1894
My dear Lafargue,
First, seasonal greetings to Laura and you from Louise and myself. And now for your disarmament plan. I saw the Vaillant motion in Le Parti Socialiste, I did not have it from Laura. [317] Neither this paper nor your letter tells me whether it has already been tabled or if that is still to come.
The Germans have been demanding for years that the standing army should be turned into a militia, this is repeated in all their Reichstag speeches on militarism, the war budget, etc., repeated ad nauseam. I fail to see that the formal tabling of a Bill could add anything to it. Nevertheless, they will look into it.
As for the proposal to be made concerning a disarmament congress, that would be — like Vaillant’s motion also—a matter to be settled by a conference of delegates from the three parliaments: French, German and Italian. One delegate from each nation would be enough. Any international action must have as a necessary premise a previous agreement both as to the basis and as to the form. It strikes me as inadmissible that one nationality should take the initiative publicly and then invite the others to fall in. The French, themselves pretty punctilious at times on matters of etiquette, should for their part observe democratic considerations. I shall not call the Germans’ attention to this point, but I should not be surprised if this rather naïve invitation, to follow in the footsteps of the 1894
French party, which has only just got into Parliament and is made up of such diverse and in some respects such little known elements, is not immediately accepted.
Now for the substance. The Vaillant motion will be opposed by the military on the ground that militias on the Swiss model, possibly good enough for a mountainous country, lack the stability needed for a large army that has to operate on every kind of terrain. And there they will be right. To build a good militia army the foundation must be laid by the athletic and military training of the young; so it’s a thing which would take from five to eight years; you would not have this militia until about the end of the century. Therefore if there is to be a Bill against which the bourgeois and the military cannot raise valid objections, this fact must be taken into account.
That is what I tried to do in the articles which appeared last year in Vorwärts and which I sent you.a I am sending you a further copy today. Here I am proposing an international agreement for the reduction — simultaneous and agreed jointly in advance — of the period of military service. To meet the usual prejudices as far as possible, I am proposing for a start a period of two years’ enlistment, to be reduced as soon as possible to 18 months (two summers and the winter between), and then to one year and so on, until a class of young men have reached military age who shall have been through that athletic and military instruction which shall have fitted them to bear arms without further training. And then there would be a militia that would require no more than large-scale manoeuvres every 2 or 3 years to find its feet and to learn how to operate in large formations.
Now that the two-year period is already generally recognised one could demand 18 months at once, and reduction to 1 year in 2 or 3 years; during that time, the athletic and military training of young men between 15 and 18 could be set going, not forgetting that of boys between 10 and 15.
Vaillant’s Bill has great need for revision by someone who knows what’s what in military affairs, it contains things written in haste on which we could not stand up to serious argument. According to art. 9 {all the children of the country), the girls, too, are to be put through “all the evolu-
a F. Engels, “Can Europe Disarm?”
1894
tions of the infantry, cavalry and artillery”, etc., etc.
I am sending a copy of my articles to Vaillant, too. Now then, if you could reach agreement with the Germans and the Italians for tabling a motion aimed at calling for a congress on disarmament and the transition — by simultaneous stages laid down in advance— to a militia system, that would be a splendid thing and have a big effect. But for mercy’s sake don’t spoil it by openly taking the initiative without preliminary consultation with the others. The conditions of internal policy as well as those governing each parliament are so different from each other that a certain manner of proceeding may be excellent for one country and utterly impossible or even disastrous in another.
The anarchist bomb [309] will become a thing of the past as have the glorious 2,500 francs of the Germans. [278] This will have an effect vis-à-vis the police; look at the Madrid verdict in the Munoz case where the police was found guilty, too; [318] and in France it risks being openly implicated in the affair of bombs; if it slips off this time, it might be glad. This pitcher has been going to the well long enough, and it is about to be broken at last.
I hope that Laura has received her manuscript. [310] Kiss Laura on my behalf. Greetings from Louise.
Ever yours,
F. Engels
Correspondance, t. II I, Paris, 1959 Translated from the French
141. Engels to Pyotr Lavrov 4 January
My dear Lavrov, Thank you for your card — please accept my best wishes for the New 1894
Year.
It would seem that, despite the harmony between Carnot and the tsar,a it will be the French, and not the outlawed Russians who will suffer perse-cutions and tribulations, the inevitable effect of anarcho-police bombs. [319] So much the better. After all, there are signs that even the Parisian philis-tine would seem to be feeling just a little shame for his hysterical actions of last October.
Could you let me have the address of Mr. Rapoport, who has just returned to Switzerland?
Best regards from
F. Engels
There is finally some hope that you will receive the 3rd volume of Capital before the end of the year. The Russian translation will be done as for the 2nd volume. I will send the proofs to Danielson.
142. Engels to Giuseppe Canepa 9 January
Please excuse me for writing to you in French. Over the last twenty years I have lost whatever little ability I had in the use of Italian.
I have tried to find a short epigraph of the kind you wish [320] from the
a Alexander II I 1894
works of Marx, whom alone of the modern socialists, it would seem, is able to stand on a par with the great Florentine.a However, I have found nothing except the following passage taken from the Communist Manifesto (Italian edition of Critica Sociale, p. 35): “Al posto della vecehia società borghese divisa in class; cozzanti fra loro, subenta un’associazione, nella quale il libero sviluppo di ciascumo è la condizione per il libero sviluppo di tutti”.b
It is almost impossible to sum up the spirit of the new age of the future in just a few words without lapsing into either utopianism or empty words.
Please accept my apologies if the quotation I offer is not wholly satisfactory. However, as you must be ready for the 21 (a date that augurs well, the execution of citizen Louis Capet), there is no time to lose.
E con distinti saluti
Suoc
a Dante - b “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, this edition, Vol. 6, p. 506). - c Respectfully yours 1894
143. Engels to Karl Kautsky 9 January
Work is continuing on the second third which I hope will soon be ready. Your good wishes for Xmas as well as for the New Year were gratefully reciprocated in thought if not in words.
I shall now probably be able to get hold of the Berne Convention.b [303] I am anxious to see Cunow’s book.c The man has done a great deal of swotting in his field and keeps his eyes open.
Dietz will be interested to hear that Laura Lafargue is translating my Feuerbach into French for the Ère nouvelle [310] and subsequent publication as an off-print. I have already looked over the first part. She translates deftly and conscientiously.
Rave, who is less deserving of such praise, has again written to me; he has had a go at your Thomas Morus,d mais c’est bien indigeste!e For the man does not, in fact, possess an adequate knowledge of German, although he is an Alsatian and by rights should probably be called Rawe.
I’m glad that Victor should have promptly extracted the best bits from your latest article and made them available to the Viennese. [321] They were quite admirably suited to the situation there. According to Victor’s last letter, all danger of anything silly being done is now past. In fact both the Czech and the trades union congresses have shelved the question of a GENERAL STRIKE [322] until the Party Conference [323] and Victor will
a On the Contents of the Third Volume of Capital’. - b See this volume, p. 240 - c H. Cunow, Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger, Stuttgart, 1894 - d K. Kautsky, Thomas More und seine Utopie, Stuttgart, 1888 - e but it’s pretty heavy!
1894
doubtless make sure that it is shelved yet again.
That’s all for today — masses of letters still to attend to. Regards from one household to the other.
Yours,
F.E.
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Published in English for the first time Prag, 1935
144. Engels to Pyotr Lavrov 10 January
My dear Lavrov, Thank you for your card of the 6th. The enclosed letter [25] contains a personal communication which I believe to be important, and therefore would not like to go astray. Would you be so kind as to send it to Mr. Rapoport as soon as you know his address. There is no particular urgency, a week will make no difference.
The first third of the manuscript of the 3rd volumea is at the printer’s (20 chapters). I am busy with the final editing of the rest. If all goes well, we will appear in September,
If, as I hope, your health is no worse than mine, we shall neither of us have anything to complain of.
Your devoted friend, F.
Engels
a K. Marx, Capital 1894
145. Engels to George William Lamplugh 10 January
My dear Lamplugh,
Your parcel was an agreeable surprise indeed. Many thanks! I am almost ashamed to confess that in my ignorance I had fancied the Anatomy of Melancholy to be one of the serious psychological disquisitions of the 18th century, which I hold in horror. Now I find that it, too, is a product of the grandest epoch of English literature, the beginning of the 17th century. I turn to it with pleasure, and have already seen enough to assure me that it will prove a constant source of enjoyment.
This reminds me that I have forgotten to let you have the only two works of mine that have been published in Englisha—I have made free to send them, to you by post and hope you will do me the favour of accepting them.
Dakyns told me on Sunday you were afraid of your little boy getting the influenza. Although there is more about of this beastly complaint than is desirable, I hope the danger has blown over.
Reciprocating your kind wishes for the New Year and with kind regards to Mrs Lamplugh.
I remain yours faithfully F.
Engels
1926 Published in English for the first time
a F. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 1894
146. Engels to Henri Rave 10 January
A thousand thanks for your good wishes for the New Year, which, I hope, will bring you good fortune also!
The translation of my book, [195] as it is at present, seems to me to be very good. As for the rest, since I edited the proofs, I also bear my share of the responsibility.
The style of Thomas Morusa will really seem rather heavy to the French public, but there are some good points, and the historical estimates have a more than transitory value.
At the moment I have no book I can offer you for translation, but if I find something, I shall let you know.
Yours respectfully.
147
147 Engels to Victor Adler 11 January
Dear Victor,
First, my thanks to you all, and especially to yourself, your wife and
See this volume, p. 257 1894
family, for your good wishes which I heartily reciprocate, and thanks also for the League tie-pin which I shall sport as soon as I have a suitable necktie to wear it with — I intend to buy one specially for the purpose.
That there is a great deal to be done over there I can readily believe and none of us can imagine how you are able to manage it all, and under the most difficult circumstances at that. We admire and envy you your tenacity. What particularly pleased me, however, was your assurance that an end has been put to the foolishness you had been fearing over there. I have since received reports on the two Congresses [323] and have been able to discover at least some of the particulars therefrom. Things couldn’t in fact have gone off better in regard to this crucial matter.
So far as the healthy development of the movement is concerned, it was a real blessing that the perspicacious Höger should have declared suffrage to be a bourgeois racket and not something to go on strike for, [327] and that the miners should, after their own fashion, have declared themselves opposed to any strike that did not also support the eight-hour day. And at Budweis the Czechs have also helped us by making admission conditional on recognition of the programme and tactics (à la Zurich [229]) and by shelving the general strike, which seemed more pervasive there than anywhere else, until the Party Conference, [323] when it will probably be shelved again.
K. Kautsky’s article which you reprinted [321] will be of great help to your people. But it’s indicative of the extent to which its author has lost touch with the living party movement. A few months ago he showed an inconceivable want of tact in proposing to sling a purely academic discussion of the general strike in abstracto, and of its pros and cons generally, into the midst of a movement engaged in a life and death struggle against slogans advocating such a strike. [290] And now comes this article which, at any rate in the passages you cite, hits the nail on the head quite admirably.
Anyhow, come next month and the Electoral Reform Bill, and you people will (be able to) start agitating again with a will. It was quite a good thing that the first high fever should have had a chance to run its course, for now the chaps will take a rather calmer view of things. Whichever way it goes, the government and the Diet are bound to place new weapons in your hands and next year there will be several score if
a See this volume, p. 257 1894
not a whole crowd of you in parliament. Proletarians in that anachronistic assembly with its class hierarchies! Those chaps will show the French that the proletariat is not le quatrième état as, by false analogy, they are so fond of describing it, but an utterly modern, youthful class incompatible with all that old nonsense of estates which it must disrupt before getting to the stage at which it can embark on its own particular task, the disruption of the bourgeoisie. I am already looking forward to the day when the first of our chaps sets foot in the Diet.
All the same, I still take the view that the coalition government will collapse the moment it tries to act in real earnest. I should say that in Austria the time has not yet come for the one reactionary mass [214]—not, at any rate, for its formation on a lasting basis. And even if the leaders in the Cabinet were to unite, the small fry in parliament would not succeed in doing so; and if, behind all this, you have a Franz Joseph yearning to get his Taaffe back, it seems to me that the days of Windischgrätz are numbered. And in practiceTaaffe now stands for universal suffrage.
I am curious to see how the sixty so-called Socialists in the French Assembly will make out.b They are a mixed bunch, even some of the socialistes de la veilléc being of a very indeterminate nature and also, despite their desire for fusion, encumbered with all manner of old and ugly memories; on top of that, however, all of these put together are in a minority as compared with the Millerand-Jaurès majority consisting of socialistes du lendemaind Indeed, the French preserve an obstinate silence in the face of any inquiry as to the nature of their group. On Sunday Bonnier will be passing through London on his way back from Paris; I shall question him and, no doubt, succeed in finding something out.
Volume II Ie is at last being printed. The first twenty chapters (664 pp. out of approx. 1870 ms. pp.) have already gone to press, I am working on the next third which only requires a final editing, and then it will soon be the turn of the last third which will probably call for rather more work. We shall be appearing in September, I think.
But now I must return to my beloved Chapter 23. Unfortunately a frightful lot of time was lost over the festive season.
Warm regards to your wife and children, Popp. Ulbing, Pernerstorfer,
a the fourth estate - b See this volume, p. 249 - c Socialists of yesterday - d Socialists of tomorrow - e of Capital 1894
Reumann, Schrammel, Adelheid, little Ryba and tutti quanti,a but in particular to you yourself from
Yours,
F. Engels
148. Engels to George William Lamplugh 12 January
My dear Lamplugh,
I had a dim recollection of having given you the Socialismb before, but was not sure. My memory for this sort of thing is getting awfully senile. Please dispose of the odd copy to your friend, as you propose, and I only hope he will find it digestible.
Compliments to Mrs Lamplugh.
Yours faithfully
F. Engels
The weather may now by and by permit of your visit to the Zoo, so when it comes off please drop us a postcard and say about what time after having seen the wild beasts you will be likely to look in here with your family.
a all the rest - b F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 1894
in English for the first time
149. Engels to Albert Delon 21 January
Should first read the second volume and then refer back. To go by his letter to Diamandi, his German still isn’t perfect but he’s still working at it, in particular the terminology of political economy.
150. Engels to W. Borgius 25 January
Dear Sir,
Herewith the answers to your questions.
1. By economic relations, considered by us to be the determinant upon which the history of society is based, we understand the manner in which men of a certain society produce the necessities of life, and exchange a Now Wroclaw 1894
those products among themselves (in so far as division of labour exists). Thus they comprise the entire technology of production and transport. As we see it, that technology also determines the manner of exchange, likewise the distribution of products and hence, following the dissolution of gentile society, also the division into classes, hence the relations of rulers and subjects, and hence the state, politics, the law, etc. Economic relations further comprise the geographical basis on which these are enacted, and, indeed, the inherited remnants of earlier stages of economic development, remnants which often owe their survival only to tradition or vis inertiaea they also, of course, comprise the external environment by which this form of society is encompassed.
If, as you say, technology is indeed largely dependent on the state of science, then how much more is not the latter dependent on the state and the requirements of technology? If society has a technological requirement, the latter will do more to promote science than ten universities. Hydrostatics (Torricelli, etc.) owes its existence solely to the need to regulate mountain streams in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Only since the discovery of its technological uses have we known anything rational about electricity. Unfortunately historiographers in Germany have got into the habit of writing about the sciences as though they had appeared out of the blue.
2. We see economic conditions as that which, in the final analysis, determines historical development. But the human race is itself an economic factor. Here, however, there are two points which should not be overlooked:
a) Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But each of these also reacts upon the others and upon the economic basis. This is not to say that the economic situation is the cause and that it alone is active while everything else is mere passive effect, but rather that there is reciprocal action based, in the final analysis, on economic necessity which invariably prevails. The state, for instance, exerts its influence through protective tariffs, free trade, good or bad fiscal systems, and even your German philistine’s mortal weariness and impotence, consequent upon Germany’s impoverished economic condition between 1648 and 1830, and expressing itself first in Pietism and then in sentimentality and cringing servility
a the force of inertia 1894
to princes and nobles, even this was not without economic effect. It was one of the greatest obstacles to recovery and was not removed until chronic poverty became acute as a result of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Thus the effect of the economic situation is not, as is sometimes conveniently supposed, automatic; rather, men make their own history, but in a given environment by which they are conditioned, and on the basis of extant and actual relations of which economic relations, no matter how much they may be influenced by others of a political and ideological nature, are ultimately the determining factor and represent the unbroken clue which alone can lead to comprehension.
b) While men may make their own history, they have not hitherto done so with a concerted will in accordance with a concerted plan, not even in a given and clearly delimited society. Their aspirations are at variance, which is why all such societies are governed by necessity of which the counterpart and manifestation is chance. The necessity which here invariably prevails over chance is again ultimately economic. This brings us to the question of what are known as great men. The fact that such and such a man, and he alone, should arise at a particular time in any given country, is, of course, purely fortuitous. But if we eliminate him, a replacement will be called for and such a replacement will be found—tant bien que mal,a but found he will ultimately be. That Napoleon, this particular Corsican, was the military dictator rendered necessary by a French Republic bled white by her own wars, was fortuitous; but that, in the absence of a Napoleon, someone else would have taken his place is proved by the fact that the moment someone becomes necessary — Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc.—he invariably turns up. If it was Marx who discovered the materialist view of history, the work of Thierry, Mignett Guizot and every English historiographer prior to 1850 goes to show that efforts were being made in that direction, while the discovery of the same view by Morgan shows that the time was ripe for it and that it was bound to be discovered.
