1892
Dear Kugelmann,
Very many thanks for the little bit of Leibnitz. 1 As regards Herr Vogt, please send one copy to Bebel and two to me, but if you yourself don’t possess another, it goes without saying that you should keep one and send only one to me. 2
As regards The Knight of the Noble Consciousness and Palmerston, What Has He Done, I have unearthed one more copy of each and these are enclosed herewith.
On the other hand I have only one copy of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, but no loose issues, and only a few volumes of the Revuec; if I want a complete set I have to borrow it. You had better get Miquel to return you yours. After all he is the only one who might now be endangered by its possession and he’ll be grateful to you for taking it off his hands. However Volume I as well as other individual volumes occasionally crop up in second-hand booksellers’ catalogues.
For the rest, I am keeping tolerably well. But if you are expecting an exhaustive pathological discourse on my somewhat complicated and no doubt also somewhat obscure case, I’m afraid I cannot oblige you. I am in correspondence with many doctors in 5 or 6 countries and all of them
a K. Marx, Herr Vogt. — b K. Marx, Der Ritter vom edelmütigen Bewusstsein. - c Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politische-ökonomische Revue.
3 Letters- 1892
want the same sort of information. This would involve me in a medical correspondence more time consuming than my political correspondence, and that is absolutely out of the question. As it is, my work on Volume IP is being hampered by the business matters I have to attend to, of which there are more than enough. So do please excuse me. The whole thing is not at all serious, but merely an occasional nuisance. With my best compliments to your wife and daughter. [15]
Your
F. Engels
2. Engels to Hugo Lindeman and Carl Stegman 6 October[3]
IN LONDON
122 Regent’s Park Road, N.W.,
London, 6 October 1892
Dear Sirs,
In reply to your favour of 2.X, I have in the past frequently complied with requests of a similar nature from gentlemen who were quite unknown to me, but my experience in these cases has been such that unfortunately I have had to make up my mind to discontinue the practice. [4]
As a result of an indisposition, moreover, I expect to be tied to my sofa for a considerable time to come and hence am in no condition to go searching in my library for old, seldom used periodicals.
a of Capital - b Gertrud and Franziska Kugelmann Letters-1892
In the circumstances I regret that I cannot oblige you in the way you wish and remain,
Yours very truly, F.
Engels
3. Engels to August Bebel 7 October
First to business. Lafargue sent me a France with the enclosed notice of an interpellation by Millevoye, [5] a Boulangist. [6] He intends to make use of this opportunity to remind the Chamber of everything done by the German Socialists in 1871 and thereafter to maintain or restore good relations between France and Germany, and of what they have had to endure as a result. He would like to have:
les dates des protestations des socialistes allemands, les paroles prononcées au Reichstag et ailleurs, et les condamnations subies a .
Now since the things I have here are incomplete or only to be extracted with untold labour from collections of periodicals buried in numerous packing-cases, during which process I might easily overlook what is most important, you would greatly oblige me and the French if you would take out the most cogent items and send them to me together with dates and references (from the official stenographic report). That is,
a The dates of the protests by the German Socialists, the speeches made in the Reichstag and elsewhere, and the sentences served.
Letters-1892
1. The statements which led to the incarceration of the Brunswick Executive in 1870 in Lötzen, along with date and period of detention. [7]
2. Your protest in the Reichstag against the annexation [8] and perhaps also one or two cogent passages from the Volksstaat attacking the war and the annexation;
3. A few trenchant excerpts from later Reichstag speeches by you and Liebknecht, along with dates and particulars of the subject of the debate in which they were made;
4. Anything else that seems to you important. Not a great deal is needed. You will know roughly how much is needed for a speech and if you then add 1 or 2 spare quotations, that will do. I should be glad if you would also quote some of your own statements, lest the French should imagine that Liebknecht did it all himself or even say that Liebknecht was an exception and that the others thought differently.
Yesterday we sent you in the Workman’s Times 2 French newspapers with reports on Liebknecht’s speeches and also a piece by Guesde which will have pleased you. a
Lafargue will be drumming up support in Carmaux and other towns in the South until his return on the 16th or 17th of this month, That is when the Chamber reassembles, and he must have the material by then. [9]
He writes to say that the patriotic press, all of which, and particularly La France, is in the pay of Russia, has launched furious attacks on Liebknecht. The Russian embassy now pays the newspapers by the job — so much for each individual article accepted. Which is also a sign that the Russians are short of funds. There is no doubt that Liebknecht has raised a furore. I don’t begrudge the old man his popularity and, in two respects, can only hope, 1. that it won’t make him even more obstinate with regard to the editorship of the Vorwärts and, 2. that in the Reichstag the malicious sniping of the German patriots and accusations of high treason, etc., don’t suddenly provoke him into maintaining the opposite, thereby landing not just himself in the cart but us as well. A reporter on the Gaulois quotes him as saying: ‘Were Germany to declare a war of aggression on France, the German Socialists would declare war on their own government, et moi-même je prendrais un fusil pour
a J. Guesde, “Vive l’Internationale!” Le Socialiste, 16 October 1892.
Letters-1892
défendre l’intégrité du territoire française’ a When he corrects this obviously exaggerated report, it is not impossible that he will go to the opposite extreme, should the Junkers and bourgeois in the Reichstag work him up into a real passion.
Lafargue says that Loubet and the Minister for Public Works, Viette, would go to considerable lengths to bring about an acceptable settlement of the strike at Carmaux [10] and compel the company to climb down, but that Freycinet is against it. The latter has designs on the presidency of the Republic and therefore wants to keep in with the voters of the Right and the Centre.
Otherwise, Lafargue is very satisfied with the Congress. [11] The 12 copies of the Neue Zeit [12] arrived here and were passed on to Tussy. The chaps ought to have sent them to her instead of to me, but as it was a day was lost. Unfortunately there has recently been a change of ownership at the Pall Mall Gazette and we don’t yet know what prospects the paper will now hold out for us.
Your account of the movement among the miners tallies with our experience in this country; here, too, the chaps keep themselves very much apart from the other branches of labour and are progressing more slowly than the rest. But in our case, the fact that there is already a strong workers’ party behind them will eventually see us through; the chaps are bound to join us, once the movement has taken a hold on them. On the other hand there are, both here and in Germany, bad and unreliable leaders who cannot be induced to trust the workers in other branches. In this country, moreover, the petty jealousies existing between the men of one coal-field and another have so far not even permitted the creation of a united guild comprising all mine workers.
I shall do my utmost to stop the French from dispensing with your contributions. It is vitally important that occasionally, at any rate, accurate reports on the German movement should appear in Paris and particularly that the public should be made aware of the general political situation in which you people have to carry on the fight. You alone can do that, nor is there any need at all for you to come into conflict with Liebknecht as a result, provided he doesn’t regard contributions to the French paperb as his monopoly. That wouldn’t do at all.
a and I myself would take up a musket in order to defend the integrity of French territory. b Le Socialiste 1892
You need have no fear that Burns is keeping too much in the background. The man’s vanity is on a par with Lassalle’s. But compared with the precipitate way in which K. Hardie thrusted himself to the fore to secure pride of place by resorting to little dodges, he was unquestionably right in adopting a non-committal attitude.
At the moment I am reading Hans Müllera and have not yet finished. It is all stale stuff and long familiar to us. The few bad speeches he quotes are not even skilfully chosen. Had I wanted to make out a case against the petty-bourgeois goings-on in the party or parliamentary group, I should have provided quite different material. The Steamship Subvention alone provides eight times as much as he does and of better quality. [13] He takes a speech made by Liebknecht in 1881 [14] during the period of general confusion that followed the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law [15] instead of later ones when the political situation makes the pacific, philistine overtones seem far less excusable, and then goes so far as to assert that power is in all circumstances revolutionary and never reactionary. The jackass fails to notice that where there is no reactionary power to be overthrown there can be no question whatever of revolutionary power. After all, you cannot start a revolution against something that can be removed without the least effort.
If there is one thing that sends the self-opinionated students, the men of letters and the would-be literati of the working class into a state of impotent rage, it is the sight of our party calmly continuing along its victorious course without needing the help from these petty panjandrums. If mistakes are made, the party is strong enough to deal with them itself. Witness the undeniably tame philistinism of the majority of the parliamentary group at the time of the Steamship Subvention, wit-ness the traditional tendency of the Party Executive, a tendency which continued to manifest itself for a short while after the Anti-Socialist Law had been repealed, to intervene in a dictatorial manner (and which, moreover, had its counterpart in an identical tendency among the executives of the previous Berlin organisation), etc., etc. Our Party is now so strong that it could, without risk of degeneration, digest not only a goodly number of petty bourgeois but also the “heddicated” and even the worthy Independents, [16] had not the latter given themselves their marching orders.
a H. Müller, Der Klassenkampf in der deutschen Sozial Demokratie 1892
Time for the post. Regards to your wifea and yourself from Louiseb and
Your
F.E.
4. Engels to Ludwig Kugelman 10 October
Vogt received with thanks. [2] If you send for second-hand booksellers’ catalogues on jurisprudence, political science and modern German history, especially for the period round 1848, you will light on individual copies of the Revuec from time to time. I myself have acquired one or two copies in this way.
Have just finished Chapter 27 of the third volumed; 29-34 present the main difficulty.
Kindest regards to your wife and daughter. e
Your
F.E.
a Julie Bebel - b Kautsky - c Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue - d of Capital- c Gertrud and Franziska Kugelmann 1892
5. Engels to Laura Lafargue 14 October
My dear Lohr,
Thanks from Louise and myself for your letters this morning. Had one from Paul from Bordeaux last night. Business first. Enclosed you find
1. Manifest des sozial demokratischen Ausschusses (Executive) Braunschweig 5. September 1870a with a letter from Mohr and myself [18] but which Paul better quote as from Mohr, who, I believe, signed it. This is referred to in the MS. extracts under No. II I (on page 2).
2. First and Second Addresses of the General Council of the International on the War, July 23rd 1870 and Sept. 9th 1870.b With French translation made, I believe, in Geneva; it very likely requires revision both as to correctness and style.
3. A series of MS. extracts received from Bebel who with his wifec set to work at once to supply us with what we wanted.
I think this will be sufficient for Paul’s speech, though I don’t envy you the task of translating all these things, especially the rather lax style of our Reichstag orators.
Anyhow, now Paul is armed and need not depend upon Liebknecht’s promises which are sooner made than kept, as a rule.
I am glad Paul is going to take part again in the debates of the Chambre,d and if he is wise, he will attend the Palais Bourbon [6] assiduously during this last session of the present Parliament. I have some notion that electors want to see and hear something of the parliamentary activity of their deputy, and if they do not, there may be a risk not only of losing his seat, but also of not so easily securing another. After all, as things are now, both in France and Germany, electoral success in many places at least, depends on the votes of a number of hangers-on of the party, men
a Manifesto of the Brunswick (Executive) Committee of September 5, 1870. -b See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 3-8, 263-70.-c Julie Bebel-d Chamber-eThe Bourbon Palace (housing the French Chamber of Deputies)
1892
that are influenced by petty considerations, and whose simple abstention may lose the seat. Then, too, Paul’s first speech [19] showed evident signs of embarras, caused by his not being used to the new atmosphere where he had to live, move and have his being; and the sooner and the more he gets used to that and to the parliamentary forms, standing orders, and business habits of the Chambre, the better. This time he will have to show them that their howlings and interruptions will not intimidate him, and if he only tries, I am sure he can do it. I don’t know French Chambers, but it seems to me, in a similar case I should take no notice of interruptions, reply to none of them, and in the last extremity call upon the president to ensure to me my right of being heard. (Capital advice on the part of one who notoriously cannot keep his own temper!)
Arndt you describe quite correctly. I see from Liebknecht’s report on his journeya that he gives Arndt a mild slap but a slap anyhow, and probably he will have been told, at Marseille, of the proceedings of Blanquists [20] and Allemanists. [21] Liebknecht seems quite intoxicated with his triumph and, for the moment, plus français que les français eux-mêmes}b Unfortunately he always deals in extremes, and I can only hope that he will not be goaded, by patriotic bullies in the Reichstag, into tumbling head over heels into the opposite extreme. So far, his attitude in his speeches in Mannheim [22] etc. has been all that could be desired.
I understand your news about Roubaix to this effect that the people there will ask Paul to stand for the Chamber next autumn. That would be very good, Roubaix would be a pretty safe seat, while Lille seems rather shaky, to be carried at a period of extra local excitement, but very uncertain, so far, at ordinary periods.
Anyhow, ca marche en Francec (everything but the Journal quotidien!)d
and Carmaux [10] shows not only the progress of our ideas among the working-class, but also the fact of the bourgeois and the government knowing, it. The self-contained attitude of the people there—et encore des méridiouaux, des Gascons gasconnants!e—and the quiet but determined way in which the socialist town-councils proceed without any possibil-ist weakness or concessions, show an immense progress. The more the French are coming to the front, the more I shall be glad. The Continental movement, to be victorious, must be neither all French nor all German,
a W. Liebknecht, ‘Agitations bericht. Nach Marseille und zurück,’ Vorwärts, 12 October 1892. -b more French than the French themselves —c everything is on the move - d daily paper - e And Southerners into the Bargain, bragging braggarts!
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but franco-allemand. If the Germans taught the French how to use the suffrage and how to organise strongly, the French will have to penetrate the Germans with that revolutionary spirit which the history of a century has made traditional with them. The time has passed for ever where one nation can claim to lead all the rest.
The Socialiste does not contain, in its report, the resolution of the Congrès syndical of Marseille [23] with regard to the Glasgow affair, [24] nor any allusion to it. How is it that this business is enveloped in such mystery?
Aveling’s article, of The Pall Mall Gazette,a is also published in the Workman’s Times. Do you still receive that paper?
Love from Louise and Yours affectionately,
F. Engels
6. Engels to Pasquale Martignetti 18 October
The business of the duchessb has been cleared up. I only knew the lady by her married name of Mrs Edgren and was unaware that her maiden name was Miss Leffler.
Unfortunately Mrs Aveling had lost the duchessas address and had some difficulty in getting hold of it. That too has now been sorted out. Mrs Aveling has written to her about you warmly recommending you, so
a E. Aveling, ‘Discord in The International. Continental Opinion on the British Trades Unionists.’ The Pall Mall Gazette, No. 8598, 11 October 1892 -b of Caianiello all you have to do is hand over the enclosed note. [25] I wish you success!
I presume that it is you that I again have to thank for the translation of the last part of my German preface to the Lage, etc. a
I am working on Volume II I of Marx’s Capital, and have to devote every available moment to it — hence must be brief while remaining
Yours,
F. Engels
con italiani, 1848-1895, Milano, 1964
7. Engels to Ludwig Schorlemmer 18 October
My dear Schorlemmer,
I have your letters of 31 July and the 9th inst. It was my fault that Pumps forgot her Schmollis.b After so long an interval she no longer trusted herself to write in German off her own bat, and so I did it for her. Naturally I knew nothing of her tippling exploits in Darmstadt and put “Sie”. Her husbandc is not to blame, for he knows no German. Pumps is expecting a child any day, her fourth. Her second, a boy, unfortunately died, while her youngest, also a boy and really a very nice humorous little chap, is very delicate and at this moment far from well.
Because of what you said about Anschütz [26] I delayed writing this
a F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England. -b A little ceremony in which the participants drink to the adoption of Du (thou), the intimate mode of address, Sie (you) being the formal term./Trans./ - c Percy Rosher 1892
letter for several days in the hope of hearing from him. But up till now there has been nothing. The position is that I must know first of all how exhaustive the biography is to be, whether it is intended for a periodical and if so which, etc., etc. If the man proposes to deal with our Carla merely qua chemist, all he needs are a few particulars that could serve as a framework. If, however, he intends to depict the man as he was, the question arises as to whether he is the most suitable candidate and whether one ought, without further inquiry, to place at his disposal the letters to and from Carl. Again, a chemist living in Germany would necessarily be unfamiliar with the circumstances of a man who had lived in England for 30 years and more, and this would involve me in work of a much more comprehensive nature. That would not deter me. I should gladly devote as much time to it as I could spare, once I had seen the back of Volume II I of Capital to which I have now returned. But who will provide me with a guarantee that my information is used in the spirit in which it was given? When in our presence, and in fact he spent all his vacations here in London except when he went to Germany in the summer, Carl was first and foremost a Social Democrat and up till now Social Democrats have been somewhat thinly represented in the ranks of the chemists. It certainly wouldn’t do if, in his biography, the biographer were, so to speak, to beg his readers’ pardon because the man whose life he was depicting had had the misfortune to be a Social Democrat!
Anschutz was, if I’m not mistaken, for a time a pupil of Carl’s in Manchester. As already mentioned; I shall be glad to be of service — in so far as I have the time — but first of all I must know what is required and what kind of biography it is to be.
The executors in Manchesterb are right in wanting to wind up whatever can be wound up without going into the settlement of the copyright questions. That will take time if only because the publishers stand to gain from a certain delay and are therefore in no hurry. I have heard nothing from Roscoe either; doubtless he won’t make a move until he can put forward and accept or reject specific proposals.
I hope your daughter continues to improve and that she has been able to leave her bed in the meantime.
Why the old manc didn’t come to Darmstadt I don’t know. Does his
a Carl Schorlemmer - b Philipp Klepsch and Ludwig Siebold -c Wilhelm Liebknecht wifea still perhaps have relations there whom he would rather not see too often, while feeling reluctant actually to steer clear of them? As to the business of Müller’sb adultery and whether he committed it or whether he didn’t, not a word has so far penetrated to London. Best compliments from Mrs Kautsky.
Yours,
F. Engels
8. Engels to Charles Bonnier mid-October
My dear Bonnier,
I have received Prototc—thank you. First of all, however, a correction. You say:
‘whereas the French socialists are protesting against the Russian alliance and do not wish to hear about a war with Germany, Bebel in particular and you yourself are quite willing to accept the idea of a defensive war against France and Russia in which the German socialists would take part’, and that ‘these accusations, which are well received in France, irritate Guesde’.
