; this was up to her and, as she refused to do so, I could only thank her profusely for her decision not to call on me in future.
I am bothering you with this only because la Schack will undoubtedly write to her bosom friend, Mrs Wischnewetzky, expatiating on the subject, and people might come pestering you about it. All this tittle-tattle emanates from pious souls enraged by the fact that Aveling, the son of a parson of high repute (Congregationalist)(2)'[122]—with whom, by the by, he was on the best of terms until his death not long ago — had joined in Bradlaugh's disreputable atheist campaign; and now that Aveling has gone over to socialism, it is being gleefully redisseminated by Bradlaugh & Co. It revolves round two points, first the fact that his first wife lives apart from him and runs him down — she left him for a parson — and, secondly, his being up to his eyes in debt. He contracted those debts 1. through being stupid enough to endorse substantial bills for Bradlaugh's printer out of sheer willingness to oblige, and all unaware that Bradlaugh had sacked the man, thus forcing him into bankruptcy; 2. because, in company with Bradlaugh, he had set up a physiological laboratory and schoolb in Newman St, and the crafty Bradlaugh — a former attorney's clerk — had so arranged matters as to place sole legal responsibility on Aveling. When things went wrong and it came to a split between Aveling and Bradlaugh, it was easy for the latter to encumber Aveling with all the liabilities while himself openly appropriating all the assets. Aveling has now got to go on discharging these debts till he's blue in the face. He is as easy to diddle in money-matters as a three-year-old — only appeal to his sense of honour and he'll do anything you want. And as always, it's those people who are honourable to the point of absurdity when it comes to money, who are reviled as swindlers. All this la Schack could have learned from me simply by asking. But that wouldn't have suited her book. It was something quite different she was after.
La Schack — in other respects a sociable, amusing person — is intent on cutting a figure, à tout prix. Having been pushed into our party as a result of harassment by the police, with whom she had crossed swords over their control of prostitution, she embarked on a women's campaign in Germany which, under different circumstances, might have had some point but which, because of the Anti-Socialist Law,[52] brought down upon the party, or so Singer tells me, three prosecutions for conspiracy; for no sooner did the women fall out among themselves than they began to gossip about, if not denounce, the activities of the men in the party organisation. Here again the police fortunately put a spoke in her wheel.a Thereupon she comes over here, consorts continually with the pious bourgeois women of the Anti-Contagious-Diseases Acts Agitation (against the attempt to introduce state-licensed and state-controlled brothels, and in favour of free trade in whores, a cause for which there is much to be said), from whom she picks up all the tittle-tattle about Aveling etc., also with the anarchist elements in the League[21]—some of whom listen avidly as she retails the self-same tittle-tattle, while others redisseminate it themselves — and throws herself more and more into anarchistic goings-on. When things came to a head in the League,[95] she realised that her regular visits to me must cease, and cast around for a seemly or unseemly pretext for breaking off relations herself before they were broken off for her. Aveling was to serve as scapegoat to this end and hence all this tittle-tattle, which for me has meant nothing but an extra dose of correspondence about cock-and-bull stories and hasn't done my eyes much good.
And with that, goodbye for today. By the same post I am sending off a parcel containing I To-Day, 2 Commonweals, I Gleichheit, 5 English and 5 German copies of Aveling's circular.[115]
I have now sent Mrs Wischnewetzky the preface in German[111] by registered post (Wednesday'sb steamer).
Your
F. Engels
See Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 30, 22 July 1887 - b 1 June
39. Engels to Laura Lafargue 7 June[4 0]
My dear Laura,
Here is a heap of gossip for you — while the movement is still in the sectarian stage it resolves itself all into gossip — and such is the case in England.
Last Sunday was the Delegate Conference of the League.[95] Morris and the Anarchists carried a resolution that the League was to hold to an anti-parliamentary policy — vote 17 to ll. (1) Amongst the 17 one bogus Anarchist section and 3 who voted against their instructions. The real reason was Morris' money which is to continue to pay the £4. weekly deficit of the Commonweal; if the resolution fell through, Morris would have resigned.
Our friends are now going to try to organise their sections better in the provinces and to call an extraordinary conference to upset this. I don't believe in it, neither does Tussy, but the attempt is unavoidable on account of the feeling among the working-class element.
One of the prominent (in a small way) members of the above bogus Anarchist section was Mother Schack (who by the bye is exactly your age!) who has lately patronized the Anarchists considerably, this appearing to her the most likely means to jouer un rôle quelconque ici}[3] As by this she placed herself in a position where she must either discontinue her visits at my house or expect an unpleasant explication, she took the initiative in breaking off. On 29th the Conference. On 30th she writes me a letter: she cannot continue visiting me because she cannot meet Aveling as he has committed discreditable acts and also is slandering whom?—Tussy! I replied asking for particulars and proofs, and stating that unless I received them, I should communicate her letter to Edward.[76] Reply: she could state no particulars but invited me to inquire into Edward's character and antecedents generally, in which case she would assist me. This I naturally declined and again summoned her to particularise and prove, or take the consequences. Again she declines, warns me that 'the credit of my house' must suffer if I take the responsibility for Edward, etc. Nothing but gossip, insinuations, infamies. The charge of Edward's slandering Tussy reduces itself to an insinuation that he spreads the idea that Tussy is extremely jealous!—Well, I told her in my reply that the credit of my house requiring from the people that met there the courage to stand by what they said about one another, I could only be extremely grateful to her for the resolution she had come to, to break off her visits. Of course I read the whole of the letters to Tussy and Edward who intend calling on her to-morrow and try to force her to some definite statement in the presence of the Kautskys. I don't think it will lead to much but let them try.
I am glad we are happily rid of this madam who has a foot in every camp, religious cranks, Anarchists, etc., and is a thorough Klatschschwester.* She first got the myths about Edward from her religious friends and had them confirmed by Mother Besant who has every reason to hold her noise but reckons on Edward's melodramatic generosity. And it is merely because he insisted on doing the virtuous hero of melodrama who is slandered right and left and rather glories in it because it belongs to the part and the eternal justice will end in bringing out the truth and show him resplendent in all the glory of his virtue, that all this slander has spread. But we shall stir him up a bit, and I think experience has told on him a little too, so that as soon as we get hold of something tangible, we shall soon put an end to it all.
Yesterday Sam Moore left here, and to-day we find a post-card announcing Schorlemmer for to-night. Pumps and her children are here, the boy is really a splendid fellow, with more irony in him than both his parents together can boast of.
At last I can sit by an open window! That is something. Sam Moore wishes to know whether Paul has received the Beckmann, History of Inventions, he sent him.
Yours affectionately
F. E.
Nim sends her love, she is rather asthmatical after the winter.
40. Engels to Jules Guesde 11 June
Dear Citizen Guesde,
I would gladly lend a hand in getting the 18th Brumaire* published in the resuscitated Socialiste,[23] but to this there are two minor obstacles.
In the first place, as you know, it was intended that, at the time of its publication in the Socialiste, the Communist Manifesto^ should also appear in book form.[123] For reasons which are not known to me, that edition never appeared, and I should like to be assured that such a thing will not recur.
In the second place — and this is a matter of far greater moment — I am prevented by eye-trouble, which has been dragging on for the past six months, from taking on any literary commitments at the present time. And, since a great deal still remains to be done before the translation is completed, it is ten to one that printing will be held up and that we shall miss the boat altogether.
Hence I would ask you to allow the matter to drop, for the time being at any rate; later on, when I am again fit for work, we might discuss it further.
With best wishes for the success of the Socialiste,
Yours very sincerely
F. Engels
Printed acording to the original
41. Engels to Laura Lafargue 11 June
My dear Laura,
Mother Schack has had her punishment. Yesterday Tussy and Edward went to the Kautskys, with whom she lives. Found her in. She refused to see Edward. Tussy and Mrs Kautsky went in to her bedroom. Interpellated as to what were the facts against Edward and what her proofs, she declined repeatedly to say anything. Tussy, after various severe hits, told her this refusal was a Gemeinheit* She: das lasse ich mir von niemand sagen!b—Tussy: Dann werden Sie sich es jetzt von mir noch einmal in Gegenwart von Louise Kautsky sagen lassen, dass es eine Gemeinheit ist, wenn Sie solche Anklagen vorbringen und nicht dafür einstehn.c Upon which she bolted out of the room, leaving Tussy in possession of her own bedroom!
She even tried to get old Lessner to fall in with her slanders but got the worst of it. She also says Pumps is sat upon by Percy! All this comes out now at once, but it has had two good effects, it will make Edward see what his treating all that stuff with contempt leads to and will make him speak out about various matters about which he ought to have spoken in his own defence; and secondly it has helped the Kautskys out of their unfortunate position in the house with Scheu. They are going to leave and take a flat for themselves.
I don't know whether I told you she had Mother Besant to tea the other day and said in her presence that all our deputies, Bebel, Liebknecht, Singer and all were corrupt. Kautsky jumped up and put his fist under her nose, he was in such a rage. If it had not been for her staying with them, we should have shaken her off long ago.
Schorlemmer is still here, doing business as Vice-President of Chemical Section at British Association meeting, Manchester, next August.[124] He, Nim, and Pumps had a long conversation this morning, planning a trip to Paris in September. Châteaux en Espagne* so far. He sends his kindest regards to both of you.
Affectionately yours
F. Engels
42. Engels to Karl Kautsky 15 June
Dear Kautsky,
O n what day did you write to Liebknecht about la Schack? I've just had a letter from Mrs Liebknecht from which it appears that she, at any rate, knows nothing at all about the matter. Would like to clear up the mystery.
Your
F. E.
43. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 18 June[1 2 5]
Dear Sorge,
I shall send this letter to Rochester or better still, perhaps — to abide strictly by your instructions — to Hoboken.
Postcard received. You guessed aright. The delay was all WilhelmV fault and I have had to hold a pistol to his head. Meanwhile you will have had the circulars (6 English, 6 German), sent off in my parcel of 4 June.
End of the Schack affair: after I had thanked her heartily for proposing not to visit me any more, Tussy and Aveling went to see her on Friday, 10 June. She received only Tussy, who demanded to know what facts she had to adduce against Aveling, and upon what evidence.— Reply again refused.—Tussy observes:-—Mrs Kautsky being present— That's a filthy thing to do.—La Schack: I won't let anyone speak to me like that.—Tussy: In that case, I shall repeat, here in the presence of Louise Kautsky, that to bring charges against someone else and not have the courage to substantiate them is a filthy thing to do.—Thereupon la Schack flounced out of her own bedroom, where this was taking place, and that was the last Tussy saw of her. A few days later she left for Germany. She is one of the most vulgar scandalmongers I have ever known, typical Prussian Junker aristo.
I shall for the time being go on sending you the Commonweal because of the debate between Bax and Bradlaugh.[126] Bax will hardly get the better of the crafty Bradlaugh — in the eyes of the public at large. He is very talented, studies a lot, but is still deeply immersed in German philosophy, which he will, no doubt, get over in the long run, but has as yet by no means digested.
In the interests of accuracy I should rectify the assertion in my last letter about Aveling's first wife running away with a parsonb; in fact, they separated by mutual consent, so I shall let the matter of the said parson — although he did play some part in the affair — rest at that.
The Socialiste has resumed publication. Having had a legacy from his old man, Deville put 12,000 francs at its disposal. I shall write and tell Lafargue to have it sent to you, but whether or not this is done, I shall presumably learn only from yourself. I know how they go about things over there.
Yesterday the Irish Coercion Bill was whipped through the House of Commons, clause by clause, in two minutes.[86] It is a worthy companion-piece to the Anti-Socialist Law.[52] Arbitrary powers for the police, no less. Things regarded as fundamental rights in England are forbidden in Ireland and become crimes. It will be the death-knell of the present Tories, whom I wouldn't have thought so stupid, and of the Unionist Liberals,[127] whom I should hardly have thought so base. What's more, the Bill is to remain in force, not just for a time but for ever. The English Parliament has descended to the level of the German Reichstag. Not that it's likely to last very long.
It will soon be time to publish Marx's letter to you about Henry George.[128] Maybe after next November's elections in New York when George is again throwing his weight about there.[129] He should be given enough latitude, either to develop further or to run to seed, the latter course being evidently the one he prefers.
Another parcel will be going off to you. I have not yet had the last Commonweal; will follow shortly. I hope a rest in Rochester will soon put you to rights again. In this marvellous weather the enforced idleness, due to the condition of my eye, suits me very well. Let's hope it goes on like this.
Your
F. E.
XXVII, Moscow, 1935
44. Engels to Pasquale Martignetti 20 June
My Dear Friend Martignetti,
Mr Paul's silence is due to the fact that he is on his travels just now,[1]
as I learn from Wedde, so it would be no good inquiring at present whether he has received your photograph, but I shall probably have a chance of finding this out shortly and hope that you may meanwhile hear from him direct. Kindest regards,
Yours,
E Engels
45. Engels to John Lincoln Mahon 22 June
Dear Mahon,
Enclosed your programme with a few suggestions.[131]—I consider it very good as a spontaneous working-class declaration of principles— requiring but a little more precision of language here and there, and a few additions.
Sorry I could not send it before but have sore eyes and dare not read or write much and had many interruptions — will write more fully tomorrow.
Yours faithfully
F. Engels
46. Engels to John Lincoln Mahon 23 June
Dear Mahon,
I returned you yesterday the programme with some notes which may perhaps be of use at some future time.[132]
What you say about the leaders of the Trades Unions is quite true. We have had to fight them from the beginning of the International. From them have sprung the Macdonalds, Burts, Cremers and Howells, and their success in the parliamentary line encourages the minor leaders to imitate their conduct. If you can get the Trades Unionists of the North to consider their Unions as a valuable means of organisation and of obtaining minor results, but no longer to regard 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work' as the ultimate end, then the occupation of the leaders will be gone.
I think your plan of organisation rather premature; the provinces ought first to be aroused thoroughly, and that is as yet far from being the case. And unless there is an overwhelming force from the provinces brought to bear on London, the London squabblers will not be silenced — except by a real movement of the London masses. There has been in my opinion already too much impatience shown in what is called by courtesy the socialist movement in England; experimentalising with fresh attempts at organisation will be worse than useless until there is really something to organise. And when the masses once begin to move they will soon organise themselves.
As to the League, if it upholds the resolution[1] of the last Conference,[95]
I do not see how anyone can remain a member who intends using the present political machinery as a means of propaganda and action.
In the meantime it is necessary, of course, that the propaganda be kept up and I am quite willing to contribute my share. But the means for this must be got together and distributed by some English Committee, and as far as they are to come from London, by a London Committee. I shall speak to the Avelings about this and give them my contribution.
I do not know any books where you could get information about the Luddite movement[133]; it will be a laborious task to trace out reliable sources from the references in history books and pamphlets of the time.
Yours faithfully
F. Engels
47. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 30 June
Dear Sorge,
Have received letters, etc., up to 16 June. I shall write and tell the Wischnewetzkys[76] to word the note thus: 'to repudiate the silly calumnies to which Aveling has been exposed as a result of his American propaganda tour'.[134] If they don't like that either, I shall tell them to refer to you and you may, if necessary, authorise them to delete the entire note. For I cannot possibly cite Aveling without saying a word about all that nonsense.
Aveling sends the enclosed postcard re Time.[135] The copies will have gone to Rochester.
The business of Scribner's advertisement for Capital has the appearance of a deliberate piracy.[136] Thanks for the information; I shall pass it on to Sonnenschein. So far as I know, Scribner is not Sonnenschein's agent in New York.
That the members of the Executive should have believed they had bought Liebknecht's silence with the electoral funds(1) was predictable and not altogether unjustified. Luckily Liebknecht's first boastful letter had put him wholly in my power[115] and of this, when he tried to withdraw, I made the most determined use.
Over here Hyndman has been continually defaming Aveling,[103] in which he is strongly abetted by Aveling's reticence about such things. If we could catch the fellow out just once, he'd have cause to remember it. However, he is gradually bringing about his own demise. He's so wretchedly envious that he cannot tolerate a rival and is openly or secretly at war with all and sundry. And Aveling is at last eager for the fray and Tussy will see to it that he stays that way.
You mustn't forget what I told you about la Schack. The creature wants to come back and is partout determined to cut a figure over here. So it's better to know exactly what she's up to. The affair between her and the Wischnewetzkys caused the Kautskys and Avelings much glee; may very well have had something to do with her going over to the Anarchists so as to prove that she had finished with us. Liebknecht writes to say that, in a letter to Dresden, she came out with the shock-ing news that Aveling already had a previous wife from whom he was not divorced, and that he lived with Tussy without being married to her! So profound a secret is it in this country that any Englishman harbouring doubts on this score and desirous of making the Avelings' acquaintance, is informed of it by them in writing so that he cannot claim to have been kept in the dark and received under false pretences.
One day she was sentimentalising away to old Lenchen, saying how very much in love with one another the Avelings seemed to be, if only they always remained so, etc. 'Well, supposing they don't,' Lenchen burst out, 'they'll just part company again, and that will be that.' Which brought Madame Tittle-Tattle up sharp — she hadn't expected Lenchen to take such a practical view of things.
I have written to Lafargue[76] telling him to send the Socialiste to you at Rochester, but have had no reply.
I trust the warm weather will put you to rights again. It is doing me a power of good. During these four weeks of drought I have had all my windows wide open and lived so to speak in the open air; I find it as good as a visit to a spa and am also hoping it will make my eyes better again.
I am sick to death of Father McGlynn and George is turning out to be a proper founder of sects. Not that I really expected anything else; considering how recent the movement is, however, this was a transi-tional stage that could hardly have been avoided. Such people must be given the length of their tether; the masses will learn only from the consequences of their own mistakes.
I wish you a good recovery and good weather in Mount Desert!
Your
F. Engels
XXVII, Moscow 1935
48. Engels to Laura Lafargue 15 July[4 0]
My dear Laura,
Thanks for your letters. I have Schorlemmer still here; a chronic catarrh of the stomach, the great heat, and the absence of a very pressing wish to revisit his dear country keep him here. Besides him, Fritz Beust from Zürich, whom you saw here eight years ago, has arrived too. So I must confine myself to urgent matters.