The same thing applies to all fortuitous and seemingly fortuitous events in history. The further removed is the sphere we happen to be investigating from the economic sphere and the closer to the purely abstract, ideological sphere, the more likely shall we be to find evidence of the fortuitous in its development, and the more irregular will be the curve
a for better or for worse 1894
it describes. But if you draw the mean axis of the curve, you will find that the longer the period under consideration and the larger the area thus surveyed, the more approximately parallel will this axis be to the axis of economic development.
In Germany the greatest obstacle to accurate interpretation is the ir-responsible neglect of economic history in literature. It is so difficult, not only to rid oneself of the historical ideas drummed into one at school, but actually to get together the material necessary for the purpose. Who, for instance, has so much as read old G. von Gülich whose dry catalogue of material nevertheless contains so much that throws light on innumerable political facts!
Come to that, I believe that the fine example provided by Marx in the 18. Brumaire0 should, precisely because it is a practical example, go a long way towards answering your questions. I also think that I touched on most of these points in the Anti-Dühring Chapters 9-11 and II , 2-4, also II I, and in the introduction, and again in the final section of the Feuerbach.d
Please do not take every word I have said above for gospel, but rather consider them in their general context; I am sorry not to have had the time to write to you in such careful detail as I should have had to do for publication.
Would you kindly convey my compliments to Mr ...e and thank him for sending me the ...e which greatly amused me.
Yours very sincerely,
F. Engels
a G. von Gülich, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus handeltreibenden Staaten unsrer Zeit, Bd. 1-5, Jena, 1830-1845 - b K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. - c F. Engels, Anti-Dühring. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science. — d F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy- e omitted in MS.
1894
151. Engels to Richard Fischer 1 February
Dear Fischer,
Discussed the matter with Aveling yesterday. [330] After the Erfurt Party Conference, [331] and armed with the documents provided by you, Aveling again went to the Daily Chronicle and notified them of the facts (he had already been there once before and denounced Reuss as a spy, whereupon they had said they would get rid of him). But now all of a sudden the story was that the proprietor of the paper wished to keep Reuss on and so there was nothing they could do about it. But if Reuss nevertheless asserts that he gave notice himself on 9. Nov. 1891, i.e. immediately afterwards, it shows that, as a result of what Aveling had told them, they treated him in such a manner as to force him to give notice — the fact remains that he was made to go.
However you cannot publicly ventilate any of these matters because you would risk a public denial by the Chronicle people, since etiquette in this country strictly precludes publication of a newspaper’s internal affairs and the chaps can thus tell any lies they choose and do so with complete impunity. If I were you I should drop the matter altogether since it is no longer of any importance whatever. The very most you could say would be that the Erfurt Conference took place in October 1891, immediately after which the information about Reuss was sent to London and that, as early as 9 November Reuss had, by his own admission, found it necessary to give notice — and let the reader draw his own conclusions. Should you venture one step further, the Chronicle will state that, so far as it is concerned, the thing simply is not true, and neither it nor any other London paper will print a line of rectification from you. Such is the etiquette of the press over here.
We know nothing about Reuss being pilloried for the second time in the Vorwärts; you will have to look for it yourselves.
Would you pay my fee [332] to the party treasurer who can receipt it in the monthly account with the initials F. E. in L.
1894
152. Engels to Karl Kautsky 13 February
Dear Baron,
Am back in Eastbourne [333] again because of my usual lame leg, but it’s already on the mend. Shall remain here until at least the 23rd of this month; if you should write, the address will be 28, Marine Parade, Eastbourne. Victor has snatched the Critica Sociale article away from under your nose and is translating it. [334] At the moment I’ve got no time at all since I am having to proof correct the whole of the rest of Volume II I,a and page proofs rain down on me as inexorably as blows in the Cameroons. [335]
Ask Dietz to send the 8 marks with the next larger consignment to Vienna.
I do not consider the term ‘communism’ suitable for general use today; rather it should be reserved for cases in which a more exact description is required, and even then it would call for an explanatory note, having virtually fallen out of use for the past thirty years. [336]
At the moment I consider Burns to be better and Jaurès to be less important than commonly made out to be.
Warm regards from one household to the other.
Yours,
F.E.
Marxismus. Engels Briefwechsel Published in English for the first time mit Kautsky, Prague, 1935
a of Capital 1894
153. Engels to Georg Von Gizycki 17 February[333]
28, Marine Parade
Dear Sir,
In thanking you for your esteemed note of the 14th of this month, I can only say that for a long time to come I shall be so overwhelmed with work as to be unable to undertake any work even for the periodical press of my own party. It would be all the less admissible if I were to contribute to journals which, however genuine and honourable the views they represent, are none the less further removed from my own immediate standpoint.
For this and other reasons I must regretfully refuse your kind invitation, while remaining
Yours very sincerely,
F.E.
a Deleted in the draft: If I were to let you have an article on the subject you propose (which, I must confess, I do not know very much about) or on some other subject, this would in all likelihood involve me in a debate concerning my materialist point of departure.
1894
154. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 22 February[333]
Dear Ede,
Thank you for your letter and for the offer of G. Bruno. [339] But just now I am busy with Chapter 4la (ground rent) and hope to polish off a few more chapters before my return on Thursday, a week today. So I should like to save up the book until I come back, when I should certainly be glad to read it. We have been sent the Frankfurter Zeitung feuilleton, ‘Bebel und VoUmar’.b The weather here is unfortunately too cold for me to be able to sit out of doors very much and I am not yet really in a condition to do any walking. Until next week, then.
Kindest regards to Gine, Kätec and yourself.
Yours F.E.
1924 Published in English for the first time
155. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 23 February
Dear Sorge,
Because of temporary lameness I am again spending a few weeks
a Of the third volume of Capital (see Vol. 25 of this edition, pp. 698-705). - b G. Brandes, ‘Bebel und Vollmar’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 4 February 1894 - c Regina Bernstein and Käte Schattner 1894
here — shall be back in London in six days’ time. [333]
You will have received the card announcing Louise’s marriage. Her husband, Dr Freyberger, is a young Viennese doctor who gave up his career at Vienna University because they refused to let him tell the workers about the social causes of their illnesses; he has now established himself here and has already shown the English that more medicine is to be learned on the Continent than in this country. For the time being we shall all continue to live together at Regent’s Park Road.
The Holy Family has arrived safely in Rome and will be returned to me in the middle of March, when it will at once be sent on to you.a
Our strange socialist group in the French Chamber is still something of a mystery. It is not yet very clear how many of them there are or what their standpoint is. Guesde tables vast numbers of Bills none of which, needless to say, goes through. Jaurès is unlikely to see a repetition of his first sensational victories, since the immediate effect of the anarchist gentry’s bombing exploits [309] has been to provide the Ministry and the cause of law and order with a solid majority.
In this country the official politicians, both Liberal and Conservative, are in a state of complete disarray. The Liberals can maintain their position only by making fresh political and social concessions to the workers, for which, however, they lack the courage. Thus, they are trying to do so with an election cry against the house of lords instead of proposing payment of members, payment of election expenses by the government, and second ballot. I.e. instead of offering the workers more power vis-à-vis the Commons and the lords, all they want is to give the Commons more power vis-à-vis the lords, and that is something the workers are no longer prepared to swallow. But in any case there will be a general election here this summer and, unless the Liberals really take their courage in both hands and make genuine concessions to the workers, they will suffer defeat and go to pieces; at present they are held together only by Gladstone who might kick the bucket any day. Then there will be a middle-class democratic party with pro-Labour tendencies, and what is left of the Liberals will go over to Chamberlain. And all this has come about simply as a result of pressure from a working class that is still disunited and only partially conscious. If, in due course, it attains full consciousness, things will take an altogether different turn.
a See this volume, pp. 250, 282, 299 1894
In Italy something violent might happen any day now. The middle classes have retained all the abominations of a feudalism in decay and used them as an excuse for their own infamies and tyrannies. The country is at the end of its tether, there has got to be a change there, but the Socialist Party [340] is still very weak and very muddle-headed, although among its number it can boast some really capable Marxists.
In Austria, too, something is to be anticipated. The funny part of it is that Socialists there are looking for support to the Emperor [1] who, by giving his blessing to Taaffe’s proposal for electoral reform, [270] has declared himself in favour of something that comes close to universal suffrage, in the genuine belief that this is a necessary counterpart to general conscription. The coalition government won’t succeed in doing anything or, if it does succeed in enacting an electoral Bill, this will be regarded simply as a bonus, while the movement, with the Emperor’s tacit consent, will proceed on its way at any rate until such time as Taaffe’s reform is put through. And then our chaps will see to the rest.
In short things are proceeding very merrily everywhere, and prospects for the fin de siècle look better every day.
To judge by appearances, the Workman’s Times is at the point of death. Nor is the INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY [114] very much more lively; it’s strange how slow and circuitously everything proceeds over here.
Many regards to you and your wife from the two Freybergers and
Yours,
F. Engels
a Franz Joseph I — b end of the century 1894
156. Engels to Adelheid Dworak and Julius Popp [ Feb.]
Cordial congratulations [341] from me too, dear Adelheid and Popp. Good examples are, as it were, raining round us thick and fast, and were I not so old and lame a horse, who knows — I might still decide to go into harness again.
Your old
F. Engels
157. Engels to Paul Lafargue 6 March
My dear Lafargue, I have just read Jaurès’ and Guesde’s speeches on the corn tariffs. I must say Jaurès’ speech is astounding, and it seems to me regrettable that he was allowed to put forward his amendment in the name of the Party. [342] I don’t wish to speak of his proposal that the State should hold the price of corn at a minimum of 25 francs, which is out and out protectionism, and purely to the advantage of the big landowners into the bargain, since the small ones have no corn to sell, their produce not even sufficing for their own consumption. Guesde certainly said that, but after Léon Say, whereas we should have been the first to proclaim it loudly, instead of fol-
1894
lowing in the footsteps of Mr Say. And it was Jaurès’ phrase-mongering which prevented us.
But just take the proposal to make the State responsible for corn imports. Jaurès wants to prevent speculation. So what does he do? He makes the government responsible for the purchase of foreign corn. The government is the executive committee of the majority in the Chamber, and the majority in the Chamber represents as fully as possible these very speculators in corn, in shares, in government stocks, etc. It’s like the last Chamber, where they made the Panamists responsible for the Panama investigation! And these Panamists, re-elected last August, are the people you want to make responsible for the suppression of speculation! It’s not enough for you that they rob France by means of the annual Budget and the Stock Exchange— where at least they use their own capital and their own credit — you want to present them with several thousand millions and the national credit, so that they can clean out other people’s pockets more thoroughly by means of state socialism !
Further, Jaurès fancies he has made an altogether new and unheard-of proposal. But the petty-bourgeois Socialists in the canton of Zurich got in first; for years past they have been asking for state monopoly in the corn trade; their state, I may say, is a great deal more democratic than the French Republic, it can even treat itself to a chief of police who is a petty-bourgeois Socialist (Mr Vogelsanger) and knows nothing of omnipotent chief commissioners; and, besides, it is so small that it can afford many absurdities which mean nothing there, whereas a great nation cannot go in for such puerilities with impunity.
Guesde’s speech naturally suffered by having to support, at least for the sake of appearances, some of Jaurès’ proposals. Fortunately his audience drew him into the field of general principles; that saved us; he was able to limit himself to touching lightly on Jaurès’ motion. Speaking for myself, I should have preferred to see Guesde make his formal contributions in-dependently of Jaurès and as the mouthpiece of our group. However, he did what he could.
All this is the upshot of the alliance with the ex-Radicals whom we are forced to endure.a In the first place, why did Jaurès make promises to the radical voters which he knew he could not keep? A radical custom, [86] but in no wise socialist and one that we should do well not to adopt.
a See this volume, pp. 249, 262 1894
Then your Mr Jaurès, this doctrinaire professor, who is nevertheless ignorant, above all, of political economy, and of essentially superficial talents, misuses his gift of the gab to push himself to the fore and pose as the mouthpiece of socialism, which he does not so much as understand. Otherwise he would never have dared to put forward state socialism which represents one of the infantile diseases of proletarian socialism, a disease which they went through in Germany, for example, more than a dozen years ago, under the regime of the Anti-Socialist Laws, [15] when that was the only form tolerated by the government (and even protected by it). And even then only a negligible minority of the Party was caught in that snare for a short while; after the Wyden Congress [343] the whole thing petered out completely.
Ah, yes, but we have a republic in France, the ex-Radicals will say to you; it’s quite another matter in our case, we can use the government to introduce socialist measures! A republic, in relation to the proletariat, differs from a monarchy only in that it is the ready-made political form for the future rule of the proletariat. You have the advantage of us in that it is already in being; we, for our part, shall have to waste 24 hours creating it. But a republic, like any other form of government, is determined by what composes it; so long as it is the form of bourgeois rule, it is quite as hostile to us as any monarchy whatsoever (save in the, forms of that hostility). Hence it is a gratuitous illusion to treat it as an essentially socialist form; to entrust it, whilst it is dominated by the bourgeoisie, with socialist tasks. We can wring concessions from it, but never look to it to carry out our job. Even if we were able to control it by a minority so strong that it could become a majority from one day to the next.
However, what’s done can’t be undone. There will be other opportunities when our people will be able to come to the fore and proclaim their own tendencies, by means of Bills.
So you were surprised by Louise’s marriage? It has been brewing for some months. Freyberger has left Vienna and given up a brilliant university career because they forbade him to enlighten the workers, in his lectures, on the social causes of their ills. So he came here, and he has found very good openings in the hospitals here. Once that was settled, there was no further reason for delaying the wedding. While waiting for his expectations to materialise he came to join his wife here, you can see that it is an entirely matriarchal marriage, the husband is his wife’s boarder!
That reminds me of my own matriarchal studies and the translation of 1894
them that Laura was good enough to do. [195] I hope she approved of the few small alterations I suggested, and that you have told her how charmed I was by the translation of that 3rd and 4th part. I kiss her by your proxy.
Yours very truly,
F.E.
Correspondance, t. II I, Paris, 1959
158. Engels to August Momberger 9 March
Dear Sir,
My reply to your esteemed letter of 26.2 has been somewhat delayed [344] by my absence from London. [333]
Things do not look very bright so far as English socialist literature is concerned. The leading publisher of books of this nature is Sonnenschein (W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Paternoster Square). While there is a lot of inferior stuff amongst his SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES, it also contains the following:
W. Morris and E. B. Bax, Socialism, its Growth and Outcome;
E. B. Bax, The Religion of Socialism; do.,
The Ethics of Socialism; Aveling, E. AND E. M[arx-Aveling], The Working Class Movement in America;
Lafargue, The Evolution of Property; E. B. Bax, Outlooks from the New Standpoint; Hyndman, Commercial Panics of the 19th Century;
Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; do.,
Socialism, Scientific and Utopian etc. Again, the value of these things varies greatly. There is also a multitude of shorter propaganda pamphlets of very varied quality, some being really good, some deplorably bad; none are easily obtainable through book shops. Most were published by the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION [44] and the FABIAN SOCIETY. [43]
There is no journal similar to the Neue Zeit in this country. The socialist weeklies are:
Justice (organ of the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION), publisher H. Quelch, 37a, Clerkenwell Green, London, E. C.
Workman’s Times, 59, Tile St., Manchester (MANCHESTER LABOUR PRESS SOCIETY).
That is about all the information I can give you. I fear, however, that the sort of Englishmen you meet in Wiesbaden will be unlikely to provide many suitable candidates for our party.