If the French socialists are not expressly discussing the case of a defensive war in which they would be willing to repel an attack by the Emperor William,d this is because it is well known, recognised and accepted that
a Natalie Liebknecht b Hans Müller - c E. Protot, Chauvins et réacteurs. - d William II 1892
there is no need to talk about it. There is not a single socialist in Germany who doubts that in such a case the French socialists would only be doing their duty in defending their national independence; there is not one who would hold it against them; on the contrary, they would applaud them, That is precisely the point of view in my articlea. If I were not proceeding from the view that, should there be a foreign attack, the French socialists would take up arms to defend their homes, the whole of my article would be absurd. What I am requesting is the benefit of the same principle for the German socialists in the case of a Russian attack, even if it is supported by official France. The same holds true for Bebel’s speeches. The people in France who use this as a basis for accusations against us belong to that kind who say: quod licet Jovi gallici non licet bovi Germanicib; to make them see reason is, it seems to me, the task of the French socialists, and presents no great difficulty.c
I would also warn you that what M. Protot cites from my article is nothing but gross falsehood.
You say that the brochure is well done. I find it very weak; the end, where this joker poses as an economist is more than grotesque. If he has a strong point, it is the royal disdain which he pours out on his readers. Indeed, one must assume that one’s readers are incurable idiots in order to dare to offer them such a collection of palpable falsehoods (in which you see only snippets) and lies contradicting one another. Is it then sufficient to put on a masque of Dérouléde in order to persuade those who create public opinion in Paris to swallow anything one wishes. Has Boulangism [6] survived Boulanger to the point of being more powerful than during Boulanger’s lifetime?
Such a collection of lies and falsehoods is, in fact, irrefutable. It would require 3,200 pages to reassert the truth against these 32 pages. There is not a single quotation of any significance which is not shamelessly distorted; it was only after comparing several texts that I had the measure of M. Protot’s affrontery.
As for the literary style, I find it lamentable, in striking contrast to the assiduity with which he has collected his material. Clearly another
a F. Engels, Socialism in Germany. — b what is acceptable for the French is not acceptable for the German - c The following phrases are crossed out in the draft letter: ‘That such chauvinist stupidities irritate Guesde I can well believe, but that is not my fault, nor that of Bebel. As for the rest, when I sent my article to Paris, I warned my friends of the danger, expressing my fears due to national susceptibilities; but I was told that, on the contrary, this was just what was needed’.
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hand was at work here. Certainly not Protot.
Nor is it, as Vorwärts believes, one of the Unabhängiger.a [16] Their manifesto (Hans Midler’s Klassenkampf)b is characterised by the lack of care he has taken in selecting his supporting texts.
Nor is it the French police; one senses that they have had a hand in it, but they are not the ones who have so interested themselves in the foreign policy of the Romanian socialists.
If M. Protot accuses the latter of being the enemies of Holy Rus, if he twice quotes the Bucharest Munca (Labour), and divulges that Nadejde de Jassi is ‘Zingaro’,c it is because he is acting in the interests of the Russian embassy, which must have supplied this information, and probably also the information on the German socialists, collected in Berlin by some attaché there.
Thus Protot’s lampoon is not only in the interests of the police, but also in the interests of Russia; it is part and parcel of those frantic efforts that Russia is making to ensure a French alliance. It is Russia, in fact, which needs France. She is so completely exhausted by the social disorganisation caused by the economic transformation that she has been experiencing since 1861, by the ravages of deforestation, by the ruination of agriculture and the cottage industry, by famine and cholera, that she could not wage a war through to the end. Her finances and her credit are in a state of collapse reminiscent of France in 1788; if the western public continues to keep its purse closed, there remain only three alternatives: 1) bankruptcy, 2) the convening of a national assembly to sanction a new loan, which then might succeed in the west; 3) war as a measure of desperation—and in that last case France is necessary: once war were declared, the French army engaged, ten against one, the Tsard would reach an agreement with Williame and Francis Joseph,f who would hasten to meet him, and la belle France would pay the expenses of the banquet of reconciliation.
a the Independents - b H. Müller, Der Klassenkampf in der deutschen Sozialdemokratie. — c a gipsy - d Alexander II I - e William II - f Francis Joseph I 1892
9. Engels to Victor Adler 23 October
There is no need for you to worry about the Trades Unions’ International Congress. [24] In the first place the whole business was probably only a device for getting the anti-Zurich resolution [27] accepted and might well not even be raised by the Parliamentary Committee. [28] Secondly, the attendance of individual Continentals is neither here nor there, seeing that even the Paris bourse du travail [29]—still, if no longer altogether, dominated by the Possibilists [30]—resolved that the Trades Unions be asked to abandon their plan. So who else might one expect to go? Maybe Mr Gilles, as representative of the German Independents [16] ?!
It would be a great help if the Austrian Trades Unions [31] were to send their resolution to the Parliamentary Committee. I shall ask Aveling for the address which I cannot find.
Yesterday I walked up Primrose Hill for the first time and, provided I’m careful, think I shall have made some slight progress by the end of the week. I shall make a note of MacEwen. He is at any rate a CONSULTING SURGEON which means that he can only advise other doctors and not the public direct. But I shall find that out. You have no idea of the extent to which everything here, including medicine, is governed by etiquette and how one breach of that etiquette is infinitely more frowned upon than ten of the sexual code. I recall a dictum of the Mancunian Medico-Ethical Society which sat in judgement over my friend Gumpert in Manchester. While paying a visit of condolence (this was around 1866-67) to a family who were not his patients, he had expressed slight misgivings about their family doctor’s having permitted other children to approach the bodies of two children who had died of scarlet fever. The other doctor lodged a complaint and the verdict was:
THAT DR GUMPERT HAD COMMITTED A BREACH OF MEDICAL ETIQUETTE,
THOUGH HE WAS MORALLY RIGHT! Well, again my best thanks — I shall follow your advice.
Tomorrow I shall again write to Stepniak about his work [32]. If you haven’t had anything by the end of the fortnight, by 7 or 8 November say, please write to me again, then I’ll send him a reminder. It’s the only way you can get anything out of a Russian.
I am now on Volume II I of Capital. If, just once during the past four years, I had been able to see three clear months ahead of me, it would have been finished long ago. But I never had any such luck. On this occasion I am making time for it by forcibly suppressing and by totally neglecting all my correspondence and other concerns. I found that I had made very good headway with the most difficult passage the last time I tackled it and up till now it’s been going pretty smoothly, though admittedly I have now come up against the chief obstacle which has long been standing in my way. [33] But I work with a will and, so far, with undiminished vigour and doubtless something will come of it this time.
Herewith a document typical of anarchists of Czech nationality. The gentlemen are beginning to bludgeon one another with the principle that voting is a revolutionary act. I am prepared to excuse its deficiencies on the grounds that, not being Germans, the louts were not altogether aware of the full impact their rhetorical flourishes would have on a German.
We were all absolutely delighted by the good news about your wife.a We hope the improvement will continue and that before long you will be able to send us further glad tidings.
Warm regards from Louise.b to you, your wife and your children, and the same also from
Your
F. Engels
Add. of the Parliamentary Committee, C. Fenwick, Esq., M.P., 12, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C.
a Emma Adler - b Kautsky
10. Engels to Charles Bonnier 24 October
In Le Figaro Guesde says:
‘Just as Liebknecht stated that, in the case of aggression by France, he would be obliged to remember that he is German, we would remind the workers’ party, in the case of German aggression, that we are French’.
Thus Guesde and myself are in perfect agreement, and it is with him that you should settle matters.
You speak of an unfortunate phrase by Bebel — which one? You reproach him with so many! If it is the one in Figaro that he would fire at Guesde, it belongs to M. Huret; Bebel writes that it existed only in this gentleman’s fantasy.
You talk of preventing war, and you boast of having voted for Domela [34]— with his plan you would crush all the socialist parties in Europe.
It is all very fine to speak of preventing a war, from whichever side it might come. But why allow yourself to believe in illusions. Do the French socialists have some means of preventing the young Williama from declaring war in a moment of madness? Can the German socialists forbid Carnot or some patriotic ministry to commit a similar folly? Furthermore, if it were William or the street-corner revanchists who were the real danger; it is the Russian government which is pulling the strings of these puppets, these by hopes, those by fears. So now prevent it from inciting war!
If war breaks out, those who are defeated will have the opportunity and the duty to bring about a revolution — and that’s that.
a William II 1892
11. Engels to Paul Lafargue 3 November
My dear Lafargue,
I am plunged up to the eyes in the 3rd Volume of Capital which must be completed once and for all. I am working on the least edited and most difficult part: banks, credit, etc. [33] I cannot interrupt the work for anything whatsoever, otherwise I should have to start from the beginning all over again. Hence all my correspondence is interrupted and I can write you only a few words.
It is most unfortunate that you believed in Millevoye’s promises, who flouted you like a good politician [36]— in future you will know that in politics such people pass for GENTLEMEN. I get letter after letter from Germany in which they complain about your absence at the critical moment and I warn you that it will be difficult to have our people undertake work for debates from which the principal speaker for whom the work is done absents himself. Publication in pamphlet form [9] will not have a hundredth part of the effect of a parliamentary speech; that’s a matter on which our Berlin people are well qualified by experience to pronounce.
The least you might do would be to send a delegate to Berlin on the 14th,
[37] that would enable you to have it out with our people over there. So do try to send someone; it’s an expedition that will pay.
You will have seen the reports in the papers of the ghastly effects, in Dahomey, of the new projectiles. [38] A young Viennese doctora who has just arrived here (ex-assistant to Nothnagel) saw the wounds made by the Austrian projectiles in the Nurmitz strike, and he tells us the same thing. There’s no doubt that people in danger of being shot to bits in this manner will want to know why. It’s a capital thing for maintaining peace, but also for curbing the so-called revolutionary inclinations, on whose outbursts our governments count. The era of barricades and street fighting has gone for good; if the military fight, resistance becomes madness.
a Ludwig Freiberger Hence the necessity to find new revolutionary tactics. I have pondered over this for some time and am not yet settled in my mind.
I am beginning to go out again a bit. I had nearly three months as a prisoner at home; now I am starting to walk, but little and slowly; but at least I realise that it will soon be over. And about time, as I feel that the lack of exercise in the open air must come to an end. And when I am completely restored, we can, I hope, arrange things so that you and Laura give us the pleasure of spending a few weeks with us. We have so many things to discuss, and it is time Laura saw London again.
Love from Mme Kautsky.
Ever yours,
F. Engels
Correspondance, t. II I, 1891-1894, Translated from the French Paris, 1959
12. Engels to Laura Lafargue 4 November
This morning Meissner sends a remittance for £38 — one-third of which £12.13.4d., covers your share and is settled by enclosed cheque which please acknowledge. There are about 400 copies left of Vol. IP and the second edition is in preparation. Fourth edition of Vol. P is out, and 460 copies sold, which wipe off the greater part of the printing etc. cost; only 886 Marks remain to be covered and all the receipts beyond that will be profits to be divided with Meissner.
Third Volumea well in hand and will not leave off until finished. This can-
a of Marx’s Capital 1892
not be done unless I neglect correspondence, so you must excuse my brevity
Now you ought to take seriously into consideration your impending visit to London; we have talked so much about it that at last it ought to be put into execution. We all should be so glad to see you here again once more.
I am in daily expectation of news that Pumps has had another baby. It’s fully due if not overdue, she herself expected it a month ago, but she is always out of her reckoning.
I wonder whether Jack Burns did say the nonsense about the foreign working men, Huret puts into his mouth in the Figaro? [39]
Now then, to work again! The day I finish that section on Banks and Credit, [33] which has been my stumbling block for 4-5 Years (because under 3 months of absolutely free time it can’t be done and these 3 months I could not get)—the day I finish that, there will be some consumption of alcohol— you bet!
Love from Louise.
Ever yours,
F. Engels
13. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 5 November
You must forgive my laziness about writing; I have got to finish Volume II P this winter; it must be completed and this won’t be possible unless I
a of Capital 1892
set all my correspondence aside. I have been at it for 3 weeks and can only tell you that the work is going more smoothly than I could have hoped; the last time I had to break off, I had made good headway and now it’s paying dividends. But there still remains a mass of work to do, though I am far enough advanced to be able to see the end of it. And nobody is more glad of that than I; this piece of work has been a burden on my conscience. I have forced myself to make time for it since it couldn’t be done in less than 4 months of complete freedom from all other jobs; I know that, unless I do it now, it will never be done, for we are entering a period of rebellion and war. But like everyone else you will have to suffer for it pro tem — so please forgive me!
Your F.E.
u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906
14. Engels to Sergei Kravchinsky ( Stepniak) 5 November[41]
Yours faithfully F.
Engels 1892
15. Engels to August Bebel 6 November
Dear August,
All this time I have been slaving away dutifully at Volume II P and not, I’m glad to say, without success. Today I may already be said to be fairly past the main obstacle, the credit system — upon which nothing remains to be done but the technical editing — which, however, is of a complex and time-consuming nature. [33] I have greatly enjoyed the work, firstly because I have discovered so many brilliant new sides to it — ask Louise,b to whom I have read quite a lot of it out loud — and secondly because it has also shown me that, when all’s said and done, my old noddle is still up to the mark, even where relatively difficult things are concerned. The worst havoc the years have wrought is in the sphere of memory whose doors are no longer so easy to find or to open, which means a general slowing down. This is something I can very well put up with, however.
But though I may have broken the back of the work, it’s very far from finished. Besides this section there still remain the two last ones (rather less than 1/3 of the whole) which I haven’t so much as looked at yet, and then comes the final, technical editing of the whole which, while not difficult, is all the more tedious and wearisome for that. It will probably take me the whole of the winter — and then there’ll be the proofs — coinciding with those of the 2nd ed., Vol. II .a
I have made time for it by forcibly suppressing in all my correspon-
a of Capital - b Kautsky dence in so far as it wasn’t absolutely vital. Not my correspondence with you, however, although I cannot reply so promptly or in as much detail as I should like. Well, you won’t, I suppose, have any objection if it means that the Witcha takes up her pen rather more often instead of me.
Lafargue has still to learn that, amongst bourgeois politicians, promises are made only to be broken. [36] In any case his intentions would have been frustrated by Standing Orders which preclude debate on such questions. He is still rather too much of a tyro on the floor of the Chamber; however he has promised to frequent it more regularly in future. They now want to publish the documents in pamphlet form. [9]
I expressed myself badly in speaking of Hans Müller.b I didn’t mean that you, as the Party Executive, should take any notice of his concoction and still less that you should do so in the manner suggested by me. But if a polemic against the angry young man was embarked upon under your aegis, then, etc. it seems to me absolutely essential that the party should criticise its own antecedents on such occasions and thereby learn to do better. True, the blunders committed at the time of the Steamship Subvention, [13] etc., are over and done with, but the same people are still around and some, at least, are capable of acting as before. It all the blunders perpetrated by the parliamentary group and by some of its members are to be concealed under a mantle of love, this would, in my opinion, be tantamount to breeding Independents. [16] Messrs Frohme, Blos, etc., should acquire a thicker skin. Am I wrong in attributing certain motions redolent of ‘Independence’, tabled at the Party Congress by the Solingen people, to the latter’s opposition to Schumacher’s bourgeoisification and philistinisation? [42] A touch of retrospective veracity in the Neue Zeit would do no harm and you, with your tact and expertise, would be the right man for the job — but whether, of course, your position on the Executive doesn’t make this inadvisable is another matter. One way or the other, however, such criticism must eventually be expressed.
It was with pleasure that I read the report of your Executive last night.c
Very good. Calm, objective, adhering to the facts which are allowed to speak for themselves and only at the end a few necessary brief words denoting proud self-confidence. We shall have to see if Aveling can’t get some extracts from it into the press. But over here you are virtually boy-
a Jocular name for Louise Kautsky - b See this volume, p. 8 - c ‘Bericht des Partei-Vorstandes an den Parteitag, zu Berlin 1892’, Vorwärts, No. 259, 4 November 1892.
1892
cotted out of sheer English chauvinism. The existence in Germany of a labour movement with procedures so different from those of the British movement and which, though contemptuous of the TRADES UNION and politico-parliamentary rules here considered sacrosanct, nevertheless goes on from strength to strength, is exceedingly galling to people in this country. And I don’t mean the middle classes. The old Trades Unions regard each of your victories as a defeat for themselves and their own methods. The Fabians [43] are riled at your forging ahead despite your having declared war upon all bourgeois radicals. The leaders of the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION
[44] detest you for refusing either to have secret dealings with them or to join the mutual admiration society which Justice has long been trying to make you accept, now by dangling a carrot, now by cracking a whip. Because of the vast ignorance of the English masses in regard to foreign affairs and their hereditary arrogance which leads them to look on a foreigner as a second-rate human being and everything occurring abroad as of little account, a conspiracy of silence is easily imposed. The Chroniclea is in the hands of the Fabians where labour matters are concerned, Justice has been led by Hyndman to espouse the cause of that rotter Gilles, the Workman’s Times likewise believes that nothing’s any good unless based on a big English-style
TRADES UNION organisation — so where are we to get the thing published? Only in the bourgeois press, as a news item of general interest. If, for the space of no more than a year, we could find a paper willing to open its pages to straightforward accounts of the German movement, the whole business would come to an end. For there is enough latent internationalism, if nurtured, to put paid to the stupid arrogance of the British, at least in the majority of cases. But as it is...!
The Workman’s Times is threatening to close down. There’s more to this than meets the eye and we’re trying to find out what. Nothing like that happens over here without jiggery-pokery of some sort.
Now ad vocemb Vollmar. As I see it, the man was attacked most ineptly. The pitfall in this case was the phrase state socialism. That phrase does not express any clear-cut concept but, like ‘social question’, etc., is simply journalese, a mere cliché from which anything or nothing may be interred. To contest the true meaning of such a word is sheer waste of time;
a Daily Chronicle — b as regards 1892
for its true meaning consists precisely in its not having any. It would have been difficult to avoid examining this supposed concept in the Neue Zeit and what K. Kautsky has to say about it is, in fact, very good (except that he too supposes that the thing has absolutely got to have a true meaning). [45] But it is doing Vollmar an immense and quite unnecessary favour to contend with him in political debate about what state socialism is or is not — there’s no end to such pointless political palaver. As I see it, what ought to be said at the Party Congress is this: ‘My dear Vollmar, what you imagine state socialism to be is all one to us, but on various occasions you have said such and such about the government and our attitude towards it, and that’s where we have got you; what you have said runs just as much counter to the tactics of the party as do the pronouncements of the Independents, and it is for this you have got to answer! Only on the score of his unashamed arse-crawling to Williama and Caprivi is he vulnerable, indeed very much so, and it was to this particular point I wished to draw your attention before the Party Congress.