I was obliged to give a card of introduction (to Paul) to a young Dr Conrad Schmidt of Königsberg, who dabbles in question sociale. He is about the greenest youth I ever saw, he was here about 3 months, seems a decent fellow, as decent fellows go nowadays, frisst keine Schuhnägel und säuft keine Tinte? If Paul deposits him in rue Richelieu, Bibliothèque nationale, he will not trouble him much. He admires Zola in whom he has discovered the 'materialistische Geschichtsanschauung \b
The Boulanger fit of paroxysm[137] ought to make our people demand again and again l'armement du peuple as the only guarantee against Caesaristic velleities on the part of popular generals. That is the only argument against the outcry of the Royalist press with regard to Boulanger being a danger to — the Republic they say, and the future monarchy they mean.
Saturday week, 23 July, we move to Eastbourne, 4 Cavendish Place,[138]
same as last year. If your Jersey trip is realised, let us know. I should not wonder if Tussy and Edward caught the Jersey fever.
Love from Nim, Jollymeier.
Yours affectionately
F. Engels
49. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 20 July
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I have returned to you by this mail the whole of the two sets of reviews you sent me, with sincere thanks.[140] They have greatly amused me.—Criticism is almost on the same level everywhere, from Stockholm and London to New York and San Prancisco, and since the rapid rise of a shoddy bourgeoisie in Russia I am afraid that even there the reviews will soon sink to the common level.
Yours sincerely
F. Engels
Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906
50. Engels to Karl Kautsky 22 July
Dear Kautsky,
Leaving tomorrow. Address 4 Cavendish Place, Eastbourne.[138]
Herewith a package of newspapers.[3] Greetings from us all. You're not too hot I hope!
Here super-shirt-sleeve weather.
Your
F. E.
51. Engels to John Lincoln Mahon 26 July
Dear Mr Mahon,
Your postcard with address was forwarded to me here, hence the delay.
If your letter means anything, it means that you intend, as far as you can, to shove Aveling entirely out of the movement.[141] If you decline to work along with Aveling on public grounds, you are bound to come out with them, so as either to enable Aveling to clear himself or to free the movement from a dangerous and false co-operator. If not, then you are bound, in my opinion, to set aside your personal feelings in the interest of the movement.
Of all the various Socialist groups in England, what is now the 'opposition' in the League,[21] was the only one with which so far I could thoroughly sympathise. But if that group is allowed to fall to pieces from mere personal whims and squabbles, or from mutual suspicions and insinuations which are carefully kept away from the light of day, it can only dissolve into a number of small cliques held together by personal motives, and utterly unfit to take any sort of lead in a really national movement. And I do not see on what grounds I should sympathise with any of these cliques more than with another, or with the Social Democratic Federation[62] or any other body.
I have no right to ask you why you refuse to co-operate with Aveling. But as you have worked with him for years,[142] he has, and therefore I consider myself bound to communicate your letter to him.
Yours sincerely
F. Engels
52. Engels to Karl Kautsky 1 August
Dear Kautsky,
I return Mandl herewith; signature overleaf.[143] I'm glad you like Ventnor. It is lovely here too, except for the Bank Holiday[144] today, besides which Bax has set up his headquarters here for a week and cate-chises me for an hour and a half every morning with the conscien-tiousness of an American interviewer. Schorlemmer was here until last Saturday when he went off to Germany. F. Beust leaves on Thursday.
So far as I remember, when dealing with the iron law of wages neither Mandl nor L. Frankel correctly emphasised its elastic rather than iron character.[145] And, while Lassalle may sometimes formulate the law more or less correctly,[146] he is wont to apply it in practice in such a way as to declare the minimum wage to be the normal wage.
It's very difficult to write here, with four people sitting at one's back, chatting and drinking beer. So good cheer and goodbye.
Warmest regards from us all,
Your
F. E.
53. Engels to Karl Kautsky 5 August
A Dr Joseph Maria Baernreither, Austrian judge and member of the House of Deputies, actual author of a book on English benefit societies[147] and future ditto of a ditto on ditto Trades Unions, proposes to visit me. Can you tell me anything about this Bärenreuter[3] or Bärenhäuterb} Many regards.
Your
F. E.
Return Burger-Zeitungs herewith. When do you go home again?
54. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 8 August
Dear Sorge,
All postcards, letters and packages up to 27 July gratefully received, save for a few newspapers which are still in London and awaited daily. We have been here for a fortnight and shall be staying until about the 25th of this month.[138] It's terribly hot, hardly a drop of rain since the 1st of June, in other words an American summer. There's only one remedy for your leg, rest and patience; then, with any luck, it will get well again, but at our age things of this sort always drag on for the devil of a long time.
Let Monsieur Grunzig see what sort of a job he can make of a biography of myself.[148] You were quite right to leave the man to his own resources; who knows what rubbish he might not have written on the strength of your notes, only to cite you as his authority. Kautsky has written a biographical piece about me which is appearing in the Österreichischer Arbeiter-Kalender[1]^ and which I have read over, corrected and added to; hence, so far as the facts are concerned, it can serve for any future eventuality and I shall send it to you. Needless to say, I am not responsible for anything else that may be in it.
I had to do most of the proof-correcting of Das Kapital I, 3rd ed., while ill in bed so that various mistakes slipped through. The punctua-tion was deliberately altered to approximate to the French and English, as is now largely done in Germany. For that matter, the only place where the old pedagogic German of our boyhood days is still taught and written is America.
Aveling has told me that he himself sent you the copy of Time.[89] But if only one halfpenny stamp too few is affixed to a parcel of books for abroad it will be withheld by the English post office. I shall make further inquiries on my return.—Aveling and Tussy are having a holiday at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace.
The business of the Wischnewetzkys is becoming ever more of a joke.[149] In Germany an Executive such as this would have long since been removed from office. The chaps would seem to think that they can afford to do anything, and that the party will stand by them through thick and thin in return for their requiring the Americans to place themselves under the command of a German society wherein sheer lubberli-ness would appear increasingly to be gaining the upper hand. But if your Germans over there make that a condition for their co-operation, the movement will soon outdistance them. Things have at last got going in your part of the world and, unless I am much mistaken in my Americans, they will astonish us all by the magnificence of their movement and also by the immensity of the blunders they will perpetrate, thereby ultimately clarifying their ideas. Pre-eminent when it comes to practice and still in swaddling clothes as regards theory — such is the situation, nor could it be otherwise; but at the same time a country without any traditions (save religious) and with a democratic republic for its point of departure, and a people more abounding in energy than any other. The course of the movement will by no means follow a classic straight line but will zig-zag badly and at times appear to turn back on its tracks, though in America this will matter far less than it would over here. Henry George was an unavoidable evil but will soon be consigned to oblivion, as will Powderly, not to say McGlynn, whose momentary popularity is understandable enough in so pious a country. In the autumn, a great deal will become — I wouldn't say clearer — but rather even more involved, as the crisis looms closer. The annual autumn elections are a real boon in that, over and over again, they impel the masses towards unity.
Mount Desert is undoubtedly very beautiful, but this place isn't to be sneezed at either — long avenues of ancient elms and oaks right next the sea, the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head right next the town, which last has quite a continental air with its tree-lined promenades — if only I could again walk 4 or 5 miles (English ones)!
I shall go on writing to Mount Desert from here up till about the 18th or 20th of August, and after that to Rochester unless instructed otherwise.
I am sending you the August number of To-day containing some comments, not altogether unfounded, on Aveling's circulars.[150] The lad has brought all this down on his own head through his utter ignorance of the world, of men and of business, and his predilection for poetical dream-ing. I, however, have woken him up a bit and Tussy will see to the rest. He's a very talented and serviceable sort of chap and thoroughly honest, but gushing as a flapper, with a perpetual itch to do something silly. Well, I can still recall the time when I was much the same kind of idiot.
In Paris our people are making a very brave stand against the chauvinists and Russophiles and, had it not been for them. La Justice wouldn't have dared to attack the Katkov cult.[151] This is particularly important just now when Bismarck is doing everything in his power to chivvy the French into war[152] before old William(1) kicks the bucket.
On the whole I am feeling better, as I hope you are.
Your
F. Engels
55. Engels to Laura Lafargue 9 August
My dear Laura,
We have now been here more than a fortnight[138] and nothing to complain of but the heat. This is indeed an exceptional summer as the sneaks in Nature call it: 'the Jubilee Anticyclone'. I have taken some light work with me for a rainy day but the rainy day will not come and the work remains fast asleep in my drawer. Jollymeier was here with us for a week and Fritz Beust a fortnight — he had to begin teaching again the day before yesterday in Zürich — there was considerable and quite undisguised flirtation between Pumps and him and nobody was prouder of it than Percy. Oh les maris!b Whoever translated that preface of mine for the Socialiste[153] did it exceedingly well. I never was so well done in French. One or two passages make me suspect that it was done from the German, at least in part.
The determined stand our people have made against Russophilism and Katkoffolatrie has evidently had a good effect. I see the Justice is coming round, and Kropotkin has tackled Rochfort. Guesde's article in l'Action shows that he knows more about the matter of Russia than I dared to hope for.[151]
Otherwise French, like all other, politics are under the influence of the hot weather. Tout rate, même les duels.*[154]
I hope that great Polish oculistb will be the last and finally successful of Paul's panaceas. When he wrote before of operations, I thought they consisted in the opening out of the lachrymal duct, as this is the most common of all slight operations on the external eye. But most old men with watery eyes suffer from that rétrécissement,c and I am almost certain I have got it myself on one eye at least. But that I can get set right, if need be, in London, and before rushing into the arms and tools of that miraculous Pole, I shall await Paul's final report. There is nothing to give you such mountain-moving faith in individual doctors, as a general scepticism with regard to scientific medicine.
I have had Bax here for a week and was daily interviewed by him with the regularity of a clock and the inquisitiveness of an American journalist. But it gave me an opportunity of quiet talk with him on many subjects, and when he has done with his set questions (which, as with most people here, are meant to save them study) and has exhausted his sudden flashes of original ideas about le lendemain de la révolution^ and so on, he begins to talk sense and more sense than the preliminary conversation led you to expect. Then you find that after all he has a largeness of view that is but too scarce here amongst the sectarians calling themselves Socialists. But as to unacquaintance with the world that is, as to hermit-like simplicity and Fremdheit^ in the midst of the largest town of the world, an English Stubengelehrter^ beats his German compeer hollow.
Paul's article on the services publics was very good.g It would do good in Germany too, where the Vierecks and Co. are only too eager to use 'Verstaatlichung^ in the same bamboozling way as Brousse and Co. the services publics.
Sunday evening all of a sudden Charley Rosher arrived — after ten. Had tricycled it — the hottest day of the season — from London; got to Haywards Heath (about 40 miles), done up, had to take the train. Next day diarrhoea and general breakdown. And on the following day, scarcely recovered, he had a telegram that his wife was ill and he was to return at once. A subsequent telegram informed us that she had had a 'Miss Carry'.
Nim was at first, while here, suffering from slight muscular rheumatism — pains all over, as poor Lizzie(1) used to say — but she is all right now and very jolly. So is Pumps and her two children. Percy has to spend most of the week in London. I am lazy and give way to it, as being the best thing under the circumstances to do. And here comes the whole brigade ready for dinner and the children want me to make them paper boats, so it's all up with writing and I close in haste.
Yours affectionately
F. Engels And love from all.
56. Engels to August Bebel 13 August
IN PLAUEN NEAR DRESDEN
Eastbourne, 13 August 1887 4 Cavendish Place
Dear Bebel,
Tomorrow or the day after you will be released from prison[64] and I, for my part, hope to realise a plan which I have had in mind ever since you took up lodgings with the King of Saxony. Namely, to invite you to make a short trip to London at my expense to help you recover from the wear and tear of martyrdom. But you must do me the favour of accept-ing my proposal in its entirely, especially as regards it's being at my expense, for my conscience would not allow me to impose upon you any sacrifices, however small, in this connection. A holiday of this kind would seem to me absolutely essential to your health; you would at long last be able to breathe the air of liberty again, for over here the air is as free as it ever can be in a capitalist society. An abrupt transition from the narrow confines of Zwickau prison to the wider ones of the prison that is Germany would be altogether too hard. But I can think of nothing that is of more vital concern to the party now than your state of health, and therefore beg you to allow me to make my contribution to the party in the shape that seems to me most fitting.
I shall be here for the next fortnight, i.e. shall return to London on the 27th inst.[138]1 imagine it will take you roughly the same amount of time to put various matters in order, and I myself am unable to go back to town before then because my house is being refurbished from attic to cellar and everything is at sixes and sevens. But if you can come over any earlier and spend a few days with us here at the seaside, so much the better and the sooner the better. You can take the night boat from Flushing and travel to Victoria Station in London; the trains for Eastbourne leave from the same station and will get you here in 2 or 2(1)h hours. Kautsky, who returns to town from Ventnor on Monday (address 35 Lady Somerset Road, Highgate, London, N. W.), will gladly pilot you around London. Liebknecht, who also paid us a visit last year, was enthusiastic about the locality.
So I eagerly await your answer and, provided this is in the affirmative and you are not coming straight away, shall send you an advance remit-tance and thus make even more sure of you.
All other discussions have best be left until we meet. So much has happened which you are better qualified than anyone else to explain to me. On the whole I am satisfied with the course the world has taken since you went into isolation; things are going ahead everywhere.
Now I must close, for down here the post goes at 1.15 p.m. and if I miss it my letter won't leave London until Monday morning. I am addressing it for safety's sake to your wife, to whom, as to your daughter,[3] kindly give my warmest regards.
Your old friend
F. E.
In case you should have to look up Kautsky in London, herewith a more detailed address:
35 Lady Somerset Road, Highgate, near Kentish Town Station, Kentish Town Road. No need to put this on letters.
57. Engels to Karl Kautsky 17 August
Dear Kautsky,
Please excuse the belated return of the enclosed, which I have read with thanks.[155] I shall be interested to peruse the clean proofs of the More,(1) though I don't see of what help I can be to you in this.
We shall be coming back on Saturday week, 27 August,[138] by which time my house will presumably be habitable once more.
If you happen to be passing Regent's Park Road I should be greatly obliged if you would drop in there and leave 3 or 4 large (long) envelopes, addressed to me here; I had left some there but they would all seem to have been used up. I mean the sort of envelope in which my people will be able to send me 3 or 4 letters at a time.
For the rest, we are as merry as grigs and are expecting Sam Moore this evening. Last night we at last had a storm, but it's fine again now.
Regards from my family to yours. The Avelings are at Stratford-on-Avon, revelling in Shakespeariana at source.
Your
F. E.
58. Engels to Bruno Schoenlank 29 August
Dear Mr Schoenlank,
Your letter, forwarded to me here by Kautsky, places me in something of a quandary. I read with interest the excerpts, published in the Neue Zeit, from your valuable work on the looking-glass industry and would not object on principle to your doing me the honour of dedicating the book to me.[156] But, in the first place, dedications are now rather out of fashion and, in the second, Marx and I have always felt a certain aversion to such more or less uncalled-for-tributes. And at present I happen to be in a frame of mind which makes me think my merits grossly overrated in some quarters. If one is so fortunate as to collaborate for forty years with a greater man and measure oneself against him day by day, one is given the chance of evaluating one's own achievements in accordance with a true standard. And I feel instinctively that to place any undue emphasis on my own activities is unwittingly to detract from what we all of us owe to Marx.
Nor can I agree with you when you dub me the father of descriptive economics. You will find descriptive economics in Petty, Boisguillebert, Vauban, and Adam Smith, to name only a few. Such accounts, notably of proletarian conditions, were written by Frenchmen and Englishmen before I did mine. It was just that I was lucky enough to be precipitated into the heart of modern large-scale industry and to be the first whose eyes were opened to its implications — at any rate the most immediate ones.
So from a personal point of view, I would sooner you abandoned your intention, and this solely on the grounds outlined above. But should you fail to be convinced by them, I would not venture to dictate what you should do.
Yours very faithfully, Fr. Engels
59. Engels to August Bebel 30 August
IN PLAUEN NEAR DRESDEN
Eastbourne, 30 August 1887
Dear Bebel,
I am tremendously glad that you are so willing to fall in with my little plan.(1) I shall expect to see you in London in the early part of October and only regret that you cannot come straight away and spend a week here in the bracing sea air. My house still being at sixes and sevens, I have had to stay here another week but we shall be going home on Friday, 2 September.[138]
Everything else I shall leave until we meet but, since you are going to Hamburg, just one more word. I have been corresponding with Wedde about a plan they have been hatching there. Unfortunately, however, I could not comply with his wishes since the plan — at any rate so far as I could judge from what Wedde told me — had been worked out in total ignorance of the law in this country and, more especially, of procedure in civil cases.[157] Might I now ask you, when in Hamburg, to get Wedde to explain the whole plan in detail to you again so that we can discuss it exhaustively over here, for if the thing is at all feasible, I would gladly do all I could, both for the sake of the cause and to oblige Wedde. If the worst comes to the worst and nothing can be done, I hope to convince you that such is really the case, and even this would mean quite a lot to me.
So in about 3 or 4 weeks' time I hope to hear when you will be arriving. In the meantime please remember me most kindly to your wife and daughter.* With warmest regards,
Your
F. E.
60. Engels to Karl Kautsky 3 September
Home yesterday evening.[138] But have not, alas, got to the stage of being able to offer you luncheon tomorrow. However, we look forward to seeing you here about 5 o'clock.
Your
F. E.
61. Engels to Pyotr Lavrov 3 September
Danielson in St Petersburg has informed me of H. Lopatin's death.(1)
Have you had confirmation? I should like to think there has been some mistake.[159] If by mischance the news should be true, let me know and I shall at once send a tribute* to the S.D. of 2 b
Yours ever RE.
62. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 15 September
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I have received your letter of 28 August. I am glad the pamphletc sells so well. The copies I received I shall hand over to Aveling who has just returned from the country to be distributed partly amongst the Socialist periodicals, partly at his East End Meetings at his lectures on the American movement.[84] I shall also try through him to get an Agent for its sale and let you know the result.
What I wrote about Trübner[3] has come true stronger than I expected. Yesterday Dr Baernreither, Austrian M.P., told me that he had asked Trübner — with whom he dealt regularly — to procure him a copy of our book.b Trübner said he had none, and that Dr Baernreither had better order it through an American Agency whose address he gave to Baernreither and through which Baernreither ordered the book. Thus Trübner not only boycotts but actually burns the book.