Yours very truly,
F. Engels
159. Engels to Victor Adler 20 March
Dear Victor,
A short while ago you asked me about translating the article in the Critica Sociale on the position, etc., of Italy. [334] Louise at once wrote a postcard on my behalf saying THAT YOU WERE WELCOME TO IT and I confirmed this a day or two later in a letter to you. [25] Soon afterwards an inquiry arrived from K. Kautsky who wanted to know if I 1894
would let him have the thing for the Neue Zeit. In my reply I told him that you had already snaffled it.a
But the article has not, in the meantime, appeared in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and that puts me in an awkward position vis-à-vis K. Kautsky. So could you please let me know what is happening about it? I must say this makes me feel like the English landlady who, having on the one hand a nubile daughter and, on the other, a susceptible German lodger, demanded of the latter at the first sign of a flirtation: “WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS WITH REGARD TO MY DAUGHTER?” But the fact that K. Kautsky has entered into competition with you will doubtless exonerate me.
Over here things are tending towards a general election [345] and everything that happens is done by way of preparation for it. The Liberals are as craven as ever. They must know that they can only retain their position by increasing the political power of the workers and yet they hesitate and flounder about nervously. Neither a cut-and-dried extension of the suffrage, nor the elimination of a property qualification which consists in burdening the candidate with all the election expenses while failing to give him a salary, nor any provision in the shape of a second ballot for the putting up of a third candidate (alongside those of the two official parties). At the same time they want to abolish the house of lords but don’t lift a finger to produce a Lower House with the courage and ability to do this. The Tories for their part are making mistake after mistake. For two years they have been turning Parliament into a complete farce on the pretext of smashing HOME RULE;
[171] with the Liberals, who took this lying down, they have played, and continue to play, Old Harry, as Randy Churchill demonstrated last night, [346] although, with elections in the offing, this is a risky business and might seriously shake the peace-loving [?]b British philistine’s faith in the Conservatives. Furthermore, Salisbury attempted to make the PARISH COUNCILS BILL [163] an occasion for playing a dirty trick on his Liberal Unionist allies, [206] Devonshire and Chamberlain, and exploiting them for purely TORY ends, so that the said alliance is no longer as steadfast as heretofore. In short, things are getting into a frightful tangle, and at the moment it is difficult to guess what the outcome will be.
My congratulations on the way you lulled the general strike to sleep
a See this volume, p. 269 — b sic in printed text 1894
and likewise on your articles on the coalition government’s electoral reform
[347] and on the situation generally in Austria. The one in the issue of the sixth of this month was particularly brilliant. Not for a moment do I doubt that your party conference [323] will go off splendidly. My regards to all our friends and also to August and Paul Singer and Gerisch, if they attend the same.
Louise sends much love, as does
Yours,
F.E.
Erstes Heft: Victor Adler und Published in English for the first time Friedrich Engels, Vienna, 1922
160. Engels to Nikolai Danielson 20 March
My dear Sir, Today I forwarded to you, registered, sheets No. 1-6 (up to page 96) of Vol. II P containing the greater part of Section 1. The continuation will follow as it reaches me.
Your letters of 4th and 23rd XI and 24/II to hand, I shall reply as soon as possible.
Yours very faithfully
L. K.b First published, in Russian, Reproduced from the original in Minuvshiye gody, No. 2, 1908 Published in English for the first time
a of Capital- b Engels’ pen name derived from Louise Kautsky’s initials 1894
161. Engels To Panait Musoiu 20 March
Dear Comrade,
Owing to my absence from London [333] I have been prevented from answering your letter of 24 February any earlier. This I duly received as well as the Manifestul comunist and Socialism utopic si socialism stüntifica for which very many thanks. Unfortunately I am not yet sufficiently versed in Romanian to be able to give an opinion on the merits of your translation. But I would caution you against taking the French translation as a basis when working on a German book.
Unfortunately time does not permit me to comply with your request that I write a preface to the new edition. I am busy putting the finishing touches to Volume II I of Marx’s Capital and, since printing is going rapidly ahead, I must devote all my time to the completion of the rest of the manuscript in order that no hold-ups should occur.
With kindest regards,
F. Engels
a K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party; F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 1894
162. Engels To Friedrich Adolph Sorge 21 March
Dear Sorge,
I have today sent back to you with many thanks The Holy Family by BOOK POST, REGISTERED, following its safe return from the trip to Rome.a
Immediately after Easter I shall send you a parcel containing the Bax-Morris bookb and Bernstein’s Berlin Complete Edition of Lassalle Works.c
Auntie Motteler has just been here in company with Gertrud Liebknecht. Apparently the latter wants to move in temporarily with the former. What Liebknecht intends to do about her (she says he wants her to go back) remains a secret — doubtless also to himself. His eldest daughter, Mrs Geiser, is living in the worst possible circumstances and his wife and Gertrud are at daggers drawn. I don’t in fact believe he has actually insisted that she return.
Have you seen the novel Helena by old Mother Kautsky in the Vorwärts? She has peopled her stage with a crowd of living party members, including Motteler and his wife. It is a poor imitation of the popular novels of Gregor Samarowd (Spy Meding). I shall be interested to see whether it is passed over in silence and am somewhat surprised that the Vorwärts should have taken it. The paper’s feuilleton is censored by Mother Natalie Liebknecht.
The Pionierkalender received with thanks. Over here the dissolution of Parliament draws on apace. At the new elections [345] more Labour candidates will be put up than ever before, though not nearly enough, and I’m not sure whether a whole crowd of them won’t
a See this volume, p. 272 - b W. Morris and E. B. Bax, Socialism, its Growth and Outcome, London, New York, 1893 - CF. Lassalle, Reden und Schriften, Berlin, 1892-1893-dSamarinin the MS 1894
again be put up with the help of TORY money. The Liberals, like the TORIES, are both of them firm supporters of the indirect property qualification which consists in the candidate’s being burdened with the entire costs of the election — ranging from 4100 minimum up to between £400 and £600 and even more for the official expenses alone, e.g. POLLING PLACES, etc. So if the working men fall into the clutches of Champion, who is offering 4100 per constituency (he got the money from Hudson, the soap manufacturer), the Liberals will have no cause for complaint. All in all their approach to the elections is characterised by a curiously obstinate refusal to face the facts. They act as though they wish to abolish the Upper House but refuse to remodel the Lower House (by increasing the power of the workers) in such a way that it would be capable of tackling something of the kind on its own. The TORIES, on the other hand, are more stupid than they ever were and that is saying a good deal. For the past couple of years they have been playing Old Harry with the Liberal government in the Upper and the Lower House. To this the Liberals have calmly submitted, while the philistines, who have been turning Conservative in droves, have rejoiced, since it was done on the pretext of removing the treasonable, anti-Empire HOME RULE BILL [171] HOME RULE Government. Now, however, that serious domestic legislation is on the agenda, they are continuing to play the same game, and that might be rather too much of a good thing for your peace-loving philistine. So things remain very uncertain and the new elections will at all events produce some surprising results. Whatever happens, Labour will be strengthened and the Liberals will be compelled to make further concessions to the working man.
In Austria, Belgium and Holland electoral reform has also been the order of the day. Before long there will be no European parliament without labour representatives. In Austria the cause is progressing very well. Adler is leading the movement with quite outstanding address and the Party Conference on Sunday [323] will also help.
Once the tariff business [301] has to some extent been sorted out on your side of the Atlantic and the duty on raw materials been abolished, the crisis will probably recede and the superiority of American industry over that of Europe will undoubtedly make itself felt. Only then will matters take a serious turn here in England, but then they will go with a bang.
I finished the first two thirds of Volume II P sooner than I had expected
a of Capital 1894
and, since printing was rapidly forging ahead (twelve proof-sheets have already come back), I was compelled to make a brief announcement.a The final editing of the final third is not yet quite done, but next week I shall be getting down to it again.
Louise Kautsky has told you of her marriage to Dr L. Freyberger from Vienna. He is a young physician who in my opinion has a major scientific career ahead of him. He is practising in hospitals here and has since moved in with us. Apart from the name, therefore, Louise’s address is unchanged.
Yours,
F. Engels
Warm regards to you and your wife from Louise and myself. I trust your health has improved.
163. Engels To Victor Adler 22 March
Dear Victor,
I wrote to you the day before yesterday, [13] and yesterday Louise wrote to you at the Kopernikusgasse by ‘registered’ mail.
Your report on the state of affairs over there gave us great pleasure. Less so the prospect of your spending your summer holidays in ‘durance vile’, [349] concerning which we had already seen something in the Arbeiter-
a F. Engels, The Third Volume of Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’, On the Contents of the Third Volume of ‘Capital’. — b See Letter 159 1894
innen-Zeitung (as distinct from the Arbeiter-Zeitung). I wrote to you day before yesterday about conditions over here. [350]
But the disappearance of our letters to you is really getting beyond a joke. After Louise had written to you yesterday we tried as best as we could to reconstruct from memory the letters she had written. These were as follows:
1. In the middle of December she sent Adelheid (Dworak) an article on Female Factory Inspectors,a along with various notes for the Arbeiter Zeitung—Adelheid has written to say that she never got the letter.
2. Shortly before Christmas Louise wrote to you asking for some information about the doctor you had recommended to Tussy.
3. In January again to you asking you, amongst other things, to convey my apologies to your wife and saying I was indisposed.
4. Towards the end of January, when Lafargue was here and Burns met him at our house, an account of the latter’s visit and conditions in England generally — the letter was from Louise to you.
5. In February she wrote to you urging you to use my article in the Critica Sociale. [334]
6 and 7. Two letters from her to you from Eastbourne between 9 February and 1 March.
8. She wrote to Schacherl at the Arbeiter-Zeitung saying she was unable to send the articleb straight away.
9. On 4 March she wrote asking you to send the Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung to Dr Bonnier, 19 Regent St, Oxford and also gave some information about Jaurès and the Socialist group in the French Chamber.
Some of these letters were sent to you at the editorial office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, some to your private address and both lots seem to have been disappearing with equal regularity. On the other hand the rest of Louise’s letters to Vienna, including those to the gas-workers, have been arriving no less regularly, as have the replies.
Your eight-page letter to Louise has likewise not arrived. So we shall now experiment for a time with registered letters. A cover address in Vienna might perhaps be a good idea.
Herewith what you wantedc for the Party Conference. [323]
a [L. Freyberger,] ‘Weibliche Fabriks-Inspektoren,’ Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, Nos. 1 and 2, 5 and 19 January 1894 b [L. Freyberger] ‘Zum 13 März’, Arbeiter-Zeitung, No. 21, 13 March 1894 -c F. Engels, To the Fourth Austrian Party Congress.
1894
Please give my kindest regards to all comrades including the Berliners. Louise and Freyberger send you their cordial regards, as does
Yours,
F.E.
164. Engels To Pablo Iglesias 26 March
My dear friend Iglesias!
I duly received your letter dated 24 November, and I begin my reply by stating that this letter will be the last, if you persist in addressing me as ‘usted’. Indeed, I have reason to feel offended by the fact that you refuse to address me in the manner customary among old members of the International and comrades-in-arms, the form of address which Anselmo Lorenzo, and many other comrades, old and younga accorded me as far back as 1872. So. let us please address each other as ‘tu’!
I shall continue in French: I have not written in Spanish for more than twenty years now, and it would take me all day to write a letter in Spanish. Please forgive me!b
Well now. I am very sorry that I missed the opportunity to see you in Zurich. [189] When I arrived at the Tonhallec on the Saturday morning, many friends came to talk with me in the restaurant before going in to
a The following words are crossed out by Engels: ‘French, German, Austrian, Swiss and others’. — b This part of the letter is written in Spanish, then follows the French text. -c The meeting-place of the Congress.
1894
the meeting: I asked almost all of them to go and find the Spanish delegation, and to tell you that I was waiting for you; however, no one came. After the congress ended, I was told that I would certainly see you in the afternoon, on the steamboat. However, I looked for you in vain, and now I know what had happened. On the Sunday, no one was able to tell me where you were staying. I was told time and again that you had left, and I lost all hope of meeting you. I was extremely sorry, since one of the reasons, and not the least, why I came to Zurich was the hope of seeing my old friend Iglesias face to face and shaking his hand.
Thank you for sending me regularly El Socialistae, which I read with great pleasure every Saturday evening, and from which I have the satisfaction of seeing that you are gradually spreading across the whole of Spain, that socialism is being established on the ruins of Carlism [352] in the Basque countries, and that far away provinces of Galicia and Asturia are beginning to join the movement. Good luck!
As for the anarchists, they are perhaps on the verge of killing themselves. This fever of violence, this volley of assassinations, senseless and, in the final analysis, paid for and incited by the police, cannot but open the eyes of the bourgeoisie to the nature of this propaganda of madmen and agents provocateurs. [353] Even the bourgeoisie will realise in the end that it is absurd to pay the police, and through the police the anarchists, to blow up the very bourgeois who pay them. And if now we also risk suffering from the bourgeois reaction, we shall benefit in the long run because this time we shall succeed in proving to everyone that there is a world of difference between ourselves and the anarchists.
Over here the movement is progressing quite slowly. There is certainly a strong tendency towards socialism among the working masses. However, the historical conditions in England are such that this tendency in the masses produces, among the leaders, a host of different cross-currents which even fight against each other. Here, as in France, there will only be unity when there are some socialists in parliament. Today there are only two — which is one too many, or at least, too few.
In Italy the situation is becoming critical and revolutionary. I am sending you the Critica Sociale with an article which I have written on the request of my friends from Milan. [334]
In Germany we are continuing as usual. It is a well-organised and well-disciplined
army which is growing every day, and which is advancing towards its goal with a
sure and implacable step. In Germany we can 1894
almost calculate the day whena state power will fall into our hands.
In the meantime, I draw your attention to Austria. There a great battle is in the making. The ruling classes, the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie, have exhausted their resources. An electoral reform is now inevitable. They are trying to arrange things so that the working class will not have too many representatives in parliament. But the workers are determined, they are forcing the bourgeois to retreat step by step, until they concede universal suffrage. After Zurich I visited Vienna; judging by what I saw there, the Austrian socialists have a great future.b
When I had reached this point, I received your letter dated 22 March. Unfortunately I am unable to send you a few lines for 1st May, since I have to finish the final editing of the third volume of Das Kapital, and am obliged to refuse any kind of collaboration, be it in connection with 18th March, or with 1st May. And what I have refused to the French, the Germans, the Austrians and others, I also cannot do for you.
Affectionately yours.
165. Engels To Benno Karpeles 29 March
Dear Sir,
I am in receipt of your esteemed note of the 19th inst. (postmarked Rome) and have also just received the first half volume of your book [354]
a The following phrase “we are the only party capable...” is crossed out by Engels. -b The text that follows is in Spanish.
from Vienna. I am most grateful to you for having sent it to me.
The extent to which both science and events have progressed since the appearance in 1845 of that early work of minea—a work to which you accord such honourable mention but which in my view is much overrated — cannot be better demonstrated than by the plan you were able to draw up for the elaboration of your book. The very fact that it was possible to tackle such an inquiry, embracing as it does every detail, even those which seem least significant, that might have a bearing on the point at issue within the field of investigation, and this by a simple layman, is an enormous advance in itself. May you succeed in completing your work exactly in accordance with your plan, thereby presenting us with a picture such as we have not possessed hitherto of the general situation of a large and highly interesting working-class community.
I am Sir,
Yours faithfully,
F. Engels
166. Engels To Hunter Watts 3 April
I am very much obliged to you and the comrades of the S.D.F. [44] whose feelings you express for the honour you do me by asking me to lecture at your hall. But I am afraid I must decline. My work for our common cause lies in another branch of activity, where I believe I can be more useful,
a F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England 1894
and where I find full occupation for all the time at my command. Were I once to begin lecturing, at which trade moreover I am but a poor hand, I should no longer have a valid plea for resisting other invitations, and then I should have entirely to give up my present class of work. For this reason I have regularly declined all similar calls from the Fabian Society, [43] the I.L.P.,
[114] and other bodies, with the exception made this year of the old Communist Verein,a where they claimed a fifty years’ hold upon me. [62]
But then, as far as the S.D.F. is concerned, there is another question to consider. You cannot but be aware that for years, up to a comparatively recent period, Justice, the official organ of the S.D.F., has been in the habit of charging me with all sorts of offences. These charges, mostly vague insinuations of mysterious crimes, Justice has never specified, never attempted to provide, and yet never withdrew.b
167. Engels To Laura Lafargue 11 April
My dear Löhr, Your agreeable letter comes just in time. I was on the point of writing to Paul this morning, and so I have a good pretext of changing the address of my letter. I had just read your translation in the Ere Nouvelle and was quite charmed by it. [310] It reads better than the original, there are only
a Society - b Then there follows a number of unfinished and crossed out phrases which amount to the following: ‘I am therefore compelled to consider whether under these circumstances I do not owe it to myself for the present to refrain from presenting myself as a speaker in the hall of the S.D.F., And further, whether my appearance in that capacity would not be unwelcome to a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of those to whom the hall belongs.’ two or three slight alterations I would suggest for a possible reprint.