Enclosure from the Witch.b Cordial regards to your wife and yourself. We are glad to hear that there’s an early prospect of your visiting us. Could be MOST BENEFICIAL politically over here; we shall do the necessary spadework. We quite agree with you about a weekly. [46] It would be tremendously effective abroad where we still very much feel the loss of the Sozialdemokrat; a good weekly survey of party events would be invaluable abroad.
a William II - b Louise Kautsky 1892
16. Engels to Paul Lafargue 12 November
My dear Lafargue,
You do not tell me where I should address my reply, and so I am sending it to Le Perreux.
Herewith I append a cheque for £20 which you have asked, but I must warn you that in the future it will be absolutely impossible for me to make good the shortages of funds, let alone the peculations that might occur within the French party. Each national party ought to see to its own expenses, and one should not hear — in France, above all — this constant complaint that ‘the fees are not remitted’. Such kind of things would never take place if there is just a bit of order; a cashier ought to be subject to some kind of control, and when he falls ill, he is to be replaced, and he is accountable for receipts and expenditures. If some inevitable misfortune assailed you — all right, let it be; but paying for such negligence of responsible agents of the party, that’s tough indeed!
But, after all, the fat is in the fire — so much for that! I have explained to Bebel the entire affair of Millevoye’sa; it seems as if they are calming down on this account; your success at Carmaux and elsewhere must have contributed to that. The fruits of your peregrinations through France begin to ripen, and all of us are pleased to see the progress made in France. Do you realise now what a splendid weapon you in France have had in your hands for forty years in universal suffrage; if only people had known how to use it! It’s slower and more boring than the call to revolution, but it’s ten times more sure, and what is even better, it indicates with the most perfect accuracy the day when a call to armed revolution has to be made; it’s even ten to one that universal suffrage, intelligently used by the workers, will drive the rulers to overthrow legality, that is, to put us in the most favourable position to make the revolution. We should reach a new stage in the 1893 elections, and then there will
a See this volume, p. 5 1892
be that union between Socialists of different shades of opinions of which Liebknecht never stops talking. That union will come about as soon as there is a score of Socialists in the Chamber; if our people have — as I hope — a majority, they will be able to dictate terms. In the meantime, go on with your ‘victories and conquests’, and you will find that it is the Germans who will applaud you the most warmly.
Have you received the report of the German Executive Committee to the Berlin Congressa? It’s magnificent — and it’s war. [47]
The paper — oh the paper! [48] If the French bourgeoisie makes the same amount of difficulty before it lends money to the Russian tsar, that would, at least to some extent, make up for the cheated hopes this journal has aroused in us.
Kiss Laura, Kind regards from Mrs Kautsky.
Ever yours,
F. Engels
Correspondance, t. II I, Translated from the French 1891-1895, Paris, 1959
17. Engels to August Bebel 15 November
Now you see how my work gets interrupted! These absurd Tribune articles have forced me to intervene. Could you please ensure that the article
a ‘Bericht des Partei-Vorstandes an den Parteitag zu Berlin 1892’, Vorwärts, No. 259, 4 November 1892.
1892
appears in the next number of the Tribüne—it’s already too late for this week’s. [49]
Can you send me another copy of those collected articles on Bakunin? Since my copy is regularly sent to Sorge, I no longer have them here, but it might be necessary for me to refer to them. Instead of working, I have had to look out the old stuff, but it was out of the question to let this tissue of lies go unchallenged. Can you find out who its author was?
Regards to Victor.a Louise will today be sending an account of Trafalgar Square to Vienna. [50]
Cordial regards to Mrs Julie,
Your F. E.
[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]
Warm regards to Julie, Victor, Popp and the proper hunter before the Lord.b Have received the Sozialist. Many thanks. Good luck with your work.
Love
Louise
a Adler - b August Bebel 1892
18. Engels to Sergei Kravchinsky 15 November
Regent’s Park Road, N.W.
My dear Stepniak,
Suppose you and Mrs Stepniak, Volkhovsky and his little girl all come on Thursdaya and have dinner with us. If you come about 3.30 to 4, we can talk matters over and have dinner at 5. You know it is a long way from your place to this, and unless we arrange as above, you might easily miss your own dinner at home.
Kind regards to Mrs Stepniak from Mrs Kautsky and
Yours faithfully,
F. Engels
19. Engels to August Bebel 19 November
This time your Party Congress [51] didn’t go off as brilliantly as it did on the last occasion. The debate on the question of salary leaves a very
a 17 November 1892
nasty taste in one’s mouth — not that I think the English or French would have done any better in that respect — though Louise refuses to admit as much. As I know from long experience, what we are up against here is one of the limitations imposed upon the outlook of working men by the conditions under which they have lived hitherto. The same people who think it perfectly natural for their idol Lassalle to have a private income and live the life of a consummate sybarite are denouncing Liebknecht for wanting, as their paid editor, barely one-third of that sum, although the paper yields them five or six times as much. [52] To be dependent, even on a labour party, is a hard lot. And, quite aside from the question of money, it’s a most otiose position for anyone with any initiative to be editor of a paper belonging to the party. Marx and I were always agreed that we would never accept such a position and that the only paper we could have was one that was not financially dependent even on the party itself.
If taken too far, your ‘nationalisation’ of the press [53] would have very material drawbacks. It’s absolutely essential for you to have a press in the party which is not directly dependent on the Executive or even the Party Congress, i.e. which is in a position unreservedly to oppose individual party measures within the programme and accepted tactics, and freely to criticise that programme and those tactics, within the limits of party decorum. As the Party Executive, you people ought to encourage a press of this nature— indeed initiate it, for you would then exert far more moral sway over it than if it were to come into being partly against your will. The party is outstripping the strict discipline of earlier days; with 2 or 3 millions and an influx of ‘heddicated’ elements, more latitude is needed than what has hitherto not only sufficed but actually proved a useful restraint. The sooner you people adapt yourselves and the party to this changed situation the better. And the first step is a formally independent party press. It is bound to come about but it would be better if you were to allow it to come about in such a way that it remains under your moral sway from the outset and does not arise in opposition to yourselves.
You people blundered badly — not in Berlin but at Brussels [54]— over the question of the May Day celebrations. You must have known at the time what you could promise and perform, and yet you went and promised more than you are now able to perform. I consider your own speech on the subject no whit inferior to Victor’s and readily believe that a stoppage of work in Germany would demand sacrifices out of all proportion to victories and gains. [55] But when the strongest party in the world suddenly 1892
sounds a retreat in this way, the general impression this produces is very bad. Noblesse oblige. You are the fighting force, the corps de bataille of the modern labour movement and, what you promised in Brussels, you were morally bound to do. Now, while it is undoubtedly better not to follow up one stupidity with another, far greater one — granted the crucial importance just now is not to interrupt the German party’s victorious progress — you should nevertheless consider what kind of impression this Berlin resolution is going to make on the world at large. The affair would also seem to have aroused indignation in France and the chaps there will doubtless be giving you a piece of their mind. You cannot afford to inflict such moral injury upon yourselves again — so in Zurich you must have the courage of your convictions and declare outright that you cannot commit yourselves to a stoppage of work; then, though people may be angry with you, they will not be able to reproach you with breaking your word and beating a retreat. [56] It is nonsensical to try and organise the movement uniformly in each individual country. The Austrians, to whom a stoppage of work on May Day is necessary, and who are accordingly prepared to make those very sacrifices which you rightly repudiated in your particular circumstances, are as justified in acting as they do as you were; now, however, they can make reproaches to which you can offer no answer. For by their very conduct they have proved that the impossibility clause laid down at Brussels does not apply.
We over here have not yet had the state socialism debate. I must congratulate you on your resolutions. They are really first-rate and I know of only one person who could have improved on them, namely Marx. The resolution on state socialism, like that on anti-Semitism, hits the nail on the head. And it is precisely resolutions of this kind that have in the past been the Achilles’ heel of the German movement; they have been sloppy, indeterminate, nebulous and cliché-ridden — in short, for the most part a disgrace. Fortunately they are so untranslatable that anyone translating them into a foreign language is compelled to read into them a meaning which they themselves do not possess.
Below is a theatre drawn by Louise or Aveling. For the past week the page thus embellished has been repeatedly placed amongst my writing paper, which is why it now has the honour of finding its way to you. [57]
Enclosed you will finda the twaddle talked by the seven Swabians [58]
a The enclosed text is missing.
1892
of London — the Fabians [43] of the Chroniclea—about the Party Congress. The poor souls are in a mess. The great Shaw, having in May urged upon you the necessity of collusion with the Liberals and demonstrated that, failing such a policy, nothing could result but defeat and disgrace [59], now admits in a speech to the Democratic Club that they have been scandalously done in the eye by the Liberals and that all they had reaped on the occasion of the elections was — defeat and disgrace; also that the Liberals, together with the Tories, are now out to do the workers in the eye! And these are the people who propose to teach you ‘practical politics’! In fact he now actually says that the two old parties have but one and the same policy and that, barring them, there is nothing but — Social Democracy! This will, I think, have the effect of a cold douche on our good Ede.b Cordial regards to your wife and all the friends.
Your
F. E. (in the stage box)
[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]
Love from the Witch herself; my enthusiasm for May Day isn’t quite so extreme.
20. Engels to Paul Lafargue 22 November
Thanks for the papers. The Panama business, [60] circumstances aiding and abetting, could well become for the bourgeois republic the Pandora’s
a Daily Chronicle — b Eduard Bernstein 1892
box that Emile de Girardin’s file of dossiers, from which issued ‘a scandal a day’, was for the July Monarchy. [61] As long as this goes on, I think your place is in Paris, in the Chamber, at the centre of the news, to put yourself, and keep yourself, in touch with what is happening and in particular with what emerges from one day to the next. Every fresh piece of scandal which is brought to light will be a weapon for us. It’s time I was done with the 3rd volumea the close of the century is more and more charged with electricity. I’m glad to say it’s going passably well (I mean the work on the 3rd volume) and I hope to finish it during the winter. The greatest difficulty has been overcome.
Sam Moore has just left us. He is going to spend the greater part of his leave in the country with his parents and will be back in January. We shall see him again next Sunday.b
If I am not mistaken I have already told you that Pumps had a little girl on the 13th — both are doing well.
For the last few days I have been well enough again to go out for a quarter of an hour; I hope this will help to restore me altogether.
The Germans have committed a fine blunder over May Day; not in Berlin, but in Brussels. [34] They ought to have reserved the right, at the International Congress, to celebrate the day in their own way and according to circumstances. Their withdrawal creates a deplorable impression and should you give them a good wigging, you’ll be doing no more than your duty. Any other party could have allowed itself this retrogressive move; they, in their position as the main body of the European army, could not make it without great prejudice to the movement as a whole. I entirely approve the reasons which decided them in Berlin: the harm, to them, of a stoppage of work would have been out of all proportion to the advantages to them; but that should have been foreseen, and they should have had the courage at Brussels not to vote for a stoppage.
And what of Laura? When do we see her here? Kiss her for me.
Kindest regards from Louise.
Ever yours,
F.E.
Please keep me posted about the Panama affair with newspapers, it’s
a of Marx’s Capital -b 27 November 1892
so important. We shall find that Wilson was only a tiny bit of a swindler compared with Reinach & Co.
Correspondance, t. II I, 1891-1895, Translated from the French Paris, 1959
21. Engels to Julie Bebel 29 November
Dear Mrs Bebel,
Of all the letters I got on my birthday, yours is the first I feel impelled to answer. My most sincere thanks. I spent the day ‘in the best of health’, for, even though I am not in full control of my movements and cannot walk as much as I should like to, I nevertheless feel quite robust and everyone says I look very well. This time we turned my birthday into an English May Day celebration, i.e. we brought it forward from the Monday to the previous Sunday.a Louise felt that, as I couldn’t fail to tipple somewhat on an occasion like this, one day would be enough and two days too many. We had a real houseful, our African, Sam Moore, also Bax, the Avelings, Bernsteins, Mottelers, the Russian Volkhovsky, and two working men from the Society
[62] ; that, I think, was all. No. I nearly forgot little Inkab who has really filled out on the food she gets in Berlin and whose plumpness suits her very well— now I have tangible proof that people have learned how to eat their fill in Berlin and let no one speak to me in future about starving Berlin!
We still had a small supply of dried woodruff and so Louise and I con-cocted a May cup with the aid of Moselle, red wine and champagne — at this foggy time of year it would hardly be possible to imagine, let alone
a 27 November - b Inka Fischer 1892
brew, anything better. Since one and all had laid a good foundation in the shape of a cold meal, the said cup was valiantly attacked, not least by Your Humble Servant, the Narrator and, strictly between ourselves, several of the gentlemen, among them — I was about to say it but shall stop before it’s too late — became somewhat the worse for wear. Juliusa was in great form; he sang various songs and told funny stories though, with his customary obstinacy, indulged in nothing but water or coffee. In short, we were all very jolly until past midnight, which is saying a great deal, considering the distances here in London and the fact that all railway and omnibus services close down after 11 o’clock on Sunday night. And so I was able to retire to bed secure in the knowledge that I had entered my 73rd year in a worthy fashion. However I hope that my health will allow me to do even better next year. Then my birthday falls on a Tuesday, and so we shall again be able to make a start on Sunday, though in that case I should like to carry on carousing until Tuesday night.
I should like to have attended that beanfeast in Berlin. Inka tells me that she could not get through to you and Bebel because of the crush so there must have been an enormous number present. [63] Still, I don’t doubt that I’ll witness something of that kind again, if not this year then the next, provided that is, you come over and fetch us. The little Fischer girl sees in you so great a mental affinity with my dear good Lenchen that I can be doubly confident in placing myself in your charge.
As August left only one measly page for your use, I shall reverse the position and he will get only one from me.
With warm regards
Yours,
F. Engels
a Motteler 1892
22. Engels to August Bebel 29 November
Dear August,
Many thanks for your good wishes — I stood the whole thing very well and without any evil after-effects whatever, nor should I be in any way averse to celebrating yet another birthday tomorrow — but so strict a watch is kept on me that I should never be allowed to indulge in such excesses! Your Prussian police are as nothing by comparison with a medical Witcha like this. But I always keep wondering what good it will do and what are the sins that have earned me such conscientious surveillance. Being unable to rid myself of a silly superstitious belief in ‘equalising justice’, I am drinking mineral water and lemonade and doing penance for the aforesaid sins without knowing whether I have actually committed them. More about politics in my next — in a day or twob—but I must see to it that I finish Volume II I.C In France things look remarkably tempestuous; c’est le commencement de la find! The time will again come when the French will have an opportunity to show their good qualities.
Warm regards.
Your F. E.
Thank you so much for the fine gluepot; it will be pressed into service straight away for Volume II I.
a Louise Kautsky - b See this volume, p. 48 end c of Capital — d it is the beginning of the 1892
23. Engels to An Unknown Correspondent 29 November
Regent’s Park Road, N. W.
My dear Charlie,
Thank you very much for your nice letter and good wishes which I hope may all be fulfilled and as you have done me the honour of being born on the same day as myself, please accept my best congratulations on your birthday and the wish that you may live to be twice as old as I am now. Then you are sure to see something very grand and, worth seeing, and then perhaps you will now and then think of me as one who tried his best to bring about such a change.
With kind regards to your parents and brothers and sisters
Yours faithfully,
F. Engels
24. Engels to The SPD Secretariat 29 November
Dear Party Secretariat,
This comes with my sincere thanks for your kind good wishes. [66] My request to you, my dear Fischer, is that you also convey these thanks to your people.
1892
While you, my dear Auer, must submit to my insisting that you now adopt in the personal sense the Du with which you, as the first half of the Secretariat, have hitherto been addressing me solely in a collective sense, it being understood that next year we shall make up for our failure to celebrate the solemn rite of Schmollis.
As the Hyena has also been brought into this affair, I shall give her the floor.
Your
F. Engels
[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]
It will be difficult, generally speaking, to give Bamberger the floor in London. Press Hyena’s note. 67
[Postscript from Engels]
Yes, but who in fact is the Hyena?
25. Engels to Paul Stumpf 30 November
My dear old Stumpf,
You could have given me no greater pleasure on my seventy-second birthday than by sending me the Ultramontanist [68] confirmation of our victory in the Mainz elections. [69] You Mainz people sometimes tend to be 1892
gas-bags — born wine salesmen — but when it comes to the point you can also buckle to and move mountains, and it will always be remembered in your favour that Mainz was the only German city to play an honourable role during the great revolution. [70] Nature gave you the gift of the gab which is just what is wanted when it comes to working on the peasants, the more so in that you have in the wine growers round about you a great quantity of material to work on. If you address yourself energetically to the task, you will be able to achieve something and show the Cologne people how it’s done. From Mainz to Cologne and down to Cleve there’s still many a poor soul to be snatched away from the priests and still many a constituency to be won, and this is precisely the moment when the gentlemen of the Centre [71] are on the point either of thoroughly compromising themselves over the military question or of leading the entire Centre up the garden path.
Apart from that, I should like to send you my best thanks and to say how glad I am that you had been keeping well and have been feeling even ‘better’ since. I too am keeping well. We had the whole Brimstone Gang [72] here on Sunday and a few more besides, all of whom vigorously addressed themselves to the wine cup.a
If we have a few more of these scandals in Paris [60], we may soon be able to re-enact the old comedy of autumn ‘47 in Brussels; the world is beginning to look shaky.
Your old
F. Engels
a See this volume, pp. 37-38 1892
26. Engels to Natalie and Wilhelm Liebknecht 1 December
Dear Mrs Liebknecht,
My best thanks for your kind note and good wishes for my seventy-second birthday which we celebrated last Sunday amidst the usual circle of friendsa all of whom remained until the 28th had actually dawned! Winter seems to have set in really early over there if you have already been blessed with snow and a temperature of 10 degrees R. We don’t have such extremes, but rather content ourselves with a pleasing alternation of rain and fog, getting more of both than we should like.
Unfortunately it was not possible to send off this letter in time to give your Willyb my greetings on his birthday. I trust you will be so good as to accept these belated wishes. I thought it probable that your Theodorc to whom, as also to Karl,d please convey my sincere thanks for the good wishes, would be able to take a break from his tedious week in Mittenwald by spending a Sunday with you, and I’m glad to see that this was in fact so. The best of luck to your Karl with his exams. [73] I, who never passed an exam in my life, can nevertheless well imagine how a young man must feel three months before such an event.