As to the copies sent to Kautsky he could hardly act otherwise than he did.[160] Neither Lovell nor yourself ever wrote him a line of instruction. I myself never heard whether any copies had been sent to the press here and to what papers. We were completely in the dark, and if the book has not got into the hands of the English press and not been noticed, that is entirely the fault of mistakes committed on your side of the water. Had I been informed of what had been done in that respect, or had I been told that that was left to me I could have acted. There is no doubt of a sale for it here, but not while it is in Trübner's hands; and if I was authorised to find an agent here I have no doubt of being able to do so; of course you would have to send a limited number of copies as a consignment.
The repudiation of the Socialists by George[161] is in my opinion an unmerited piece of good luck which will redeem to a great extent the— unavoidable — blunder of placing George at the head of a movement he did not even understand. George as the standard-bearer of the whole working-class movement was a danger; George as the Chief of the Georgeites will soon be a thing of the past, the leader of a sect like the thousands of sects in America.
Your pamphlet on philanthropy'[1] has not yet come to hand. Your translation of Marx's Free Trade speech I shall look over with pleasure and compare it with the French original of which I have perhaps the only copy extant. We will see about the preface later on. The 7th Bemerkung^ from the Misere de la Philosophie would fit in very well. As to the chapter on Rent, that seems more doubtful, as there is a good deal of reference to Proudhon's notions in it, and I doubt whether Mr Tucker's lucubrations deserve any attention.[162]
The reply of the Executive to my footnote is in itself so deprecatory and meaningless that to reply to it would be a work of supererogation.[163]
I cannot reply in time for the Congress, and the fact remains that I have openly taken sides against the Executive in this matter. A fresh controversy across the Atlantic can lead to nothing. As to the Sozialist and
Volkszeitung boycotting me, I am sorry for it on account of the sale of the book and pamphlet, otherwise it is a matter of perfect indifference to me. I have got too often over such chicanery by simply waiting and looking on.
Your expulsion I read in the Volkszeitung at the time, it was what was to be expected. I hope your pamphlet will come in time for the Congress, it would have been well if it had been out a month ago so as to come into the hands of the sections before they sent delegates. I am curious what the Congress will do but do not hope for too much.
Faithfully yours
F. Engels
Fortunately the movement in America has now got such a start that neither George, nor Powderly nor the German intriguers can spoil or stop it. Only it will take unexpected forms. The real movement always looks different to what it ought to have done in the eyes of those who were tools in preparing it.
63. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 16 September[1 2 1]
Dear Sorge,
Letter of 1 September received. I hope your leg will gradually improve again; rest and patience, that's the main thing.
This summer has been appallingly disrupted and my house full of visitors from all over the world, as it will continue to be until the middle of October since I am expecting Bebel in a fortnight's time. I shall not be able to look out Marx's letter about George[128] until I can get things in order, i.e. until the new bookcases I have ordered arrive and provide me with more space. Then you shall at once have the translation. There's no hurry. Let George get himself into rather more of a fix. His repudiation of the Socialists[161] is by far the best thing that could have happened to us. His elevation to the status of standard-bearer last November[6] was a mistake that was unavoidable and was bound to have repercussions. For the fact remains that the masses can only be set in motion along a course — usually a circuitous one — appropriate to the country and the circumstances concerned. Everything else is of secondary importance, provided only they are galvanised into life. But on each occasion the penalty has to be paid for the blunders which inevitably ensue. Thus, it might have been feared in this instance that the elevation of the founder of a sect to the status of shield-bearer might have encumbered the movement with sectarian nonsense for years to come. By chucking out the founders of the movement, by constituting his sect a special, orthodox, Georgian sect, and by proclaiming his borné views to be the bornes[3] of the movement as a whole, George is saving the latter and ruining himself.
Needless to say, the movement as such still has many unpleasant phases to go through — unpleasant in particular for anyone who lives in the country and has to endure them. But I am absolutely convinced that things are now going ahead over there, and perhaps more rapidly than here, despite the fact that, for the time being, the Americans will have to learn almost exclusively from practice, and relatively little from theory.
The New York Executive's reply to my note is deplorable.[163] Nor do I expect very much of their congress.[164]. The chaps in the east — the sections — don't seem to be up to much and yet there seems little likelihood of the Social Democratic Party's centre of gravity shifting to the west.
The Trades Union Congress over here has again gone to show that a revolution is taking place within the old trades unions. It was resolved, in opposition to the leaders, notably Broadhurst, and to the other labour members of parliament, to form an Independent Labour Party.[165] An armchair socialist and Austrian parliamentary deputy[11] was quite amazed at the vast changes that had come about since he was last here in 1883.
I haven't heard a word, or seen anyone, from France since Lafargue left for Jersey, where he is spending a week or two.
I shall write to you about Germany as soon as I have discussed things over here with Bebel.
As regards politics generally, everyone is getting ready for old William'sb death, whereupon the Russians will behave rather more cock-ily in the East and Bismarck will egg them on in order to maintain his own position. But I hardly suppose it will come to a war. The uncertainty of what a war might entail is so great, the reciprocal intention of cabinets to betray each other so manifest, the certitude that the war would be more violent, bloody, costly and prostrating than any previous war (10 or 12 million soldiers locked in battle) so indubitable, that everyone is uttering threats but no one has the courage to begin. But it's a game that may unleash a war without their wanting it, and therein lies the danger.
Five thousand copies of Kautsky's work on Marx's theoryc have already been sold.
And there I must stop for today — time for the post and for dinner.
Your
F. E.
64. Engels to Hugo Koch 22 September
Dear Mr Koch,
I have lately wasted so much time replying to anonymous tittle-tattle that I have made it a rule to reply only to such rumours as are substan-tiated by those who spread them. Before I can reply to your query, therefore, I must ask you to tell me:
1. To whom I am alleged to have made the remarks in question, 2. who passed them on to you.
Yours faithfully
F. E.
65. Engels to Johannes Weiss 10 October
Dear Sir,
Having carefully considered the matter, I regret to say that it is not within my means to do as you ask and advance you a sum that would put you in a position to complete your studies. As you will be able to imagine without my expressly assuring you of the fact, I have for years been subjected to demands from every possible quarter — and not just Germany and England — in an ever increasing number of cases, these being for the most part cases from which, for private or party consider-ations, I cannot possibly dissassociate myself. In this way I have contracted such a vast quantity of permanently recurring liabilities that I am myself in some perplexity — particularly at this moment — as to how I am to meet them. So much so, indeed, that were I now to tie up a sum such as you desire for, say, 2 or 3 years, I would patently find myself unable to meet those obligations into which I have already entered. This being so, I am forced to look at your proposal from a wholly businesslike point of view and this, unfortunately, leaves me no alternative but to say again how sorry I am that to comply with your wishes would be quite beyond my means.
Trusting that you will succeed in obtaining the money in question elsewhere, I remain,
Yours faithfully
66. Engels to Laura Lafargue 11 October
My dear Laura,
I was glad to hear you received the cheque all right — a miscarriage with that sort of thing may be a very unpleasant matter and so I was rather anxious about news with regard to it.
I hope by this time you have settled down again, and are not too much disturbed by the precious scandals cropping up around you. This Caffarel affair[168] seems to have been brought forward by the Rouvier-Ferry lot, but if so it was a great mistake. It looks very much like the first scandals brought out by Girardin in 1846/47 and which led much farther than le rusé Emile[11] expected.[169] The ball is once set rolling; and no doubt a good crop of further scandals will come to daylight. There are plenty of them going on behind the scenes and this single affair having been dragged forth, will frighten a lot of petty dabblers in the same kind of thing; in their anxiety to get out of danger they are sure to compel madame la justice to come forward, however reluctantly, and tackle the people who will be denounced by their frightened associates. Even this one affair bodes no good to the ruling lot; if Wilson is implicated, what is old Grévy to do?
It would be a splendid piece of historical irony if the bourgeois republic was doomed to kill itself by the same révolutiondu mépris*b
which swept away the bourgeois monarchy in 1848.[17]°
The Raon-sur-Plaine affair was simply this: within Bismarck's empire this way of treating civilians is quite the rule with the military.[171] They are trained to it, and rewarded for it; and the cowardly bourgeois press praises such things if committed upon working men, and excuses them if committed upon bourgeois. And then it is of course impossible to drive into the same soldiers that on the frontier they must act differently, and that a Frenchman, a Russian or an Austrian is to be treated with more consideration. That drunken brute Kauffman will either be acquitted or, if sentenced, for appearances' sake, to a nominal imprisonment, will be treated like le bon dieu en France^ and promoted hereafter.
The Socialiste in its new shape is a considerable improvement upon the old one.[172] Paul could not do everything and his own articles look more worked out since he has not the whole burden upon his shoulders. It will do Deville good to contribute an article per week, his journalistic practice wanted developing and his articles are getting less ponderous.
Next week I expect Bebel here[173] and also probably Singer. Their Congress seems to have been a great success, and the right wing of the party have got a direct snub:[174] Geiser and Viereck have been too cowardly to sign the Aufrufe for the Congress, and have consequently been declared incapable of further occupying eine Vertrauensstellung in der Partei* Bax was also there, he has brought his boy to Zürich where he will be more or less under Bernstein's care and go to Beust's school.
Here things are moving slowly but they are moving. The Trades Union Congress was a splendid symptom.[165] The Tories help us here by all sorts of little police chicanery with regard to open-air meetings— what confounded jackasses they are both here and in Ireland! Jackasses — unless they intend opening next parliament with the announcement that they have tried coercion and broken down and that nothing therefore remains but Home-Rule[175]—thus taking the wind out of Gladstone's sails and bringing in a half-and-half Home-Rule Bill of their own shaping. But I cannot think Salisbury has either so much sense or so much boldness.
In the meantime Champion has openly attacked Hyndmanb in his paper Common Sense (rather Uncommon Nonsense) and the Fabians[176]—a dilettante lot of egregiously conceited mutual admirers who soar high above such ignorant people as Marx — are trying to concentrate the 'movement' in their hands. Very nice amusements en attendant que la classe ouvrière se mette en mouvement et balaye tous ces mannequins et femmequinesc (Mrs Besant is of them too).
Yours affectionately RE.
Nim sends her love, is just remanaging the carpet in my room over-head. I have not yet had Sonnenschein's account. I have reminded him of its being due.
67. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 29 October
Am sending you by today's post the Austrian calendar (Österreichischer Arbeiter-Kalender) with a biographical note,[155] ditto Commonweal. Bebel and Bernstein are here in order, amongst other things, to make preparations for next year's international congress.[178] Bebel most satisfied with the St Gall congress and likewise with the state of affairs in Germany.
Faced with spontaneous agitation on the part of the unemployed, both parliamentary groups[179] in this country have shown how very much out of touch they are with the masses. Commonweal, as you will see, is completely at its wits' end.
68. Engels to Paul Lafargue end October
... to outwit it, he says, the Republic is always in danger and it always will be in danger so long as every working man does not have in his home a Lebel rifle and fifty ball cartridges. And this is what Clemenceau has not dared to concede — still less propose — and it is what you ought to din into his ears day in day out. The Republic will always be in danger so long as the soldier has his rifle and the working man has not. But Clemenceau is a bourgeois and, as such, is closer to Ferry than to the Socialists. He might be a staunch Radical, were it not for the revolutionary Socialists. And now that his ideal — republican America where the labour question was unknown — no longer exists, he must be in a curious frame of mind. On top of all that, there's the position he's in, to judge by what you say, and this makes me realise how it is that a Ferry-Clemenceau cabinet might seem to him an acceptable solution ...
F. E.
69. Engels to Laura Lafargue 12 November
My dear Laura,
Nous voilà en plein 1847V- The parallel is indeed striking; for Teste read: Wilson, for Emile de Girardin read: A. E. Portalis; and if Grévy is not an exact counterpart of Louis Philippe, he is a very well got-up combination of both Louis Philippe and Guizot, uniting the money-greed of the first with the false dignity of the other.[181] I have devoured this morning the papers Paul was good enough to send me, and thought myself forty years younger. Only that the république bourgeoise beats the bourgeois monarchy in out-and-out in cheek. Girardin's study was never broken into nor was his head smashed, and the wholesale suppression of documents seized by police and parquet**[1]*[2] has no counterpart in 1847. But all these tricks will be useless, the ball is set a-rolling and roll on it will. What we see now is only the 'exposition' of the drama which seems likely to be as creditable to the innate dramatic genius of French history as any of its predecessors.
The most important feature is that this commencement de la fin de la république bourgeoise^ does not come alone. In Russia, too, the end seems near. The ever-repeated promises of an energetic and successful policy with regard to Bulgaria, followed by ever-renewed checks and moral defeats, seem to have again united the various elements of opposition — it looks as if there might soon be a crisis. Then there is Unser Fritzc with a now undeniable cancer in his throat — if anything happens to him, the successor to Old William will be a dummer schnoddriger Junge,d of the Gardelieutenant type, at present an adorer of Bismarck but sure soon to fall out with him because he will want to command; a fellow who will soon drive things to extremes and upset the present alliance between feudal nobility and bourgeoisie by sacrificing the latter entirely to the former and who even in army matters is almost sure to fall out with the old experienced generals. And then a crisis is certain. Thus, the critical point is coming nearer everywhere, and I only hope that everywhere people will find as much work cut out for them at home as to prevent them from rushing into war.
La belle Limouzin alias Scharnet[183] is indeed a beauty of a peculiar kind to fascinate French officers. But then, she aimed at nothing less than generals, and generals are people of a certain age when tastes begin to be uncertain with some people. It is certainly a very queer new edition of the Victoires et conquêtes de l'armée française^—the conquest of a hunchbacked, lame, repulsive old hag from Karlsruhe! Anyhow she looks energetic and has roused Thibaudin to a rare enthusiasm.
The stories you tell me about the men of the agglomération^ are characteristic too.[184] The transformation of Paris into a Luxusstadtf under the Second Empire could not help telling on the working-class too. But any serious movement will shake off a good deal of that. The effect upon the intellect of the masses, I am afraid, will be more lasting.
Tomorrow we shall have here a bit of a tussle too. After a deal of hesi-tation and vacillation the police have at last forbidden all meetings on Trafalgar Square; the Radical Clubs have answered by calling a great meeting thither for to-morrow afternoon.[185] Tussy and Edward are of course bound to go. I do not anticipate a serious collision. But it is just possible that Matthews and his colleagues of the Tory government for once show fight; especially as the daily Liberal press have taken the side of the police, and as there is no general election in sight just now, as was the case at the time of the Dod St affair.[186] If so, there may be a scrimmage and a few arrests. So you better look out for tomorrow evening's papers.
I must shut up now, it's past five and no time to lose if you are to have this letter to-morrow morning. So good-bye. Nim keeps cutting her fingers now with one kitchen tool and then with another. Percy has been to Dresden and Berlin for his buttonhole machines and consumed untold quantities of lager. Pumps and children are well.
Ever yours affectionately
F. Engels
70. Engels to Paul Lafargue 16 November
My dear Lafargue
Dense fog — can't possibly write more than a line or two. Didn't either of you see Tussy's letter in Monday[1] evening's Pall Mall} It ought to have reached you by Tuesday evening. She arrived here about seven o'clock, her coat in tatters, her hat crushed and torn by a blow from a staff, having been arrested by bobbies but released on the orders of an inspector; practically no one was held and Edward got through unscathed, the contingent he was with having done a bunk at the very outset.[185]
The case is to be heard in the courts and it remains to be seen whether the jury endorses Matthews' famous doctrine which holds that any person walking in Trafalgar Square without the Crown's permission is a trespasser. The Liberals, from Gladstone to Labouchere and Bradlaugh, are begging the people to leave the question in abeyance since it is to be settled in court. But so exasperated have the working men been by police brutality that there may well be another clash next Sunday. Then— provided, that is, that nothing unforseen happens — there'll be another rout, Trafalgar Square being the place most favourable to the government. It is easily defended, can be approached from the east only by narrow streets, is far removed from the abode of the working class and is situated at the heart of the shopping centre, with barracks close by and with St James's Park — in which to muster reserves of troops — a stone's throw away from the field of battle. Since your philistine, both of the bourgeois and the working-class variety, is in favour of constitutional action, it is to be expected that the next demonstration will be too half-hearted to attempt anything serious. In which case it would be a shame to see the best elements sacrifice themselves to preserve the honour of the chicken-hearted who are now pulling out.
And in France? If you get Ferry in place of Grévy, not only will you get a thief of a son-in-law in place of a father-in-law who is at worst a fence; you'll get a son-in-law who's a thief of the first water.[168] For what Wilson has stolen throughout a whole lifetime does not amount to anything like the sum stolen by Ferry during the Tunis affair alone. To admit the possibility—even pro tern—of such a dénouement seems to me too incompatible with the dramatic genius of French history. Rather than a solution, it would be intrigue at its most extreme and tending towards a crisis. And, from that point of view, Ferry's accession is almost to be wished for — the accession of the head of the firm of Roublard & Co. in place of humble clerk. Grévy, for having merely turned a blind eye to corruption, toppled by Ferry who indulges in it openly and boasts of so doing — that would be fine! But Ferry as President — that would be a call to revolution: the bourgeoisie's 'I don't give a fig for you!' flung in the face of the people.
As for peace, no one but a fool would try to end it just now. The Crown PrinceV cancer would be enough to restrain any warlike impulses Bismarck might feel; the Central Alliance, with England in reserve, is strong enough to ward off, almost effortlessly, any Franco-Russian attack. On the other hand, an offensive war against France with her newly entrenched positions, and against vast and impoverished Russia, would present more problems than pleasures. The impossibility of a true alliance between the Tsarb and the Republic, both of whose governments are manifestly labile, becomes increasingly evident. In Russia, even the Slavophiles[187] are turning against the internal system of government. One of their leading men, Lamansky, openly says that the obstacle to the march on Constantinople does not lie in Vienna or in Berlin but in a system of government which prevents the Russians from attaining the same intellectual level as the West and thus becoming worthy of the rôle of leading Slav nation. All things considered, coups de têtec on the part of both Petersburg and Paris are to be anticipated. It remains to be seen what the Tsar will do at Berliin after the public slap in the face he has just received from Bismarck via the Imperial Bank of Germany.[188]
As for your army, the soldiers with 2 or 3 years' service have not yet been used against the people, hence it is impossible to say how they might conduct themselves. But they are no longer the undisciplined troops of the Empire. One would have to know how the regiments are constituted, from what regions they are recruited, and whether there are many Parisians in their ranks.