This leads me at once to the libertaire, alas not libertin! Dühring. [355] dear girl, vous avez fait vos preuvesa! You arrange yourself with Bonnet as most convenient. Provided the Manuscript passes through your hands, it’s all right and I will gladly look it over — within the limits of my time, cela s’entend,b which limits I am sorry to say are very narrow and don’t look as if they were going to expand, on the contrary!
But I do wish you could use your talents and energies for some other kind of work which, besides credit, would also bring cash into the pocket of the worker. Could no arrangement be made with Carré for something of that sort?
I send you a No. of the Rheinische Zeitung, edited, as maybe you are aware, by the grand Karl Hirsch (since the 1st April). It is not, however, in order to give you a specimen of his elucubrations that I send it to you, but because it gives a report of the motion brought out in the Reichstag by Count Kanitz, [356] one of the most shining lights amongst those Prussian Junkers who are, according to Hermann Wagener, their theoretical champion, either Ochsen von Geburt oder Ochsen aus Prinzip.c This motion, made in the interest of the landed aristocracy of Eastern Germany, is almost literally the proposition [made by] Jaurèsd which was to show the way to the socialist world how to use their parliamentary position in the interest of the working class and the peasantry. The same Count Kanitz has, the other day, proclaimed a new way to pay old debts, for the benefit of the German Empire: sell all your gold coin and replace it by about 4 milliards silver coin, which will leave 2 milliards clear profit (silver being bought at 28 pence the ounce and being turned into money at 60 pence an ounce) wherewith to wipe out the Imperial debt. Now if I wanted to be malicious, I might ask M. Jaurès whether, in return for Kanitz’s acceptance of his corn motion, he would not accept Kanitz’s silver motion which looks equally socialistic, and which, from an economic standpoint, is not a bit more objectionable. But I will be generous, even with Jaurès, and leave him alone; our French comrades, however, I cannot refrain from observing, ought really to look a little closer into the proposals of their ex-radical allies,e before they accept them blindfolded. A few more such escapades, and their reputation as political economists will be in great danger.
a you have proved yourself! - b be it understood -c oxen by birth or oxen on principle - d See this volume, p. 275 - e Ibid., p. 276 1894
Of the Discours sur le libre échangea there exists but one copy which I by some accident got hold of through a second-hand catalogue. If that were to get lost, the whole thing, in the French original at least, would be lost for ever, I cannot send it unless there are strong guarantees against loss. I expect to-night a new Postal guide containing the latest information as to the international postal insurance arrangements; if these are satisfactory I will forward the thing to you at once, otherwise try some other means. Anyhow a reprint would be in every respect highly desirable. [357] In the meantime I will send you another copy of the English translation published in Boston. [358]
Sorel’s Métaphysiqueb I really have not had time to read. I am awfully busy; deep in the Rent of Land (Vol. II Ic) which causes me a deal of trouble by Mohr’s tables being almost without exception miscalculated — you know what a genius he was for figures!—and having to be recast. And 15 sheets are already printed so that there is no time to be lost with the remainder of the Manuscript. And then the hot weather — just as you have it at Le Perreux. In there anything in that Sorel’s study?
Louise thanks you for your letter and will soon write to you; sends her kindest regards. Her husband is getting quite a reputation here as an anatomical preparator; he works a good deal for the anatomical Museum at Middlesex Hospital; the clumsy people here cannot come up to the Vienna standard in these delicate matters.
We have Gertrud Liebknecht here, back from America, but hardly much improved there.
Just read Paul’s letter in the Vorwärts—capital.d So good that even Berlin translations cannot spoil it.
Ever your old
F. Engels
a Speech on Free Trade—b G. Sorel, ‘L’ancienne et la nouvelle métaphysique’, L’Ère nouvelle, None 3, 4, 5 and 6, March, April, May and June 1894 - c of Capital -d [P. Lafargue] Gallus, ‘Die Heldenthaten der französischen Polizei’, Vorwärts, No. 82, 10 April 1894 1894
168. Engels to Filippo Turati 12 April
Dear Turati,
I am sending you by post the Anglo-American edition {Discourse on Free Trade. [358] K. Marx) of your discourse, and the German translation of The Poverty of Philosophy, where you will find this speech in the appendix.a As for the French text, this is to be reprinted in the Paris L’Ère Nouvelle. [357] There is only one copy of the French text, namely mine, and if it is lost there will be no way to replace it. I therefore still do not know how to send it to Paris, for if I have a copy made here, this will mean loss of time, and I have too much experience of the post to entrust the original to it.
The 2nd volume of Capital came but in Hamburg, published by Otto Meissner, as the 1st was, in 1893 (2nd edition). If I am not mistaken, the price is 6 marks. The same publishers are to issue the 3rd volume in September, to the great pleasure of the illustrious Achille Loria, a charlatan who warned everyone that Marx had never written this 3rd volume, but was always referring the reader to it simply to make a fool of him. [360]
Kindest regards from myself and Mme Freyberger (ex Kautsky, she has just married a young Austrian doctor living here) to Mme Kulishov.
Yours,
F. Engels
English for the first time
a K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy.
1894
169. Engels to Henry William Lee 16 April
H. W. Lee. Secretary Social Democratic Federation
Dear Comrade,
Both you and the party who suggested to you the idea of my lecturing for you, [361] must have been aware that I have so far made it a rule not to lecture anywhere. But apart from that, I find myself in a peculiar position with regard to you, that is, if I rightly understand your letter, the Social Democratic Federation. [44]
You cannot ignore that for a long series of years and up to a comparatively recent period, Justice, the organ of the S.D.F., has constantly attacked me and brought all sorts of charges against me. While no attempt has ever been made to prove these charges, they have never been withdrawn. Nor has the S.D.F. ever disclaimed any responsibility for what Justice wrote. In consequence I have been compelled to keep entirely aloof from the S.D.F. and do not see how I can change my attitude unless that difficulty is entirely removed.
Yours faithfully,
F. E.
First published, in Russian, Reproduced from the original in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Published in English for the first time Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946 1894
170. Engels to Editorial Board of a French Socialist Newspaper 24 April
Dear citizen,
I have received your letter dated 20th of this month, but unfortunately I am quite unable to provide an article for the 1st May issue of your newspaper.
To begin with, I am unwell at the moment. However, even if I were in the best of health, the urgent work that I am presently engaged in (the publication of the 3rd volume of Capital by Marx) and that I cannot lay aside makes it impossible for me to undertake any other literary work. I have already warned those of our friends with whom I corresponded, and asked them to excuse me. You can well understand that I cannot now do for you that which I have officially refused to do for our friends in Spain, Austria and other countries.
I wish your newspaper every success, and send my fraternal greetings to the editorial committee.
Yours sincerely,
F.E.
First published in Russian Printed according to the original in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Translated from the French Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946 1894
171. Engels to Carl Eberle 24 April
Dear Comrade,
Your letter of 21 March arrived a day or two ago as did the album of Barmen you so very kindly sent me, and I should like to say how very grateful I am to the Social Democratic Club in Barmen and, in particular, to the compiler of the album, for this kind and for me both flattering and agreeable gift. Indeed it was an unexpected pleasure to be able to see the enormous changes that have taken place in Barmen during the twenty years that I have been away. I feel completely lost. Other than by the station and on one, the older, side of the Werther Bollwerk, I can no longer tell where I am from the pictures. Even the view taken on the Neuenweg, which surely cannot be more than a few minutes walk from the Bruch, is utterly strange to me. Only our old house remains unaltered.
Though it is cheering to see these signs of an upheaval that has changed the Barmen of my youth from a small philistine backwater into a large industrial town, what nevertheless pleases me most is the fact that people there have also experienced a significant change for the better. Had that not been the case, Barmen would even now be represented in the Reichstag by an out-and-out Conservative, some thoroughly sanctimonious ‘swell’, nor could there be any question of a Social Democratic Club in Barmen, while the last thing that would have occurred to Barmen’s working men would have been to honour me with an album. Fortunately, however, the revolution in the appearance of the town is attended by a revolution in the minds of its working men and for us that is a guarantee of a far mightier and more comprehensive revolution in the world as presently constituted. With sincere regards,
Yours,
F. Engels 1894
172. Engels to Laura Lafargue 11 May
My dear Laura, Just two lines. Have the proofs of the Discours sur le libre échange [363] gone to Milan? If not, do please see that they are sent at once. Turati has published in the Critica Sociale a text which is a traductiona from the Russian of something made out of something in German, [364] and moreover so abbreviated that it is anything but Mohr. Now they threaten to publish this en brochure. And unless they get the French text soon, I shall not even be able to haul them over the coals for it, as they are doing ‘their text’ !
Surely it will be possible to make our French friends to treat business as business for once!
Just come back from town where we sent off the last of the Manuscript of Vol. II I,b
If you get the Neue Welt with the Vorwärts or some other German paper, look at Aus finsteren Zeiten’c in No. 18. You will find there your grand-parents and Mohr transmogrified into a romance and I wish you may relish it.
Kind regards from Louise. Monsieur Guesde neither turned up nor wrote a line of excuse, Les français sont si polis!d
Ever yours
F. E.
a translation -b of Capital-c ‘Aus finsteren Zeiten’, Die Neue Welt, Nos. 18 and 19, 1894 — a The French are so polite.
1894
The lazy womana says she is just writing 30 letters to Trades Unions and others anent an Austrian strike, and says she should be very glad of your assistance if she could have it.
Avvocato F. Turati Portíci Galleria, V. E. 23 Milano, Italia
173. Engels to Filippo Turati 11 May
My dear Turati,
I am returning to you, registered Post, the proofs of Libero Scambio, etc., together with the English edition, [358] which I would ask you to keep. The translation of my introduction is very good, except for a few points that are technically difficult — you will find the appropriate indications. However, Marx’s speech, which is published in the Critica Sociale, is not a translation but a summary [364] that I despair of setting in order. I have written again to Paris [25] to ask them to send you the French original. In the meantime please compare with the English text. If you publish the text according to Critica Sociale, you will receive complaints that this is not the author’s text, that this is to take liberties which are tantamount to forgery, etc., and unfortunately I will find it impossible to come to your aid, It would be better to rewrite it — it is not very long — than to expose oneself to such complaints.
a Louise Freyberger 1894
Yours,
Engels
Greetings to Mme Anna Kulishov and you from Louise Kautsky-Freyberger and myself.
174. Engels to Adolph Sorge 12 May
Dear Sorge,
Yesterday we sent to you through G.W. Wheatley & Co (New York AD-
DRESS, U.S. Express Co., 49, Broadway) a parcel containing Morris-Bax and the Berlin Lassalle in fifty parts, which I trust will reach you before long.
CARRIAGE PAID. On the same day the remainder of the ms. of Volume II Ib went off to Hamburg, thereby removing a heavy load from my mind. The two final sections made me ‘sweat good and proper’.c There will be sixty sheets of which twenty have already been set up in type.
I was greatly relieved to hear that the Holy Family had safely returned into your keeping after its strange Odyssey.d On the other hand the news about your eyes is most distressing. I hope you will consult a good specialist, for a lot can be done if steps are taken in good time. For the past fifteen years I too have had trouble with my eyes off and on. Having taken medical
a W. Morris and E. B. Bax, Socialism, its Growth and Outcome, London, New York, 1893; F. Lassalle, Reden und Schriften, Bd. 1-3, Berlin, 1892-1893 - b of Capital- c See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II I, Ch. 37-42 and 48-52 - d See this volume, pp. 250, 272, 282 1894
advice I have again reached the stage at which the thing no longer bothers me at all, provided only that I don’t write too much by lamplight.
Not long ago I caught a cold, which left me in no doubt that I am now an old man at last. On this occasion, what I had previously been able to treat as a minor annoyance, pretty well laid me low for a week and kept me under draconian medical supervision for a whole fortnight after that. Even now, I am expected to take care of myself for another fortnight, no less. It was a mild form of bronchitis which is not to be taken lightly in the case of the elderly, especially when, like myself, they have continued to tipple away merrily. Needless to say, I find this business of taking care of myself thoroughly distasteful, but Freyberger was, after all, quite right to prescribe it for me and, as to seeing that I carry it out, that is the province of Argus-eyed Louise who has doubled and tripled her vigilance. I think I have already written and told you a that we left our domestic arrangements as little changed as possible when we took in the young husband as a boards and lodger. All very nice and jolly, it is true, but only, alas, so long as one is in good health. Never in my born days have I been so plagued with medical attention as during this past month and I can only console myself with the thought that it was all done for my own good.
Dietzgen and wife were here for an hour or two on Sunday afternoon but unfortunately missed Tussy. I have given him recommendations to Bebel and Kautsky. They were very nice people.
I hope that your sonb has since found a situation. With his knowledge of business, and having by now doubtless rid himself of a good many illusions as a result of practical experience, a bright young man like that should always fall on his feet in America.
Things are little changed over here. There is no chance of achieving any kind of unity amongst the labour leaders. But the masses are nevertheless moving ahead, Slowly it is true, and only now striving to acquire consciousness, yet the process is unmistakeable. It will be the same here as in France and, before that, in Germany: Unification will be forced upon them as soon as a number of independent working men (especially those who have been elected without the help of the Liberals) secure seats in Parliament. This the Liberals are doing their utmost to prevent. They are not 1. extending the franchise to the people who—on paper—already have it, but are, on the contrary, 2. ensuring that the registers of electors
a See this volume, p. 284 — b Adolph Sorge 1894
will involve the candidates in greater expense than hitherto, since they are now to be compiled twice a year, the cost of compiling a correct register being borne by the candidates or the representatives of the political parties and not by the state. They have categorically rejected the principle of 3. electoral expenses being borne by the state or the municipality, also 4. of parliamentary salaries and 5. of second ballots. The retention of all these old abuses amounts to the outright disqualification of the labour candidates in at least three-quarters of the constituencies. Parliament is to remain a rich man’s club. And this at a time when the rich, because content with the status quo, are all turning Conservative, while the Liberal Party is slowly dying, and becoming ever more dependent on the Labour vote. The Liberals, however, insist that the working man should only vote for a bourgeois and not for a working man, let alone an independent working man.
This will be the undoing of the Liberals. Their lack of courage is alienating the country’s Labour voters, dissipating their small majority in Parliament, and, unless they make some very bold moves at the eleventh hour, they will probably be done for. Thereupon the Tories will take the helm and carry out what the Liberals intended — not merely to promise — actually to do. And in that case an independent Labour party is pretty well assured.
The Social Democratic Federation [44] over here and your German-American Socialists [367] share the distinction of being the only parties that have contrived to reduce Marx’s theory of development to a rigid orthodoxy which the working man is not expected to arrive at by virtue of his own class consciousness; rather it is to be promptly and without preparation rammed down his throat as an article of faith. Hence they have both remained mere sects, having come, as Hegel puts it, from nothing by way of nothing to nothing.a I have not yet had time to read Schlüter’s controversy with your Germans, but shall tackle it tomorrow. Judging by the Volkszeitung’s earlier articles, it would seem that the right note has been struck.
Give my warm regards to your wife and let us have some better news from you soon. Warm regards.
Yours,
F. E.
a G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaß der Logik 1894
Warm regards from Louise.
von ]oh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works,
175. Engels to Boris Krichevsky 20 May
Dear Sir,
I note from your letter of the 10th inst. that you have made and already sent to the printers a Russian translation of my works on Russia which recently appeared in Berlin, just as you did previously in the case of other writings by Marx and myself. [368]
I must needs draw your attention to the fact that, in accordance with the Berne Convention [303] Introduction to Wage Labour and Capital by Marx (1891) as well as the above-mentioned works are my literary property and that translations of them into foreign languages may not be published in the countries of the Union without my permission. Even though the matter of fees may play only a subordinate or no role at all in cases such as these, or where genuine party undertakings are concerned, I am nevertheless obliged to assert my rights in the interests of the cause, for otherwise it would mean my assuming joint responsibility for the publication of translations by unqualified or otherwise incompetent persons. And since I have already committed myself to a third party, I am under a twofold obligation.
So far as I am aware, it has hitherto been customary in the party, even in the case of translations of works unprotected by the Berne Convention, to show consideration for the writer by applying to him for authorisation.
First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Published in English in full for the first time 1894
When, however, a work falls within the terms of the Berne Convention, this is not simply a polite formality but the translator’s bounden duty. You have chosen to ignore this. I hereby protest against your conduct and reserve all my rights.
My objection to the publication of an unauthorised Russian translation of my works on Russia from Internationales aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ is all the greater in that I have already made over the translation rights in the Russian language for these and other works, namely to Mrs Vera Zasulich.
This disposes once and for all with your inquiry regarding my preface.