The Stadthagen affair has shown that they are still perfectly capable of persecuting us even without the Anti-Socialist Law. [15] That the debate on salary at the Party Congress [52] has caused your family great annoyance I can well believe, but that kind of thing is inevitable in public life. Not everyone is as eager as the German Reichstag to vote grants; in other countries even ministers and, on occasion, crowned heads no less, must expose themselves to unpleasantnesses of this kind. It is a case of everyone trying to prove that ‘where money begins, benevolence ends’. [74] On the other hand, Liebknecht enjoyed a well-earned triumph with the Ems Despatch, [75] which makes up for a good deal, and then again his trip to Marseilles was an ovation from start to finish. [5]
a See this volume, pp. 37-38 - b Wilhelm Liebknecht jun. - c Theodor K. Liebknecht - d Karl Liebknecht 1892
Pumps felt impelled to show the world that, despite her prematurely grey hair, she is still a young woman and therefore presented her husband with a baby girl a little more than a fortnight ago. Both are doing very well under the circumstances. I too am keeping pretty well on the whole but am still not yet mobile enough. However when one looks out of the window at the persistent downpour, one is less inclined to make a fuss about it.
Take good care of yourself; with best wishes to you and all your family.
Yours,
F. Engels
Dear Liebknecht,
You will have to wait a little while for the sequel to this, as Volume II P admits of no delay. In France it almost seems as though we are back in ‘47, and Panama [60] could well put paid to all the bourgeois cochonnerie.b The scandals of 1847 and of the Second Empire are trivial by comparison. Do write and tell your Paris correspondents to keep you informed about it and to send you the material in newspapers — these are matters you must pursue in person.
Your old F. E.
a of Capital - b beastliness 1892
27. Engels to Ludwig Schorlemmer 1 December
My sincere thanks for your kind good wishes for a day that was happily spent.a Though I may not actually be fit for active service in the ‘glorious army’ as I enter on another year of my life, I am nevertheless in good health and, on the whole, robust and I think you are right in saying that for the time being I shall continue to pull my weight.
To go by your latest information on Anschutz, it would certainly be best if we were to hear no more of him. Old Pflüger — a nephew of mine used to work in his laboratory — is, so far as I can judge, a real philistine and if, on top of that, Anschütz’s father was a Prussian officer, that makes matters even worse, The fact is that it will be difficult to find the right man for Carl’sb biography, one who is not only a chemist but also a Social Democrat, and not only a Social Democrat but also a chemist and, what’s more, a chemist who has made a close study of the history of his discipline since Liebig’s day. Presumably we shall have to wait and see whether we can find that man or whether we must content ourselves with the two aspects of Carl being treated separately. I myself must above all else finally complete Volume II I of Capital and cannot see how I could break off just now — and on top of that there are also the proofs of the 2nd edition of Volume II !
And then, too, we live in very turbulent times, what with the military affair, [76] the impending crisis in Germany, the Panama scandals [60] and the crisis that has already set in in France as well as the crisis over Ireland that will almost certainly occur over here next spring. [77] In times like these my correspondence increases twofold and threefold and if, on top of everything else, one is forbidden on account of one’s eyes to wield a pen by lamplight, how can one possibly manage? And as for daylight here in London in winter! We’re glad if we get four or five hours of it and often there’s none at all— gaslight all day because of the fog.
a See this volume, pp. 37-38 - b Carl Schorlemmer; see also this volume, p. 14 1892
But it can’t be helped and so long as things keep moving ahead in the outside world, one mustn’t complain.
With my best compliments to your family,
Yours,
F. Engels
Best wishes from Mrs Kautsky. I almost forgot to tell you that Pumps gave birth to a baby girl a fortnight ago last Sunday; both are doing well.
28. Engels to Charles Bonnier 3 December
My dear Bonnier,
Es wird nichts so heiss gegessen, wie es gekocht wird.a You have the ad-mirable habit of serving warm, very warm, but would I not sometimes risk burning my lips? The newspaper, as you know, is not yet being published. [48]
You ask me to convey to the Germans a kind of ultimatum from the French. If I undertake to do so, will you guarantee that, in reply to a direct query by Berlin to Paris, Paris without disavowing me entirely would not say that I had exaggerated.
a If you don’t cool it, you’ll not be able to drink it.
1892
As to the core of your ultimatum:
1) let us first see what will happen here between now and 1st May, and what will happen this 1st May.
2) Between May and August a number of things might happen before Zurich [56] which cannot today be anticipated,
3) and, all the more so, between August 1893 and May 1894. With the military question in Germany, [76] with Panama [60] in France, with the Irish complication in England [77]—three acute imminent political crises— with an industrial crisis everywhere, it seems to me that we could put our time to better use than quarrelling over how to mark 1st May, 1894, a day on which, perhaps, we will have better things to do than ‘demonstrate’!
As for your perennial Protot, I couldn’t care less about him, any more than about his fellows, the agents-provocateurs of the German police. When will you adopt a similar attitude?
In any case, it seems to me rather odd that you are prepared to allow the English to disregard the resolutions of Brussels [54] but them alone. [79] What will French logic say to that?a
As for the rest I know only one party which has the right to reproach the Berlin Congress. [51] That is the Austrian party. [81] Until now 1st May in Berlin has been worth far more than those in Paris.
I am writing today to Bebel.b I will tell him of your ultimatum, but for the moment only as your personal opinion.
a The following sentence is crossed out in the draft: ‘The article by Bebel 80 has probably gone to press already, if in Paris they wanted to prevent it.’ - b See next letter.
1892
29. Engels to August Bebel 3 December
I was delighted by what you said in your letter of the 22nd about the disinclination you people feel for any further ‘nationalisation’ of the party press. [82] So there’s no need to waste any more words on the subject.
As regards the May Day celebrations, I concede that you were perfectly right so far as the Berlin resolution was concerned. But the fact remains that the general impression you produced in Brussels was that in future you too would celebrate on 1 May and not invoke the permission not to do so that was granted purely by way of an exception.^ So you shouldn’t be surprised by the hullabaloo to which the Berlin resolution has given rise. But your intention of getting Congress to settle on Sunday as the day on which celebrations should be held in future is likely to hit on some snags. Except for the English everyone will be against it, many of the smaller parties out of sheer bravado. It would be a sorry retreat and the last people to join in its official proclamation would be those who secretly reserve the right to do likewise, whether it was proclaimed or not.
Well, yesterday evening I got a rabid letter from Bonnier (he never writes any other kind) in which, having read your article in the Neue Zeit, [83] he declares in the name of the French that, if the first Sunday in May were to be adopted, they would drop the whole business of May Day. ‘Jamais,’ he writes, ‘notre parti n’acceptera (le dimanche) et nous sommes bien décidés à tenir ferme.’’a And he believes you people are playing with fire.
I wrote and told himb 1. that things are never as black as he paints them, 2. asking who had authorised him to speak in the name of the French party, 3. that before May 1893, and between then and August ‘93 in Zurich [56] and between then and May ‘94 much might happen
a Our party would never agree (to the Sunday) and we are fully determined to stand firm. - b See this volume, Letter 28 1892
that we didn’t expect and that, with 3 acute political crises in the offing (Army in Germany, [76] Panama in France [60] Ireland in England [77]) and a general industrial crisis, we probably had better things to do than bicker about how best to demonstrate on 1 May ‘94, when we might have work of a very different nature to do; 4. how his proposal to allow the English, and them only, to celebrate on the Sunday chimed in with French logic; 5. that I knew of only one party — the Austrian [81]—which had any right to reproach the Germans, that the May Day celebrations in Berlin more than made amends for those in Paris and 6. that I had passed on his ultimatum to you, but purely as his own private opinion.
The man is consumed by an irrepressible urge to be up and doing but, such being the case, he shouldn’t have gone to Oxford where he is all on his own with red Wolffa who is completely out of everything. It’s a priceless idea, wanting to direct the European labour movement from Oxford — the last genuine remnant of the Middle Ages still to be found in Europe — but for us it makes an infuriating amount of unnecessary work and I shall protest in no mean terms to Paris about this go-between. The really unfortunate thing is that he’s the only person who understands German save for Laura, and she lives out of town.
For the rest, the Party Congress went off quite well, but subscribing to the resolution [84] despite the sundry rubbish it contains, must have been a bitter pill for Vollmar to swallow.
Ede came to see me, bringing with him a whole bunch of letters from K. Kautsky — who had also written to me — all of them concerned with the Neue Zeit, and wanting me to add my mite. My opinion is that, if you accept the change proposed by Dietz, you should think it out and prepare for it properly, and not go ahead till January, otherwise it will be altogether premature. [85] But speaking generally, I should say that, since becoming a weekly, the Neue Zeit has to some extent relinquished its old character in favour of a new one which it has not been completely successful in assuming. The paper is now being written for two sets of readers and cannot do full justice to either.
If it is to become a popular, part-political, part-literary and artistic and part-learned journal, à la Nation, then it will have to move to Berlin. The political section of a weekly must be written at the hub of things, on the eve of publication, otherwise it will always be lagging behind. And,
a Ferdinand Wolff 1892
save for the correspondents, those working on the political section must always be in the same place. The idea of editing a review in Berlin and London and publishing it in Stuckert a doesn’t seem feasible to me. In any case there would be a 20 or 30 per cent difference in subscriptions between a Berlin and a Stuttgart weekly. I am regarding this simply from a bookselling point of view, having no more than a nodding acquaintance with the other aspects that need to be considered and about which you out there will be better informed than I.
But if the Neue Zeit undergoes these changes, it will appeal to only one section of its former public and will have to be organised solely for their benefit. It would then no longer be open to those articles from which it has hitherto derived its greatest and most enduring value — the longer, learned papers which run on through 3 to 6 numbers. Hence, alongside the Neue Zeit there would have to be a predominantly learned monthly— if necessary even quarterly — journal with a correspondingly restricted circle of subscribers, and this would have to be offset by raising the price if the paper was to be kept going.
Indeed, it seems to me altogether necessary, if the party publishers wish increasingly to secure a monopoly of party publications, including learned ones, that they should not aim at bulk sales for everything, whether suitable for that purpose or not. An original paper on political economy is bound to be primarily a detailed treatise, nor can it be expected to sell in bulk. Similarly, a genuine historical work, the outcome of independent research, does not lend itself to publication by installments. In short, I think there should be two separate departments, one for bulk sales, the other for ordinary, slower-moving sales through booksellers, in smaller quantities and at a correspondingly higher price.
What happens when an attempt is made to boost sales beyond the limits called for by the nature of the case is something I have learned from my own experience. Though written as popularly as possible, my Anti-Dühring is by no means a book to suit every working man. But along comes Dietz, takes over part of the Zurich edition and then tries to boost sales by remaindering the thing at a reduced price with 11 assorted booksellers. This is not at all to my liking and next time I shall be on my guard. It is the only longer work I have written since 1845 and, whichever
a Stuttgart 1892
way one looks at it, it is degrading to see it treated in that way. By the by, there’s no need to say anything to Dietz about this — the thing is over and done with and cannot be altered, nor would I have mentioned it to you had it not provided an apt illustration of what I mean by the wrong way of selling books.
For the rest, times are growing critical. Every morning when I read the Daily News and such French papers as have arrived, it takes me right back to ‘47. At that time, too, one expected some further scandalous revelations each morning and one was seldom disappointed. The Panama affair [60] beats everything that went on in the way of corruption under Louis-Philippe and under Bonaparte II I. The initial outlay, including bonifications to the press and Parliament, amounted to 83 million francs. This will be the ruin of the bourgeois republic, for the Radicals [86] are as deeply implicated as the Opportunists. [87] On every side attempts are being made to hush things up, of course, but the more they are hushed up the worse they get. Once the revelations were under way and a few people had become irretrievably implicated in the scandal, these had perforce to cover themselves by betraying their accomplices and showing that they had only been swimming with the stream. Already the committee is in possession of such enormously compromising statements that there’s no holding back; a few may slip through the net, but large numbers have already been named and, of course, the fewer the names that are compromised the greater the odium that attaches to the bourgeois republic. Though much may still happen in the meantime, this is nevertheless the beginning of the end. Fortunately all the monarchist parties are completely done for, nor will it be at all easy to find another Boulanger. [6]
Herewith an extract from Lafargue’s letter for the Vorwärts—but do ensure that the paper gives no indication whatsoever that the letter emanated from a deputy. [88]
What Liebknecht entirely overlooked in the matter of Bismarck’s Ems forgery was that that’s the sort of thing diplomats do in secret but never boast about. [75] But if one of them does happen to boast about it, the breach of etiquette is such as to render him persona non grata. After this it will never again be possible to appoint Mr Bismarck Imperial Chancellor, otherwise any foreign government could refuse to enter into negotiations with a man who not only is not above using such methods, but actually boasts of having used them. The Imperial Government would risk incur-
1892
ring a general international boycott were Bismarck to become Chancellor again. I believe it would do a lot of good if this were said on the floor of the Reichstag.
Many regards to your wife.a
Your F.E.
[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]
Dear August,
It seems to be my fate that my space should be rationed because I once over-stepped the mark and wrote a leader, so rather than look at your last letter, I shall look instead at the pretty inkstand that invites kind, happy thoughts and was inaugurated with the proofs of the second volume of Capital. Thank you very much for it — how good you both are; now that I’m equipped, I am, it seems, likely to run on and to be rapped over the knuckles for so doing. Well, that isn’t what I was intending to write about — all I meant to say was that not once this week have I been able to get round to writing, there having been, alas, so much to prevent me — glass-workers, transport workers, Reumann, Victor,b meeting of the unemployed and, last but not least, the Jews. They are not getting the Vorwärts, August, so could you please make inquiries? Then, some time ago, I asked if you could let me have another copy of the Vorwärts’ report on the Congress, but you probably forgot — I’d like two if at all possible, otherwise one; it’s the report on the Party Conference I want, not the one made by you people at the Conference. Victor enjoyed the time he spent with you and wrote saying that to him it seemed as though the poor Austrians were standing guard in the wet and the cold, whereas you people were sitting snug in your encampment, despite the struggle and the fighting. Then there’s another thing — I still have two English reports on the International Glassworkers’ Congress 89 to spare. Would you like one? It’s very interesting, but you would have to write a few lines about it by way of justification and send a sample copy, and would you please ask Fischer if he might perhaps write something for a Bavarian paper, in which case I would send him the other copy. I would, of course, send them without any strings attached but I feel responsible because it’s the English who have to pay for the whole thing, so I’d be grateful if you’d let me know. I must close, so more anon; it’s time for the post and I must close. With loving kisses to you and Julie,
the Witch
[Postscript from Engels]
Please convey my most sincere thanks to the parliamentary group for their kind telegram last Sunday. 90
a Julie Bebel - b Adler 1892
30. Engels to Karl Kautsky 4 December
Dear Baron,
My best thanks for your good wishes in respect of a day that was spent very happily. Alas, tippling still does not agree with me and I shall have to atone for it by abstaining for the next few weeks.
Thank you, too, for sending the prospectus for the new journal — do you know the chaps [91] ? I have never heard of any of them.
I haven’t yet been able so much as to look at Schmidt’s latest on the rate of profita since, until Volume II Ib is finished, I shall have to fend off everything that might entail extra work — there being far too many interruptions as it is.
As for the Neue Zeit, 85 Edec and I have discussed it at length, and yesterday I wrote a long letterd to August on the subject.
It is my opinion that if, as proposed by Dietz and August, the Neue Zeit is to be given a lighter, more popular tone and made ‘more interesting’ from a literary point of view, it will have to move to Berlin. For only there can a political review covering all events up to the eve of publication be catered for on the spot and only there can a wealth of artistic and literary work, which would otherwise come a week too late, be produced
a C. Schmidt, ‘Die Durchschnittsprofitrate und das Marx’sche Wertgesetz,’ Die Neue Zeit, 1892/93, Vol. I, Nos. 3 and 4. - b of Capital -c Eduard Bernstein - d See this volume, Letter 29 1892
with speed and ‘immediacy’. This and other circumstances would mean that a Berlin edition would have 20 or 30 per cent more subscribers than a Stuttgart one.
But in that case the Neue Zeit would have to sacrifice the better part of its contents — and the latter would call for a monthly or quarterly of a more rigorously learned nature than hitherto and which, because intended for a smaller public, would have to be sold at a higher price.
But what if neither is feasible? In that case — and this has only just occurred to me — it might perhaps be better to turn the Neue Zeit back into a monthly but with the same capacity as at present, i.e. 104 sheets a year and 8-9 a month. The longer articles could then appear in one, or at most 2, numbers and would, in the second case, have to be subdivided into I, II or I, II , II I, IV installments which would be conducive to their general intelligibility. With 2 sheets a month it’s impossible to break off longer articles at the point the sense requires, since this would almost invariably be precluded by considerations of space and diversity. But in this way you could train your contributors to divide up their things themselves into 2 installments. And then there could be ‘something for everyone’ in every number. But here again, you would have to reckon on a reduced circulation, and hence be obliged to raise the price — or so at least it seems to me.
At all events, before making any experiments you should consider the matter carefully. Once made, a false step is difficult to reverse.
If the weekly Neue Zeit were to move to Berlin it would, in many respects, replace the weekly central organ which might otherwise hold out for another year. Between now and then a great deal may happen. Things are livening up. It looks as though the Panama scandal [60] might mark a turning-point so far as the development of France is concerned. You should pester Lafargue about collecting material for a longish essay on the subject, or supplying you with articles as each particular phase of the scandal reaches its climax. With that sort of material the Neue Zeit would be able to outstrip the dailies even in the matter of factual news.
As for the Vorwärts—the less said the better!