By the way, has the Socialiste again succumbed? My last number is dated 29 October.
Yours ever, RE.
Keep an eye on the XIXe Siècle and send me a copy if it contains documents and fresh news.
71
ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE87
IN PARIS
[Extract]
London, 22 November 1887
You will have read in the L ... the speech made by V. in the ... constituency of K. He complains, not without reason, that the Party is getting bourgeois.
It is a misfortune that overtakes all extreme parties as soon as the day for them to become 'possible' draws near. But ours cannot go beyond a certain limit in this respect without betraying its own cause, and it seems to me that in France as in Germany we have now reached that point. Luckily there is still time to call a halt.
72
71. Engels to Paul Lafargue 22 November
72. Engels to Paul Lafargue 23 November
My dear Lafargue,
I haven't a bean and shall have to sell some shares, which I cannot do for another two or three days. As soon as the money comes in I will send you a cheque. Meanwhile, here is Sonnenschein 's statement in respect of the English edition of Capital—it amounts to very little — only £39.12— From that I shall deduct £20 in order to recoup some of the £80 advanced for the translation and paid to the translators. The balance of £19.12 — I shall divide into 5 equal parts, 3 for the heirs and 2 for the translators (as was agreed with Laura and Tussy), which results in the following statement:
For the Longuet children[3] £ 3.18.4 " Laura £ 3.18.4 "Tussy £ 3.18.4 £11.15.-
For Samb 3/5 £4.14.2 " Edwardc2/5 £3.12.6 £ 7.17.-£19.12.-
Cheque for Laura enclosed herewith. Sonnenschein says he has printed 1,000 copies, of which 480 are in stock and 78 have been given gratis either to us or to the press.
224 copies sold in England £336. - 10% £33.12 200 America £120.- 5% £ 6.-£39.12.-
18 " thirteenth gratis[189]
442 558 1,000
As to the American 5%, I shall compare this statement with the contract. But I do not believe we can do anything about it. The fellow has clearly sold far more, but is concealing the fact from us in order to have a year in hand.
The Parisian devil-may-care attitude, cited by you as a symptom of demoralisation, is proudly acclaimed by Camille Pelletan in La Justice. My £20 were immediately swallowed up by urgent payments and, indeed, I am completely cleaned out just now. Otherwise I should be sending you a cheque today.
Yours ever
F. E.
73. Engels to Conrad Schmidt 26 November
Dear Dr Schmidt,
I was delighted to hear from you again and to learn that you had left behind the fogs of London and the exuberant air of Paris and were back in the atmosphere of 'pure reason'. I had learned from the press about the strange adventures connected with the arrival of your crate of books[190] and imagined I was back again in those long-forgotten days when I myself was in Berlin, an occasional contributor to the Hartungsche Zeitung,[3]- and when everything was banned save a 'narrow slave mentality'.[191] But no doubt there are even better things in store!
As regards Heine's letter, I cannot throw any definite light on it.[192]
Up till 1848 Lassalle cut no sort of political figure at all; he became known only as a result of the Hatzfeldt trial.[193] And in it both parties had recourse to all possible means, no matter what, provided they gave promise of success, and brought into play, whenever and however they thought fit, anyone who might conceivably be of use. On the other hand, the ban placed by the Federal Diet on Heine's books, even future ones, forced him to use all available methods of advertisement in order to ensure the sales that he would otherwise have automatically enjoyed. In the circumstances, Lassalle could become most useful to Heine; on the other hand, Heine was impressed by his energy, ruthlessness and knowledge of the world — all things rare in the majority of young Germans then as they are today.
So it is more than probable that Lassalle sought to make use of Heine for the benefit of the Countess, and the letter in question almost certainly relates to some aspect of the case — very probably the casket. Whether la Meyendorf was in Paris at the beginning of 1846, I cannot say for certain but, from what I remember of the proceedings, I think she was. Either the proceedings in the casket case of 1846, or those in Lassalle's of 1848 should provide a clue (best source Kölnische Zeitung). If she was in Paris, it was doubtless for the purpose of making an attempt on the casket. Heine and I never discussed Lassalle, whom neither Marx nor I knew at that time.
Your fellow-townsman Weiss came to see me here; has gone to Berne to complete his studies."
A fortnight ago we had a rumpus of our own over here during which Mrs Aveling became involved in a scuffle with the police without, however, coming to any serious harm.[185] The fact is that our Tory government's stupidity is such as almost to rival Puttkamer's. If old Disraeli were to rise up out of his grave, he would lambast these school-boys good and proper.
May I thank you in advance for the article you promised to send me.[194]
Recently I was called upon by Herkner, a quite intelligent man when one comes to converse with him, and a good deal more radical than his book.b He seemed very anxious to impress upon me that in reality even Brentano is, at heart, less tame than he makes himself out to be in his books. Indeed, if the gentlemen at German universities only had the courage of their convictions, we should at any rate be as far on as we were in 1837 and 1840. But whether, in that case, they would find an audience is questionable to say the least.
Otherwise, everything goes jogging on in the same old way over here, so there's nothing new to report.
Do write again some time and, if I can be of any service to you over here, I shall be glad to oblige. Cordial regards,
Your
F. Engels
74. Engels to Natalie Liebknecht 29 November
Dear Mrs Liebknecht,
Thank you and Liebknecht very much indeed for your good wishes on the occasion of my birthday, which we celebrated yesterday. A whole lot of people foregathered; there had first been, in the evening, a rehearsal in a public house of a French play adapted by Aveling, in which he and Tussy both acted and met with great applause, as did the play itself, which has been accepted by a popular actress and hence is now more or less assured of success. Afterwards, the whole company repaired to my house; Lenchen had made some doughnuts and pretzels and Mrs Kautsky a Viennese apple-tart, while midnight ushered in Aveling's birthday, so that we were able to celebrate that as well.
Percy* would undoubtedly have come to see you in Leipzig, but he was making only a brief business trip to Dresden and Berlin and had to get back as soon as possible because his buttonholing machine was to figure in an exhibition here which was remaining open only until last Saturday. He arrived in Leipzig in the middle of the night, had to stop there a few hours after missing his connection and left again that same morning for Dresden. Otherwise he would not have failed to pay you his respects.
As far as Mrs Schack is concerned, she has, to my knowledge, declared on three separate occasions that all the German deputies in our party are corrupt and, on two of those occasions, expressly included the names of Liebknecht and Bebel.(1) After she had done this, it was impossible for me to have any further dealings with her, even if she herself had made the first move, which was certainly not the case. Bebel had an opportunity of seeing her in her new role and seemed in no way edified thereby. Liebknecht likewise had that opportunity at St Gallen,[174] she having had the, to my mind, unbelievable impertinence to go there. What she told him while there I, of course, don't know, but it cannot alter the fact that she spoke about him over here in such a way as, in my eyes, to constitute a complete breach. The creature is absolutely determined to cut a figure and if, after what has happened, Liebknecht should help her in any way, whether direct or indirect, to do so, or if he should allow his behaviour to be governed by the moderate attitude you have described, there would be a danger that his enviers, of whom we all have our fair share, would look for other motives for his actions. Of course, you and Liebknecht must know best what attitude you should adopt towards the woman. I, for my part, am glad to be rid of her.
In her conflict with the powers that be, Tussy came to no harm, unlike her coat and hat which were irretrievably damaged. As a matter of fact she wasn't attacked; rather it was she who did the attacking. Now the rumpus is virtually over and, while some trifling incident may be staged in Trafalgar Square, it will only be for fun. But the government will have something to think about. Were old Disraeli to know what dunderheads his successors were, he'd rise up out of the grave and lambast them good and proper.
I am tolerably well again and so is Lenchen. She and the Roshers, ditto the Kautskys and Avelings, send you and your husband their cordial regards.
Very sincerely yours,
F. Engels
75. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge November
Dear Old Man,
Have received and burned the letter concerned. Had a shrewd idea that the isolation of Rochester wouldn't suit you. In a little hole like that one even misses the irritation of seeing the movement ruined by inept would-be big wigs and business men on the make. But perhaps you'll get used to it. Being in business is, after all, no more boring than teaching music to lazy, recalcitrant pupils. One gets used to counting-house chores; I had to do them for close on thirty years,[9] though I must say I'm glad to be quit of them. Well, let me know honestly how you get on.
Your old friend,
F. E.
76. Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky 3 December
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
As I told you in my postcard per last mail,[69] William Reeves, publisher of To-day and of the greater portion of London popular Socialist literature, has undertaken the sale of the book.(1) He writes December 1:
'Regarding our conversation of to-day (Wednesday) in reference to the agency of The Condition etc. by Engels we shall be pleased to undertake the same and have copies from you or the publisher in Americab at the rate of 3s. net bound — the future copies should be sent unbound. The sole charge will be the necessary printing of titles and insertion of same which will cost about 10s.'
And further, December 2: 'In answer to your enquiry as to date of making up accounts we beg to say that every six months is the time and payment made a month after. We understand until other arrangements are made we are dealing with you.'
This latter proviso I made as otherwise Reeves could have evaded settlement of accounts by saying he did not know whom to pay, Mr Lovell or myself, and then cause delay and procrastination. In future transactions other arrangements can be made. As to these he writes December 1st:
'The rates for other works similar in character could be taken at about the same rate of discounts — it depends a little on the price to be put on for retail price, for instance a 6s.- book is supplied to the trade at a little cheaper rate than a 5s.- one.'
So the fellow will keep a door open for haggling and in future cases it will be well to inform me in time, so as to arrange definitely his discount before you put his name on the title as London agent. These people are all alike.
The above terms are of course for books delivered to him carriage paid and free of all expense on his part. He says the carriage is but trifling and so it may be to the trade and for bales, but I know that for parcels sent to private people they stick it on pretty well; Kautsky had to pay above 10s for the copies sent to him, and the Liverpool agent (Wheatley) made me pay 2s.6d. extra expenses on the parcel containing the 1,000 pamphlets,(2) altho' no carriage whatever was charged to me.
We shall send copies to the Socialist press (except Justice which had one from America and said just two lines about itd), to the Athenaeum, Academy and Pall Mall Gazette; Weekly Dispatch and Reynolds. The Commonweal (I sent a copy to Morris) has begun a series of extracts from the book,[195] the first of which I mailed to you to-day. Altogether the prospects are very good. Only we must not send the copies to the press until after Christmas, otherwise they would be wasted.
As to the pamphlet,(3) as I told you, Reeves had it pirated and will of course sell his own lot first. I shall hand the 1,000 copies to Aveling to do the best he can — either sell at meetings or give to Reeves as he may want them; but I am afraid a good deal of them will have to be given away gratis in the long run at meetings.
Your translation of Free Trade shall have attention as soon as ever possible.[196] I shall also write a preface, only I am sure it will not in any case be what you want. It is impossible for me to answer the probable arguments of American protectionists beforehand. I do not know that sort of literature and have no time to go into it. My reasoning in nine cases out of ten would miss the mark, and moreover whatever we may say, they will always find a way out, and have something to say that we cannot foresee. To enter into polemics with them directly, one must be in America. And I have always found that a good book makes its way and has its effect whatever the penny-a-liners of the day may say.
Yours faithfully
F. Engels
Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
77. Engels to Paul Lafargue 5 December
My dear Lafargue,
Like you, I cried 'VictoryI' yesterday morning. It is clear that, had it not been for the people of Paris, the Right would not have dreamed of voting for an impossible candidate[3] and would have rallied to Ferry with the opportunists-cum-speculators.[197] In which case — battle and, as likely as not, defeat.
The drama is unfolding in complete accordance with the rules. In 1878 victory of the people and the army over the monarchists alone;[198]
in 1887 victory over the monarchists and opportunists[199] combined. The next victory must be victory over monarchists, opportunists and radicals[200] combined.
Clemenceau would seem after all to have contributed not a little to that result by dropping Freycinet in favour of Carnot. It was the least he could do after falling headlong into Ferry's trap. But it's better than nothing. And, circumstances being what they are, a legal solution of this kind, brought about under the menacing pressure of the Parisian workers, is all we might wish. As in the case of most days during the great revolution, it is a period of ascent.
What attitude did the soldiers adopt — those of the line, I mean? Peaceful victories such as this are a capital way of familiarising troops with the supremacy and infallibility of the popular masses. Another day or two of the same sort and the troops will undoubtedly mutiny.
Sadi Carnot won't do much. The presidency is done for after what has happened. The president has been reduced to a puppet, appointing and dismissing ministers at the command of the Chamber.
All the same, I hope the scandals will continue to be relentlessly followed up. Things have gone too far, I think, to be halted now. The bourgeois will cry that enough is enough, that one should display generosity and let bygones be bygones — but let us hope that the only way for the radicals to come to power is by prosecuting the thieves.
Yours ever,
F. E.
The Social Democratic Federation was supposed to be meeting in Trafalgar Square yesterday,[3] but there wasn't a word about it in the Daily News; we may be sure Hyndman didn't run any risk.[201]
78. Engels to Hermann Schlüter 7 December
Dear Mr Schlüter,
It would be best if you were to make up a volume of Shorter Papers, 1871-75 by F. Engels, as follows:
1. Article on Vogt, 1871, No. 38, 10 Mayb
2. Refugee Literaturec
3. Tkachov's letter 4. [On] Social Relations in Russia 5. The Bakuninists at Work We shall have to omit the Neue Rheinische Zeitung article/ for in the first place it would today require an additional explanatory section (because of our Russian friends) and, in the second, I intend at some later date to bring out a collection of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles by Marx and myself. We might discuss this later on.[202]
Herewith The Bakuninists at Work with the paragraphs in Section III correctly numbered in the order in which they should appear. Would you kindly send this sheet for me to look at, so that I know what I'm about. The remaining proof reading can be attended to over there.
If you could get hold of one or two copies of the Revue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (complete), I will gladly pay for them. I have only got vols 3, 5 and 6, and should like to have 1, 2 and 4 as well.
You shall have the 'Mordspatrioten'b shortly: I am writing the introduction. I shall also try and put the 'Force Theory' to rights.[203]
As regards other matters, 1. Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles, see above; 2. Revue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung—nothing that could do without an introduction and wouldn't be time-consuming; 3.1 have sold the Prussian Military Question to Meissner, with whom I cannot start a row, and much of what I say in it would be very difficult to understand today without a commentary.
After the New Year I shall have to tackle Volume III of Das Kapital, for which I must spare my eyes. Aside from what I have already undertaken, therefore, I can at present do absolutely nothing for you; I'm very sorry, but I have no alternative. As soon as this ms. has gone to press, and while correcting the proofs, I shall have time to spare for you, provided my eyes are all right again. But you must remember that I can only really write for a few hours each day and then only by daylight— often not to be had for love or money over here — and withal a vast correspondence!
With kindest regards,
Your
F. Engels
79. Engels to Karl Kautsky 20 December
Dear Kautsky,
I have got to go to Brighton today and shall try and be back by tomorrow evening. But as something might intervene, it might be safer if you were to let us have the pleasure of your company on Thursday(1)
evening instead of tomorrow.
Kindest regards,
Your
F. E.
80. Engels to Laura Lafargue 24 December
My dear Laura,
Nobody is gladder to be in possession of your new address than Nim who was in an awful funk — not so much about the arrival of the pudding than about one of the cakes sent along with it, and which she intends for the children/ and as there was no safe and quick way of communicating with you and as she knows Paul capable of eating two cakes in one day, she was very much afraid indeed. She hopes now that this will arrive before that cake has been broken into and that you will be good enough to see it delivered à qui de droite
I enclose cheque £25 — the odd five is a little Christmas present for you which no doubt will soon find investment.
Schorlemmer is here and I expect him in every minute, so shall have to close this letter before he comes in.
I was in Brighton last Tuesdayc to see Gumpert who is there — generally very well outwardly but still very much shaken morally — absolute loss of self-confidence and energy. His poor young wife has to suffer very much in consequence. Perhaps when spring comes on, we may shake him up a bit.
The Pall Mall Gazette is getting horribly dull — the paper is either a chronic bore or an acute sensation of chamber of horrors. Stead is out of date — a puritan fanatic who ought to have lived in 1648, quite out of date nowadays. But useful and good in one way — he, though full of it himself, hates respectability and middle-class cant.
Will send you some American comic papers'[1] after to-morrow, must show them here first. The parvenu in all his glory — how they are enchanted to see themselves in evening dress! And the vulgarity breaks out all over their skins especially when talking about socialism. One almost gets a prejudice in favour of English 'Society' after that.
Yours affectionately
F. Engels
Jollymeier was very 'bould' last night and lost fivepence to Nim.
81. Engels to Paul Lafargue 29 December
My dear Lafargue
I held back my reply until today when I should have received more precise information from Kautsky about the worthy Oberwinder. I knew about the business in general terms, but I wanted to be sure.[204]
After 1873 Oberwinder played a fairly important part in the Viennese movement. He was an erstwhile Lassallean, and editor of the Volkswille, a weekly paper. At that time, the deputies to the Austrian parliament were elected by the provincial diets, and the Liberals were agitating for direct election by the districts. Oberwinder espoused their cause with a fervour all the more disinterested for his being in the pay of the Liberals — through an intermediary, a Mr Szeps of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt. On the pretext that the Liberals' demand was the first step towards universal suffrage, he urged the workers to support them. Scheu opposed this, but in Vienna Oberwinder had a majority and compelled Scheu and his friends to secede; the latter, who had a majority in the provinces, founded Die Gleichheit in Wiener Neustadt and used their journal to attack Oberwinder in all kinds of ways, reproaching him for the above-mentioned activities and for other things besides. Oberwinder brought a libel action against Scheu, but the jury found that Scheu had proved his case and acquitted him. In the course of the proceedings it was further established that Oberwinder had expended on his weekly paper the sum of 10,000 florins (25,000 francs) subscribed towards the founding of a daily, and had done other things of a similar nature. In short, the case ruined Oberwinder's position in Vienna and the Liberals could have no further interest in paying him. He went to Hamburg where he associated with the Breuerist group of Lassalleans— one of those sects in which moribund Lassalleanism was ending its days. Its members were out-and-out petty bourgeois and their sect has been extinct for ten years or more. Next, Oberwinder came to Paris. About a year ago he published a pamphlet" in which he called on the German workers to rally to Bismarck's policy and support him so that he, in return, should grant them social reforms.