Yours very truly
176. Engels to Georgi Plekhanov 21 May
My dear Plekhanov,
First of all, please spare me ‘mentor’—my name is simply Engels. Next, thank you for your information. I have sent a registered letter to M. Krichevsky to say that the introduction to Wage Labour and Capital,a and also the articles on Russia in Articles on International Themes from the Newspaper ‘Volksstaat’ [370] are, according to the Berne Convention, [303] my literary property, and that any translation requires my consent; that I am obliged, in the interests of the cause, to stand upon my rights in order to prevent translations by incapable or otherwise incompetentb (or
a These words are written by Engels in Russian. See previous letter. - b A German word as given in parenthesis ‘unbefungt’ (meaning unauthorised).
1894
unauthorised) individuals; that therefore it was simply his duty to request my permission beforehand, which he did not do; that as a result I would enter a formal protest against his actions, and reserve all my rights; that, as regards the articles on Russia, I protested all the more since I had already committed myself, having granted authorisation for a Russian translation of these and other works to Madame Vera Zasulich.
If he now persists in publishing, we shall see; in any case, please let me know if it appears, and send me a copy.
As he also announces a translation of Kautsky’s Erfurt Programme,a I felt obliged to warn the latter of the methods being used in my regard. [25] I told him nothing of what you wrote to me, but I told him that dishonesty was involved, and that he should get in touch with you to learn more.
I hoped to see Mendelson yesterday evening, but I hear that his wife is ill. If I can, I shall go to see him this week.
Thank you in advance for the copy of your Chernyshevsky.b I await it impatiently.
Here things are moving, albeit slowly and in zigzags. Take, for example, Mawdsley, the leader of the Lancashire textile workers. He is a Tory, a conservative in politics, and a pious believer in religion. Three years ago, these people were furious over the 8 hours day, and now they themselves insist on it. In a recent manifesto, Mawdsley, who a year ago was a vehement opponent of any separate politics by the working class, declares that the textile workers should think about direct representation in parliament, and a workers’ newspaper in Manchester calculates that the textile workers in the county of Lancashire alone would control twelve seats in parliament. You will see: it is the trade-unions that will enter parliament; it is not the class but the branch of industry which is asking to be represented. But that is also a step forward. First let us break the subordination of the workers to the two large bourgeois parties by having textile workers in parliament, as we already have miners. When there are a dozen branches of industry represented, class consciousness will explode of its own accord.
To complete the comedy, in this same manifesto Mawdsley requests bimetallism [299] in order to preserve the supremacy of English cotton fabrics on the Indian market!
a phrase in Russian - b G. W. Plekhanov, N. G. Tschernyschewski. Eine literar-historische Studie, Stuttgart, 1894.
1894
One can only despair at these English workers with their sense of imag-inary national superiority, their essentially bourgeois ideas and opinions, their narrow ‘practical’ viewpoint, and the rampant parliamentary corruption which has infected their leaders. Yet things are moving nonetheless. Only the ‘practical’ English will arrive the last, but when they arrive, they will put a very heavy weight on the scales.
My greetings to Axelrod and his family,
Yours,
F. Engels
177. Engels to Stanislav Mendelson 22 May
My dear Mendelson, I have received a long letter from Georgi Plekhanov which contains many things with regard to you and the Polish movement. I intended to read it to you last Sunday, but I have learned that Mme Mendelson was taken ill and that therefore you had to stay at home. If this be convenient to you, I shall come to see you the day after tomorrow, Thursday, from 2 to 2.30 in the afternoon, together with Mme Freyberger, who would like to see how Mme Mendelson is feeling.
Yours truly,
F. Engels
Our compliments to Mme Mendelson, who, we hope, is doing better.
First published in Russian in a collection Gruppa ‘Osvobozhdeniye truda’, No. 2, 1924 1894
178
ENGELS TO GEORGI PLEKHANOV
IN MORNEX (France)
London, 22 May 1894 122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W.
My dear Plekhanov,
Yesterday, shortly after my letter to you had left, Bernstein and Kautsky arrived at my house. That has inevitably changed my plans. I thought that I ought — even without waiting for your express permission — to read them your letter, and put them both in a position to judge for themselves of the Krichevsky business. The impression this created on them will, I believe, be everything you could have desired. Indeed, however much one might wish to remain neutral in issues and disputes within the Russian emigre community, one cannot excuse the behaviour of Krichevsky as regards the translation of the Soziales aus Russland [368] after learning about the translation undertaken by Vera Zasulich.a As for the rest, these gentlemen knew Karl Kautsky had given his consent to the translation of his Erfurt Programmeb; however, he thought that it was to be printed in Russia, or at least, he had not the slightest idea that it would be published in Switzerland.
Ignatievc is, so Kautsky told me, the pseudonym of Helfond (or some name similar to that), who is in Stuttgart. You probably know him. However, as I do not have Kautsky’s authorisation to use this information, I would ask you to treat it as strictly confidential. According to Kautsky and Bernstein, it would seem that Helfond is an honourable fellow who has fallen into Jogiches’ trap by accident rather than malicious intent.
a See this volume, p. 303 - b in Russian -c in Russian in the original.
1894
Yours,
F.E.
179
178. Engels to Georgi Plekhanov 22 May 306. 179. Engels to Boris Krichevsky 31 May
You have my permission to sell off the copies already in print of your Russian edition of Wage Labour and Capital along with my introduction, and I note with satisfaction that you will refrain from publishing my other works. [368]
Apart from that, I thank you for your letter of the 25th which I look upon as a most valuable contribution to the characterisation of certain trends amongst the Russian émigrés. Any inclination I might have to discuss its contents is tempered by the consideration that you yourself probably do not expect to impress anybody with these time-worn catchphrases à la Nechayev, since you yourself are doubtless aware how ludicrous it is to seek to act the Social Democrat while behaving like an anarchist.
But when you say ‘that we could have had no inkling that you had already made over the translation rights to someone else’, you might really have spared yourself that downright falsehood. You knew long before you wrote your letter of the 10th of May that V. Zasulich and Plekhanov were preparing a Russian translation of ‘On Social Relations in Russia’. In view of the character of these people and the friendly relationship I have enjoyed with them for many years, it goes without saying that they would
a See also this volume, p. 302 1894
not have done so without my consent, and of this you quite definitely had more than an ‘inkling’.
180. Engels to Nikolai Danielson 1 June
My dear Sir,
Last week I forwarded to you sheets 7 to 16 incl. of Vol. II P and hope you have received them. They were registered, and my name as sender at the back (L. K.b). [371]
I am glad to learn of the success of the ‘Essays’.c I hope a new edition is in the press. I should be very glad if I could find a German translator for the book, unfortunately most of the translation work from Russian into German is done by ladies, generally not well prepared for economic work.
With many thanks I received the Russian ‘Origin’ etc., [372] the translation, as far as I have read, seems to me very well done, and on the whole the censorship seems to have dealt leniently with the book.
The sheets were sent rather late, but it was the fault of the publisher who delayed them a long time. It is very hard work reading the proofsheets of a book like this. You will find in the sheets sent the solution of the question how the different rates of surplus value are equalised into one and the same average rate of profits, the law of the tendency of that rate of profits constantly to fall, and the mode in which commercial capital participates in the distribution of surplus value. This comes to a conclusion in Sheet
a of Capital- b Louise Kautsky - c Nikolai-on. [Danielson], Outlines of our Post-Reform National Economy, 1893 [title in Russian] 1894
21, in which the 5th Section opens: the splitting up of profits into interest and ‘profits of enterprise’ (Zins und Unternehmergewinn), moneyed capital generally, banking and credit. This section fills up a whole third of the book; it has cost me more trouble than all the rest. — The last third consists of section VI: Rent of Land, and VII : the three kinds of revenue: Rent, profits (interest), wages.
The last of the Manuscript is in the printer’s hands. But I only now find what an enormous amount of arrears of work I have on my hands, as everything not absolutely necessary had to be put back in order to finish Vol. 3rd. This must be my excuse if I do not now recur to some of the economic questions previously discussed between us. As it is, I think we both have plenty of work on our hands and better leave that discussion for another time.
Yours very sincerely
L. K.
The volumes on industrial and agricultural development of Russia (Chicago Exhibition) [373] have reached me. Please accept my hearty thanks. They are very useful indeed, especially when compared with the ‘Essays’.
181. Engels to Paul Lafargue 2 June
My dear Lafargue, Herewith the cheque for £20. Please acknowledge receipt. The last bit of the manuscript of Vol. II P is at the printer’s. What a
a K. Marx, Capital 1894
relief! But the proof-sheets are giving me a rough time; they need close, unremitting attention, it’s wearisome! And Meissner employs a rather careless printer, which makes my job twice as hard. Add to this that Dietz is printing the 3rd edition of my Anti-Dühring and you can take my word for it when I say that I am literally overwhelmed by proof-sheets.
Your description of fashionable socialism in France gave me a good laugh. But it could turn out to be a serious matter. If you had a strong, steady army like the two million German voters, well and good; that would control the heterogeneous mass of newcomers. But with a Party split into Marxists, Blanquists, [20] Allemanists, [21] Broussists [30], and several other ists, not to mention the ex-Radicals [86] of the Millerand stamp who boss all the others in the Chamber, it is very hard to say where this new fashion is going to lead you. You compare it to Boulangism [6]: Boulangism, after a few months’ spree, ended in the mire and in ignominy. In a movement of this kind it is pretty well certain that phrase-mongers like Jaurès, who already arrogate to themselves the sole right to speak for you all in the Chamber, will boss things.
Today they have the ear of the House where they silence our people, tomorrow they will have the ear of the nation.
It is always on the cards that the whole thing will not turn out too badly, and even well; but, in the meantime, you will go through some curious experiences, and I am glad for us all that there is a solid combat corps in Germany whose actions will decide the battle. This socialist mania which is emerging in your country may lead to a decisive struggle in which you will win the first victories; the revolutionary traditions of the country and of the capital, the character of your army, reorganised since 1870 on a far more popular basis — all this makes such an eventuality possible. But to ensure victory, to destroy the foundations of capitalist society, you will need the active support of a much stronger, more numerous, more tried and more conscious socialist party than you have at your command. It would mean the achievement of what we have foreseen and predicted for many years. The French give the signal, open fire, and the Germans decide the battle.
In the meantime, we are nowhere near that and I am very curious to see how the confused enthusiasm surrounding you will resolve itself.
Even Carl Hirsch noted in the Rheinische Zeitung that behind all this noise over Turpin [374] there are but bourse speculators. It is only the English press that is forbidden to say this and consequently, it pretends to see in that an affair of high and low politics. Here one is sure that behind 1894
any great political affair there must be the bourse and the smart operators, and this is why it is strictly forbidden to speak of that. Protestant bourgeois hypocrisy! Look at Jabez Balfour and at Mundella who has just resigned from his ministry and for good reason; look at Sir J. Ferguson and Sir J. Gorst, who are also implicated and who probably have made themselves ineligible for any future Tory ministry. [375]
The other day Kautsky came to us — he has been four times to us. Louise and her husband received him in the most amiable manner; if someone was embarrassed, it was not they.
As to your medallion (that is to say, mine), this will make difficulties. Once I was foolish enough to have myself photographed in profile, but this will never happen to me again. I have such a foolish look that I would rather not have my portrait in profile go down to posterity. However, I would be pleased to see the medallion of Marx (send it also for Tussy, please!), and I am quite curious if your artist has succeeded in reproducing the nose which, in profile, has really impossible lines.
Kiss Laura on my behalf! Greetings from Louise and Ludwig. The latter continues trying to get English physicians to see how much their colleagues on the continent are superior in real science, anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc.
Cordially yours,
F. Engels
1900 and in full in: F. Engels, Translated from the French P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II I, Paris, 1959
182. Engels to Witold Jodko-Narkevich 5 June
My dear Jodko, I cannot recall exactly whether you have translated and published 1894
in Przedswit my article Eine polnische Proklamation (Internationales, aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ [370]). If you have, please send me another copy of Przedswit with this article; some Polish students from Vienna have asked me for permission to translate it.a
Yours
F. Engels
183. Engels to Stanislaw Zablocki 7 June
Dear Sir,
As you will see from the enclosed, the article in question [376] has already been published in Polish here, first in the London journal Przedswit, nos. 1-3. March 1894; it is now about to appear in pamphlet form also, together with two other pieces of mine, ‘The Bakuninists at Work’ and ‘On Social Relations in Russia’. Since this pamphlet will soon be coming out — in an easily smuggled pocket edition — it would hardly seem worthwhile your making a new translation.
The editors of the Przedswit (Al. Debski), 7 Beaumont Square, Mile End, London, E., will be very glad to furnish you with any further particulars.
Yours very truly
I am sending you Przedswit by book post.b
a See next letter. - b See previous letter 1894
184. Engels to Karl Kautsky 19 June
Dear Baron,
If you would like to have two chapters from Volume II P for the Neue Zeit:
1. Interest and Profit of Enterprise (Chap. XXII I) 2. Externalisation of the Relations of Capital in the Form of Interest-Bearing Capital (Chap. XXIV),
I shall gladly place them at your disposal. Their content lends itself very well to this type of publication, while at the same time they do not contain any of the major solutions which should only appear in context and, for that very reason, should be reserved for publication in toto. No. 2 contains amongst other things the story of Dr Price, Mr Pitt, and the compound interest hocus-pocusb. If you would like to have them, I shall delete such notes, etc., as are not required from the first proof-sheets and send them to you as soon as I have got the revises, in about eight or sixteen days’ time.
I have also routed out the old article von den letzten Dingenc which I am at last licking into shape for you (I resume after having been interrupted for two and a half hours by Liebknecht and Julius,d who have just left), but am changing it and giving it a different titlee; since the time I began it I have been able to study many new things, some of them in the field of early Christianity.
a of Capital-b A reference to Richard Price’s pamphlet, Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (1771) and its supposed influence on Pitt’s policy. - c of Last Things. — d Motteler - e On the History of Early Christianity.
1894
But if I am to complete the aforesaid work, I must conclude this letter from which you will, I hope, see that my thoughts revert to the Neue Zeit whenever Old Father Time allows.a
Many regards from one household to another,
Yours,
F. Engels
185. Engels to Karl Kautsky 26 June
Dear Baron,
Marx’s two chapters’ [5] despatched by registered mail at the same time as this. You might entitle them: ‘From Book II I of Capital by K. Marx’—I and II , and indicate in a note that these are Chapters XXII I and XXIV, taken from Part V, ‘Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise. Interest-bearing Capital’. The titles of the chapters must be retained in each case. In order to simplify things I have deleted the Greek, also all the notes save one important one.
The article ‘On the History of Early Christianity’—that is what I shall probably call the thing — is in hand and, WELL ADVANCED. But yesterday there was a Händel festival at the Crystal Palace and Louise, I and the Avelings went to hear The Messiah. Today I have got to deal with my let-
a A play of words in the original: Neue Zeit (New Times) and ‘alte Zeit’—old time. - b See previous letter.
1894
ters and tomorrow I shall probably buckle to again, but Liebknecht is here and we are having a heat-wave.
Thank you for the bit of the Volksanwalt. As regards the thing from the Critica Sociale, [334] Victor has really been leading me up the garden path. After I had agreed to let him have it, he simply dropped the thing altogether and now proposes to await the moment when it ‘becomes topical’ again. Next time I shall be more wary; he treats his contributors in a very odd way. Well, I look forward keenly to seeing what the fate of your daily will be. [377] Not, I hope, that of Guesde’s and Lafargue’s Socialiste quotidien ‘pour paraître en octobre’ ; [280] only yesterday we were chaffing poor Bonnier about it when he passed this way.
So Carnot has been stabbed to death. A poor, stupid, boring fellow — the first Frenchman to rise to the top through being a bore — and in France too! But now Alexander II I will repudiate the French alliance. ‘Merci,’ he will say, ‘there’s plenty of that sort of thing to be had at home and at less expense!’ Incidentally, there might be a certain element of vengeance for Aiguesmortes in this. [378] I shall be curious to see how the sixty self-styled ‘Socialists’ in the Chamber will now behave.a That the affair will be exploited à la Hödel there can be no doubt, but on the other hand the sixty will weigh heavily in the scales at the presidential elections next Wednesday.b
Kindest regards from one household to the other.
Yours,
F.E.
27 June. Left unfinished yesterday,
Benno Karpeles intervened. During the past three days there has been 1. One Hellmut von Gerlach of Berlin, 2. Liebknecht, 3. Karpeles and, today, 4. Prof. Tönnies of Kiel — not to mention the Händel Festival the day before yesterday — so how can a man be expected to work?