Your
F. Engels 1892
Herewith a trifle for the Neue Zeit. If you think Sternberg’s report is too long, condense it; having once got going I translated the whole thing. [92]
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Published in English for the first time Prague, 1935
31. Engels to Paul Lafargue 5 December
My dear Lafargue,
Your remarks concerning Bebel compel me to refer back to your letter from Lille. [93] What you say about him is unfair in the extreme. Far from Liebknecht correcting Bebel on any matter whatsoever (an amusing idea to anyone who understands the situation), it’s precisely the contrary that is taking place. It is Liebknecht who is promising wonders, and if the whole thing doesn’t collapse and dissolve, it’s thanks to the work Bebel is doing. If Liebknecht said only agreeable things to you at Marseilles, don’t forget that this is how he behaves with everyone; [5] that he always acts on the impulse of the moment and that consequently he says white here today, but tomorrow somewhere else he will say black, and he will maintain in all good faith that he has not contradicted himself. You complain about the Berlin resolution concerning May 1st, [54] well and good, according to our German press, Liebknecht is reported to have said that at Marseilles he explained the position to you, including the impossibility for the Germans to stop work on May 1st; and that ‘the French’ had fully acknowledged the force of his arguments. If that is true, by what right do you complain of the Berlin resolution? If Liebknecht has erred (for he believes what he says), what have 1892
you to say of the man who, according to you, ‘corrects’ Bebel?
I fear that behind all this lies the dissatisfaction of our Oxford hermit.a If his impulsive nature makes him unjust to Bebel, who is an ironic and business-like character, the heat he is generating during his compulsory activity in the heart of the only city in the world where the Middle Ages continue in full swing, will drive this aversion to the point of hatred. As it is, I never get a letter from him which does not teem with abuse of Bebel. I grant all that, I give full recognition to the hermit’s good faith and goodwill, but firstly an enthusiast of that kind is a dangerous guide in matters of practical life, particularly when he lives in the isolation of Oxford, consumed by the desire to do something for the movement. And it’s not just something to do that he needs, but positively something important and decisive. You know how he pestered us over the paper. [48] The day before yesterday he sent me a veritable ultimatum in the name of the French Party (he always speaks in its collective name) addressed to the German Party: if the Germans at Zurich propose the postponing of the May celebrations to the first Sunday, the French will withdraw from the demonstration altogether, and there will be, if not war, at least something like the breaking off of diplomatic relations — and goodness knows what else. Anyhow he warns the Germans ‘that they are playing with fire’. However, his French logic allows him to add that if the English insist on demonstrating on the Sunday, the French would see no harm in it!
I answered him fairly ironically that I would communicate his ultimatum to Bebel, but only as his personal opinion.b
Naturally I don’t take Bonnier’s explosions for the attitude of the French Party; on the contrary, even if you authorised him I should not do so; I know him to be quite incapable — with the best will in the world — of expressing other people’s ideas and words without putting in his own. He can’t help it; like Liebknecht, he only knows two shades, black and white; he either loves or hates; and as he cannot love Bebel, he needs must hate him. But you would be monstrously wrong to form your view of the German movement according to his. Laura being in the country cannot gainsay all the gossip about the Germans, and it’s a great pity that he is the only one of you all who understands German.
a Charles Bonnier - b See this volume, pp.46-47 1892
Have you seen his ‘Moment’? There are poems in it (Heine’s Poesiemusik,a die Instrumental- und Vokalpoesie die keine Musik istb), poems on Germany; that ‘unfathomable’ and extremely chaotic Germany which has never existed outside Victor Hugo’s imagination. The Germany which was supposed to be preoccupied only with music, dreams and clouds, and which left the care of matters here below to the French bourgeois and journalists. This good fellow would but speak of oaks, of forests, of students with scars on the face, of Gretchen and other playthings — and this after having lived in a country which is today the most prosaic and workaday in the world. Do read all that, and if then you believe a single word of what he has to say about Germany, it will be your fault.
Besides, you may remember that recently, as you needed documents with respect to Liebknecht, it was Bebel who immediately set himself to work for you, while Liebknecht — though it concerned him closely — would but confine himself to sending several newspapers to you.
Enough of that. Had it not been to destroy the false judgements about the most perspicacious, the most sensible and the most energetic man in the German party, I would not have written to you at such length. I wanted to write about Panama, [60] but here is the bottom of the 4th page — and so I shall write about that to Laura.c
Ever yours,
F. Engels
Correspondance, t. 111, 1891-1895, Translated from the French Paris, 1959
a poetry-music - b instrumental and vocal poetry which is not music - c See next letter.
1892
32. Engels to Laura Lafargue 5 December
It’s a long time yet till April, but if it cannot be managed otherwise, well then we must submit and only consider the matter finally settled, affaire bâclée, that you celebrate, both of you, your silver wedding here. And maybe you may manage a few days with us in the meantime, at all events we will consider that an open question still.
If you do not receive this week the Arbeiterinnenzeitung please let us know; Louise will write again. The paper having been handed over to the women altogether has probably caused some irregularities which will soon be set right.
Ah le Panama! [60] I can tell you I am 45 years younger again, and living through a second ‘47. Then La Presse (Girardin’s) brought every day a fresh revelation about some scandal. [61] or some other paper brought a reply to some charge of his; and this went on till it killed Louis Philippe. But those scandals, and even those of the Second Empire dwindle into nothingness compared with this Grand National Steeplechase of Scandals. Louis Bonaparte took jolly good care, when he coaxed the peasants’ money out of their buried hoards, to do so for the benefit of his State loans, which were safe; but here the savings of the small tradesman, the peasant, the domestic servant and above all of the petit rentier,a the loudest howler of all, have gone into irretrievable ruin, and the miracle has been performed of transforming a canal which has not been dug out, into an unfathomable abyss. 1,500 million francs, 60 million pounds sterling, all gone, gone for ever, except what has found its way into the pockets of swindlers, politicians and journalists; and the money got together by swindles and corrupt dodges unequalled even in America. What a base of operations for a Socialistic campaign!
The thing has evidently been based upon its own immensity.
a small rentier 1892
Everybody considered himself safe because everybody else was as deeply in it. But that is just what now makes hushing up impossible; partial disclosures having set in, the innumerable receivers of ‘boodle’ (for here American is the only possible language) are by their very numbers debarred from common and concerted action, everybody fights on his own hook and as best he can, and no talking and preaching can prevent a general sauve qui peut.a That the police have placed themselves at the disposal of the Committee after the strike of the courts of law, shows that confidence in the stability of swindle is broken, and that it is considered safe to keep well with the ‘financial purity’ side.
To my mind c’est le commencement de la fin.b The bourgeois republic and its politicians can hardly outlive this unparalleled exposure. There are but three possibilities: an attempt at monarchy, another Boulanger, [6] or socialism. The first and the second, if attempted, could only lead to the third, and thus we may be called upon, long before we in consequence of our own action had a right to expect it, to enter upon a career of immense responsibility. I should be glad of it, if it does not come too soon and too suddenly. It will do our Germans good to see that the French have not lost their historical initiative. A country cannot pass through 200 years like what 1648-1848 were for Germany without leaving a small impression of the philistine even on the working class. Our revolution of 48/49 was too short and too incomplete to wipe that out altogether. Of course, the next revolution which is preparing in Germany with a consistency and steadiness unequalled anywhere else, would come of itself in time, say 1898-1904; but revolutionary times, preparing a thoroughgoing crisis, in France, would hasten that process, and moreover, if the thing breaks out in France first, say 1894, then Germany follows suit at once and then the Franco-German Proletarian Alliance forces the hands of England and smashes up in one blow both the triple and the Franco-Russian conspiracies; then we have a revolutionary war against Russia — if not even a revolutionary echo from Russia—vogue la Galère!c
Love from Louise who is at a meeting of actors and dramatists for the foundation of a freie Bühne or théâtre libred or what not. [94]
a panic - b this is the beginning of the end - c be that as it may - d free stage or free theatre 1892
My respectful salutes as well of those of our tom-cat Felix to your animals.
Ever yours,
F.E.
Mendelsons were here last night, spoke a good deal of their visit to Le Perreux.
33. Engels to Mrs Stepniak ( Kravchinsky) 6 December
Regent’s Park Road, N.W.
Dear Mrs Stepniak,
Mrs Kautsky showed me your note in which you are kind enough to ask me to spend next Saturday evening with you. I should do so with the greatest pleasure, but unfortunately my locomotive capabilities are still too limited to enable me to undertake such distant expeditions.
I am at present practically confined to the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill, and Mrs Kautsky will be able to tell you that I have been obliged to decline invitations besides yours.
Kind regards to Stepniak from
Yours sincerely,
F. Engels 1892
34. Engels to Wilhelm Ellenbogen 7 December
Esteemed Comrade,
Many thanks for kindly sending your Geschichte des Arbeiter-Bildungsvereins.a I regard the publication of studies on the history of the Austrian labour movement as a highly rewarding task, the more so since in our fast-moving time some moments, important in themselves, are lost to posterity as they only live on in the memory of the participants and have never been recorded in writing. I, for my part, am again working diligently on Volume 3,b a bit of news which will probably compensate you for my not answering your kind letter in person.
Yours faithfullyc
F. Engels
[From Louise Kautsky]
Dear Comrade,
I enjoyed reading your correction in the latest issue of the Arbeiterzeitung. For that devilish misprint had accused you of bigamy too, something you had completely overlooked in your eagerness to exculpate yourself in the eyes of the female comrades. Also going off today will be the report of the International Glass-Workers Congress, 89 which will surely be of great interest to you. Many
aby Wilhelm Ellenbogen - b of Marx’s Capital —c in Engels’ handwriting 1892
thanks for sending your pamphlet. With warm greetings,
Your
Louise Kautsky
35. Engels to Pyotr Lavrov 14 December
My dear Lavrov,
I do not see why I would oppose the publication of the letter from Lopatin about a conversation that he had with me. [97] Therefore do as you like.
I was pleased to learn from Mendelson that you are well. As for me, I have no reason to complain — quite the contrary. For three months now I have been working on the 3rd volume of Capital, and although there is still a great deal to do, this time I have grounds to hope that I will finish it.
As for the Berlin resolution, I am of the opinion that the Germans committed at Brussels the mistake of promising — although indirectly— more than they can fulfil. [54] The 1st May 1890 and ‘91 has shown that in Germany a strike is impractical; the sacrifices were not worth the possible gains. At Hamburg alone the attempt cost more than 100,000 marks. [98] The coincidence that 1st May 1892 was a Sunday led them to forget in Brussels that real world to which the crisis — more acute this time in Germany than elsewhere — has sharply returned them.
The strike on 1st May ‘93 could cost us too dear — in Germany, and, by reaction, elsewhere. A strike in Germany would dry up both funds and 1892
financial credit of the party for more than a year. And that at a time of military crisis and the possible dissolution of the Reichstag, [76] with elections in May or June.
It is the law of the development of parties that a party which has achieved a certain degree of power finds that the very demonstrations which it could not do without in its early days have become impractical.
For the rest, as for the forms, one could have shown a little more regard for the susceptibilities of others. However, what will you — these are the grobe Deutscht who do not know how to sugar the pill.
As regards the rest, it seems to me that Panama [60] is more important than 1st May, given the times. Panama puts me in mind of 1847, when every day one could expect some new scandal. [61] 1847 dug the grave of the July Monarchy, and what will 1892 bring?
Yours,
F. Engels
36. Engels to Laura Lafargue 20 December
My dear Löhr,
Yesterday we forwarded by Van Oppen and Co’s Express (they have an office in Paris too, but I did unfortunately not note the address) the box with pudding and cake, and hope it will arrive safe (directed to you, Le
a unpolished Germans 1892
Perreux). The pudding is not quite boiled out, our copper would not heat last Saturday and so, instead of twelve hours’ boiling, the unfortunate pudding only got about nine or ten, But if you give it two to three hours’ boiling before serving, it will be all right.
Before crossing the Channel, the Oxford sagea gave us a call here. I hope I quietened his anxiety about the first of Mayb to some extent, The attempt, in 1890, to chômerc at Hamburg alone cost the party above 100,000 marks [98], and in my opinion it would never do to allow the bourgeois to bleed the German party’s cash and credit ‘à blanc just at the moment when a dissolution of the Reichstag [76] is in the air, and when every farthing would be wanted.
Panama is delightful, [60] The papers you so kindly send me, and old Mother Crawford’s letters — though awfully cut down by the respectable people of the Daily News—form already a pretty comprehensive dossier which I intend to complete up to the — I hope—bitter end. Respectability here, of course, triumphs.
Wenn sich das französische Laster erbricht, setzt sich die englische Tugend zu Tischd—and I’ll be damned if I do not prefer a thousand times that plain open outright French vice to this hypocritical British virtue. Here corruption has been brought into a system and has been endowed with a complete code of étiquette which you have only to keep within, in order to be perfectly bullet-proof against all charges of undue corruption. In France no man would stand a chance in a popular constituency, a town especially, who openly wanted to get into Parliament for the purpose of furthering his own interests; here, anybody who wanted to get in for any other purpose would be considered a fool and a Don Quixote. The English Panama is called Building Society and has more than one head— the savings of the small people have been eaten up in these societies by wholesale, and no great fuss about it.e One M.P. is in here too, Spencer Balfour — he will take the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into private life — while lots of M.P.’s make money by selling their names as directors of all sorts of swindling companies, which is considered perfectly fair so long as it is not pushed to excess.
On Fridayf we expect Pumps and her family here, as we have not room
a Charles Bonnier - b See this volume, pp. 46-47 - c strike - d When French vice fails, British virtue sits down to a meal - e See this volume, p. 75 - f 23 December 1892
enough in the house we have taken lodgings next door but one — the old Marquis’s house is now a lodging house! I think I wrote to you that on November 13th Pumps had a little girl.
Shall write to Paul after the first rush of the holidays is over.
Ever yours,
F. Engels
[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]a
My dear Laura,
Should I do penance, in sackcloth and ashes? But I’d rather not for I regret all my misdeeds as it is. Because of my not writing I suffer more than you do. After my return the Generalb was no longer his old self and I had hardly any time of my own, but when I did have time I was in no mood for writing. Yet now and again everything turned out very well. I look forward to the spring when we’ll be able to talk to our hearts content. My best regards to the M.P.C
With love and kisses
Your
Louisa
a written in German - b Engels’ nickname - c Paul Lafargue 1892
37. Engels to August Bebel 22 December
Dear August,
We recently had the pleasure of seeing Cato Censorius Bonnier here while in transit from Oxford to Paris. I think I made some impression on him by pointing out that 1. his manner of giving ultimatumsa is hardly calculated to promote mutual understanding and 2. that it really might be better if the German party were to preserve its funds and its credit for the eventuality of a dissolution and future elections rather than dissipate both on a stoppage of work on May Day. It’s unfortunate for both French and Germans that this chap should be an indispensable middleman between the two, since Guesde seems reluctant to make use of any one else. But thwarted as it is by the isolation and inactivity of Oxford, his enthusiasm plus his intense urge to be up and doing serves to evoke discord rather than collaboration. And in the present state of Europe what is called for above all else is precisely the harmonious collaboration of Germans and French.
Many thanks for the Reichstag stenographic reports. I shall not be able to read your big speech about the Army until tonight, but I was delighted by what you said about Heinze’s law. [99] So long as prostitution cannot be wholly eradicated, our first bid ought, I think, to be the girls’ total exemption from any kind of extraordinary legislation. Here in England this is more or less the case; there are no ‘morality police’, and no controls or medical examinations, but the police still have tremendous power because it is a punishable offence to keep a disorderly house, and every house in which a girl lives and receives visitors can be treated as such. But although this law is enforced only on rare occasions, the girls are none the less exposed to frightful extortion on the part of policemen. This relative freedom from degrading police restrictions enables the girls to preserve an independent and self-respecting character in a way that
a See this volume, pp. 46-47 1892
would hardly be possible on the Continent. They look upon their situation as an unavoidable evil to which, since it has befallen them, they must resign themselves, but which otherwise need in no way affect their character or self-esteem and, given the chance to get out of their profession, they seize upon it, as a rule, successfully. In Manchester there were whole colonies of young men — bourgeois or clerks — who lived with girls of this kind, being in many cases legally married to them and treating them at least as well as a bourgeois would a woman of his own class. The fact that now and then one of these girls might take to the bottle in no way distinguished them from their middle-class counterparts over here, themselves no strangers to the habit. Indeed, some of these married girls, having moved to another town where there was no fear of their running into ‘old acquaintances’, have been introduced into respectable middle-class society and even into the squirarchy — squires being the English equivalent of country Junkers — without anyone’s noticing anything in the least objectionable about them.
It is my belief that, in dealing with this matter, we should above all consider the interests of the girls themselves as victims of the present social order, and protect them as far as possible against ending up in the gutter — or at least not actually force them into the gutter by means of legislation and police skulduggery as happens throughout the Continent. In this country the same thing was attempted in a number of garrison towns where controls and medical examinations were introduced, but it didn’t last long; the only good thing the social purity people have done has been to agitate against this.
Medical examinations are absolutely worthless. Wherever they were introduced here, syphilis and gonorrhoea increased. I am convinced that a police surgeon’s instruments are exceedingly effective in transmitting vene-real disease, since he would be unlikely to spend time or trouble on disin-fecting them. Free courses on venereal disease should be made available to the girls, then most of them would probably take precautions themselves. Blaschko has sent us an article on medical controlsa in which he is forced to admit that these are absolutely useless; if he were to draw the logical conclusion from his own assumptions, he would be bound to conclude that prostitution must be freed from all restrictions and the girls be protected
a A. Blaschko, ‘Die moderne Prostitution’, Die Neue Zeit, Stuttgart, 1891-1892, Vol. II , Nos. 27, 32.
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against exploitation, but in Germany that would seem utterly Utopian.
I hope that Kneipp treatment is doing Dietz good; at all events Nasoa
maintains that the crack-brained parson made him astoundingly healthy. By completely changing the habits of people the routine of whose urban professional lives has made them a bit rigid and set in their ways, and by forcing them to take exercise in the open air, the said cure may, from what I have heard, do them a certain amount of good or, indeed, harm — according to the nature of the case — just as does the ‘water cure’ when it is not as a rule the mineral water that does the trick, but rather the change of routine and the strict diet. But otherwise you are right; amongst our people there is many a one who deems it his duty fervently to embrace any and every new ‘ism’ and, likewise, any disgruntled bourgeois or bureaucratic malcontent, any obscure literary or artistic genius. He may equally well set himself up as the protector of all victims of persecution and injustice, and discover in every ism a theory of world redemption hitherto suppressed by the wicked capitalist world order. It is an excellent way of turning to account and putting on display the very things one has not learnt. One has only to look at what the late-lamented Volksstaat achieved in that sphere!