As you can see, he's a Lassallean who can say he has never betrayed his own opinions. 1) He believes in the omnipotence of universal suffrage, which is why he supported the Austrian Liberals; 2) Lassalle demanded that, in the struggle between royalty and the bourgeoisie, the workers should side with royalty — and that is why Oberwinder is a partisan of Bismarck's. Seeing that Lassalleanism is extinct in Germany, why should not this erstwhile Lassallean take Bismarck's money just as he had taken it from the Austrian Liberals? Except that, once he had drawn his first Bismarckian penny, he must have realised he was dealing with one more wily than himself and that he was trapped.
The discovery made by our people in Switzerland[11] may be of the utmost importance — the Swiss authorities will do all in their power to compromise Prussia, and the Geneva affair — a nihilist plot — will have repercussions. It is typical of the stupidity of the Prussian police! The said Haupt, caught red-handed by a handful of intrepid workers who, while searching his house — which he allowed them to do!—discovered his correspondence with Krüger — the Haupt is such a muffzs to admit having been an informer for the past seven years! And that's the man to whom they entrust a mission of this kind! After that, the suborning of Nonne and Oberwinder surely comes as no surprise. But as Heine always used to say: the Prussian informers are the most dangerous because they are not paid but always live in hopes, which makes them active and intelligent; if Prussia were to pay them, they would no longer be good for anything.
I hope that the Pucks and Judges sent off yesterday have reached Laura.b
That your protégé Stead is very useful just now, no one will deny, but it doesn't prevent this man, who defends in Russia what he attacks in Ireland, from living in a century which is not our own. You ought likewise to take the Salvation Army[205] under your wing for, without it, the right to hold processions and discussions in the street would be in a far more parlous state in England than it now is.
Nim, Jollymeier, Pumps and the little ones have gone to the theatre to see Hans the Boatman, an American play in which there are lots of children and a large dog.
Laura's paintings won't dry well with the weather we are having.[206]
A thousand good wishes for the New Year.
Yours ever,
F. E.
I am sending my card to Mesa, 36 rue du Bac; is that still his address? Isn't the Socialiste coming out any longer?
Endnotes
[5] publisher. However he died, in 1869, and the matter remained unsettled. The English version of Volume I, edited by Engels, was published by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co. in January 1887, after Marx's death. The translation was done by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, between mid-1883 and March 1886. Eleanor Marx-Aveling helped prepare the edition. The translation was based on the third German edition of Das Kapital, due account being taken of the French edition and Marx's directions for the English translation, which failed to materialise, planned for late 1877. 3. Between September and December 1886 Wilhelm Liebknecht, Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling toured the United States at the invitation of Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America. They gave talks and lectures in a number of cities on the theory and history of socialism, on the working-class movement in Europe and on other themes. After the tour the Executive, which had financed it, accused Aveling of over-expenditure. This charge was taken up by the bourgeois press and used for anti-socialist agitation. The conflict between Aveling and the Executive lasted for several months. Engels took part in settling it. The Socialist Labor Party of the United States (originally called the Workingmen's Party) was set up at the Philadelphia union congress, 19-22 June 1876, through the merger of the US sections of the First International, led by F. A. Sorge and Otto Weydemeyer, with the Lassallean-type Labor Party of Illinois and the Social Democratic Party, led by A. Strasser, A. Gabriel and Peter J. McGuire. It was the first Marxist party in America. However, it failed to win a mass following because of the sectarian policy of its leaders, who wanted no links with the mass organisations of the indigenous US workers, and because of the Lassalleans' prevalence in a number of local branches. 4. An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in: K. Marx and F. Engels, On the United States, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1979. 5. In June 1886, a Hague court sentenced F. D. Nieuwenhuis to one year in
[7] of officials' in the press. Early in January 1887 the conviction was upheld by
[20] Publishers, Moscow, 1976. 18. On 1 February 1887 Laura Lafargue informed Engels of the conflict that
[10] He was released from prison on 1 September 1887. 6. In the Mayoral election in New York on 2 November 1886 Henry George,
[26] workers and finally disintegrated in 1889-90. 22. Radical Clubs began to emerge in London and other cities in the 1870s.
[27] They consisted of bourgeois radicals and workers. In the Clubs of London's poorer areas, such as the East End, the workers predominated. The Clubs criticised the Irish policy of Gladstone's Liberal government and urged an extension of the suffrage and other democratic reforms. From the early 1880s they engaged in socialist propaganda. In 1885 London's Radical Clubs united in the Metropolitan Radical Federation. 23. Two French translations of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte were made, almost simultaneously, by the French socialists Paul Lavigne and Edouard Fortin. Fortin's translation, sent to Engels somewhat earlier (see Engels' letter to Paul Lavigne of 1 December 1885 in Vol. 47 of the present edition) and edited by Engels at Fortin's request, was published first in Le Socialiste, the newspaper of the French Workers' Party, in January-November 1891 and appeared in book form in Lille the same year. 24. This concerns the charges the levelled at Aveling by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America (see note 3). This letter was the first of the many Engels wrote to American and German working-class leaders in defence of Aveling. 25. On 30 December 1886 The New York Herald published an article headlined 'Aveling's Unpaid Labor', containing accusations against Aveling (see note 3). Cabled to London, it was reprinted, abridged, in The Daily Telegraph (1 January 1887) and The Evening Standard (13 January 1887). After the publication of the article in England, Aveling cabled a denial to America, which appeared in The New York Herald on 10 January 1887. An official denial by the Avelings addressed to the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party was published in the Herald on 15 January 1887. 26. This refers to the article 'Aveling und die Sozialisten' in the New Yorker Volkszeitung, No. 10,12 January 1887, which was the first public statement of the charges levelled at Aveling (see note 3). The article was reprinted in the Wochenblatt (weekly supplement) of the New Yorker Volkszeitung on 22 January. As can be seen from F.A. Surge's letter to Engels of 28 February 1887 the article was written by Alexander Jonas, the chief editor of the paper. 27. At the end of November 1886 a court in Leipzig sentenced the Social Democratic worker K. Schumann to four years in prison and another eleven people to various prison terms on charges of 'rebellion'. The pretext for the prosecution was the farewell party given to Schumann by Leipzig workers on 21 September 1886 in connection with his expulsion from the city under
[18] Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung emphatically denied this report. 17. An excerpt from this letter was first published, in the language of the orig-
[30] and George Engel - to be hanged. In the spring of 1886 a mass working-
[34] early days of May. On 3 May, workers clashed with police at a rally. At another rally, held in Haymarket Square on the following day, an agent provocateur threw a bomb, killing seven policemen and four workers. The police opened fire. Several people were killed and over 200 injured. Many people were arrested, including the leaders of the Chicago Labor Union. Despite the broad campaign in the US and Europe in defence of the four convicted men, they were executed. In commemoration of the Chicago events of 1886, the 1889 International Socialist Congress in Paris proclaimed the 1st of May international workers' solidarity day. 29. This letter was first published in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895. A Selection, International Publishers, New York, 1953. 30. 'Reptiles' and 'the reptile press' were designations used by left-wing writers for the venal reactionary pro-government press. The 'reptile fund' referred to Bismarck's special fund for bribing periodicals and individual journalists. 31. In her letter of 7 February 1887 Laura Lafargue asked Engels to remind Eleanor of Pyotr Lavrov's copy of the Historical Review and to send her (Laura) the January issue. 32. This refers to the Circular containing accusations against Aveling (see note 3) which was directed by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party to the party's branches on 7 January 1887. It was signed by Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg, Hermann Walther and others. 33. Engels means the French Workers' Party (Parti ouvrier français), formed at the 1880 Le Havre congress, when a party programme drawn up with Marx's participation was adopted (see his 'Preamble to the Programme of the French Workers' Party', present edition, Vol. 24). The adoption of the programme led to an aggravation of the inner-party struggle between the Possibilists (see note 19) and the Guesdists (the revolutionary wing), and to a split at the 1882 St Etienne congress. The Guesdists retained the name of the Workers' Party. They relied for support on the workers of France's largest industrial centres, in particular those of some big plants in Paris. The struggle to win broad support among the workers was one of the party's top priorities. 34. On 30 October 1886 Laura Lafargue informed Engels of the publication of the book Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag in geschichtlicher Darstellung by the Austrian sociologist and lawyer Anton Menger. The
[35] author alleged that Marx's economic theory was 'not original'. Some of
[36] Marx's conclusions, he maintained, were borrowings from William
[37] Thompson and other English Ricardian Utopian Socialists. Engels believed
[38] that by attacking Menger directly he would provide him a welcome oppor-
[41] Revolution en Allemagne. Prise de Berlin', carried an editorial entitled
[42] 'Victoire!' devoted to the German Reichstag election of 21 February (see
[43] note 15). 42. Engels compares Paul Singer's success at the Reichstag election to that of the
[44] French Radical Edouard Lockroy, who obtained 272,680 votes, more than
[46] premier élu de la France' (France's first choice). As can be seen from Singer's
[48] and other socialist organisations. It was a detailed answer to the accusations
[50] Maupassant's novel Bel Ami. 49. A passage from this letter was first published in English in Karl Marx and
[51] Frederick Engels Letters to Americans. 1848-1895.A selection, New York,
[54] to Americans. 1848-1895. A selection, International Publishers, New York,
[55] 1953. 54. In his letter of 20 February 1887 Sorge suggested to Engels that Florence
[56] Kelley-Wischnewetzky should be asked to translate the Manifesto of the
[59] translation and edited by Engels, appeared in London in 1888. 55. On 20 February 1887 Sorge informed Engels that the English edition of
[61] the 1890s the organisation disintegrated. 61. The Central Labor Unions were mass trade union centres of US and foreign
[63] The first was formed in New York in 1882. Many of these centres joined the
[66] Volkszeitung, No. 10, 12 January 1887 (see note 26). The answer was
[68] on Aveling, an editorial headlined 'Affaire Aveling noch einmal'. To this
[70] here, which, as the rough copy shows, had been written by Engels. It was
[71] published on 30 March, in Issue 76. 66. In a letter dated 28 February 1887 Sorge informed Engels that a long state-
[72] ment in support of Aveling, signed by K.H. Müller, had appeared in the Chicago Arbeiterzeitung. Sorge sent Engels a clipping from the paper. On Aveling's second Circular see note 47. 67. This extract is the last page of Engels's letter to Hermann Schlüter of 19 March 1887. The whereabouts of the letter are unknown. The text is reproduced from a facsimile of a publication in Pionier. Illustrierter Volks-Kalender fur 1902, New York, 1901. 68. At the Reichstag elections of 21 February 1887 (see note 15) the Social Democrats obtained 11 seats. Under the existing regulations, 15 mandates were needed to form a faction. 69. No information is available concerning this postcard. 70. Rumours published in the last issue of the Voie du peuple (17 March 1887) caused a quarrel and even an exchange of seconds between Albert Goulle, who contributed to this newspaper, and Georges de Labruyere, a contributor to the Cri du peuple. The two then accused each other of trying to evade the duel. In publishing its version of the incident, the Cri du peuple, while careful to avoid referring to the Voie du peuple by name, suggested that its demise had been due to the lack of readers. On 20 March 1887, Le Radical published Albert Goulle's and Gabriel Deville's answer to the Cri du peuple. 71. This presumably refers to an item published in the 'Topics of the Day' column of the Weekly Dispatch on 20 March 1887 denying the rumours about the death of William I. 72. On 13 (1) March 1887 a group of members of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), led by Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin's elder brother, made an attempt on the life of Alexander III in St Petersburg. The police arrested and handed over for trial thirteen people, five of whom, including Alexander Ulyanov, were executed, while the rest were given long prison terms. The official declaration of the tsarist government referred to by Engels maintained that 'some foreign newspapers' were exaggerating the role of the constitutional party and that 'the most influential classes in Russia do not consider that ... the time is ripe for the introduction of constitutional government.' It also declared that the Russian government was 'carefully studying state socialism, which is being successfully implemented in Germany by Prince Bismarck', and expressed the Tsar's hypocritical regret at 'the need for costly precautions to safeguard his personal security'. 73. Engels refers to the political crisis in Bulgaria brought about by the over-
[73] throw, on 9 August 1886, of Prince Alexander Battenberg by a group of
[75] throne, Battenberg sent an obsequious message to Alexander III promising
[79] him that he was sending the manuscript of his Danish translation of Engels'
[81] the book in America. On 8 February 1886 the Executive of the Socialist
[82] Labor Party, which she had approached for support, set up a special
[85] April 1888 expelled several associate editors of and contributors to the
[92] Burns, Michael Davitt, John Williams and others), the socialist League
[93] (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling and others) and other organisations. A report headlined 'Irish Crimes Bill, Great Demonstration in Hyde Park, Processions and Speeches', in The Daily Telegraph of 12 April 1887, said that Eleanor Marx-Aveling's speech was warmly greeted and heard with great interest. Despite the protests the two chambers of parliament passed the bill in July 1837. Beginning 23 July, a state of emergency was introduced on the strength of it, initially in four and ultimately in about 30 counties of Ireland. 87. This letter was first published in English in Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue. Correspondence. 1887-1890, Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1960. 88. This refers to Marx's Misere de la philosophie. In 1884 Laura Lafargue failed to reach an agreement on a second French edition of the book. In 1887 Paul Lafargue again conducted negotiations on the matter. However, it was not until 1896, after Engels 's death, that the project materialised (in Paris). 89. This presumably refers to the Avelings' series of articles, 'The Labour movement in America', published between March and May 1887 in the journal Time, which appeared in Swan Sonnenschein's publishing house in London. 90. Engels means the municipal elections in Paris held on 8 May 1887. Lafargue stood for election in the Fifth arrondissement (Jardin des Plantes). In the first ballot he received 568 votes and was third. In the second, on 15 May, he got 685 votes and was second. 91. After Jules Guesde, Gabriel Deville and other members of the French Workers' Party had resigned from the editorial board of the Cri du peuple and after the Voie du peuple, the paper they had started, also ceased publication (see note 18), the Party's weekly La Socialiste likewise closed down (the last issue appeared on 26 March 1887). The Party's paper resumed publication on 11 June 1887. 92. On 11 April 1887 the European press reported that another conspiracy to assassinate Alexander III had been uncovered. It was to take place during the Tsar's inspection of a Guards cavalry regiment. These reports were not confirmed (see also notes 72 and 77). 93. This refers to the Peasant Reform of 19 February 1861 ('Regulations concerning Peasants Emerging from Serf Dependence'). It put an end to serfdom in Russia and brought freedom to about 22.5 million peasants. However, even after the abolition of serfdom some of the former serfs (the
[78] Crown, I am prepared to return it into the hands of her sovereign.' 74. Engels is replying to Trier's letter of 22 March 1887 in which Trier informed
[13] of date (see present edition, Vol. 26), and suggested that the new preface
[94] so called temporarily liable peasants) were obliged to do corvee work or pay
[96] was passed stipulating the obligatory redemption of the peasant plots as of 1 January 1883. Corvee and quit-rent in their open form were abolished, but
[97] continued to exist in the shape of the redemption system until the first
[101] was invited onto German territory, ostensibly for negotiations, and arrested
[102] on charges of organising espionage and encouraging young people in
[104] ruling quarters launched a virulent anti-French press campaign. This was
[105] taken advantage of by French revanchist circles for stepping up anti-
[106] German propaganda. However, the governments of Russia, Great Britain and Austria-Hungary refused to support Bismarck. Germany was forced to beat a retreat. On 30 April Schnaebelé was released and the conflict thus settled. 100. This letter was first published in English, abridged, in Labour Monthly, No. 2, London, 1934, and, without the first paragraph, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895. A Selection, International Publishers, New York, 1953. 101. In the letter in question Sorge, replying to remarks contained in Engels' letter of 10 March 1887, pointed out that the leaders of the Socialist Labor Party of North America had, by their mistaken tactics, to a considerable extent nullified the successes achieved in the US labour movement by Marx's adherents at the time of the First International. 102. This refers to the English translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party made by Samuel Moore (published in 1888). The three manuscripts mentioned are those of a French translation of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see note 23), an Italian translation of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital and a Danish translation of Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (see note 74). 103. An item headlined 'A Costly Apostle', published in Justice No. 172, 30 April 1887, reproduced the contents of the circulars of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America attacking Edward Aveling (see notes 32 and 98). Aveling answered in a Letter to the Editor, published in Justice, No. 174. 14 May 1887. 104. An American exhibition opened in London in May 1887, the programme including the show Buffalo Bill's Wild West. 105. In his letter of 29 April 1887 Eduard Bernstein asked Engels and Kautsky to find out, confidentially, whether the Austrian anarchist Joseph Peukert, resident in London, was not, as he, Bernstein, assumed, a police agent. In late 1887 Peukert was exposed. 106. This refers to the London German Workers' Educational Society. It was founded by members of the League of the Just Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and Heinrich Bauer in London in 1840. In 1847 and in 1849-50 Marx and Engels took part in its activities. The Society changed its name in subsequent years. From the 1870s it was called the Communist Workers'
[107] Educational society. Soon after the introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law
[108] in Germany (see note 52), the Society was overruled by the faction that
[109] rejected the tactics adopted by German Social Democracy for the period of
[110] operation of the Law. It opposed combining legal and illegal methods of struggle, objected to the Social Democrats' use of the Reichstag platform and favoured individual terrorism. In March 1880 a considerable part of the Society's members formed an independent organisation of their own, retaining the Society's name. This new Society declared that it would be guided by the principles and tactics of German Social Democracy. The remainder of the members, in particular the followers of Johann Most, stuck to their extreme Left views. They operated under the same name. 107. This refers to data on the state of affairs in the French republic at the time of the conspiracy of the Equals, which Bernstein needed for his Afterword to Gabriel Deville's book Gracchus Babeuf und die Verschworung der Gleichen. Translated by Bernstein into German, the book was published, with his Afterword, in the series Sozialdemokratische Bibliothek, in Hottingen-Zurich in 1887. The Conspiracy of the Equals, organised by Babeuf and his followers, aimed at provoking an armed uprising of the plebeian masses against the bourgeois regime of the Directory and establishing a revolutionary dictatorship as a transitional stage on the way to 'pure democracy' and 'egalitarian communism'. The conspiracy was exposed in May 1796. At the end of May 1797 its leaders were executed. Buonarroti's Conspiration de Babeuf, which Engels mentions later in his letter, was translated into English and published by William O'Brien, a prominent Chartist. 108. Engels's remarks contained in this paragraph were used in the column 'Sozialpolitische Rundschau' of Der Sozialdemocrat, No. 20, 13 May 1887. 109. Engels means the political crisis in Bulgaria in the summer of 1886 created by the overthrow of Prince Alexander Battenberg by a group of military conspirators linked with agents of the Russian Government. The provisional government formed on 9 August was replaced, a few days later, by a pro-Austrian regency. An attempt to re-enthrone Alexander Battenberg failed in the face of open opposition from Russia. In September, the Russian Government dispatched Major General N. V. Kaulbars to Sofia with the task to prepare the ground for the election of a Russian candidate to the Bulgarian throne. However, his mission failed, owing in particular to the stance taken by the West European powers, notably Britain. On 5 November Russia recalled Kaulbars and broke off diplomatic relations with Bulgaria. 110. On 31 March 1887 two Bulgarian émigrés staged an attempt on the life of Mantoff, prefect of the Bulgarian city of Ruschtschuk, in Bucharest for negotiations with the Russian ambassador. Mantoff was seriously injured. On the night of 23 April a bomb was set off in the house of Major Popoff, chief of the Sofia garrison. The attack had been organised by members of
[112] shot in Bulgaria in February 1887. 111. Kelley-Wischnewetzky had suggested that Engels's article, 'Die
[113] Arbeiterbewegung in America' ('The Labour Movement in America'), writ-
[114] ten as a preface to the US edition of The Condition of the Working Class in
[116] pamphlets. This was also suggested by Sorge in his letter of 26 April 1887.