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Published in English for the first time Prag, 1935
a See this volume, p. 262 - b 27 June 1894
186. Engels to Otto Wachs end June-early July
To Major Wachs
Unfortunately, as things are in the Party today, I was obliged to maintain a certain reserve in view of the fact that hea contributes to Das Volk. Not because of the paper’s standpoint which would have counted for little in a purely personal relationship, but until very recently its editor-in-chief, Mr Oberwinder, played a role in, and on the periphery of, the Social Democratic Party such as to make it absolutely imperative that we also observe a certain reticence vis-à-vis his colleagues. [380] Needless to say, it would never occur to me to ask of these, Mr Oberwinder’s colleagues — as to whose good faith I am not in doubt — that they should believe what we know about him. As you are aware, every social group has its own point d’honneurb and that is what is at stake in this instance amongst us Social Democrats.
187. Engels to Boris Krichevsky July
1. You say: ‘V. Zasulich’s and Plekhanov’s intention was, it is true, a Hellmut von Gerlach - b sense of honour 1894
known to us long before the 10th of May, but only at third hand’. The said third hand was that of Mr J. Blumenfeld, whose address, 3 Ch. de la Roseraie, Genève, is the only one supplied on the jacket of your edition of [K. Marx, Wage Labour and Capital]a. According to the self-same advice, even subscriptions to Kautsky’s work,b are to be sent to the same address (no other being supplied). If, therefore, V. Zasulich and Plekhanov sent the information in question to what was your Library’s sole official address, this was perfectly adequate and it is puerile, anarchistic casuistry to describe it as information at third hand.
2. The moment you were in receipt of that information you were more than ever bounden to address yourself to me as the only person having the right to decide between the two claimants in this case. You did not do so because you already knew what my answer would be, because you wished to steal a march on V. Zasulich and Plekhanov in a dishonourable manner, and were counting on my bowing to a fait accompli. You were totally mistaken, because generally mistaken, in regard to the times, imagining that, at the present state of development both of the European and of the Russian socialist movement, it would be possible to revert to the old prevarications and impertinencies of a Bakunin or a Nechayev and this time, what’s more, with success.
188. Engels to Laura Lafargue 4 July
My dear Löhr, Tussy writes to say that the heat in Paris interferes with the free action of her intellect and in proof encloses 4 stamps 25 centimes each — I could
a Title in Russian - b Erfurt Programme [title in Russian] 1894
have believed it without that! Anyhow I return the stamps to you as she may be leaving before they arrive.
I told Liebknecht Paul’s letters were das beste im ganzen ‘Vorwärts’a but he won’t believe it — it’s true all the same; his letter today about Carnotb is very good again, calm and clear judgment, none of the spasmodic paragraphs which the Vorwärts is so fond of launching on English and French politics.
Cannot you send me a few Petite Républiques? Just now the Jaures and Millerands are on their trial, and I am very much interested in seeing how they behave.c My confidence in their political and economical intellect does not exactly increase; but I shall only be too glad if they could prove me in the wrong.
Liebknecht left on Monday evening, had to speak at Aix la Chapelle on Tuesday.
Yesterday 10 sheets 3rd Vol. Capital which we had forwarded to Petersburg for translation were returned: ‘Défendu’!d
I must close — another proof-sheet to be got ready and then I have to go to town.
Love to you all
Ever yours F.
Engels
t. II I, 1891-1895. Paris, 1959 Reproduced from the
original
189. Engels to Ludwig Schorlemmer 5 July
Dear Schorlemmer,
Now that the final manuscript of Volume II I of Capital is in the print-
a the best thing in the whole of Vorwärts - b [P. Lafargue,] Gallus, ‘Präsident Carnot’, Vorwärts, No. 151, 3 July 1894 - c See this volume, p. 262 - d Prohibited
190. Engels to Editor of the Neue Zeit 9 July
1894
ers’ hands, I am once again able to turn my attention to your affairs, [199] and can let you have the much delayed reply to your note of 25.4.
There are certain snags about the continuation of Carl’s major work, brought out by the Vieweg Verlag, and this also applies to all the rest of his other stuff held by that firm. When I went down to Manchester I took a look at the contracts which stipulate that if, for instance, Carl were to die before completion of the whole, Vieweg might have the work completed by a person of his own choosing. This is the reason for his silence and also for his failure to publish the work left behind by Carl; he obviously wishes to retain a completely free hand. Nor can he be expected to pay any further royalties. For 1. by the terms of the contract, he will pay only for mos. that are ready for press, i.e. no unfinished stuff, and 2. will pay no royalties in respect of new editions to which no changes have been made.
In short, Vieweg can do exactly as he likes and will, if he is to bring out Vol. V, in any case have to find another author for the German edition. [311]
As regards Carl’s work on the history of chemistry, Siebold has written to tell me that, because of constant illness, he has not yet been able to prepare the ms. for press, nor has he yet completed his English translation. [313] The poor devil has had rotten luck with his health, his nerves being again in a very poor state, and will need a long rest and plenty of fresh air if he is to recover. As far as money matters are concerned there is no need for you to worry; they are in good hands and, as things are now, Roscoe is also in control of this aspect so that ultimately one must content oneself with the particulars he supplies in respect of payments made for work such as revision, etc. It is possible that Roscoe’s task has been made somewhat easier by his having dealt with Siebold direct instead of with myself as promised, but it won’t make much difference since I should in any case have had to refer him to Siebold and Klepsch in respect of all settlements and should, in the end, have had to make do with his assurances. A vital factor here is that, with the rapid advances made in chemistry, any textbook becomes out of date within a year unless constantly revised and thus, where this sort of literature is concerned, only a living author can keep his end up vis-à-vis either publishers or readers.
I had hoped I might again visit Germany this summer but shall not be able to, the reason being that precisely during the summer months and because of matters connected with my lease I must remain in the vicinity of London so as to be able to return there at any moment should need 1894
arise; indeed, I don’t even know when, if at all, I shall be able to repair to the seaside. I really ought to have got all this settled last year but I missed the opportunity while on the Continent [189] and, by the time I got back, it was too late.
You will shortly be able to read two chapters from Vol. II I of Capitala in the Neue Zeit, and possibly something of mine as well.b
Liebknecht left on Monday, having been here for over a week. It is tremendously hot as it is no doubt where you are. In Paris the heat is said to be intolerable.
Many regards from
Yours,
F. Engels
190
ENGELS TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEUE ZEIT
IN STUTTGART
[London,] 9 July 1894
At the request of Mr K. Kautsky and in reply to his inquiry from Hirsau on 7.7.94, I beg to inform you that Chapter of Das Kapital, p. 359, lines 9 and 10 from the top, should read: ‘Welchen Rohprofit es ihm als fungierendes— Kapital... abwirft’ [‘what gross profit it yields to him as functioning capital’.] Likewise, on p. 368, line 3 from the top, the expression fungierendes Kapital’ [‘functioning capital’] is correct.
Further, on p. 363, line 14 from the top, a comma may, in fact, be inserted after desselben [‘of it’] in the sentence: ‘in Form von denen das gesamte Kapital, abgesehen von dem in Geld existierenden relativ kleinen
a See this volume, p. 314 - b F. Engels, On the History of Early Christianity.
1894
Teil desselben, vorhanden ist’ [‘which make up the total capital outside of a relatively small portion of it, existing in money’], as this brings out the meaning better. [381]
I am very pleased about the discovery of the printing error on P. 359, namely fungierendem in place of fungierendes, for which kindly convey my best thanks to K. Kautsky,
Yours very faithfully,
F. Engels
191. Engels to Karl Kautsky 16 July
Dear Baron,
My article on early Christianity [1] goes off by registered mail today to the Editor, Neue Zeit, Furthbachatr. 12, as does this letter, since I have not got your exact address in Hirsau and do not know how long you will be staying there.
Since the ms. is barely legible and contains many corrections, I should be glad if you could send me the galley proofs. No doubt minor amendments and additions would be admissible in the case of such comprehensive material.
There was indeed a slip of the pen in the passage from Das Kapital, Chapter 23, and you did me a real service in pointing it out.b
Because of sundry business matters I cannot go away at the moment. At the beginning of August I hope to be able to go to the seaside. Nothing
a F. Engels, On the History of Early Christianity. — b See previous letter.
1894
will come of a trip to the Continent this year. At this precise moment it is raining cats and dog.
Kindest regards from one household to the other.
Yours,
F.E.
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Published in English for the first time Prag, 1935
192. Engels to Victor Adler 17 July
Dear Victor,
I am glad that those few marks should have arrived so opportunely and trust you will use them to treat yourself to the rest and recuperation out in the country which are so absolutely essential to you. You simply must go away; what you need more than anything else is to recover from the wear and tear of your time in prison. [349] You yourself say you feel done in and that, if truth be told, is not surprising, so the moment you are released, out into the country with you! This would also be the best way of ensuring your wife’s complete recovery.
The additional chapter (it is only the enlargement of an already extant one) in Anti-Dühring is by Marx, so the only work I had to do on it consisted in copying and editing. [382]
About 36 sheets of Volume II P have been set up and there will probably be more than 50 all told. Since it is wholly in Meissner’s interest to get the thing out by September, it will doubtless be ready by then.
I wish your daily paper well and am already looking forward to seeing it.
[377] It is really essential to set the insufferable Vorwärts an example of
of Capital 1894
‘how things are done’. The chaps can hardly fail to follow it. However, when you are in jug, one sometimes becomes aware that the Arbeiter Zeitung, too, has men who are unsuitable and who push themselves to the fore where they have no business to be. But once the daily is in existence, your activities as a speaker will automatically be confined to a few occasions of crucial importance, and this will mean your spending less time in jug, while a dummy editor is in any case indispensable to the paper as such, if only as the sacrificial lamb who takes upon himself the sins of the editorial department.
And again, in Vienna, you have just now a soil more favourable to a daily than that proffered by Berlin. The political movement to which you belong is in the ascendant; you are assured of getting electoral reform [270] and the very fact of fighting for a goal such as this, for an immediate political advance is of tremendous advantage to your paper. Electoral reform, however, is no more than the impulse that will set the ball rolling and will necessarily entail other concessions relating to the press, association, assembly, legal practices, etc. In short, you are engaged in an offensive and one, which, to begin with at any rate, is assured of victory. In France, Germany and Italy, on the other hand, our people are engaged in what is a by no means always promising defensive action and have to withstand the onslaught of a reaction constantly reinforced by the adherence of the most disparate parties. It is proof that — in Germany, at least,—our people have really become a power in the land, while in France, a country riddled with revolution, it is proof that our people are at least looked upon as a power. But none the less you are, at the moment, in a better position to fight — you are attacking, gaining ground step by step, and every fresh bit of ground you seize and occupy not only strengthens your position but brings you vast numbers of fresh reinforcements. Your primitive constitutionalism is such that there are still at least a few positions for the workers to capture, and by lawful means at that, i.e. means whereby they themselves will be politically educated — positions which ought to have been captured by the bourgeoisie. In our country, too, there are still positions of this kind to be taken, but these we shall only get if the impulse comes from without, from a country where the amalgamation of the old forms— feudalism, bureaucracy and police — with more or less modern, civil institutions, has given such preponderance to the first as to produce a situation of impossible complexity. And that is the happy state in which you find yourselves, not to mention the even hap-
1894
pier one of having a workers’ movement big enough and strong enough to bring things to a head and thus, I hope, provide the impulse required by Germany, France and Italy if they are temporarily to disrupt the far too premature formation of the ‘one reactionary mass’, [214] and replace chronic reactionary oppression with a number of civil reforms such as freedom of movement for the masses. Not until you have fought for and won electoral reform — of no matter what kind — not until then will the agitation against the three-class electoral system in Prussia [291] have any significance. And even now the fact that there is going to be some sort of electoral reform in Austria has already averted the threat that hung over universal suffrage in Germany. So at this moment you people have a very important historical mission. It is you who will constitute the vanguard of the European proletariat, and initiate the general offensive which we can only hope will not falter again before we achieve victory all along the line — and it is you yourself who will be leading that vanguard; so unless you go out into the country forthwith and thoroughly recoup your strength, you will be neglecting what is your foremost duty.
And how serious that duty is becomes all the more apparent when you reflect that the only rivals whom you might have as a vanguard are the French. You wrote and told Louise that you would like me to report on the latter. I have put it off until today because 1. last week Tussy returned from the Glassworkers’ Congress in Paris and 2. Bonnier came to see us the day before yesterday and I wanted to hear their side of the story first. WELL, SO far as I can see, the position is this:
The last elections [208] brought some twenty-five ‘Socialists’—Marxists, Broussists, [30] Allemanists, [21] Blanquists [20] and Independents — into the Chamber. At the same time they eliminated what had hitherto been the ‘Radical group’, also describing itself as républicains socialistes, [86] notably by excluding all its former leaders. Thereupon some thirty members of that group, who had been re-elected, combined under the leadership of Millerand and Jaures and suggested that they and the ‘Socialists’, should join forces. [169] It was a very safe move on their part for not only were they more numerous then the old Socialists, they were also united whereas the latter were fragmented into umpteen groups. In this way they once more formed in the Chamber a respectable group some fifty or sixty strong without having to offer the old Socialists anything more than a highly platonic socialist programme, the politically radical articles of which had already formed part of their earlier programme as had their general pro-
1894
working class attitude, while the socialisation des moyens de productiona still remained an innocent chimera which might perhaps acquire practical significance three or four generations hence, but certainly not any sooner.
Our twenty-five old Socialists seized on the opportunity with both hands. They were not in a position to lay down conditions, being far too disunited for that. The intention was, it is true, that they should act in concert in the Chamber, as during the elections, but that, for the rest, all the separate organisations should continue to exist alongside one another; indeed, an attempt on the part of any one group to lay down specific conditions for the new Socialists would have brought it into conflict with the others. For that matter, they would not have been Frenchmen, had not the immediate prospect of swelling their numbers in the Chamber from twenty-five to fifty-five or sixty filled them with enthusiasm, and had not present victory, or a semblance thereof, blinded them to the dangers that lay ahead. Damn it all, aren’t the Germans for ever crowing about their forty-four deputies? And at one fell swoop we’ve got fifty-five if not sixty! La France reprend sa place à la tête du mouvement!c
The thirty or thirty-five new Socialists have entered into a marriage of convenience with Socialism. They would just as soon not have done so, but taking the plunge was the shrewdest thing for them to do. Having realised that they would not, after all, be able to carry on without the workers, they have had to ally themselves with the latter for better or for worse. But for no-one was that alliance an altogether voluntary affair at first, as it certainly still is not for many today.
Of its leading representatives, Millerand is the shrewdest and, I believe, the most sincere, but I fear that some of his bourgeois-legal prejudices are more deep-seated than he himself realises. Politically he is the most capable of the whole bunch. Jaurès is an academic and doctrinaire who enjoys the sound of his own voice and whose voice the Chamber enjoys listening to more than to that of Guesde or Vaillant because he is more closely akin to the gentlemen of the majority. I believe it is his sincere intention to turn himself into a decent Socialist but, as you know, the zeal of such neophytes is in direct relation to their lack of practical knowledge which, in the case of Jaurès, is very great. Which explains how it was that
a the socialisation of the means of production - b France will once more resume her place at the head of the movement.
1894
in Paris Jaures tabled as socialist the self-same motion as that put forward in Berlin by Count Kanitz in the interest of the Junkers — the nationalisation of the import of grain with a view to raising the price of corn. [356] And since the old Socialists in the Chamber evince a lack of practical knowledge in oeconomicisa hardly less extreme — Lafargue’s defeat at Lille means there is no one on the spot who knows anything about the subject — Guesde could not abstain from supporting at least part of the motion as ‘socialist’ and directed against ‘speculation’. To propose to do away with ‘speculation’ by handing over the grain trade to a government and a government party consisting of Panamite confidence tricksters [60] is indeed a splendidly socialist idea. I have, through Bonnier and Lafargue, conveyed to the gentlemen concerned my unvarnished opinion of this colossal blunder.
I further told them that, though fusion rather than a mere alliance with the new Socialists might be their inevitable fate, they should bear in mind the possibility of there being bourgeois elements amongst the latter and that this might involve them in a conflict over principles, in which case a split might become inevitable. They must, I went on, prepare for this so that in the event the transition to a simple alliance could proceed smoothly and not surprise them into making blunders. Above all, should the chaps in the joint group put forward anything they felt unable to endorse and they be outvoted, they should repudiate any obligation to take the floor in the Chamber in support of such measures, but rather reserve the right to justify their adverse opinion in their press even if, for the sake of unity, they had had to vote in favour of the said measures.