The Panama business [60] gets nicer every day. As so often in France the affair is taking a quite dramatically exaggerated course. At any moment, or so it seems, the efforts to thrust it out of sight are going to succeed, and then up it springs again where least expected and more vigorously than ever before. Now the situation is such that no hushing up will avail. First the affair was to be hushed up in the courts, whereupon fresh revelations necessitated the setting up of a committee of inquiry; then it was the latter that was to be hamstrung, an attempt that was only partially successful and only to the extent that further legal proceedings of a more serious nature were instituted. And now there’s a spate of fresh revelations and prosecutions of deputies and senators. The ball has been set rolling and is very far from coming to a stop. Standing in the wings are 1. Constans, who knows that he is played out and is anxious to avenge himself, 2. Rochefort and the Boulangists, [6] who also know a great deal, 3. the Orléans family, who would like to make use of all this farcical business to attempt a restoration. All these people know a great deal and can to a large extent prove it. And if the worst comes to the worst, Ch.
a Leonhard Tauscher 1892
de Lesseps and Rouvier will avenge themselves by compromising as many people as possible and involving them in their fall. Rothschild summed up the situation in the words:
‘I need the monarchy and shall buy it once and for all; the Republic costs me too much, since every few years I have to buy yet another ravenous crew.’
What wouldn’t that jackass Boulanger give for that now if he hadn’t shot himself! He’d be in clover; indeed, I shouldn’t be surprised if an attempt were made to find another Boulanger. Fortunately this would not be at all easy. The monarchy, too, is down on its luck — the Right voted as one man for the Panama lottery [100] and, what is worse, made propaganda for it in the rural areas, thus landing philistines and peasants in the cart. The 1,700 million francs that were swallowed up consisted to a very large extent of the savings of little men (over 800,000 are said to be involved!), hence the wave of indignation, while the Right (Clerical Monarchists) who at first rejoiced over the Panama scandal, are now turning coy.
How it will all end is obvious — ultimately in our favour. But in a country as incalculable as France it is difficult to predict what intermediate stages there will be. Several, at any rate, before our people really take possession of the stage. Only if there were to be revolution in Paris would the Socialists come to power; for in Paris — cf. the Commune—every revolution is automatically socialist. But Paris is less turbulent than the provinces and that is a good thing, Paris is blasé, not least because the workers, disunited, confused and patriotic (in so far as they sense that Paris is — wrongly, or so they feel—no longer the political hub of the world), can see no way out. Should the scandals continue, there might be a presidential crisis — Carnot has at least connived at a lot of dirty work — and whatever happens there will be parliamentary elections next year. Also a good many municipal elections in Paris. All this will provide more than enough legal loopholes. On the other hand, uncertainty as to the reliability of the army (which is new to general military service and not so hardened to it as Prussia) is a safeguard against coups d’ état, as is the unarmed state of the masses (who this time could not, as always before, turn to the National Guard for guns and ammunition) against attempted uprisings. It therefore seems very probable that the crisis will take a peaceful course. It’s just what we need, however, if we are to have time to reap the benefits of Panama — no violent upheavals and time for the ferment to take effect throughout the country. In the provinces the Marxists have virtually no rivals; in Paris it is, for the time being, quite 1892
a good thing if Blanquists, [20] Allemanists [21] and Broussists [30] should wear each other out.
At all events, internal developments in France have again become of paramount importance and we shall soon see to what extent the chaps are equal to the tasks by which they are confronted. I must say that, where major crises such as this one are concerned, I have considerable confidence in them. Not in their ability to win instant and striking victories — there may yet be short-lived episodes of a horribly reactionary nature — but in their ability eventually to emerge with honour. Nor, from our point of view, should things happen too quickly. We too require time for growth.
Quite between ourselves, I am over the worst so far as Volume II P is concerned. The difficulties in the most difficult section have been sur-mounted. [33] But until I have been through the last two sections I can say nothing definite about the date of completion. There may still turn out to be individual difficulties that will take some time. But I have sighted land and the worse and most time-consuming part is behind me; this time I shall finish. When you come over here I shall show it to you.
You would in any case do better to come via Calais; it’s hardly any further from Stuttgart and maybe even somewhat nearer than via Ostend.—Cordial regards to you, your wifeb and your children and a Happy Christmas to you.
A uf Wiedersehen,
Your F.E.
a of Capital- b Julie Bebel 1892
38. Engels to Karl Kautsky 24 December
Dear Baron,
I have been trying to persuade August to cross the Channel this winter, if only for a few days, and am not without hope of his concurring. Should he do so, and since he will in any case have to travel via Stuckert,a Ishould be obliged if you could give him Marx’s old Ms., together with such parts of the Ms. as you may have already completed. [102] The rest we shall settle at some future date. For now that there is every prospect of Volume Ill’s long gestation period at last drawing to its close, it’s important that I should have the material for Volume IV at my disposal.
You shall have a more detailed reply to your letter shortly — in the meantime a Happy Christmas and cordial regards from
Your
F. Engels
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Published in English for the first time Prague, 1935
a Stuttgart 1892
39. Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht 28 December
Dear Liebknecht,
A Happy New Year to you, your wifea and your children. As regards the French, I pointed out to Lafargue more than a week ago that now’s the time.b However, it’s quite possible that the chaps don’t want to expend their powder too soon. To begin with, the Panama affair [60] is still in its early stages, the more important revelations won’t come till after the New Year, and so far nothing serious has been proven, legally speaking, against any living parliamentarian; in January, both Radicals [86] and Monarchists may find themselves well and truly in the soup and then it will be possible to speak up far more effectually. Secondly, there are, in the Chamber, not only Marxists but also Blanquists, [20] Allemanists [21] and free lances à la Cluseret— not to mention complete reprobates such as Lachize and Thivrier who have latched on to our coat-tails — and, with the socialist groups in Parliament differing as they do, it would be easy for the others to give them as good as they got, so to speak. Now an attempt is being made to find a common basis for action. If this succeeds, as seems probable, it will be easier to get something done.
I tender this merely as a possible explanation for the chaps’ silence. In this country we have long had to contend with Bonnier’s enthusiasm. He fairly peppered us with shot over the May Day business. [54] I drew his attention to your statement in the Vorwärts in which you said that at Marseilles you had given the chaps advance notice of what the Germans’ attitude would be on 1 May ‘93, and that they had declared themselves satisfied.c
So they have no right to complain. I then went on to tell him that, what with Panama in Paris, the military business in Berlin [76] and a general industrial crisis into the bargain, there might be something better for us
a Natalie Liebknecht -b See this volume, pp. 58-59 -c W. Liebknecht, ‘Agitationsbericht Nach Marseille und zurück’, Vorwärts, No. 239, 12 October 1892.
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to do on 1 May than demonstrate. [3] Indeed, in Paris he would subsequently seem to have realised as much. The man has the best of intentions, but anyone wanting to have a finger in the pie of the labour movement of three countries has no business to live in Oxford. Cordial regards to you all,
Your F. E.
[Postscript from Louise Kautsky]
Dear Mrs Natalie,
May I associate myself with the General’sb letter and his good wishes. Having myself answered the question in the affirmative, I wish you, your dear husband, and your children a very Happy New Year.
Sincerely yours,
Louise Kautsky
mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, Published in English for the first time The Hague, 1963
40. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 31 December
Dear Sorge,
Just a line or two before the year ends. Your letters of 18 November and 16 December received — many thanks. Did you get the parcel of books I posted to you in September, containing the Condition of the Working
a See this volume, p. 47 - b F. Engels’ nickname 1892
Class, new edition, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,a translated by Aveling with an introduction by me? If not I shall send you another parcel by registered mail.
Here, in old Europe, things are proceeding at a somewhat livelier pace than in your ‘youthful’ country which still can’t quite extricate itself from the hobbledehoy stage. It is remarkable, though perfectly natural, that in so young a country, which has never known feudalism and has from the outset grown up upon a bourgeois basis, bourgeois prejudices should be so firmly entrenched even in the working class. Indeed it is precisely his opposition to a mother country still garbed in feudalism that leads the American working man to suppose the traditional bourgeois economic system he has inherited to be by its nature something immutably superior and progressive, a non plus ultra. Just as in New England, where puritanism, precisely because it is the raison d’être of the whole colony, has become a traditional heirloom and all but indistinguishable from local patriotism. However much the Americans may twist and turn, they cannot simply discount, as if it were a bill, what is beyond doubt a tremendous future, but will have to wait until it falls due; and precisely because that future is so great, their present must be largely taken up with preparations for it, a task which, as in any young country, is chiefly of a material nature and calls for a degree of conservative thinking, a clinging to traditions connected with the founding of the new nationality. The Anglo-Saxon race — those damned Schleswig-Holsteiners as Marx always called them — is in any case slow in the uptake, a trait its history both in Europe and in America (economic success and, on the whole, peaceful political evolution) has tended to foster. Here momentous events alone can be of any avail and if, in addition to the transfer — now almost complete — of state-owned lands into private hands, industry were to expand under a somewhat less hare-brained tariff policy and foreign markets be conquered, things might also go well for you people. In this country, too, the class struggles were more violent during the period of growth of large-scale industry and petered out precisely at the time of Britain’s undisputed industrial domination in the world; similarly in Germany the growth of large-scale industry since 1850 has coincided with the rise of the socialist movement, and in America things are not likely to turn out any differently. It is the revolutionising of all time-honoured conditions
a Both works were written by F. Engels. See vols. 4 and 25 of this edition.
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by the growth of industry which likewise revolutionises men’s minds.
Furthermore, the Americans have long provided the European world with proof of the fact that the bourgeois republic is the republic of capitalist businessmen in which politics is merely a business transaction like any other — something which the ruling bourgeois politicians in France have long known and practiced on the quiet, and whose truth is at last being brought home to the French on a national scale by the Panama scandal. [60] Not that the constitutional monarchies can preen themselves on their virtue, for each has its own little Panama; England, the building society scandals of which one, ‘the Liberator’, has conscientiously ‘liberated’ vast numbers of small depositors of savings amounting to some £8 million [104] ; Germany, the Baare scandals and Lowe’s “Jewish rifles’ [105] (which prove that the Prussian officer is, now as always, a thief, but in a very, very small way — the one thing that is modest about him); Italy, the Banca Romana, already an approximation of Panama, which has bought some 150 deputies and senators [106] and concerning which, so I am told, documents are shortly to be published in Switzerland; Schlüter should keep an eye out for anything about the Banca Romana that appears in the press. And in Holy Russia the Russian Prince Meshchersky waxes in-dignant over the indifference with which the Panama revelations are received in Russia, the only explanation for this being, he says, that Russian virtue has been corrupted by the example of the French, and that ‘we ourselves have more than one Panama here at home’.
However, the Panama affair is the beginning of the end of the bourgeois republic and may soon place us in some very responsible positions. The whole of the opportunist [87] and the better part of the Radical gang [86] are compromised up to the hilt; the government is seeking to hush things up but that is no longer possible, for documentary evidence is in the hands of people who wish to overturn those now in power: 1. The Orleans, 2. the former minister Constans, now out of the running because of revelations about his scandalous past, 3. Rochefort and the Boulangists, [6] 4. Cornelius Herz who, being himself deeply involved in all manner of frauds, has plainly taken refuge in London merely in order to buy his way out by compromising his fellows. All these people have more than enough evidence against this thieving crew, but are holding back, firstly and more generally, so as not to expend all their powder at one go and, secondly, in order to give the government and the courts of law time to become hopelessly compromised. This is all grist to our mill; enough information gradually leaks out not only to keep the pot on the boil and 1892
run the dirigeantsa increasingly onto the rocks, but also to allow time for the scandal and the revelations to do their work in the remotest parts of the country before the inevitable dissolution of the Chamber and the general elections which, however, ought not to come too soon.
That things have very nearly got to the point at which our chaps in France will be the only possible rulers of the state is evident. But it mustn’t happen too quickly, our people in France being by no means ripe for leadership. As things are now, it is absolutely impossible to say what intermediate stages there will be in the meantime. The old Republican parties are compromised down to the last man, while the Royalists and Clericals, having sold Panama lottery tickets [100] on a vast scale, have identified themselves with that affair— if that idiot Boulanger hadn’t shot himself, he would now be cock of the walk. I should be curious to know whether the old unconscious logic of French history will again assert itself on this occasion. There are going to be a great many surprises. If only during the interval in which the air is being cleared, some general or other doesn’t seize power and foment a war; that is the only danger.
In Germany the party’s undeviating, irresistible advance proceeds at a steady pace. Everywhere small successes provide proof of progress. If the Army Bill [76] is adopted more or less as it stands, there’ll be a new floodtide of malcontents coming to join our ranks. If the bill is thrown out, there’ll be a dissolution, a general election, and we shall get at least fifty seats in the Reichstag which, in a conflict, might often give us the deciding vote. At all events the struggle, while it may, perhaps, also break out in France, can only be fought to a finish in Germany. But it’s a good thing that Volume II Ib is now at last to be completed — not that I can say when that will be. Times are growing unsettled and the wind is rising.
A very Happy New Year from myself and Mrs Kautsky to you and your wife,c
Your
F. Engels
a leaders -b of Capital —c Katharina Sorge
First published in: Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 1892
41. Engels to Karl Henckell end of 1892
The Song of Steam, typical of an early, if past, phase of the Labour movement and one which Germany has also experienced.
First published in: Buch der Freiheit. Printed according to the original Gesammelt und herausgegeben von Karl Henckell, Berlin, 1893 Published in English for the first time 1893
1893
42
Endnotes
[4] Working on the book Handbuch des socialismus, Hugo Lindemann and Carl Stegmann requested Engels in their letter to clarify ‘certain moot points’ and, if possible, grant them some journals not available in the British Museum.
[7] On 9 September 1870 the Prussian authorities arrested members of the Brunswick-based Committee of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany which was its steering body (Wilhelm Bracke, Leonhard von Bonhorst, Samuel Spier, Hermann August Kühn and Heinrich Gralle). These men were deported to the fortress of Boyen (Lötzen) in East Prussia. The arrest came as a result of the promulgation of the Party’s Manifesto on 5 September 1870 {Manifest des Ausschusses der Sozial-demokratischen Arbeiterpartei. An alle deutschen Arbeiter !—Brunswick, den 5. September 1870) calling for protest meetings against the plans of the Prussian ruling circles to annex Alsace-Lorraine. Included in the text of the Manifesto were excerpts from the letter by Marx and Engels to the Committee in reply to its request to clarify their opinion on the attitude of the German proletariat to the Franco-Prussian War that had just begun (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 260-262). However, the names of the authors were not indicated therein — it was said in the Manifesto that the text was written by ‘one of our oldest and most respected comrades in London’. On 23 November 1871 the Committee members appeared before the district court on charges of breaking the public order laws and affiliation with the International Working Men’s Association. The court sentenced the accused to prison terms ranging from 5 to 16 months. The sentence was commuted on appeal to 3 months, including the period of preliminary detention; it meant that they were virtually acquitted.
[8] Addressing a Reichstag session on 27 July 1870, August Bebel supported the Reichstag’s refusal to vote for credits to finance the war against France. On 26 November 1870, when the German Reichstag took up this issue again, Bebel and Liebknecht demanded that credits be refused and peace with the French Republic promptly concluded without annexations. On 28 November the entire Social-Democratic group in the Reichstag, together with Bebel and Liebknecht, voted against the granting of war credits. After the Reichstag session closed on 17 December Bebel, Liebknecht and Hepner were arrested and charged with high treason.
[11] Marseille was the venue of the 10th Congress of the French Workers’ Party which contin ued in session from 24 to 28 September 1892. The Congress considered the party’s situa tion and its activities, its work in country districts, the celebration of May Day, its partici pation in the International Socialist Congress of 1893 at Zurich, its participation in the forthcoming parliamentary election, among other issues. The Congress worked out an agrarian programme — its critical analysis is contained in Engels’ work The Peasant Question in France and Germany (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 481-502). The Congress also passed a decision not to participate in the International Congress on an Eight-Hour Working Day convened by the British Trades-Unions but to invite their representatives to the International Socialist Working Men’s Congress at Zurich. The French Workers’ Party {Le Parti ouvrier français) was set up by Marx’s followers— Jules Guesde and his supporters — by the decision of the Workers’ Congress held in Marseille in 1879; this Congress endorsed the Party Rules. In 1880 Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue drew up the Workers’ Party Programme, with Karl Marx taking part in framing its theoretical chapter. In November 1880 a Workers’ Congress in Le Havre adopted the Party Programme by a majority vote whereby the French Workers’ Party took shape.
[12] A reference to August Bebel’s article ‘Ein internationaler Kongress für den Achtstundentag’ carried by Die Neue Zeit, Bd. 1, Nr. 2, Stuttgart, 1892-93. In his letter to A. Bebel of 26 September 1892, Engels requested 12 copies of the article for circulation in British newspapers (see present edition, Vol. 49, pp. 485-89).
[14] In his book Der Klassenkampf in der deutschen Sozialdemokratie (Zurich, 1892, p. 48), Hans Müller, representing Die Jungen (see Note 129) cited W. Liebknecht’s speech in the Reichstag on 31 May 1881.
[2] In his letter of 28 September 1892 Ludwig Kugelmann informed Engels he had three copies of Herr Vogt which had been sent to him for custody on a commission from Karl Marx. Kugelmann expressed the desire to have them sent to Engels so that the latter could dispose of them at his discretion.
[18] The letter of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to the Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. Only a fragment of it is preserved, one included in the text of the Brunswick Committee Manifesto (see Note 7).
[19] In his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies on 8 December 1891 P. Lafargue validated the substance of his motion to grant a general pardon for political prisoners. His speech was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers from among the bourgeois deputies. The Chamber defeated Lafargue’s motion.
[22] Engels alludes to W Liebknechts speeches at rallies in Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt a.M. and Offenbach on 2-4 October 1892 in which he reported on his trip as a representative of the German Social-Democracy to the Congress of the French Workers’ Party in Marseille (see Note 11).
[23] The Congress of the National Federation of Labour Unions (Congrès national des syndicats) was held in Marseille on 19-23 September 1892. Besides other issues (the organisational set-up of the labour-union movement, a general strike, May Day celebrations, female and child labour in industry), it discussed the decision of the Glasgow-held congress of the British trades-unions to convene an international congress on 1 May 1893 on the issue of an eight-hour working day (see Note 24). The French syndicats, meeting in Marseille, decided not to take part in the congress convened by the British trades-unions; instead, it was decided to invite their representatives to the International Socialist Congress in Zurich.
[25] This letter has never been found.