[117] Engels translated the preface into German himself. The pamphlets appeared
[118] in New York in July 1887. Engels's German translation was also published in the Sozialdemokrat, Nos 24 and 25; 10 and 17 June 1887. 112. Engels is quoting from Sorge's letter of 26 April 1887. Enclosed in it was a clipping from the New Yorker Volkszeitung of 25 April with a report on a sitting of the New York Section that had concerned itself with the Aveling case. 113. In his letter of 26 April 1887 Sorge informed Engels that Alexander Jonas, editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, had stayed away from the meeting of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party which discussed the Aveling case (see note 3). Sorge also noted that the Executive had dealt itself a mortal blow by its second circular on the matter (see note 98). 114. On 21 May \H7, Justice, No. 175, carried an editorial note in the 'Tell Tale Straws' column which gave the following resume of Aveling's latest Letter to the Editor (see Justice, No. 174, 14 May 1887): 'The gist of it is that the Board of Supervisors in America exonerate him from all blame, and that Mr. Friedrich Engels, Mr. F. A. Sorge, and Mr. Wilhelm Liebknecht (who writes a letter to that effect) are ready to answer for Dr. Aveling's correct behaviour in the matter of his expenditure on his American trip'. 115. Aveling's answer to the second circular of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party (see note 98) was printed in the form of a pamphlet, containing Aveling's statement of 27 May 1887 (a detailed reply to the charges levelled at him); a statement by Eleanor Marx-Aveling of 24 May, confirming her husband's arguments and adding certain details; a statement by Wilhelm Liebknecht in defence of Aveling of 16 May. 116. Six Possibilists (see note 19), including Paul Brousse, were elected to the Paris Municipal Council in a second ballot on 15 May 1887. 117. On 17 May 1887, in a debate at the French Chamber of Deputies, the budget committee opposed the draft budget for 1888 submitted by Rene Goblet's Radical Cabinet (see note 200). The majority of deputies supported the committee, thus forcing the Cabinet to resign. The government crisis lasted for 13 days. On 30 May 1887 Maurice Rouvier formed a Cabinet composed mostly of Rightists. 118. Engels wrote this letter on a postcard. The address, written by him on the back, reads K. Kautsky Esq., 54 Langdon Park Road, Highgate, No 661. The text of the letter is slightly damaged. 119. Engels wrote this letter on a postcard. The address, written by him on the
[122] note 139. 121. An excerpt from this letter was published in English in The Labour
[123] Monthly, London, 1934, No. 2. 122. Congregationalists (Independents) - adherents of one of the Protestant
[124] trends in England. In the 1580s and 1590s they formed the Left wing of the
[125] Puritans. Consisting of members of the commercial and fledgling industrial
[126] bourgeoisie and the 'new' bourgeois nobility, they constituted a radical
[127] opposition to absolutism and the Church of England. During the English
[129] suggested publishing Marx's letter to him, Sorge, of 20 June 1881 (see
[131] Progress and Poverty, published in New York in 1880. However, at the
[132] time, Engels held that a publication of Marx's letter in the US would be
[133] premature. Engels gave a critique of George's views on land nationalisation
[134] in his Preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England (see present edition, Vol. 26). 129. On 8 November 1887 elections to the State legislatures were held in twelve US Federal States. Henry George, who stood for election to the post of Secretary of State in New York State on behalf of the United Labor Party (see note 6), failed. 130. This letter was first published, in the language of the original (English), in Edward Thompson's book, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1955. 131. Engels means A Labour Programme, the statement of principles of the North of England Socialist Federation, established by Socialist League (see note 21) member John Mahon and other socialist workers in Northumberland on 30 April 1887. On 14 June Engels received a copy of the programme from Mahon with the request to comment on it. Engels sent his suggestions concerning the introductory part of the programme (see present edition, Vol. 26). They were not put into effect since the Federation only lasted a few months. 132. This letter, like the previous one, is Engels' reply to Mahon. In his covering letter to the programme of the North of England Socialist Federation (see note 131) Mahon set forth a plan for creating a socialist organisation for England and Scotland. This was to be achieved by uniting the various extant socialist societies. The constituent congress which was to discuss the programme, was to be preceded by broad socialist propaganda within the trade unions. Mahon intended to start a special fund for preparing the congress and asked Engels for material assistance. 133. Mahon, who intended to write an essay on the Luddite movement, had asked Engels to recommend him relevant material. The Luddites came out against the introduction of machinery as ruinous to craftsmen. The Luddites were active in the late 18th and early 19th century. They owed their name to Ned Ludd, the legendary journeyman supposed to have been the first to wreck his knitting machine in protest against his master's arbi-trariness. 134. The separate edition of Engels's article The Labor Movement in America (see note 12) contains a brief footnote (see present edition, Vol. 26) in which Engels refers to the relevant articles by Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx-Aveling (see note 89). In this connection Engels states his attitude to the anti-Aveling campaign launched by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party (see note 3). The passage to this effect which Engels gives in his letter
[135] is worded in the footnote as follows: 'I am all the more pleased to refer to
[136] these excellent articles since this offers me an opportunity simultaneously to
[137] reject the wretched slanders concerning the Avelings which the Executive of
[140] was included in the separate German edition put out in New York in 1887. 135. Sorge had informed Engels that he had not received the three issues of Time
[141] containing the Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx-Aveling's series of arti-
[142] cles on their tour of America, which they had sent him. 136. In a letter of 16 June 1887 Sorge informed Engels that an advertisement for
[143] the forthcoming publication by Scribner & Welford (New York) of two volumes of Marx's Capital, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, had appeared in the journal Jahrbücher fur Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 1887, Vol. 14, p477. 137. After his resignation from the post of War Minister, General Boulanger continued to whip up a revanchist campaign with the support of the chauvinist elements of different parties, from the radicals to the monarchists. On 8 July 1887, when Boulanger was leaving for Clermont-Ferrand to assume command of the 13th Corps, his supporters staged a chauvinist demonstration at the Lyons railway station. Boulangism was a reactionary movement in France in the mid-1880s, led by ex-War Minister General Boulanger. It urged a revanchist war against Germany to win back Alsace, annexed by Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. In alliance with the monarchists, the Boulangists sought to capi-talise on the masses' discontent with the government's policy. Their large-scale demagogic propaganda was especially effective among the lower ranks of the army. France was under the threat of a monarchist coup. Measures taken by the republican government, with the support of the progressive forces led to the collapse of the Boulangist movement. Its leaders fled from France. 138. Engels holidayed in Eastbourne from 23 July to 2 September. 139. This letter was first published, in the language of the original (English), in Briefe und Auszuge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A Sorge und Anders, Stuttgart, 1906. 140. Kelley-Wischnewetzky had sent Engels clippings from the US (New York and provincial) press with reviews of the American edition of the Condition of the Working Class in England. 141. On 21 July 1887 Mahon wrote to tell Engels that he no longer trusted Aveling and considered it impossible further to co-operate with him. He did not give any reasons. 142. Aveling and Mahon, along with some other members of the Socialist League, opposed the anarchist policies of its leaders (see note 95). 143. In a letter of 30 July 1887 Kautsky asked Engels to send his signature, a
[144] facsimile of which he wanted to give under Engels' portrait in the annual
[145] Österreichischer Arbeiter-Kalender for 1888, where Kautsky's article,
[146] 'Friedrich Engels' was to appear. The article was published, with some
[147] addenda and amendments, after Engels' death, in 1895, in Vorwärts (Berlin),
[148] under the title 'Friedrich Engels, sein Leben, sein Wirken, seine Schriften'. 144. Bank Holidays - in 1871 additional holidays were legally introduced for all
[149] English banks: Easter and Whit Monday, the first Monday of August and 26
[150] December. 145. The Austrian Social Democrat Heinrich Mandl questioned the 'iron law of
[152] lutionary France must side with the Russian people, fighting for freedom,
[153] rather than with official Russia. 152. The elections held in Germany on 21 February 1887 were won by the pro-
[154] Bismarck 'cartel' - the conservatives of both trends and the National-
[156] nate demanded by Bismarck (see note 36). It again increased the peacetime
[157] complement of the army (by more than 40,000) and sharply raised the
[159] regret over the fact that Kautsky, to whom the American editor of the
[160] Engels-written book The Condition of the Working Class in England, John
[162] to send it to London newspapers and magazines for reviewing. 161. Characterising the resolution of the conference of the United Labor Party
[121] U.S. America. For data on the first publication of the letter in English see
[164] note 6) on the expulsion of the Socialists from this party, ostensibly in conformity with its Rules, Henry George declared in his paper The Standard that this decision largely furthered the success of his efforts to enlist representatives of the petty bourgeoisie and even big capitalists; as he explained, these social groups would have certainly refused to back the new independent political movement had it involved the Socialists with their 'doctrine of the class struggle'. 162. The American edition of Marx's speech on free trade, which he made in Brussels on 9 January 1848 (See present edition, Vol. 6, pp450-65), appeared in Boston in September 1888, in Kelley-Wischnewetzky's translation. Engels wrote a special preface to this edition - first published in the author's translation into the German by the magazine Neue Zeit No 7, July 1888, under the title 'Schutzzoll und Freihandel' and then in the English original, in the latter half of August 1888, in The Labor Standard of New York. Appended as an addendum was the slightly abridged version of the 'Seventh and Last Observation' from Chapter II ('The Metaphysics of Political Economy') of Marx's work The Poverty of Philosophy (see present edition, Vol. 6, ppl74-78). Kelley-Wischnewetzky suggested that the fourth part of this chapter, 'Property of Rent' (ibid., pp 197-206) be likewise included in the addendum; she argued that the American anarchists, Benjamin Tucker in particular, raised a noisy publicity campaign in connection with the publication of Proudhon's works they had undertaken. However, Engels did not find it necessary to include this part. 163. In connection with Engels' note to a separate edition of his article 'The Labor Movement in America' (see note 134), the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party issued a statement published in the newspaper Sozialist, No. 35, on 27 August 1887. It expressed surprise that a comrade in such an exposed position as Engels could not expect such ... accusation against a whole number of persons who ... have taken their stand under the circumstances...' and also claimed that allegedly none of the sections of the party 'has come out against the National Executive Committee concerning the financial aspect of the matter'. 164. Apparently the reference is to the convention of the Socialist Labor Party of North America (see note 3) held on 17-20 September 1887, in Buffalo, NY. 165. The annual 20th Trades Unions Congress, held at Swansea from the 5th to the
[169] November 1888, an international labour congress in London. For the first time
[17] of French troops on the German border. On 25 January the semi-official
[171] and on holding a plebiscite among the trade union members concerning the
[172] struggle for an eight-hour working day, along with other resolutions. 166. This letter is a reply to the letter from the editorial secretary of the socialist newspaper Londoner Arbeiter-Zeitung, Hugo Koch, of 21 September 1887; Koch had asked Engels whether the rumour of his negative pronouncements about the newspaper was correct. 167. Engels wrote this letter on the letter from Johannes Weiß, written on 9 October 1887, requesting a long-term loan for the completion of his education. 168. On 6 October 1887, Deputy Chief of the French General Staff General Louis Charles Caffarel was dismissed from his post and arrested on a charge of selling Legion d'honneur Orders. The investigation revealed that MP Daniel Wilson, son-in-law of the President of the Republic, Jules Grévy, was one of the chief accomplices of General Caffarel. As a result, General Caffarel was demoted, stripped of his decorations and discharged with disgrace; Grévy had to retire. 169. Engels means the pronouncements made by Emile de Girardin, a French bourgeois journalist and editor of the newspaper La Presse, in 1846 and 1847. E. Girardin accused some of the figures of the July Monarchy and the Guizot Ministry of corruption (selling peer titles, bribery of the press, etc). His exposures had a role to play in exacerbating the domestic political crisis on the eve of the Revolution of 1848. For more details, see Engels' article 'The Decline and Approaching Fall of Guizot - Position of the French Bourgeoisie' (present edition, Vol. 6, pp213-219). 170. Révolution du mépris - a phrase in use during the February Revolution of 1848 in France, when the bourgeois-republican quarters presaged a révolution du mépris ('revolution of contempt) for the corrupt regime of the July Monarchy. 171. On 24 September 1887 a group of Frenchmen on a hunting party near the Franco-German border at Raon-sur-Plaine (Vexaincourt), was shot at by a German soldier, R. Kaufmann, from German territory; one of the Frenchmen was killed, and another wounded. Kaufmann said he had taken them for poachers. The German government expressed its regret over the incident and pledged to pay an indemnity to the families of the victims. 172. On 11 June 1887, the newspaper Le Socialiste (2 Serie) resumed its publication following a break from March 26; its format was considerably enlarged. 173. Bebel visited Engels as guest in the latter half of October 1887. 174. The Congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany was in session
[173] from the 2nd to the 6th October 1887, at St. Gallen (Switzerland). It was
[175] report of the Reichstag faction of the party, the activity of Social
[176] Democratic deputies in the Reichstag and the Landtags, the party's attitude
[178] by the government in the social sphere, the party's policy at the last election and at the election to come, the convocation of an international socialist congress, and the attitude to the anarchists. It was stressed in the congress resolutions that in its parliamentary activities, the party was to concentrate on the critique of the government and on the agitation for the principles of Social Democracy; Bismarck's social policies, it was said, had nothing in common with the genuine concern for working people's needs. It was also pointed out that anarchist views were incompatible with the socialist programme. The congress passed a decision to convene an international labour congress in 1888 to consider labour legislation. Most of the delegates upheld the party's revolutionary wing, led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. The leaders of the opportunist wing found themselves in relative isolation. 175. Home Rule - this refers to the struggle for Irish self government from the 1870s to the beginning of the 20th century. Although Home Rule provided for an Irish parliament and national bodies of administration, it envisaged supreme power being vested with the British cabinet which retained the administration of foreign, military and customs affairs. 176. The British Fabian Society was founded by democratic minded intellectuals in 1884. This society was named after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus (3rd century B.C.), who was named Cunctator ('the delayer') from his cautious tactics in the war against Hannibal. Playing the leading part in it were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Bernard Shaw and others. Local organisations of the Fabian society sometimes included working-class members. Rejecting notions of militant class struggle and the revolution, the Fabians believed it was possible to move from capitalism to socialism by means of reforms implemented within the framework of a municipal socialism. 177. Engels wrote this letter on a post card. He indicated the address on the back - F. A. Sorge Esq., Rochester N.Y., U.S. America. 178. The German Social Democrat Congress held at St. Gallen adopted a decision (along with other resolutions (see note 174)) on convening an international labour congress to consider the issue of labour legislation. Almost simultaneously, a similar decision was passed by the British Trades Unions Congress (see note 165). The trade unions convened their congress in London in November 1888; the German Social Democrats abandoned their
[179] plan and took part in the convening and holding of an international social-
[181] Workers' Party (see note 33); it stood at the beginnings of the Second
[183] Socialist League (see note 21). 180. The full text of this letter is not available. For first publication in English,
[184] see note 87. 181. Here the reference is to the Caffarel-Wilson case (see note 168) in which
[186] Emile de Girardin in 1846-47 (see note 169). The journalist Albert Eduard Portalis, referred to in the letter, was the publisher of the newspaper Le XIXe Siècle which was taking a particularly vigorous stand against Wilson, and which published a number of materials compromising him. During the court trial the dossier, entitled Los antécédents financiers des membres du cabinet Rouvier, was stolen from Portalis, and an attack was made on Portalis himself. 182. In response to the inquiry of the editorial board of Le XIXe Siècle to the Paris procurator's office with the demand to give back the documents seized during the search le préfet de police offered copies of the documents but retained the originals on a formal pretext. 183. Mme Limouzin (née Scharnet), a favourite of the former War Minister General Jean Thibaudin, was arrested in connection with the Caffarel case as his intermediary in selling Légion d'honneur Orders. 184. Early in November 1887, Laura Lafargue wrote to Engels about squabbles among some of the members of the Paris branch (agglomération parisienne) of the French Workers' Party. 185. In view of the frequent meetings of the unemployed from the autumn of 1886 to the spring of 1887, the Chief Constable of London, Charles Warren, banned demonstrations and meetings in Trafalgar Square by his fiat of 8 November, 1887. In reply the Metropolitan Radical Federation (see note 22) appointed Sunday, 13 November 1887, as the day of a rally. On that day Trafalgar Square was cordoned off by the police and soldiers, and nearly all the demonstrators, about a hundred thousand strong, were dispersed with exceptional cruelty on their way to the square. Hundreds of workers sustained injuries in clashes with the police (with three workers receiving deadly wounds); numerous arrests were made. Also taking part in the demonstration was Eleanor Marx-Aveling, who described the events of that day in the Pall Mall Gazette on the 14th of November 1887. 13 November 1887 went down in the history of the British working class movement as 'Bloody Sunday'. 186. The reference is to the joint meeting of the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist League, the Labour Emancipation League and the London
[187] Radical Clubs in London on 20 September 1885, in protest against the arrest
[188] of Socialist speakers who had addressed rallies in the East End in July-
[189] September 1885 when the British Socialists were fighting for freedom of
[190] speech ('the free speech struggles against the police suppression of outdoor
[191] meetings'). The September 20 rally brought together several thousand who offered resistance to the police trying to arrest the speakers. Several people were detained nonetheless, but they were set free the next day. September 27 saw an even larger demonstration and a rally that adopted a resolution protesting the police actions. Thereupon the authorities ceased their attempts to silence Socialist speakers. 187. Slavophiles (e.g. A. Khomyakov, the brothers Aksakov, I. Kireevsky, Yu. Samarin and others) were a trend in nineteenth-century Russian social and philosophical thought. In the late 1830s-1850s they advanced a theory of Russia's unique path of historical development which, in their opinion, differed from that of Western Europe. Among the characteristic features of their theory were monarchism, a negative attitude to revolution and a lean-ing towards religious-philosophical conceptions. The Slavophiles met mostly in the literary salons of Moscow. 188. On 10 November 1887, die Deutsche Reichsbank announced, on Bismarck's orders, that it would no longer accept Russian securities as deposits. 189. It was common practice in the book trade for a publishing house to grant a discount to bookstores on wholesale purchases depending on the quantity ordered; for example it might offer about 12 copies, a thirteenth part of the total print, free of charge. Referring to '18 copies - a thirteenth part - free of charge', Engels meant 224 copies of the book sold in Britain. 190. As Conrad Schmidt told Engels in his letter of 22 November 1887, his rela-tives in Königsberg had been searched on having received a box with books which he, Schmidt, had sent them from Paris during his trip abroad. The police tried to prosecute Schmidt on the grounds that the parcel had contained several numbers of the newspaper Sozialdemokrat which was banned in Germany. He managed to avoid arrest. 191. From the latter half of September 1841, to about 10 October 1842, Engels stayed in Berlin for his tour of duty in an artillery brigade. In his spare time he attended lectures at Berlin University and forged close contacts with left-wing Hegelians, progressive writers and scholars. It was at that time that Engels maintained close ties with East Prussian liberals (Eduard Plottwell and Johann Jacoby). Through them he might have contacted the bourgeois newspaper Königl. Preuß. Staats-Kriegs-und-Friedenszeitung (a progressive paper in the 1840s); however, we have no evidence that Engels really co-operated with the newspaper. 'The restricted intelligence of loyal subjects' ('beschränkter Untertanenverstand') was a phrase coined by the Prussian Minister of the Interior von Rochow; it gained wide currency in Germany. 192. On behalf of Ernst Elsters, preparing a new edition of Heine's works for