Well, we shall have to see if it does any good. Thus, on the one hand there are the new Socialists who are imposing a certain unity on the most disparate groups of old Socialists. On the other, our chaps abroad, who find it puzzling that a group of some sixty men should suddenly have appeared ‘out of thin air’ and that its chief spokesmen, Millerand and Jaurès, should not hitherto have been known to be Socialists; hence the very natural doubts as to the authenticity of the aforementioned sixty, particularly after the brilliant impression left behind in Zurich by the French delegates. [250]
Beneath the surface, the intrigues and mutual recriminations of the various sects continue unchecked. In particular the Marxists complain about Vaillant who is constantly touring the provinces for propaganda
a economic matters 1894
purposes and is alleged to be spreading all manner of false calumnies about the Marxists there. At one time Vaillant used almost always to act in concert with the Marxists but 1. He is a strictly Blanquist party man who carries out the party’s resolutions no matter what the circumstances, and for two years there has been trouble between the Blanquists and the Marxists; and 2. There are a great many Possibilists [30] in his constituency; he needs these people and this is partly why he has gone over to them.
It is very possible that the new reactionary measures in France [383] will act as a spur to the new Socialists and that the group of sixty will gradually become a truly socialist group. But that is not yet the case and things might well turn out differently.
In this country life is proceeding in the usual English leisurely fashion. Economic and political developments alike are increasingly impelling the majority of English working men in our direction, but it may be years before these ‘pragmatists’, wholly unaccustomed to taking a theoretical view of things and incapable of seeing beyond their own noses, become conscious of their own feelings and requirements unless virtually forced to do so. In the meantime political intrigue of the bourgeois-parliamentary variety continues to flourish mightily amongst the ‘leaders’, and never a day goes by without one’s hearing of some startling instance of this.
Ludwig is today sitting his examination for admission as MEMBER, (not merely LICENCIATE) OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. The thing goes on for a fortnight. Soon after it is over we shall, with any luck, be able to go to the seaside — this year I shall be prevented from leaving England by domestic business.
Louise sends her love and says that there is no question of umbrage having been taken; you will shortly learn the reason for your not yet having had a reply.
Warm regards to your wife, Adelheid, Popp and all our friends.
Yours,
F. E.
Erstes Heft: Victor Adler Published in English for the first time 1894
193. Engels to Julius Motteler 21 July
Dear Julius,
Herewith a letter from Siegel which I have been asked to pass on to you.
[384] I have written to the Executive Committee about the 300 marks. [25] Should you be able to do something in the Club [62] here, or anything else for the chaps, it would be a good deed; in the meantime I have sent them a pound.
Kindest regards to your wife. Our house is in mourning, the canary hen having died while sitting on her four eggs — from a stroke, it would seem.
Yours,
F.E.
194. Engels to Karl Kautsky 28 July
Dear Baron,
There is no hurry about printing the article.a Once I have seen to the proofs you can print it when you wish, in September, say, or even October. I have been mulling the thing ever ever since 1841 when I read a lecture
a F. Engels, On the History of Early Christianity.
1894
by F. Benary on Revelation. Since then I have been in no doubt that here we have the earliest and most important book in the New Testament. After a gestation period of fifty-three years there is no great need to hasten its emergence into the world at large. As to your questions.
1. If I have expressed myself correctly in other respects, I certainly would not describe serfs and small peasantsa as being amongst the earliest adherents of Christianity; rather I should number them amongst those classes where it might expect to find adherents. And to these they quite certainly belonged— especially in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. There is no doubt that, from the time Christianity first spread from Judaea to Northern Syria and Asia Minor and Greece, Egypt and Italy, it was in the towns that it developed and found its earliest adherents.
2. You ask whether the millennium is of this world or of the next. That depends on how one interprets it. I call the next world that which comes after death. And on this point Revelation leaves one in absolutely no doubt whatever. The millennium is reserved only for the martyrs and at best for such Christians as happen to be still living when it comes about, and to that extent, for the latter, it is of this world, whereas for the martyrs, who are only then resurrected from the dead, it is of the next. So it’s the old story: You PAYS YOUR MONEY AND YOU TAKES YOUR CHOICE. TO my mind what decides the issue is the fact that it is impossible unless one has a concept of immortality and a belief in reward and punishment in the next world. Even less of this world is the New Jerusalem which is to come after the millennium and the Last Judgement.
But the so-called Pauline Epistles also have it that those believers still living at Christ’s second coming are to be ‘changed’, i.e. transformed and magnified from mortals into immortals.
That the millennium was here depicted in earthly colours goes without saying. Even Revelation cannot rest content with such heavenly delights as sitting with a bare bottom on a damp cloud, twanging a harp with more or less gory hands and singing hymns to all eternity.
The preface to Volume II Ib has 1. not yet been written and 2. I cannot give it to you. This solution of the rate of profit and price question and of
a As can be judged from Kautsky’s letter of 23 July 1894, to which Engels is replying, there is apparently a slip of the pen here: Kleinbauern. Kleinbürger (petty bourgeois) in the ms. - b of Capital 1894
the distribution of price can only be given its due in the book itself.
Save for Sorge and Schlüter there are no intelligent correspondents to be found anywhere in America, because the Germans there stick obstinately to the same sectarian attitude towards the workers as is stubbornly adhered to by the Social Democratic Federation [44] over here. Instead of seeing in the movements of the Americans the propulsive element which, even though it may take wrong or circuitous paths, is bound in the end to lead to the same goal as the one they themselves brought with them from Europe, they see only the wrong paths, treat the blind, foolish Americans with arrogant condescension, boast of their own orthodox superiority, repel the Americans instead of attracting them and, as a result, have themselves remained a small, impotent sect. Hence it has come about that their writers have also relapsed into pure ideology and place a false and narrow interpretation on conditions as a whole. Little Hepner, for one, could always be said to have lived in a world of fantasy and when he gets sentimental his stuff beggars description. I once read a comedy of his — though the funny bits were pretty good, the serious love scenes contained so much gush that one became convulsed with laughter.
Kindest regards from one household to another.
Yours,
F.E.
195. Engels to Laura Lafargue 28 July
My dear Löhr, This morning I had a letter from Paul, but much obliged as I am to 1894
him for it, yours is older and claims attention first; and indeed I have been trying to find time to write, all the week, and have been stopped day after day by interruptions endless in number and variety. The fact is I am not sure of remaining much longer in 122; I ought to have settled that business last year, but was enjoying myself on the continent, [189] and now have to face the dilemma: either to get the whole house thoroughly overhauled or to look out for another. I have attended to both eventualities, and maybe in a few weeks may know where I am, or at least where I am to be in future.
You ask about Pumps. I have hardly heard from them for months past. Percy had lost, or given up, the agency for his brothers in the Isle of Wight; he had spent a lot of money (not his own) but induced me to become surety for him for a loan to enable him to look out for other agencies in the same line of business, where he said he could make it pay. All at once, in June, I am informed by him that, in consequence of some arrangement with his family, he is going to sell up his furniture and come back to London; on my remonstrating, I am told it is now too late and the plan must be carried out. Then I heard that they were at a school in Kent where their little boy is, and at last, last Monday, they turned up here. As far as I can learn, the family arrangement is all moonshine, at least it leaves him in the same shiftless position as before, After all I have done for them, I am not going to quietly submit to such treatment, and did not receive them very heartily. What Percy is going to do and how this is to end, is more than I know. The children are at schools. Lily at Herne Bay and is said to be getting on well; the boy is near Sittingbourne, very delicate, and ailing again while Pumps was there last week. The youngest girl is with them.
Thanks to you for the article of Jaurès in the Revue Socialiste;a it seems awfully shallow as far as I can see, but the man looks after all as if he was learning a bit, so we will not give up all hopes. The Petite République is indeed awful reading — the discursive matter as well as the soi-disantb reports of facts, and you will not be astonished to learn that I do no longer long for it, unless it given real news, real reports, or articles from Jaurès (whose evolution I should like to follow) and Millerand. Les élucubrations de MM. Rouanet, Fournière, Viviani etc. ne me laissent que tro froid.c
a J. Jaurès, ‘Introduction à la Morale Sociale de Benoît Malon,’ La Revue Socialiste, t. XIX, June 1894. - b so-called — c Disquisitions of Messieurs Rouanet, Fournière, Viviani etc. leave me indifferent.
1894
I am really obliged to the Ere Nouvelle for giving you a chance to restore in the French Manifeste,a as published by the Socialiste, those passages where the Parisian text revisers, dans l’intérêt et de la langue française et des auteurs du ‘Manifeste’,b had considerably narrowed the horizon of certain expressions. Of course I shall be very glad to see it reprinted as often as you can get it done.
My congratulations to Paul on the Delagrave acquisition. [386] May this lead to further business!
Where do I go this summer? alas all hope of going to Le Perreux is knocked on the head by that beautiful new law! [383] And the worst of it is that this time the old English lawyer’s saying becomes applicable to France: the law is there, and what the courts will make of it, is more than we know. My impression is that the government will not lose much time before it sees that a precedent is established of the application of that law to Socialism, and to the inclusion of Socialism under the heading of anarchism. The Cour de cassationc is quite capable of that. The German Socialist law [15] kept me from Germany thirteen years, let us hope this new law will not last long enough to prevent me from coming to France once more in my life.
Paul is not quite so enthusiastic about the situation in in France as ce cher Bonnier who considers the whole debate — result and all — an unmitigated triumph for French Socialism; but still his way of looking at the subject seems to me rather couleur de rose. The main advantage I consider indeed to be the irrefutable proof that our party is the only real and serious opposition party in France as well as in Germany; and that the French Radicals [86] are no more serious in their pretended opposition than the German Richters & Co. From that, as Paul says, a real union of all Socialist elements must grow; and the persecution now initiated will hasten it; and if this unification, under the auspices of Jaurès, Millerand & Co, and their lot,d means a lowering of the standard of the official expression of the party, un abaissement de niveau intellectuel et politique,e this comes from the previous indulging in revolutionary phraseology, as Paul also sees very clearly, and is but the necessary consequence of it.
Love from Louise. Freyberger who sends his kind regards has just been re-
a K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party - b in the interests of the French language and the authors of the Manifesto - c Court of appeal - d See this volume, p. 318 - c a lowering of theoretical and political level 1894
ceived a member of the Royal College of Physicians, after examination. Salut
à Paul.
Ever yours
F.E.
196. Engels to Filippo Turati 31 July
My dear Turati,
A certain Mr Pasquali has arrived here a couple of days ago saying that he has been banished for the Sicily business [388] and was obliged to leave Paris, where he was a correspondent for Punto Nero (and in possession of authorisation from the editorial board), but had been threatened by the police.
In Turin he was a preacher or missionary of the English sect of Baptists, and showed me the letter from his ecclesiastical superior in which he was removed from this post because of his socialism.
He will need assistance since, even if he seriously looked for work, he does not speak a word of English.
As in other countries we have had some curious experiences with ex-ec-clesiastics of Christian, Jewish and other religions. I and my other friends here would be obliged to you if you could give us some information on this man, who claims to know you.
Has he indeed been banished from Italy? Has he indeed been obliged to leave Paris to escape pursuit? Has he indeed played a role, and if so, what, in the events in Sicily and in the socialist movement in Italy in general?
1894
Greetings to you and Mme Anna from Louise Kautsky-Freyberger and myself,
Yours,
F. Engels
(French) in: Annali, an. I, Translated from the French Milano, 1958
197
197 Engels to Victor Adler 4 August
Dear Victor,
The encl. letter and also a parcel were handed in here along with the anonymous note [389] overleaf, addressed to me. Probably from the anarchist philologist Nettlau (...)a No doubt you will give instructions in due course as to what is to be done with the parcel.
I have asked Cerny to pass on to you people a renewed request from the Spanish National Council that you send them a brief congratulatory message in Spanish or French on the occasion of the congress they are holding on 29 August. [390] I am repeating this in order to be on the safe side. Address:
Pablo Iglesias, Hernán Cortès 8, pral. Madrid. Warm regards to your wife and yourself.
Yours,
F.E.
Louise and Ludwig also send you their warmest regards.
a At this point there is a break in the text.
1894
198. Engels to Pablo Iglesias 9- 14 August
Dear Iglesias,
I have received your letters of 8 June and 27 July. With regard to your congress [390] I have written to Berlin (the answer is affirmative) and to Vienna (no answer so far); also to the Social Democratic Federation [44] here (H. W. Lee, Secretary), the Independent Labor Party [114] (Tom Mann, Secretary) and the gas workers [391] (W. Thorne, Secretary; Comrade Avelinga is a member of the Executive Council)—they will all drop you a line. Further, to the Standing Parliamentary Committee of the Trades-Unions Congress [28] (Fenwick, Secretary, M. P.), the League for Eight Hours [197] (Sheridan, Secretary; they are certain to write to you) and the Fabian Society [43] (E. R. Pease, Secretary), from which I have received no reply.
The above list will give you an idea of the personal divisions, jealousies and quarrels adorning the labour movement here. Look: on Monday, the 6th instant, the S. D. F. held a conference. There it was proposed that in the coming parliamentary elections the S. D. F. should support the candidates of the Independent Party provided that they declared themselves socialists. The proposal was rejected. But if the ‘independents’ refuse to vote for the Federation’s candidates and to support them, they will be seen as traitors! Further, the S. D. F. Conference resolved that because the London international congress in 1896 [392] is not to be exclusively socialist, the Federation will convene an exclusively socialist international
a Eleanor Marx-Aveling 1894
congress, to be opened three days before the general congress of workers!! What will the socialists of other nations say? While all that — and much else — has no practical importance, those are attempts by various groups to exploit in their particular interests the convocation and holding of an international congress. It is best not to discuss or attach too much importance to those things in the press until they have taken a more distinct form. For all that, the movement among the working masses is making headway, the idea of socialising the means of production is gaining ground, and the day will come when the class-conscious masses throw out all schemers and corrupt leaders.
Every week Comrade Eleanor Marx-Aveling publishes in Workman’s Times a report on progress in the international movement. You would do well to send her El Socialista if possible, for she understands Spanish. Address: Eleanor Marx-Aveling, etc.
Take care of yourself. All the best from your old and faithful friend.
Works, First Edition, Translated from the Spanish Vol. XXIX, 1946
199. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 14 August
Dear Ede,
We are safely installed here and up till now, i.e. since 2.30, have been very pleased also with the way they have looked after us. Let’s hope it will so continue. [393]
I shall be interested to hear whether and how Liebknecht has reacted to your promptings on the subject of Arndt. The matter ought not to be passed over in silence like this. We had better wait and see what transpires. A man who behaved as he did at Zurich has no place on the Vorwärts. [394] 1894
I have returned your textile worker.a Dogmatism. If one wants to base oneself on that sort of dogma, one ought to secure one’s allies in advance, otherwise one is likely to make an ass of oneself. [395]
As to the Social Democratic Federation [44] and its special congress, I have already advised Spainb of the matter and shall do the same in the case of Italy and Paris, but am asking the chaps not to make too much fuss about it for the time being. For either the Social Democratic Federation issues a circular to justify the resolution and get its own brand of agitation going or we scotch the whole thing simply by means of statements in the Continental press to the effect that not a single delegate would be sent to such a congress. If, however, the circular does appear, there will be official discussions about it on all sides and that would be far preferable.
The Social Democratic Federation must have got wind of the Parliamentary Committee’s [28] S061 proposal (long bruited about) to change the 1896 Congress [392] into a TRADES UNION congress and to take the requisite steps to that end in Norwich. [396] Hence they obviously wanted to be first in the field. These little schemes might well result in the Continentals saying: Neither of the two congresses is the one you ought to convoke and, since you don’t want to convoke the latter, we’ll simply go somewhere else and leave you to settle your squabbles between you.
It is inconceivably stupid of the Social Democratic Federation to have passed at the same time the resolution in regard to the Independent Labour Party [114] candidates, whether Socialists or not. It’s the old story: either you are a Socialist, in which case you belong to the Social Democratic Federation or else you are unwilling to join the Social Democratic Federation, in which case you are no Socialist. But what seems to have entirely escaped their minds is the fact that these two resolutions, set side by side, would be bound to make the Continentals feel disinclined to have anything to do with the Social Democratic Federation’s congress.
All this, incidentally, has left me comparatively unmoved. Between now and the congress all kinds of water will flow down the Thames and neither the quantity nor the quality of that water can possibly be predicated today.
I am writing to August too about all these things, incl. Arndt. Warm regards to Gine, Ernst, Kätec and you yourself from Louise,
a Der Textil-Arbeiter - b See previous letter. - c Ernst and Käte Schattner, Bernstein’s adopted children.
1894
Ludwig and
Yours,
F.E.
Are the Mendelsons also in Broadstairs?
200. Engels to Thomas Clarke 15 August
That from long personal acquaintance I consider Mr. S. Mendelson a respectable and responsible person that in your place I should not hesitate in accepting him as a tenant for such a place as you mention.