[26] Engels refers to Ludwig Schorlemmer’s letter of 9 October 1892 in which he told Engels about the intention of Richard Anschütz to write Carl Schorlemmer’s biography and asked what Engels thought of that.
[27] In keeping with the decision of the Second International Socialist Working Men’s Congress held in Brussels on 16-22 August 1891 (see Note 228), the worker and socialist organisations of Switzerland, beginning January 1892, launched preparations for the next congress due in Zurich in the summer of 1893. They set up an Organising Committee which included representatives of the Social-Democratic Party, of the Grütli Union (founded in 1838 as an enlightenment alliance of artisans and workmen, it adhered to reformist positions) and of the trade-union amalgamation. In February 1892, the Organising Committee issued an appeal to the working men of all lands saying that it began its activities and urging them to send in suggestions concerning the congress agenda.
[28] The Parliamentary Committee — the executive body of the Trades Union Congress of Great Britain that met in Manchester in 1868 and united the country’s unions. As of 1871 the Parliamentary Committee was elected at annual congresses of the British trades-unions and, in fact, was their steering body in between the congresses. It nominated candidates to Parliament, supported draft bills tabled in the interests of the trades unions and worked to prepare regular trades-union congresses.
[29] Labour bourses {bourses du travail) was the name given in France to worker associations set up beginning with the latter half of the 1880s largely at the municipal councils of major towns and comprising representatives of various syndicats (labour unions). Such bourses du travail were initially supported by government bodies and subsidised by them; thereby the government hoped to use these bourses as a ‘tool of social appeasement’. Yet the activity of the labour bourses (labour exchanges) engaged in job placement of the unemployed (each bourse had a special department in charge of that), in the organising of new syndicats in the professional training of workers, and in strike action soon caused apprehension among the government, and it started combatting their further proliferation. The Saint-Etienne Congress of 1892 formed a federation of bourses du travail in which the Possibilists soon came to play a leading part (see Note 30). The Paris Bourse du travail was opened on 3 February 1887. Using armed force, the French government seized the Paris Bourse on 7 July 1892 and expelled labour union representatives. It closed the Bourse on the pretext that this body had ostensibly been prohibited by the law. The Bourse remained closed until 1896.
[31] In his letter of 10 October 1892 Victor Adler told Engels that the Austrian trades unions would ‘undoubtedly’ adopt a decision to stay away from the International Congress convened by the British trades unions. The text of the resolution, he said, ‘had already been prepared’. In this connection he asked Engels to give him the address of the Parliamentary Committee to which he intended to send the text of the resolution.
[32] Engels refers to V. Adler’s German translation of the first volume of the book by Sergei Kravchinsky (alias Stepniak) The Russian Peasantry. Their Agrarian Condition, Social Life and Religion that was published in English in 1888 by Swan Sonnenschein & Co. In his letter of 22 September 1892 Adler asked Engels to approach Stepniak so as to obtain formal permission from S. Sonnenschein to publish the German translation of the book, and pay the royalties due to the author and the publisher. Stepniak read the German edition and wrote a brief preface. The book appeared in Stuttgart in 1893 under the title Der Russische Bauer (Dietz Publishers).
[37] The French Workers’ Party (see Note 11) was not in a position to send its delegate to the Berlin congress of the German Social-Democratic Party (see Note 51). Instead, it sent a message of greetings signed by Guesde and Lafargue.
[38] Engels means the colonial war unleashed by France against the West African state of Dahomey in 1890. In the latter half of November 1892 French troops captured the country’s capital. In 1893 Dahomey became a French colony ruled by a governor-general. In the course of this colonial expedition the French forces were the first to use artillery shells containing the powerful explosive, melinite.
[39] On 2 November 1892 the newspaper Le Figaro (No. 307) carried an interview with John Burns, an activist in the British working-class movement and an MP. His interviewer was Jules Huret, a French journalist who, from 1 August 1892, had published a series of articles under the general heading ‘La question sociale — théoriciens et chefs de sectes’. J. Burns was reported as saying that as an adherent of gradual reforms, he could not agree with the continental Socialists in their idea of a violent revolution; in his opinion, Britain had less of the antagonism between working men and capitalists than France.
[41] In that letter Sergei Kravchinsky (alias, Stepniak) said he had sent to V. Adler the materials for the German edition of his book The Russian Peasantry. Their Agrarian Condition, Social Life and Religion (see Note 32).
[42] Engels probably means the proposal of the Solingen party organisation to the Berlin congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (see Note 51) to limit the mandates of Social-Democratic deputies to the Reichstag to 2 or 3 years in order to secure a rotation of elected deputies. Besides, the party local proposed to expel Georg Schumacher from the Reichstag’s Social-Democratic parliamentary group. These proposals, together with amendments to the agenda tabled by other party locals, were published by the Berliner Volksblatt Vorwärts (No. 259) on 4 November 1892.
[44] Social Democratic Federation—a British socialist organisation set up in August 1884 on the basis of the bourgeois-radical Democratic Federation; it united heterogeneous socialist elements, predominantly intellectuals and a section of politically active workers. The Federation stated in its programme that the entire wealth of the nation should belong to Labour, its only source. It also set as its aim a socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and came out for a society of ‘emancipated labour’. That was Britain’s first socialist programme based mainly on Marxist ideas. The leadership of the Federation was in the hands of Henry Hyndman, prone to authoritarian methods of guidance, and his supporters who did not deem it necessary to conduct work in the trades unions, a stance that inevitably led to isolation of the organisation from the working-class masses. A group of Socialists within the Federation (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, William Morris, Tom Mann and others) opposed Hyndman and championed closer ties with the working-class movement. The differences on tactical issues and international cooperation resulted in a split and the formation of an independent organisation— The Socialist League (see Note 136).
[45] Apparently a reference to K. Kautsky’s article ‘Der Parteitag und der Staatssozialismus’ published by the journal Die Neue Zeit, Bd. I, No. 7, 1892-93, S. 210-221, immediately after G. Vollmar’s article ‘Zur Streitfrage über den Staatssozialismus’.
[46] In his letter dated 18 October 1892, A. Bebel told Engels about his suggestion of having a new central Party weekly, Der Sozialdemokrat, instead of the unprofitable Die Berliner Volks-Tribüne. This issue was resolved in 1893 at a party congress in Cologne. The weekly was being published from 3 February 1894 to December 1895 under the name Der Sozialdemokrat. Wochenblatt der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands; its editor was M. Schippel.
[47] Engels paraphrases the epigram C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre (‘It’s magnificent, but it’s not warfare’) ascribed to the French general (subsequently, marshal) Pierre Bosquet. He was said to have uttered this phrase during the Crimean War of 1853-56. The words applied to the reckless bravery of the English ‘Charge of Light Brigade’ at the Battle of Balaklava.
[49] From 6 August to 24 December 1892 the German Social-Democratic newspaper Die Berliner Volks- Tribüne was publishing (in its supplement) a series of articles by the Swiss Socialist Louis Héritier under the general title ‘Die Juraföderation und Michael Bakunin; the author’s name was indicated only in the final article. Proceeding from Bakuninist principles, the author gave a slanted picture of the history of the First International in Switzerland and vindicated the divisive activities of the Bakuninists in particular, of the anarchist Jura Federation which, at its congress in La Chaux-de-Fonds held between 4 and 6 April 1870, had broken away from the International sections in Roman Switzerland. In addition, the articles contained numerous innuendoes about the activity of the General Council, Marx and his associates, specifically, about Johann Philipp Becker. Thus, it was claimed without any ground whatever that the London Conference of the First International (1871) had been held in Marx’s house. The tenth article, published on 12 November 1892, contained particularly numerous distortions. Engels therefore decided to speak out and refute the insinuations without waiting for the end of the series. He sent his statement, together with the present letter, to August Bebel for delivery to the editorial board of Die Berliner Volks-Tribüne. The newspaper published Engels’ statement on 19 November 1892 (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 344-46). On 24 December 1892 L. Héritier offered his reply, which was published together with his final article. As in his letter to Engels of 15 December 1892, Héritier tried to rebut the accusations. See also Engels’ letters: to Héritier of 20 January 1893 and to Kautsky of 25 March 1895 (see this volume, pp. 85-6, 481).
[50] On 14 November 1892 British Socialists held a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ of 13 November 1887, when a socialist meeting culminated in clashes with the police. Several hundred demonstrators received injuries (three, fatal injuries), and some organisers were arrested. Louise Kautsky’s account, which Engels mentions in his letter, was published without any title by Die Arbeiter Zeitung {no. 49) on 2 December 1892.
[53] Engels refers to the proposal of the Executive of the German Social-Democratic Party and of the Party’s parliamentary group in the Reichstag to the Berlin Party Congress (see Note 51) to purchase all the newly established Social-Democratic newspapers and turn them into official organs of the Party. The Congress turned down this proposal.
[55] In his address to the Berlin congress of the German Social-Democratic Party on 17 November 1892, A. Bebel vindicated the proposal to hold 1893 May Day celebrations in Germany without staging work stoppages on May 1. V. Adler, who was attending the Congress as a representative of the Austrian socialists, opposed this proposal in a speech he made the same day.
[57] At the bottom of this letter was a hand-drawn picture of a theatre stage. Engels signed his name just where the proscenium was depicted.
[58] Engels refers to the characters of the Grimm brothers’ fairy-tale Sieben Schwaben.
[59] An allusion to George Bernard Shaw’s letter to A. Bebel of 29 May 1892 which Engels had copied. This letter was published in a supplement to Volume 49 of the present edition, p. 563; in it Shaw pointed to the need of an alliance between the Socialists and the Liberals in the election campaign. The only chance for the Socialists to win the election, he wrote to Bebel, was ‘to force the Liberals to accept our men as their party candidates’. According to Shaw, the Fabians were ‘compelled’ to force their candidates on the Liberals, or otherwise ‘at every election’ they would ‘suffer defeat and disgrace’. In his letter to Kautsky on 4 September 1892, Engels analysed the Fabian electoral tactics and the causes of the defeat of the Fabian candidates on the Liberal list during the 1892 elections, (see present edition, Vol. 49, p. 514).
[62] This refers to the London German Workers’ Educational Society. Founded in 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll, Heinrich Bauer and other activists of the League of the Just. In 1847 and 1849-50 Marx and Engels took part in the work of the Society. With the foundation of the First International it joined the International Working-Men’s Association. The London Educational Society continued in existence under different names until 1918 when it was closed by the British government.
[63] A reference to the soirée arranged on 17 November 1892 by the Social-Democrats of Berlin for delegates of the Party Congress (see Note 51).
[66] Engels wrote this facetious letter in reply to the birthday greetings sent to him on behalf of the Secretariat of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany by Ignaz Auer and Richard Fischer on 27 November 1892. Jakob Bamberger made a postscript to the message and joined in the greetings on Engels’ 72nd birthday.
[68] Ultramontanes—the Italian party of the Roman Catholic Church favouring the doctrine of papal supremacy and the Pope’s right to interfere in the secular affairs of any state.
[69] On 21 November 1892 Paul Stumpf greeted Engels on his 72nd birthday and three days later, on 24 November, sent him as a birthday gift a special issue of the newspaper Mainzer Journal which came from the press on 23 November 1892; it had the following dedication: ‘Unserem Papa zum 72sten Geburtstage’ (‘To our Papa on his 72nd birthday’). The number dealt with the returns of an election to the municipal council of Mainz which brought a significant victory for the Social-Democrats.
[70] Engels refers to events in Mainz during its occupation by the French revolutionary army in October 1792 - July 1793 when the French military authorities set up a provisional administration there. The Mainz democrats formed a Society of Equality and Freedom Friends ( The Mainz Club). The Rhineland-German National Convent elected in February 1793 deposed the Kurfürst (Elector) and proclaimed Mainz and adjacent districts a republic which joined France in March 1793. The decree of the French National Convent of 15 December 1792 abolished feudal dependence privileges of the nobility and clergy; also, the Mainz Republic was to pay an indemnity to France. In July 1793, after a siege of many months, Mainz was overrun by Prussian troops which restored the Kurfürst back in power and the old body politic.
[71] Centre—a political party of German Roman Catholics formed in 1870-71 as a result of unification between the Catholic factions in the Prussian Landtag and the German Reichstag (the seats of their deputies used to be in the centre of the assembly hall). The Centre Party would take an intermediate stand, as a rule, by manoeuvering between the parties that backed the government and the Left-wing opposition groups of the Reichstag. It rallied under the banner of Catholicism the socially heterogenous strata of the clergy, the landed aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, that part of the peasantry predominantly in small and medium-sized states, as well as Roman Catholic working men in Western and South-Western Germany. The Centrists, while being in opposition to the Bismarck government, voted nonetheless for its anti-labour and anti-Socialist enactments. Engels gave a detailed analysis of the Centre in his work The Role of Force in History (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 453-511) and in the article What’s Next? (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 7-11). Since in 1893 the Centre Party had 196 seats in the Reichstag out of 397, it could play a decisive role in the event of differences among other parties.
[72] The Brimstone Gang (Die Schwefelbande)—the name of a student’s association at Jena University in the 1770s; its members were notorious for their brawls. In his work Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung. Stenographischer Bericht, Dokumente und Erläunterungen, Geneva, 1859, K. Vogt, a German petty-bourgeois democrat, called Marx and his supporters “The Brimstone Gang”. Marx responded with the lampoon Herr Vogt which came out in London in December 1860 (see present edition, Vol. 17).
[73] In October 1890 Karl Liebknecht began a course in law at Berlin University. He completed this course in March 1893 and, after passing an examination in October 1893, obtained the rank of a Referender (a low-rank official in Germany, usually a lawyer, on probation at court of law or government office).
[74] ‘In Geldfragen hört die Gemütlichkeit auf (literally, ‘In money matters there is no room for sentiments’—’Where money begins, benevolence ends’). Engels cites the phrase from a statement from one of the leaders of the Rhineland liberal bourgeoisie and Prussian Finance Minister David Hansemann at a session of the first United Landtag of Prussia on 8 June 1847.
[79] In a letter addressed to Engels on 2 December 1892 Charles Bonnier agreed that in Britain May Day celebrations were to be held on the first Sunday of May, as it had been in 1890 and 1891 (see also Engels’ article May 4 in London; present edition. Vol. 27, pp. 61-67).
[82] In his letter of 22 November 1892 A. Bebel wrote the following about what Engels had thought of the Social-Democratic party press: ‘If you mean the nationalisation (Verstaatlichung) of our press, you must be utterly misinformed. All the newspapers without exception are independent, including those that are getting money from us. We never sought to exert pressure even in cases when it was absolutely necessary in the Party’s interests.’
[83] A. Bebel’s article ‘Der Parteitag der deutschen Sozialdemokratie’ published by the journal Die Neue Zeit, Bd. 1, No. 10, Stuttgart, 1892-93. It dealt with the work of the Berlin Congress (see Note 51) and stressed, in particular, the significance of the decision to hold 1893 May Day celebrations in Germany on the evening of May 1.
[84] The reference is to the resolution of the Berlin Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party (see Note 51) condemning state socialism. Proposed by W. Liebknect and G. Vollmar, the resolution was adopted by the Congress on 18 November 1892.
[85] Because of the drop in circulation of the journal Die Neue Zeit, J.H.W. Dietz suggested certain changes in its content and periodicity. Thus, the arts and current politics sections were to be expanded at the expense of the theoretical part.
[88] An extract from P. Lafargue’s letter to Engels was published by the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 286) on 6 December 1892 without the author’s name being indicated. Appended to the text was an editor’s note: ‘Man schreibt uns aus Paris über den Panama-Skandal’.
[91] A reference to a journal on the issues of social and economic history—Die Zeitschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte published by S. Bauer, C. Grünberg, L.M. Hartmann and E. Szanto. The journal appeared from 1893 to 1900 in Leipzig, Freiburg and Weimar.
[92] Engels sent Kautsky his article A Newly-Discovered Case of Group Marriage’ (see present edition, Vol. 27) for publication in the journal Die Neue Zeit. Its subject-matter drew on a publication in the Russian-language newspaper Pycckue Begomocmu (No. 284, 14 October 1892) dealing with findings of the Russian ethnographer L. Sternberg who had been studying the life and society of the Sakhalin Gilyaki, a small ethnic group otherwise known as the Nivkhi (Nivkhs). In his article Engels cited the text of the original almost verbatim, with only a few deviations.
[93] On 24 November 1892 P. Lafargue wrote to Engels: ‘From the international standpoint Bebel behaves himself but very poorly by permitting Liebknecht, to put himself right. Their alliance is impossible for the German party’.
[94] An allusion to the ‘Free Theatres’ trend in the fin-de-siècle West European art. The ‘Free Theatres’ expressed the protest of progressive actors and playwrights against the conservatism of the state-run stage, its isolation from life and the contemporary art, against censorship, etc. Such theatres appeared in major European cities in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
[97] In his letter of 12 December 1892 P. Lavrov asked for permission to publish H. Lopatin’s letter of 20 September 1883 to M. Oshanina, member of the Executive of the illegal Russian Revolutionary organisation (‘People’s Freedom’). In it Lopatin gave the gist of his talk with Engels in London on 19 September 1883 concerning the prospects of a revolution in Russia. An excerpt from this letter was published in Geneva in March 1893 in the book Foundations of Theoretical Socialism as Applied to Russia; see also present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 591-93.
[99] On 13 December 1892 A. Bebel made a long speech in the Reichstag criticising the draft military law tabled by the government (see Note 76). The Heinze Law—a package of laws against prostitution, drafted in the wake of the 1891-92 trial of a Heinze, a pimp, accused of murder and burglary. The Heinze Law, tabled in the Reichstag in 1891 and envisaging heavier penalties for pandering, pimping and propagation of pornographic literature, was adopted after long debates only in 1900. Speaking during the Heinze Law debates in the Reichstag on 15 December 1892, A. Bebel attacked the bigotry and hypocrisy of the then acting German laws on prostitution. The Bebel speech was published in a supplement to Vorwärts (No. 295) on 16 December 1892.
[102] Engels refers to The Theories of Surplus Value which were a component part of the 1861-63 manuscript of the second preliminary variant of Das Kapital (see present edition, Vols. 30-34). In 1889-90 Engels gave a part of The Theories of Surplus Value to Kautsky for deci-phering. He thus hoped to get assistance in preparing the MS for the press and in coaching expert editors and publishers of the Marxian manuscripts. Engels did not live to see the publication of The Theories of Surplus Value as Volume IV of Das Kapital. It was K. Kautsky who published them in 1905-10. The Theories of Surplus Value were also published in The Complete Works of Marx and Engels in the languages of the original (MEGA, Abteilung II , Bd. 3, Teile 2-4, Berlin).