[192] publication, C. Schmidt appealed to Engels on 22 November 1887, with the
[193] request to clarify some 'mysterious innuendoes' made in Heine's letter to
[194] Lassalle on 7 March 1846, which was to be included in that edition. This
[195] letter appeared in the second volume of Heine-Briefwechsels, München-
[196] Berlin, 1917, published by Friedrich Hirth. 193. As a lawyer, Lassalle conducted Countess Sophie Hatzfeldt's divorce
[197] proceedings in 1846-54. In February 1848, he was arrested on a charge of
[198] abetting the theft of a casket with documents with intent to present them to the court. Lassalle was held in custody till 11 August 1848, when acquitted by the jury. 194. On 22 November 1887, Conrad Schmidt wrote to Engels that he had read with much interest Volume II of Das Kapital; he said if some economic newspaper could accept his article on the Marxian system, he would like to send it to Engels. It must have been Schmidt's work Die Durchschnittsprofitrate auf Grundlage des Marx'schen Werthgesetzes, Stuttgart, 1889. 195. On 3 December 1887, The Commonweal (No. 99) carried an article by Henry Ambrose Barker, 'The Condition of the Working Classes. I', which was a précis of the first chapters of Engels' book The Condition of the Working Class in England; this abstract contained extensive quotations from those chapters. There was no continuation of the article. 196. Engels means Kelley-Wischnewetzky's translation into English of Marx's speech on free trade (see note 162). Asking Engels to write a preface to the American edition of the Marxian speech, Kelley-Wischnewetzky, in her letter of 24 October 1887, wished the preface to contain a critical evaluation of pronouncements made by the American protectionists. 197. The reference is to the resolution of a presidential crisis in France over the exposure of speculatory machinations committed by Daniel Wilson, son-in-law of President Jules Grévy (see note 168). Under public pressure J. P. Grévy had to tender his resignation on 1 December 1887. Nominated as candidates for the presidency were the moderate republicans M. F. Sadi Carnot, Jules EC. Ferry, Charles Louis de Freycinet, among others; the ultra Right nominated Félix Gustave Saussier. Ferry's candidacy elicited sharp protests from left-wing organisations and Paris workers. The Blanquists, headed by Emile Eudes, a former general of the Paris Commune, and Edouard Vaillant, a member of the municipal council, joined hands with the Guesdists (see note 33) and organised several meetings and demonstrations against Ferry's candidature. After the first round of the election Ferry and Freycinet withdrew their candidacies in Marie François Carnot's favour, who was then elected president. 198. Pertaining to the coup attempt of 1877 by Marshall Macmahon, President of the Republic, with the aim of restoring a monarchy in France. Yet
[199] Macmahon found no support among the broad popular masses or in the
[200] army (among the soldiers and the greater part of commissioned officers),
[201] which reflected the republican sentiments of the French peasantry. The
[202] parliamentary election of October 1877 brought victory to the republicans,
[203] with a bourgeois republican government being formed; in January 1879 Macmahon resigned. 199. Opportunists was the name given in France to the party of moderate bourgeois republicans upon its split in 1881 and the formation of a left-wing party of radicals under Georges Clemenceau. The name was first used in 1877 by Henri Rochefort, a journalist, after the leader of the party, L. Gambetta, had said that reforms were to be implemented at 'an opportune time' ('un temps opportun'). 200. The Radicals were a parliamentary group in France in the 1880s and 1890s that emerged from the party of moderate republicans ('Opportunists', see note 199). The Radicals relied chiefly on the petty bourgeoisie and to some extent on the middle bourgeoisie; they upheld the bourgeois-democratic demands: a unicameral system of parliament, separation of the church from the state, a progressive income tax, limitation of the workday, among other social issues. The Radicals were led by George Clemenceau. This group transformed itself into the Republican Party of Radicals and Radical-Socialists (parti républicain radical et radical-socialiste) in 1901. 201. On 4 December 1887, London was the scene of several meetings of the unemployed, organised by the Social Democratic Federation (see note 62). Although significant police reinforcements were moved in, no clashes were reported. For an account of the meetings, see Justice Vol. IV, No. 204, 10 December 1887: The Unemployed Agitation. 202. Such a collection was not published at the time; in 1894 the Social Democratic Publishers Vorwärts released a collection of Engels' works under the title Internationales aus dem 'Volksstaat' (1871-75) which comprised all the articles mentioned in the letter with the exception of Refugee Literature IV. Friedrich Hermann Schlüter also suggested that Engels include in the collection some of his articles from Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-Ökonomische Revue, as well as excerpts from his pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party. 203. Engels replies to F. Schlüter's suggestion to revise three chapters from the second part of Anti-Duhring and have them published as a separate pamphlet. These chapters, under the single title The Theory of Force contained an explanation of materialist views on economics and politics. Engels subsequently changed his plan and decided also to add a fourth chapter on Germany history from 1848 to 1888 and a critique of Bismarck. The proposed title of the pamphlet was The Role of Force in History. Engels wrote this (fourth) chapter somewhat later, at the close of 1887 and in the
[204] first three months of 1888. Having interrupted his work in March 1888,
[205] Engels must have never resumed it. This unfinished work of his, an outline
[206] of the preface to the pamphlet, the plan of the fourth chapter, as well as the
[2] while working on the manuscript in 1865 (see his letter to Engels of 31 July
[3] 1865; present edition, Vol. 42, pl72). The English journalist Peter Fox, a
[6] prison and a fine of 50 guldens on charges of 'lese majesté' and 'denigration
[8] the Netherlands Supreme Court. The charges were based on two articles by
[9] Nieuwenhuis published anonymously in the newspaper Recht voor Allen.
[11] the candidate of the United Labor Party, got 68,110 votes, 31 per cent of the total cast. During the preparation for the municipal election in New York in August 1886, the United Labor Party was founded to rally the workers for joint political action. The initiative came from the New York Central Workers' Union, an association of New York trade unions formed in 1882. Similar parties were set up in many other cities. 7. In November 1886 elections were held to the US Congress and the State legislatures. Led by its parties, the working class achieved substantial success in the elections in New York (see note 6), Chicago and Milwaukee. In Chicago, ten Labor Party candidates were elected to the State Legislative Assembly (one to the Senate and nine to the Lower Chamber). The party's candidate to the US Congress was short of only 64 votes. In Milwaukee, the Labor Party candidate was elected Mayor, one of its men got into the State Senate, six into the Lower Chamber, and one into the US Congress. 8. In his letter of 9 January 1887 Martignetti informed Engels that he was being persecuted for his socialist views and was, as an official of the government notary archives, in danger of dismissal. He asked Engels to help him find employment outside Italy. 9. From November 1850 Engels supervised the Manchester branch of the Ermen and Engels German textile firm. The German side of the enterprise was run by Fr. Engels Sr., with the assistance of Anthony Ermen. The firm's office was in Barmen. In 1860, after his father's death, Engels received £10,000 from his brothers in compensation for his share in the family concern in Engelskirchen, which consolidated his financial and legal standing in the Manchester firm. From June 1864 to June 1869 Engels was a co-owner of the Ermen and Engels firm. After five years in this capacity he withdrew from the firm and devoted himself entirely to party work, schol-arship and journalism. 10. This letter was first published abridged, in the language of the original (English), in Briefe und Auszuge aus Briefen von Job. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906, and in full in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895. A Selection, International Publishers, New York, 1953. 11. In a letter dated 10 December 1886 Kelley-Wischnewetzky asked Engels to write a preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which she had translated into English. She argued
[12] that Engels' Afterword, written for this edition in February 1886, was out
[14] should, above all, contain a critique of Henry George and that the words 'in
[15] 1844' should be omitted from the title. In reply to her request Engels wrote the article 'The Labor Movement in America', which was to open the book. 12. Engels' article 'The Labor Movement in America' opened the American edition of his The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in New York in 1887. That same year the article appeared, in Engels' German translation, under the heading 'Die Arbeiterbewegung in Amerika', in the Sozialdemokrat (10 and 17 June). In July separate prints, in German and English, were distributed in New York. The article was also published as a pamphlet in London (see present edition, Vol. 26) and, in French, in Le Socialiste (9, 16 and 23 July). Even before the publication of the book the article was, without Engels' knowledge, translated into German by Alexander Jonas, editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, and published in this paper in April 1887. Engels, displeased with the quality of the translation, lodged an official protest. 13. This letter was first published in English, abridged, in: Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence. 1887-1890,Vo\. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1960. 14. Russo-German rapprochement appeared to be on the cards in early 1887. In the course of negotiations between the two countries, the Russian ambassador, P. Shuvalov, proposed to Bismarck that the 'alliance of three emper-ors', which was expiring in the summer of 1887, should be resumed, but without Austrian participation. Shuvalov's proposal also envisaged Russia's neutrality in the event of another Franco-German war and a free hand for Russia in the Balkans. Addressing the Reichstag on 11 January 1887, Bismarck urged the need for friendly relations with Russia. An anti-French press campaign, the mobilisation of reservists and other steps on the part of the German government gave rise to fears of an imminent military clash with France (the 'war alarm' in January 1887). However, the Russian government refused to back up Shuvalov's proposals and Bismarck's actions. 15. On 14 January 1887, Bismarck dissolved the Reichstag in view of its refusal to endorse the proposed seven-year military budget (the bill on the septen-nate). The elections to the new Reichstag, held on 21 February, were attended by a brutal campaign of terror, directed above all against the Socialist Party. Nevertheless, the Social Democrats polled 763,128 votes (10.1 per cent of the total), 213,038 more than in the 1884 elections. However, owing to the undemocratic additional ballots law the number of Social Democratic deputies declined to 11, as against 24 in the previous Reichstag. 16. In January 1887 the Daily News reported that the Bismarck government
[16] intended to demand that the French government explain the concentration
[19] inal (English), in K. Marx and F. Engels, On Literature and Art, Progress
[21] had arisen between Caroline-Rémy Séverine-Guebhard, publisher of the newspaper Le Cri du Peuple, on the one hand, and the associate editors of this paper - Jules Guesde, Gabriel Deville, Albert Goullé - on the other. The latter emphatically objected to Séverine's public pronouncements in defence of the anarchist Duval, convicted on charges of burglary, and to the publication in the paper, as a leader, of an anti-German article by one Bienvenu. They also demanded the dismissal of the journalist Georges de Labruyère, notorious for his Boulangist views (see note 137). As a result of the conflict, almost all leading members of the editorial board withdrew from the Cri du Peuple. They started a new paper, the Voie du peuple, the first issue of which appeared on 2 February 1887. The paper lasted only a few weeks, the last issue appearing on 17 March. 19. The Possibilists (Broussists) were a reformist trend in the French socialist movement between the 1880s and the early 20th century. Its leaders - Paul Brousse and Benoit Malon -caused a split in the French Workers' Party (see note 33) in 1882 and formed the Federation of Socialist Workers. Its ideological basis was the theory of municipal socialism. The Possibilists pursued a 'policy of the possible' ('la politique des possibilités'). At the beginning of the 20th century the Possibilists merged with the French Socialist Party. 20. Presumably Engels means the newspaper Le Citoyen, of which Jules Guesde was a co-founder. It appeared from 1 October 1881 to 8 March 1884. In October 1882 it merged with the newspaper La Bataille, edited by Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray. As a result, the French Workers' Party (see note 33) lost its influence on the paper. 21. The Socialist League was founded in December 1884 by a group of English socialists who had withdrawn from the Social Democratic Federation (see note 62). The League's organisers included Eleanor Marx Aveling, Ernest Belfort Bax and William Morris. 'The Manifesto of the Socialist League' (see The Commonweal No.l, February 1885) stated that its members advocated 'the principles of Revolutionary International Socialism' and sought 'a change in the basis of Society ... which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities'. The tasks of the League included the formation of a national socialist party, the conquest of political power through the election of socialists to local government bodies, and the promotion of the trade union and co-operative movement. In the League's early years its leaders
[22] took an active part in the working-class movement. However, in 1887 the
[24] 'anti-parliamentarists'). With sectarian tendencies growing stronger, the
[28] the Anti-Socialist Law (see note 52). 28. On 11 November 1887 the US Supreme Court sentenced four leaders of the
[29] Chicago Labor Union - Albert K. Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer
[25] League gradually distanced itself from the day-to-day struggle of the British
[31] class movement for the eight-hour day developed in America's leading
[32] industrial centres (Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis,
[23] League split into three factions (Anarchist elements, 'parliamentarists and
[1] back, reads: F. A. Sorge Esq., Hoboken N.J., U.S. America. 2. Marx first thought of the need for an English translation of Das Kapital
[39] tunity for self-advertising. He therefore decided to answer him either in an
[45] any other candidate, at the 1885 parliamentary election and was called 'le
[47] letter of 7 March 1887, Engels congratulated him on the great success. 43. After failing to poll the requisite number of votes at the Reichstag election of 21 February 1887,Wilhelm Liebknecht succeeded in winning a seat in the run-off in Berlin's Fourth constituency on 30 August 1888 in lieu of Wilhelm Hasenclever, who had dropped out for health reasons. 44. The Centre was a political party of German Catholics formed in June 1870. It expressed the separatist and anti-Prussian sentiments current in West and Southwest Germany. (The seats of its Reichstag deputies were in the centre of the hall, hence the name of the party.) The Centre's following consisted of socially disparate sections of Catholic clergy, landowners, bourgeois and peasants. Its deputies usually took a noncommittal attitude, manoeuvring between the pro-government parties and the Left opposition groups. Although it opposed the Bismarck government in the mid-1870s and early 1880s, the Centre voted for its measures against the working-class and socialist movement. Engels gave a detailed characterisation of the Centre in his work The Role of Force in History (see present edition, Vol. 26) and in his article 'What Now?' (see Vol. 27). 45. The Party of Progress, founded in June 1861, advocated the unification of Germany under the aegis of Prussia, the convocation of an all-German parliament, and a liberal Ministry responsible to the Chamber of Deputies. Fearing a popular revolution, it did not support the basic democratic demands - universal suffrage and the freedom of the press, association and assembly. In 1866 the Party of Progress split. Its right wing founded the National Liberal Party, which capitulated to the Bismarck government. After the final unification of Germany in 1871, the Progressists continued to describe themselves as an opposition party, but their opposition was purely declaratory. In March 1884 they merged with the left wing of the National Liberals to form the German Free-Thinking Party (Die Deutsche Freisinnige Partei). 46. Despite Bismarck's anti-French press campaign in Alsace Lorraine, which was supported by the clergy, candidates opposing his militarist ambitions were put up in the Reichstag elections. All the fifteen nominees elected were members of the Elsasser (Alsatian) party. 47. This refers to Aveling's letter of 26 February 1887 which was circulated, in printed form, to the sections of the Socialist Labor Party of North America
[52] International Publishers, 1953. 50. The second ballot, in eighteen constituencies, brought the Social Democrats another five seats in the Reichstag (Breslau-West, Elberfeld, Frankfurt am Main, Hanover and Solingen). 51. At the end of 1884, Bismarck, seeking to activate Germany's colonial policy, demanded that the Reichstag should vote an annual subsidy to shipping companies to enable them to operate regular lines to East Asia, Australia and Africa. The left wing of the Social Democratic parliamentary group, led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, came out against the government scheme. The right wing, which made up the majority (Dietz, Frohme, Grillenberger and others), intended to vote for the subsidy, on the pretext that it would help promote international communications. Under pressure from the majority the group decided that the issue was of a non-fundamental nature and every deputy should be free to vote as he chose (see Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 50, 11 December 1884). The sharp critique of the proposed subsidies in Der Sozialdemokrat and in resolutions of the party leadership forced the majority of the Social Democratic group to somewhat modify its stand during the discussion of the matter in the Reichstag in March 1855. The group made its support for the subsidies conditional on the adoption of a number of its own proposals. Since the Reichstag rejected these, all Social Democratic deputies voted against the subsidies. 52. The Anti-Socialist law {Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie) was introduced by the Bismarck government, with the support of the majority of the Reichstag, on 21 October 1878, as a means of combating the socialist and working-class movement. It imposed a ban on all Social Democratic and working-class organisations and on the socialist and workers' press; socialist literature was subject to confiscation, and Social Democrats to reprisals. However, under the Constitution, the Social Democratic Party retained its group in parliament. By combining underground activities with the use of legal possibilities, in particular by working to overcome reformist and anarchist tendencies in its own ranks, the party was able to consolidate and expand its influence among the masses. Marx and Engels gave the party leaders considerable help. Under the pressure of the mass working-class movement the Anti-Socialist Law was repealed (1 October 1890). For Engels' characterisation of the law see his article 'Bismarck and the German Workers Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp407-09). 53. This letter was first published in English, abridged, in The Labour Monthly,
[53] No. 2, London, 1934 and, in full, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters
[57] Communist Party into English for publication in the USA. This project did
[58] not materialise. An English edition of the Manifesto, in Sam Moore's
[60] Volume I of Capital was not selling well in the USA, and suggested sending copies of the book to the editors of leading American journals for review-ing. 56. Part of the English edition of Volume I of Capital was bought by the American firm Scribner & Welford, which gave the book a new title page, reading Capital. A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production; from the German by S. Moore and E. Aveling, and edited by Frederick Engels, N.Y., Scribner & Welford, 1887, 2 v. 57. An unsigned review of the English edition of Volume I of Capital appeared in the London literary and critical journal Athenaeum, No. 3097, 5 March 1887. 58. The third, cheap English edition (10s 6d) of Volume I of Capital appeared in London in 1888. Copies of the first two editions (both 1887) were sold at 30s. 59. Engels means the following passage, referring to the socialist Labor Party of North America, in his work 'The labor movement in America'. 'This section is a party but in name, for nowhere in America has it up to now, been able actually to take its stand as a political party' (see present edition, Vol. 26). 60.Justice, No. 164, 5 March 1887, carried an item by Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg, secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of North America, headlined 'Letter from America - The Great Strike', which characterised the longshoremen's strike in New Jersey as an unmitigated defeat for the workers, incurred through the fault of the Knights of Labor leaders. The party, Rosenberg stressed, must not support this organisation. The Knights of Labor (The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor) was an American workers' organisation founded in Philadelphia in 1869. Originally a secret society (up to 1878), it included mostly unskilled workers, among them black workers. The Knights' aim was the promotion of co-operatives and mutual aid societies. They took part in a number of working-class actions, but the organisation's leadership opposed workers' participation in political struggle. It forbade members of the organisation to take part in the 1886 general strike; however the rank and file ignored the ban. After the strike the Knights' influence among the workers began to shrink. Towards the end of
[62] workers, both white and black, in a number of American cities in the 1880s.
[64] American Federation of Labor (AFL), set up in December 1886. 62. The Social Democratic Federation was a British socialist organisation, the
[65] successor of the Democratic Federation, reformed in August 1884. It consisted of heterogeneous socialist elements, mostly intellectuals, but also politically active workers. The programme of the Federation provided for the collectivisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Its leader, Henry Hyndman, was dictatorial and arbitrary, and his supporters among the Federation's leaders denied the need to work among the trade unions. In contrast to Hyndman, the Federation members grouped round Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, William Morris and Tom Mann sought close ties with the mass working-class movement. In December 1884, differences on questions of tactics and international co-operation led to a split in the Federation and the establishment of the independent socialist league (see note 21). In 1885-86 the Federation's branches were active in the movement of the unemployed, in strike struggles and in the campaign for the eight-hour day. 63. In 1886 and 1887 the Social Democratic Federation conducted a broad campaign of agitation among London's unemployed. The church parades were a form of this agitation, practised in early 1887. It was an attempt to address the unemployed from the pulpit. One parade, on 27 February 1887, took place in front of St Paul's Cathedral. During the sermon, parade participants proclaimed socialist slogans. After the service the Social Democratic Federation held three meetings in the streets, the speakers including John Burns, George Bateman and Fielding. However, this form of agitation failed to produce tangible results and was abandoned. 64. From mid-November 1886 to 14 August 1887 August Bebel was in prison in Zwickau. He was one of a group of German Social Democrats (others included Ignaz Auer, Johann Dietz, Georg Vollmar, Karl Frohme) condemned on trumped up charges of belonging to a 'secret union' whose purpose it was to obstruct by illegal means the enforcement of laws and government regulations. The indictment was based on the defendants' participation in the 1883 Copenhagen Social Democratic Party Congress. The court brought in a verdict of not guilty. However, the government appealed to the Imperial Court, which sent the case for re-examination to the Saxony State Court in Freiberg. On 4 August 1886 the latter sentenced the defendants to various prison terms. In the subsequent two and a half years another 55 trials of socialists were staged, resulting in the conviction of 236 people. 65. This refers to Aveling's answer to the article in the New Yorker
[69] second article Aveling answered by a letter dated 16 March 1887, mentioned
[76] every support to the Tsar's 'noble intention to bring Bulgaria out of the
[77] grave crisis'. The closing sentence read: 'Since it was Russia that gave me my
[80] The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and asked for Engels' opinion. The translation, revised by Engels, appeared in Copenhagen in 1838. 75. On 25 March 1887 Sorge informed Engels that Hepner had openly protested against the accusations levelled at Aveling (see note 3), describing them as 'insidious and mean', but saying that the whole thing could have been avoided had Aveling been 'more frank'. Sorge also said that according to his information Kautsky did not know what to make of the matter and Liebknecht kept silent. 76. The whereabouts of this letter is unknown. 77. This refers to the attempt on the life of Alexander III which took place on 13 March 1887 (see note 72) and to the widespread rumours that preparations for another attempt, to be staged in Gatchina, had been uncovered on 1 April. 78. Engels means the replacement of recruitment in Russia by conscription. Under the introduction of compulsory military service of 1 January 1874, the entire male population aged 21 to 43, with the exception of natives of Central Asia and Kazakhstan and men belonging to certain peoples of the Caucasus, Siberia, the Volga area and the Arctic regions, were liable for military service in the regular army, the reserve or the militia. The call up was conducted by casting lots. This system was to turn the Russian army into a mass army. However, under the existing autocratic and landlord system, the implementation of universal military service was hampered by the numerous privileges of the propertied classes and the unequal conditions of army service for members of different social strata. As early as 9 January 1877, during the Russo-Turkish war, Engels pointed out that conscription was contributing to the 'disorganisation' of the Russian army (see present edition, Vol. 45). 79. At Engels' request Sorge sent a message to Alexander Jonas, Editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, on 29 March 1877, asking why he was not publishing Edward Aveling's letter of 16 March 1887 (see note 65). 80. On behalf of Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, the translator of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England, Rachel Foster, Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was trying to find a publisher for
[83] committee to deal with publishers, but the negotiations dragged, and the
[84] book was published in May 1887, independently of the Executive. 81. At the insistence of the German authorities the Swiss Federal Council on 18
[86] Sozialdemokrat (Eduard Bernstein, Julius Motteler, Hermann Schlüter and Leonard Tauscher) from the country. Until 22 September the paper continued to appear in Switzerland, edited by the Swiss Social Democrat Conrad Consett. From 1 October 1888 to 27 September 1890 the paper was published in London. 82. Pan-Slavism was a social and political movement predicated on the notion that the Slavonic peoples ought to oppose themselves to other peoples and merge in a single state with tsarist Russia. In Russia itself, Pan-Slavism assumed a reactionary character in the 1830s. The Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin, drawing on official populism, asserted that the Slavs were superior to other nations and that Russia was destined for hegemony in the Slavonic world. The same ideas, with various modifications, were propounded by the Slavophiles in the 1850s and 1860s (see note 187). 83. Nihilists were the extreme wing of the radical movement in Russia in the 1860s, intellectuals who believed in the destruction of existing society and culture. The Nihilists rejected the dominant ideology and morality and fought against religious prejudices. They demanded freedom of the individual and equality for women, and favoured the study of the natural and exact sciences. Towards the end of the 1860s the term practically ceased to be used in polemic literature, but in later years reactionary journalists occasionally applied it to revolutionaries. In West European literature the term was used to denote Russian revolutionaries, including the members of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), in the 1870s and 1880s. 84. After their return from the USA (see note 3) Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling launched a large-scale socialist propaganda campaign in London's Radical Clubs (see note 22). Their purpose was, among other things, to familiarise the British workers with the experience of the US labour movement. 85. At the April 1887 municipal elections in the USA, workers' organisations put up candidates in about 60 cities and succeeded in having them elected in twenty. In Cincinnati (Ohio), Milwaukee and Chicago their candidates failed by a few hundred votes. 86. In the first half of April 1887 the British House of Commons discussed a Crimes Bill for Ireland which was to introduce a simplified judicial procedure for quelling the growing peasant unrest. The executive authorities were to be allowed to outlaw various societies, and members of the judiciary to pass sentence on charges of plotting, illegal assembly, disobedience to the
[88] ings to protest against the Bill were held in Hyde Park, with 100 to 150
[89] thousand people attending. The meetings, held separately by different
[90] organisations, were addressed by speakers for the Liberal Party (William
[91] Gladstone), the Social Democratic Federation (George Bateman, John
[95] quit-rent for the use of land. It was not until 28 December 1881 that a law
[40] editorial in Die Neue Zeit or in a review signed by the journal's editor, Karl Kautsky. Poor health prevented Engels from writing the bulk of the text as intended. The article was completed, with his help, by Kautsky. It appeared unsigned, under the title 'Juristen-Sozialismus', in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 2, 1887 (see present edition, Vol. 2). 35. Engels means diplomatic preparations for the 1866 Austro-Prussian war. Early in March of that year he had secured, through Robert Goltz, the Russian Ambassador to Paris, an undertaking by Napoleon III that France would maintain positive neutrality towards Russia in the event of an Austro-Prussian war. At about the same time, Bismarck conducted talks with the Italian general Giuseppe Govone in Berlin on forming a Prusso-Italian coalition against Austria. On 8 April 1866 Prussia and Italy signed a treaty establishing a defensive and offensive alliance. It provided for the transfer of Veneto to Italy in the event of victory over Austria. 36. On 14 January 1887 the German Reichstag, by 186 votes to 154, adopted a bill limiting the army contingent to 441,000 persons, with a three-year term of service (the government had insisted on 468,000 for seven years). As a result, the Reichstag was disbanded and new elections held (see note 15). On 11 March 1887 the new Reichstag passed the bill on the septennate despite opposition from the Social Democratic group. 37. This refers to the festival of international brotherhood which was to be held in Paris on 19 February 1887 on the initiative of a number of socialist émigré organisations. German, Scandinavian, Polish and Russian socialists took part. The festival was to protest against the arms drive and war preparations in Europe. At the request of one of the organisers, the Russian socialist émigré Ossip Zetkin, Engels addressed a message to the Organising committee of the festival (see present edition, Vol. 26). It was read out at the festive meeting and published in Le Socialiste on 26 February and, in German translation, in the Sozialdemocrat on 11 March and the New York Sozialist on 19 March. 38. Danielson's letter to Engels was dated 22 January (3 February new style) 1887. 39. This is the pseudonym Engels used in his correspondence with Nikolai Danielson. Percy White Rosher was the name of the husband of the niece of Engels's wife. 40. This letter was first published, in the language of the original (English), in F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. 2 (1887-1890), Paris, Ed. sociales, 1956. 41. On 24 February 1887 the Voie du peuple, under the general headline 'La
[98] decade of the 20th century. 94. The American economist Henry George favoured a uniform progressive state tax on land values as an alternative to nationalisation of the land, thus 'resolving' all the contradictions of the capitalist system. George's theory enjoyed wide currency in the USA, England, Ireland and Australia. Engels gave his assessment of George's agrarian views in 'The Labour Movement in America' (present edition, Vol. 26). 95. On 29 May 1887 the third annual conference of the Socialist league (see note 21) was held in London. Delegates from 24 sections attended. The anarchists gained the upper hand; a resolution was adopted saying: 'This conference endorses the policy of abstention from parliamentary action, hitherto pursued by the League, and sees no sufficient reason for altering it. 96. This refers to the fresh wave of government reprisals against Social Democrats and the trade unions that swept Germany in 1886, after the third promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law (See Note 52). On 11 April 1886 the Prussian minister of the Interior Puttkamer issued a circular on strikes, spearheaded against the trade unions. In the spring of that year the authorities expelled from Berlin the leaders of the city's stonemasons and disbanded their union with a view to paralysing the building workers' movement. This was also the lot of three women's unions and all the district workers' unions. Workers' mutual aid funds were being closed down and their assets, like the trade unions', confiscated by the state. From the beginning of 1878, public meetings in Berlin could only be held with police permission. As a result, 47 meetings, including 33 trade union ones, were banned that month. Similar measures were taken in the provinces. In the early years of the Anti-Socialist Law a number of trumped-up trials of Social Democrats were staged, resulting in the imprisonment of prominent working-class leaders (see notes 27, 64 and 81). During the Reichstag elections (see note 15) the workers' party was made the object of terrorist attacks. 97. In her letter of 24 April 1887 Laura Lafargue told Engels that she was contributing to the magazine European Correspondent co-owned by the American journalist Theodore Stanton and was being paid extremely irreg-ularly. 98. Engels received the second circular letter of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America, dated 30 March 1887, from Friedrich Adolph Sorge on 18 April. On Aveling's statements see notes 47 and 65. Wilhelm Liebknecht issued a statement in defence of Aveling on 16 May. 99. This refers to the 'Schnaebelé case', a conflict between France and Germany
[103] Alsace-Lorraine to emigrate from Germany. At the same time, the German
[111] the pro-Russian Liberal Party. The Russophile officer Olimpi Panoff was
[115] England, should be issued in the form of separate German and English
[128] revolution of the seventeenth century the Congregationalists formed an independent political party, which came to power under Oliver Cromwell at the end of 1648. The Congregationalists rejected every kind of Church deriving from the State. They favoured complete autonomy for every congregation of believers and did not tolerate any coercion in matters of faith. 123. Laura Lafargue's French translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, revised by Engels, was printed in Le Socialiste from 29 August to 7 November 1885. No separate French edition of the Manifesto appeared in Engels's lifetime. 124. The British Association for the Advancement of Science, founded in 1831, still exists. The proceedings of its annual conference are published. The Association issues The Advancement of Science, a quarterly journal. 125. An excerpt from this letter was published in English in: Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971. 126. The Commonweal weekly, Nos 71, 72, 74, 76, 79 and 80; 21 and 28 May, 11 and 25 June, and 16 and 23 July 1887, carried a polemic between Ernest Belfort Bax and Charles Bradlaugh on the subject, 'Will Socialism Benefit the English People?'. Each author contributed three articles. Bax advocated socialism, Bradlaugh opposed it. 127. Engels means the differences within the Liberal Party and the incipient rapprochement of its Right wing (the Whigs) with the Conservatives. The Right-wing Liberals opposed Home Rule for Ireland. In 1886 they broke away from the Liberal Party and formed the Liberal-Unionist bloc led by Joseph Chamberlain. It favoured retaining the 1801 Union of Ireland with Great Britain and supported the Conservatives on most issues. Unionist Liberals reflected the regrouping of Britain's ruling classes and their shift to the Right. 128. On 19 March 1883 Sorge had informed Engels that Henry George's propaganda in America was leading the working-class movement astray and
[138] the Socialist Labor Party has had the impudence to circulate'. The footnote
[151] wages' in his article '1st das eherne Lohngesetz richtig?' {Gleichheit, No 21, 14 May 1887). Leo Frankel answered him in an article headlined 'Zur Kritik des "ehernen" Lohngesetzes' {Gleichheit, Nos 28-30; 2, 9 and 16 July 1887). 146. The 'iron law of wages' was formulated by Ferdinand Lassalle, in the pamphlet Offnes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Comité zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitercongresses zu Leipzig, Zurich, 1863, ppl5-16. 147. Engels means J.M. Baernreither's book Die englischen Arbeiterverbande und ihr Recht. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in der Gegenwart, Bd 1 Tubingen, 1886. The second volume, which was to deal with the English trade unions, was not published. 148. On 27 July 1887 Sorge wrote to tell Engels that Julius Grunzig, associate editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, had asked him for biographical data on Engels, since he intended to write an article on him for the Pionier calen-dar, published by that newspaper. 149. On 16 July 1887 Florence Kelley-Wischnewetsky and her husband, Lazar Wischnewetzky were expelled from the New York section of the Socialist Labor Party of North America for defending Edward Aveling at a section sitting (see note 3). 150. The August 1887 issue of To-Day (Vol. 8, No. 45) contained a note by its editor, Hubert Bland, setting forth the contents of Edward Aveling's circulars on the charges levelled at him by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America (see note 3). Bland dealt with the charges favourably to Aveling, pointing out that at the bottom of it all was a differ-ence of policy, as Aveling had advocated a line of action which the Executive Committee had disliked. 151. In connection with the death, on 1 August 1887, of the Russian political writer M.N. Katkov, who advocated an anti-German alliance of Russia with French chauvinistic circles, the French bourgeois press published a series of articles eulogising Katkov as a 'great friend of France'. On the other hand, the socialist press exposed Katkov as a reactionary and champion of the autocracy. In particular, Jules Guesde, in an article headlined 'Républicains et cosaques' {l'Action, 4 August), pointed out that Katkov was responsible for the Tsarist government's reprisals against Polish patriots and that revo-
[155] Liberals (see note 265). The newly formed Reichstag endorsed the septen-
[161] Lovell, had sent a considerable number of copies, did not take the trouble
[163] of the State of New York, held on 17-19 August 1887, in Syracuse, N.Y. (see
[165] 12th September 1887, passed a decision to set up an independent labour organ-
[168] Committee. Likewise, the Congress adopted a decision on convening, in
[174] attended by 79 delegates. The congress discussed the following questions: a
[185] connection Engels recalls the exposures made by the French journalist