[104] Engels refers to a scandal that broke out in 1892 over the bankruptcy of the building society ‘Liberator’ and its affiliated banks and building societies. It was stated that upwards of seven million sterling had been invested in these undertakings, chiefly by the working and poorer trades classes.
[105] L. Baare, a German industrialist and director of the Bochum Steel Company, was taken to court for tax evasion and other machinations. The issue of rifles (nearly half a million) supplied to the German army by the Jewish firm Löwe & Co. was on the Reichstag agenda in 1892. That same year Hermann Ahlwardt’s anti-Semitic pamphlet Neue Enthüllungen. Judenflingen came off the press in Dresden. It accused Isidor Löwe, an arms manufacturer, of supplying faulty rifles to the German army. The owners of the firm sued the author for libel. In December 1892 Ahlwardt was found guilty on libel charges and sentenced to five months in prison.
[106] Engels means flagrant abuses in the activity of the Banca Romana which came to light during debates held in the Italian Parliament in December 1892-January 1893. Implicated in these shady dealings were statesmen, MPs, lawyers, journalists and private individuals. The scandalous affair came to be known as Panamino, a hint at the Panama Company fraud. The debates were sparked off by a statement of one of the deputies, Napoleone Colajanni. Engels responded by the article ‘The Italian Panama’ (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 356-60) published in the newspaper Vorwärts in February 1893. For more detail about the Panama sobriquet, see Note 60.
[15-] The Anti-Socialist Law (The Exceptional Law Against the Socialists) was introduced by the Bismarck government on a majority vote cast in the Reichstag, on 21 October 1878 to combat the socialist and workers’ movement. It banned all party and mass workers’ organisations, and the socialist and workers’ press, and sanctioned confiscation of socialist literature and persecution of Social-Democrats. Nevertheless, the Social-Democratic Party, in accordance with Constitution preserved its group in the Reichstag. Assisted by Marx and Engels, the Party was able to overcome both the reformist and anarchist tendencies within its ranks and expand its base among the popular masses by a skilful combination of legal and illegal methods of work. Under pressure from the mass workers’ movement, the Anti-Socialist Law was abrogated on 1 October 1890. For Engels’ assessment of the Law, see his article ‘Bismarck and the German Working Men’s Party’ (Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
[3] The rough copy of this letter written in Engels’ own hand is still available. Louise Kautsky copied the rough notes of the letter. Engels wrote in the word ‘hochachtungsvoll’ (with kind respects) and added his signature. The texts of the original letter and of the rough notes are identical.
[5] Addressing the 10th Congress of the French Workers’ Party on 25 September 1892 in Marseille (see Note 11) as a representative of German Social-Democracy, Wilhelm Liebknecht said the following, partly on the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and partly on the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany: ‘... the matter would be settled without any trouble once the social and democratic Republic was established on both sides of the Rhine.’ This statement triggered rabid attacks in the French bourgeois press against the Socialists. Thus, in its editorial note of September 28 titled ‘Herr Liebknecht’, the newspaper La France urged his immediate expulsion from France. Meanwhile, Lucien Millevoye, deputy for the Nord in the Chamber of Deputies, asked the Minister of the Interior: ‘Following the example of Mr. Liebknecht, does the government of the Republic intend to tolerate that foreigners should come to France in order to arouse hatred and con-tempt for the French nation?’
[6] Boulangism—a movement that emerged in France in the mid-1880s; named so after its leader, General Georges Boulanger, the War Minister in 1886-87. This movement expressed the views of reactionary chauvinism. Appealing to the injured national pride of the French in connection with the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Boulangists succeeded for some time in enlisting significant popular support in their cause and in influencing the army rank and file. Capitalising on popular discontent with the domestic policies of the bourgeois Republicans, the Boulangists were preparing a coup d’etat to restore the monarchy in France. Yet the Boulangist movement suffered a fiasco due to steps taken by the Republican government with the backing of progressive forces, and its leaders fled from France.
[9] All the required materials mentioned in the letter were handed over to Paul Lafargue through Engels. But since Lafargue’s planned statement in the Chamber of Deputies never took place, Lafargue used them subsequently in his pamphlet La Démocratie Socialiste Allemande devant l’histoire which came from the press in Lille in 1893. It bore the following imprint (after the Preface and the Afterword): Conseil national du Parti ouvrier. J. Guesde, P. Lafargue.
[10] The miners’ strike at Carmaux (Southern France) which continued from mid-August to early November 1892. The strike action was caused by the dismissal of one of the miners, Calvignac, the head of the local union, who had been elected to the post of town mayor. The workers demanded that the managers of the mine revoke their decision and, this demand having been refused, went on strike. This stoppage became political in character. The governments arbitration actually sanctioned the decision of the mine management. The French Workers’ Party came out in support of the strike action; a country-wide fund-raising campaign was launched. Eventually the strikers succeeded in getting Calvignac and other participants in the action reinstated.
[13] Late in 1884 Bismarck, in a bid to intensify Germany’s colonial policies, urged the Reichstag to approve annual subsidies for steamship companies with the aim of organising regular voyages to East Asia, Australia and Africa. This demand caused a split within the Social-Democratic faction in the Reichstag. The Left wing with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht at the head spoke out against support for the government’s demand. The Right-wing majority in the faction (J.H.W Dietz, P. Frohme, G. Grillenberger) intended to vote for the subsidies on the pretext of furthering international ties. The Right-wing stand was condemned by the party’s rank and file and its central organ, the newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat. As a result, the majority of the faction was compelled to modify their attitude to the government motion during Reichstag debates in March 1885 by making its ‘yes’ votes conditional on passage by the Reichstag of some of the proposals of the faction (in particular, the demand that ships for these lines be built only at German yards). Only after these demands had been turned down by the Reichstag did all the members of the Social-Democratic faction vote against.
[16] The Independent Socialists Union was founded in Berlin on 8 November 1891 by representatives of a semi-anarchist opposition group better known as The Young {Die Jungen) that was formed within the Social-Democratic Party of Germany in 1890 (see Note 129). Separate groups of ‘Independent Socialists’ sprung up also in other towns — in Magdeburg, Wiesbaden, Fürth, and Freiburg (Baden-Würtemberg). The newspaper Der Sozialist, published from 1891 to 1899, was the Union’s mouthpiece. The ‘Independents’ opposed any participation of Socialists in the parliament (Reichstag) and other institutions of the bourgeois state; they scoffed at the political struggle of the working class and overrated the significance of direct action so-called, or ‘revolutionary mass action’. By the latter they meant work stoppages, boycotts and sabotage, as well as work at the grass-roots level in trade union locals. There was a good deal of infighting between the ‘Independent Socialists’ and the Anarchists — mainly for the newspaper Der Sozialist. The controversy between the two factions concerned above all the model of a society of the future and ways of achieving it. Eventually the anarchists got the upper hand in the summer of 1893, a victory that caused the Union’s disintegration and demise in the spring of 1894.
[20] Blanquists (les blanquistes)—supporters of Louis A. Blanqui who, after leaving the Workers’ Party {Le Parti français ouvrier, see Note 11), set up an organisation of their own, the Central Revolutionary Committee (Comité Révolutionnaire Central) in 1880. After Blanqui’s death in 1881, E. Vaillant, E. Eudes and E. Granger came into the Committee’s leadership. The Blanquists upheld the slogan of a general strike and advocated the independence of labour unions from the party. They opted for political struggle at the expense of economic struggle. During Boulangism (see Note 6) the Blanquists broke into two factions; one with Edouard Vaillant at the head came out against General Boulanger and thus made common cause with the Workers’ Party, while the other (E. Granger, E. Roche), having cooperated with the Boulangists, walked out of the Central Revolutionary Committee and fell apart soon after.
[21] Allemanists {les allemanistes)—supporters of the French socialist Jean Allemane. After a split in the Possibilist Party (see Note 30), the Allemanists formed a Revolutionary-Socialist Workers’ Party {Le Parti ouvrier socialiste-révolutionnaire) in October 1890; this party existed up to 1905. Considering economic struggle above the political one and opposing excessive parliamentarism, the Allemanists concentrated their efforts on propaganda work in labour unions {les syndicats) and assigned the political party of the proletariat but a secondary role. A significant part of their activity was devoted to campaigns to win seats at municipal councils.
[24] Engels means British Trades-Union Congress which was in session in Glasgow on 5-10 September 1892. The Congress considered worker representation in Parliament, cooperation, factory inspection, among other issues, and came out for an eight-hour working day. The British trades-unions refused to accept the invitation to the International Socialist Congress which was to be convened in Zurich in the summer of 1893 but decided to hold a parallel international congress in London on the struggle for an eight-hour working day. Qualifying this decision as an attempt to split the international working-class movement, Engels sent letters to German and French socialists and asked them to speak out against the plan of the British trades-unions. Engels also addressed the socialist parties of Spain and Austria.
[30] Possibilists, or Broussists — a reformist trend in the French Socialist movement which, in the 1880s through the early 20th century, was headed by P. Brousse and B. Malon who caused a split in the French Workers’ Party (1882) and formed an independent party, The Workers’ Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (Le Parti ouvrier socialiste-révolutionnaire). It abided by the theory of municipal socialism as the mainstream idea. The Possibilists proclaimed a ‘policy of possibilities’ (la politique des possibilitées) as their principle. At the turn of the 20th century they joined the French Socialist Party.
[33] In his preface to Volume II I of Das Kapital (written in October 1894), Engels noted that Part V presented ‘the chief obstacle in preparing it for the press’ (Division of profit into interest and entrepreneural income. Capital yielding interest). Engels completed the bulk of this work in the spring of 1893 (see present edition, Vol. 37. pp. 8-9).
[34] Engels alludes to the issue of militarism discussed at the Second International Socialist Working Men’s Congress in Brussels in 1891 (see Note 228).
[36] Engels refers to L. Millevoye’s statement in the Chamber of Deputies on 29 October 1892 with a question concerning W. Liebknechts speech of 25 September 1892 in Marseille (see Note 5). P. Lafargue did not attend that session. Millevoye thus broke his promise to Lafargue not to speak up before his (Lafargue’s) return from Carmaux.
[43] Fabians—members of the Fabian Society founded in 1884 by democratic-minded intellectuals. It was named after the Roman general of 3d century B.C., Quintus Fabias Maximus, surnamed Cunctator (‘the delayer’) because of his cautious tactics in the war against Hannibal. The Fabian Society included such prominent members as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Bernard Shaw, H. Bland, among others. Its local organisations drew support from industrial workers who were attracted by a sharp critique of the capitalist order contained in Fabian publications. However, except in 1892, when it attracted a number of otherwise ‘homeless’ working-class socialists, the number of actual ‘practising’ workers (i.e., non-official trade-union members) never exceeded 10 per cent of the identifiable membership, and perhaps even less if the total numbers were counted. Rejecting the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of bourgeois society, the Fabians thought it was possible to shift from capitalism to socialism by implementing reforms within the framework of so-called municipal socialism. In 1900 the Fabian Society joined the Labour Party.
[48] Le Socialiste. Organe Central du Parti Ouvrier—it was planned to make this French Workers’ weekly a daily publication. Engels was watching closely the course of negotiations of which he had learned from Laura and Paul Lafargue. Yet this plan did not come off.
[51] The Berlin Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany took place on 14-21 November 1892. It heard the reports of the Party’s Executive and of its Reichstag group, and discussed issues related to May Day celebrations in 1893, as well as the economic crisis and its consequences, the boycott tactics, the attitude to anti-Semitism, etc. After lengthy debates the Congress adopted a resolution that contained a negative attitude to state socialism (see Note 84). The delegates also rejected the invitation to an International Congress that was to be convened in Glasgow by decision of the British Trades-Union congress (see Note 24) and came out for participation in the International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress in Zurich in 1893.
[52] The Berlin Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party (see Note 51) also discussed the issue of the newspaper Vorwärts, the Party’s central organ, whose editor was Wilhelm Liebknecht. He became the target of sharp criticism by Party members who objected to the allegedly high salary he was receiving for editing the Vorwärts and for his nonchalance, as it was claimed, in discharging that responsibility.
[54] The International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress held in Brussels in 1891 (see Note 228) adopted a resolution which recommended, wherever it was possible, to combine May Day celebrations with work stoppages. All the delegates, including those from Germany, voted for this resolution, even though during the discussion on this issue the British and the German delegations had insisted on this action being held on the first Sunday of May. The Berlin Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party (see Note 51) passed a decision to celebrate May Day 1893 on the evening of May 1 and refrain from general work stoppages owing to the bad economic situation in the country.
[56] Engels means the Third International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress due at Zurich in 1893 (see Note 229).
[60] The Panama affair — a shady transaction connected with the bribery of French statesmen, government officials and the press by the Panama Canal joint-stock company set up in France in 1880 at the at the initiative of Ferdinand de Lesseps for building a canal across of the isthmus of Panama. In December 1888 the company declared its insolvency which caused the ruin of small-time shareholders and numerous bankruptcies. This scandal compelled the French authorities to start an investigation. On 19 November 1892 the Monarchists tabled three questions on the Panama crash in the Chamber of Deputies which on 21 November elected a Commission of Inquiry of 33 with M. Henri Brisson, a Radical, as chairman. The Commission obtained irrefutable evidence implicating a number of high-ranking officials, e.g., the former French premier CL. de Freycinet and others who had been bribed by the Lesseps company which wanted to conceal its true financial situation and embezzlements. French justice hushed up the affair by going no further than condemning F. Lesseps and a number of his cat’s-paws (see Note 157). ‘Panama’ became a byword for major dealings in which government officials were implicated.
[61] Engels means the pronouncements of Emile de Girardin, a French bourgeois journalist and editor of the newspaper La Presse, in 1846-47 with sensational charges levelled at some figures of the July monarchy and the Guizot ministry whom he accused of corruption (the selling of peerage, bribery of the press, etc.); these statements fomented a crisis which culminated in the Revolution of 1848. For details, see Engels’ article The Decline and Approaching Fall of Guizot.—Position of the French Bourgeoisie (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 213-19).
[75] The Ems dispatch — a report on the results of negotiations held between the Prussian King William I and the French Ambassador M. Benedetti in the town of Ems concerning the candidacy of Prince Leopold Hohenzollern to the Spanish throne; this dispatch was sent to Bismarck on 13 July 1870. William I declined the demand of the French side that Prussia desist from Hohenzollern’s claim to the Spanish throne. Being in receipt of this epistle, Bismarck abridged the text in such a way that it acquired a stridently insulting connotation for France and, then and there, passed it on for publication in all German news agencies. The promulgation of the Ems dispatch in that form was a public insult to France and served as an immediate pretext for the Franco-Prussian War. The fraud came to light only many years after the event. In the summer of 1891 W. Liebknecht published the pamphlet Die Emser Depesche oder wie Kriege gemacht werden in Nuremberg, in which he collected sundry documents on this episode and exposed Bismarck’s bellicose policies. In October 1892 Bismarck actually admitted the deception. ‘It is so easy... completely to alter the meaning of a speech, without forgery, but by simple omission’, he said in an interview. ‘I once tried this myself, as editor of the Ems telegram... The King sent it to me with the order to publish it either in whole or in part, and after I had edited it to my taste, by cancelling and condensation, Moltke, who was with me, exclaimed, “A few minutes ago it was a charade; now it is a fanfare.”‘
[76] An allusion to the draft law tabled in the Reichstag on 23 November 1892 by the War Minister Werd and the General Staff Chief Waldersee providing for an increase in the numerical strength of the German armed forces within the next seven years. The mean annual strength of this army was fixed at 492,068; it was proposed to introduce a two-year term of service in the Infantry, which could increase the war machine’s throughput by 30 per cent. The planned increase in the strength of the land forces exceeded all the previous increments, as of 1874, combined. It was planned to compensate the significant growth in the war expenditures by raising taxes on consumer goods. This elicited widespread discontent among the popular masses and with some bourgeois political parties as well. On 6 May 1893 the Reichstag majority rejected the draft bill of the government. The same day the Kaiser dissolved the Reichstag two years ahead of time. After a new election, in June 1893, a similar draft law was endorsed by the Reichstag.
[77] Engels probably means the intention of W. Gladstone’s Liberal Government in Britain to grant Home Rule for Ireland (see Note 171). The decision to table a draft bill to this effect was largely due to conditions attending the formation of the Gladstone cabinet after parliamentary elections in the summer of 1892 when the Liberals could form the government only with the the backing of the Irish deputies. The Home Rule Bill was introduced in February 1893 and, after heated debates and agitation throughout the spring and summer, was adopted by the Commons but turned down by the House of Lords, as had been the case in 1886.
[81] The attitude to the Austrian Social-Democrats which Engels expressed in this letter was further elaborated in his message of greetings to Austrian working men on May Day 1893 (see present edition, Vol. 27).
[86] Radicals—in the 1880s-1890s, a parliamentary group in France that used to belong to the party of moderate Republicans (the ‘Opportunists’). The Radicals relied chiefly on the petty bourgeoisie and, to some extent, on the middle bourgeoisie; they supported certain bourgeois-democratic demands like a unicameral parliament, separation of the Church from the state, a progressive income tax, limitation of the working day and other social issues. The Radicals were led by G. Clemenceau. Officially the group became known as the Republican Radical and Radical-Socialist Party (Parti républicain radical et radical-socialiste), formed in 1901.
[87] Opportunists—a party of moderate bourgeois Republicans which emerged after the 1881 split in the Republican Party and the formation of the left-wing Radical Party with Georges Clemenceau as its head (see Note 86). This name was introduced in 1877 by the journalist Henri Rochefort who coined it from the words of L. Gambetta, the leader of the ‘Moderates’, that reforms should be implemented ‘at an opportune time’ (‘en temps opportun).
[98] Engels described these events in his letters to P. Lafargue of 31 January and 6 February 1891, and to F. Sorge of 11 February 1891 and 4 March 1891; see present edition, Vol. 49, pp. 115, 121, 125, 137.
[100] In 1888 the Panama Canal Company (see Note 60), assisted by the bribed Chamber deputies and acting in circumvention of the French laws forbidding lotteries, gained permission to issue lottery-loan bonds.