201. Engels to Filippo Turati 16 August
4 Royal Parade
My dear citizen Turati,
I am infinitely grateful for the trouble you have taken concerning 1894
Pasquali.a Fortunately, the ‘seccatore diprima sfera [398] ha cessato di seccare la nostra sfera.b In my day they said in Milan [398] of those banished financiers who took the road to Switzerland ‘L’è ànd à Varés’c: Pasquali has gone to Edinburgh, where he is probably going to try his fortune. He announced his visit ‘colla mia moglie e col mio piccolo Marx Guglielmo’,d but he never came, and when one of our friends went to his lodgings, he was told that Mr Pasquali had left, with his family, for Edinburgh. Probably some ‘Christian socialists’, of whom there are a large number here, and someone else from a religious sect, will become interested in this interesting character. Let us wish him bon voyage\
Your bust of Marx does not have many admirers here. [400] There is too little of Marx and too much of Garibaldi in the head. Moreover, even if the bust bore a resemblance, it would be difficult to sell it outside Italy. In Paris they have just struck a rather big medallion which they are trying to sell, and in Germany, Austria and Switzerland these Marxes in plaster have multiplied to the point of being unsaleable.
Your law on suspects [401] goes further than ours of 1878, [15] and the one passed in France in 1894. [383] It entails administrative exile as in Russia. I hope, however, that this is one of those instances which will illustrate the German proverb ‘es wird nichts so heiss gegessen wie es gekocht wird.’e What is certain is that, of all the countries of Europe, Italy is the one where all political ailments suffer acute inflammation: rebellion with the outright use of force on the one hand, and excessively violent reaction on the other. However, where Bismarck failed, Crispi will certainly not succeed: in the end persecution will strengthen socialism in Italy, and all that I desire is that this squall will pass without forcing you temporarily into either the hell of Eritrea or the purgatory of London.
Speaking of London, the Social Democratic Federation, [44] one of the five or six socialist sects here — it has a Marxist programme, but the tactics of an exclusive sect — has just held a congress at which two quite important resolutions were adopted. The first is characteristic of this Federation: it was proposed that the Federation should support the candidates of the Independent Labour Party [114] in the coming parliamentary elections if these candidates proclaim themselves openly to be socialist — rejected
a See this volume, p. 333 - b The bore of the first degree has ceased to pester our circle. - c He went to Varés. - d “together with my wife and my little Marx Guglielmo” - e the devil is not so black as he is painted - f See this volume, p. 337 1894
by a large majority. The Independent Party of Workers is a rival group which has also included ‘the socialisation of the means of production’ in its programme, and which consequently is socialist, although it does not publicise this fact, and has as its aim to secure the election of worker candidates independent from the Conservative and Liberal parties. Everyone had hoped that these two groups would join together for the elections, but no, says the Federation: either you are socialists, in which case you should join our ranks, or else you refuse to join us, and constitute a separate group, and then you are not socialists. So create a movement with such elements!
However, now for that which concerns us more nearly. After a debate in which it emphasised the fact that the congresses held in Paris, [227] Brussels [228] and Zurich [229] were not truly socialist congresses, and that it is time for the socialists to free themselves from the trade-union (corporative) element which is not socialist, the Federation has officially resolved to convene in London, in 1896, a purely socialist congress which will begin three days before the general congress in London. [392]
Note that the group which is calling on the socialist world to attend a special congress which has no mandate whatever, declared at the congress I have just referred to that it had 4,500 members; but according to the secretary,a last year they had 7,000 names on the membership list, so that they have lost almost as many as they have retained, and another member boasted that during the fourteen years that this organisation has existed, no less than a million members have joined and left (except for the 4,500 mentioned above).
An organisation possessing such an ability to attract (and repel), which rejects all socialist candidates save its own (note that the Independent Labour Party, in the provinces, exists in perfect harmony with the SDF!), and which also wishes to exclude the trade unions at a time when they (our largest and most promising terrain for propaganda) are probably going to declare themselves at Norwich [396] for the second time in favour of the socialisation of the means of production (adopted at Belfast in 1893) [402] and adopted again by the council of workers of London [197] in 1894 — such an organisation is indeed well positioned to take the initiative on such a question.
The continental socialists, now united in all the countries, will have
a Henry Mayers Hyndman 1894
to judge whether or not they should agree to the convocation of a congress at which they will have to pass resolutions which will bind them in advance as regards their actions at the general congress. This could not but annoy — and quite rightly — the delegates to the main congress sent by groups which are not quite socialist. And as we know by experience that these groups, by the very fact of attending our congresses, are unconsciously drawn into the socialist lap — the English trade unions are the best proof of this — are we going to be sufficiently narrow to close this door?
You have no idea of the intrigues afoot here as regards this congress. The parliamentary committee of the Trade Union Congress [28] wishes, so it is said, to take control of our congress in order to transform it into a trade union congress pure and simple, like the one held here in 1888, [403] and about which C. Lazzari could tell you certain things. Naturally, on the continent the response to this attempt will be bursts of laughter. However, the Social Democratic Federation would seem to have taken these rumours seriously, and wishes to take advantage of them so that it can take control of the congress and turn it into a separate event. As the resolution adopted by the SDF is official and has been published, one can discuss it in the press. However, it would be better not to lend it too much importance, as it is clearly an attempt to see which way the wind is blowing, and will become important only if there then come steps to carry it through, a circular letter of invitation, etc., etc.
Greetings to you and Mme Anna from Mme Freyberger and myself,
Yours,
F.E.
Please consider this letter as private and confidential.
English for the first time 1894
202. Engels to Paul Lafargue 22 August
4 Royal Parade
My dear Lafargue,
Here we are at Eastbourne since the past week, [393] Louise, her husband and I. I needed it badly and the ozonised sea air is already taking effect. Unfortunately it has been raining more than necessary since yesterday.
Your cheque will arrive during the first days of next month as soon as I shall have had some payments.
I am very curious to see how they are going to administer the new law against suspects. [383] I am by no means sure that they will not use it against the Socialists as much as against the anarchists at a given moment. But though a few individuals may suffer by it, this law will certainly do for you what the ‘78 law did for the Germans; [15] you will defeat it and you will emerge from the struggle infinitely stronger than you went into it.
Here the Social Democratic Federation, [44] which for a time seemed to try to adopt a reasonable and tolerable line of conduct, has suddenly fallen back on the Hyndmanniads of yore. At the Congress which they held in London a fortnight or three weeks ago, [404] the Liverpool delegate moved that at the next general elections they should support the Independent Labour Party [114] candidates provided they publicly declared themselves Socialists. This, against all the rules of English procedure, was turned down in favour of a motion adopted by 42 to 12, that the duty of every Socialist was to belong to an openly revolutionary socialist organisation, such as the Social Democratic Federation (and as the S.D.F. claims that apart from itself there is no other, this meant: belong to the S.D.F.). As for electoral tactics, this was delegated to a committee which will report to the Executive Committee. You know of course that the nationalisation of the means of production is an integral part of the I.L.P. programme. Thus, the reciprocity which hitherto has existed in the North (particularly in Lancashire and Yorkshire) between the two groups, is to all intents and purposes rejected by the S.D.F. which proclaims the policy of 1894
the Caliph Omar in burning the Alexandria library: either these books are contrary to the Koran, in which case they are bad; or they contain the same thing, in which case they are superfluous — into the flames with them! And these people claim the leadership of the socialist movement in Britain!
But there is worse to come. Hyndman has stated that it was time for socialism to detach itself outright from trade unionism, and that instead of joint congresses of the two, there should be an out and out socialist congress. And, as it was realised at the same time that it is still too early to strike a direct blow against the 1896 Congress, [392] they resolved that the S.D.F. should convene an exclusively socialist Congress to be held in London three days before the general Congress of 1896.
What will the continentals say to that? Will they go to such a congress in order later to attend the large, our congress, tied hand and foot by the resolutions passed two or three days earlier [1] in a small committee? Will they provoke a split between the delegates who are thoroughgoing Socialists and those who are not yet that but are on the point of becoming so? Will they administer this slap in the face to the British trade unionists, who have made such progress since the New Unionism [405] has set them on the road towards socialism, who at Belfast in 1893 [402] voted for the nationalisation of the means of production (adopted a few weeks ago in the political programme of even the recalcitrant London Trades Council [197]) and which, in a fortnight’s time, at Norwich [396] will be stating its position in relation to us once again?
But do you know how the S.D.F. in its annual report and the speeches at a conference depicted the strength of that organisation which claims to change the Zurich resolutions [229] (for this is a palpable emendation which contradicts the Zurich resolution)? It has — 4,500 members. Last year 7,000 names passed through its membership list, so it has lost 2,500! But what of it? asks Hyndman. In the 14 years of its existence the S.D.F. has seen a million people pass through its ranks. What organisation! Out of one million, 995,500 have hopped it, but — 4,500 have stayed!
Now for the key to all these idiocies, inconceivable without that key. The 1896 Congress will not leave untouched any of the sects, fractions, groups, etc. which compose what one calls here Organised Labour. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Congress [28] would very much like
a A mistake in the manuscript: after [après].
1894
TO BOSS THE Congress. There are already motions tabled on the agenda for the Trades Congress at Norwich (September) to confine admission of British delegates to the ‘96 Congress only to those qualified for the Trades Congress: bona fide workingmen, working or having worked at the trade they represent. And it is said that they are not a little desirous of extending this system to the continental delegates as well, which would cause explosions of laughter violent enough to shake all London to its foundations. Very well, the S.D.F., which, in its turn, thinks the opportunity has come for it to boss the Congress and, through Congress, the British movement, appears to have taken these rumours as an excuse to launch its little counter-plan.
So far it is only a feeler. But as soon as the S. D. F. issues an invitation circular or something of that kind, the matter will take on substance, and the continental parties will be called upon to come to a decision.
One question: Le Socialiste lebt or noch, oder aber ist er tot?a Since April we haven’t seen a trace of it. If you have succeeded in killing it, do you count this as one of the Party’s victories in France?
Whatever the case, the two months of September and October will be interesting. Towards the 5, the Trades Congress, at Norwich [396] (after the Spanish congress [390] next Sunday), then your congress at Nantes, [406] then the Germans at Frankfurt on 21 October. [418] The last two will be dealing with the question of peasants and farm workers. Overall, the views of the two national groups are the same, only that you intransigent revolutionaries of the bygone days are now inclining a little more towards opportunism than the Germans, who probably will not support any measure which might serve to maintain or conserve small property against the corrosive action of capitalism. On the other hand, they will agree with you that it is not our task to accelerate or intensify this corrosive action, and that a most important thing is to organise small property-holders into agricultural associations to cultivate land in common and on a large scale. I am curious to see which of the two congresses will show itself to be the more advanced in economic theory and propose the more effective practical measures.
Give my greetings to Laura and remind her that she owes me a letter. Greetings from the Freybergers.
Yours,
F.E.
a Is Le Socialiste still alive or is it dead?
1894
In a couple of weeks the Neue Zeit will have an article from me on the origins of Christianity.a The 3rd volumeb is underway, 43 sheets are written; I am writing the Preface.
Pirst published abridged in English, Printed according to the original in the Labour Monthly No. 11, 1955 and, in French, in Cahiers du Communisme, Translated from the French No. 11, 1955 and in full in F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II I, Paris, 1959
203. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 6 September
4 Royal Parade
Dear Ede,
I shall write and tell Schlüter [25] that you haven’t the time and that he can reprint the piece from the Neue Zeit.
The errata can wait until I return on 18 September. [393] The prefacec won’t be finished until later, but you can come and see it at my house before it goes off. You will find the part on the rate of profit in the book proper. There is nothing new on the subject in the preface, merely a critique of the attempts at solving it. [4]° [7]
As to Edwards, I would in your place first inquire from the Avelings as to why they refused and what they know about the man. In English the expression ‘DON’T KNOW HIM’ is not wholly unequivocal. If you are prepared to sacrifice the time, it would certainly be quite a good idea, if you prevent an Arndt, say, or a Hyndman, from writing the article. On the other hand contributing to an annual of this sort which has suddenly been brought into being by someone you don’t know can involve you in some unpleasant experiences. The chap can’t take it amiss if you ask him
a F. Engels, On the History of Early Christianity. - b K. Marx, Capital.-c Preface to Vol. II I of Capital 1894
for the names of the contributors he has already secured. After all, that would enable you to form a more definite opinion. [408]
Pinkau is welcome to a photo as soon as I myself have got another one. As you know, Inka’s attempts miscarried and since then I have not been anywhere near a lens.
Many regards to Gine and the childrena from Louise and
Yours,
F.E.
Freyberger is in London today doing hospital duty.
in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I, 1924 Published in English for the first time
204. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 18 September
We got back this evening. [393] The Baron wants me to let him have some ‘unpublished stuff on the International. I have now searched through my old papers and found something that might possibly do. Could you pick it up here so that it can be translated? Time is pressing, to judge by the Baron’s letter. I shall be in town tomorrow between 10 and about 11 and shall then come back here, but Louise knows where the things are.
Regards to Gine and the childrena from us all.
Yours,
F.E.
a Bernstein’s wife and adopted children 1894
205. Engels to Laura Lafargue 2nd half Sept.
Now to something else. The Trades Union Congress [396] marks a distinct progress against last year, and combined with the Leicester election and other symptoms, shows that things are on the move in England. Of course there is no progress here without a drawback: take the resolution against foreign working men immigration passed at Norwich; but such contradictions and inconsistencies one will have to put up with for some time yet ‘in this free country’. The moment will come after all, when the masses, having attained a sufficient degree of consciousness, will break through the tangled web of the intrigues and sectarian squabbles of the ‘leaders’.
The war between China and Japan [409] seems to me instigated by the Russian government, who use Japan as their tool. But whatever may be the proximate consequences of this war, it must lead to one thing: the total break-up of the whole traditional system in old China. There, an old-fashioned system of agriculture and domestic industry combined has been artificially kept going by rigid exclusion of all disturbing elements. That exclusion of everything foreign has been partially broken through by the wars with the English and French; this war with Asiatics, rivals living next door to the Chinese, must put a complete stop to it.
The Chinese, licked on land and on sea, will have to Europeanise themselves, open their ports generally to trade, establish railways and factories, and thus completely smash up that old system which made it possible to feed so many millions. There will be all of a sudden a constantly increasing surplus population, superseded peasants, who will flock to the coast to search for a living in foreign lands. Where up to now thousands emigrated, millions will want to go then. And then the Chinese Coolies will be everywhere, in Europe as well as America and Australia, and will try to reduce wages and the standard of living of our working men to the Chinese level. And then the time will come for our European workmen.
1894
And the English will be the first to suffer from this invasion and to fight. I fully expect that this Japan-Chinese War will hasten our victory in Europe by five years at least, and facilitate it immensely, as it will drive all non-capitalist classes over to our side. Only the large landed proprietors and manufacturers will be pro-Chinese.
Paul’s articles in the Neue Zeit- are on the whole very good.a There are some historical views in them that do him great credit. The exposition of the causation and course of French history since 1871 is the best I have yet seen. I have learned a good deal from them.
But the considérant of the Nantes agricultural programme, [406] which declares it the duty of the Socialists to maintain and defend the peasants’ property, and even the fermiers and métayers who employ labourers, is more than most people outside France will be able to swallow.
Kind remembrances from the Freybergers. Ever yours
F. Engels
206. Engels to Karl Kautsky 23 September
Dear Baron,
Your appeal for documents on the Internationalb reached me while I was still in Eastbourne. Unfortunately I couldn’t ask Ede to look out something for you, as I had brought the keys to my cupboards with me and he would have had to search through several of them — I myself
a P. Lafargue, ‘Der Klassenkampf in Frankreich’, Die Neue Zeit, Nos. 46, 479 48, 49, 1893-94, Vol. II - b See this volume, p. 346 1894
hardly know where I am amidst the disorder of my old papers. Then, on our return the following day (Tuesday), I looked out something for Ede and we asked him to call that evening but he had to finish the article for the Neue Zeit.a On Wednesday morning the things were collected by Ernst,b but were brought back that same evening by Ede who said that it was now too late and that in any case you already had something. What I had found was in any case nothing out of the ordinary. It is difficult to find an unknown document of the Internationals that will, of itself, still have a telling effect today.
Many thanks for the Entwicklung in Armenian. Luckily I can’t read it. As regards the fee for Marx’s chapters, kindly deduct this from, or alternatively charge it against, the fee for my own article and remit it to me for the heirs. Should mine be insufficient, kindly set off the difference against future contributions. [411]
Needless to say copies of the complete issue will do just as well as off-prints of the article. I only need them for one or two quite specific incidental purposes.
The payment of fees to the Austrians remains in force until further notice. The Italians are beginning to fill me with dread. Yesterday that blath-erer Enrico Ferri sent me all his recent writings along with an over-cordial letter which only served to make me feel less cordial towards him than ever. And yet one is expected to send the chap a courteous reply! His book on Darwin-Spencer-Marxd is an atrocious hotchpotch of insipid rubbish. The Italians will long continue to suffer from this their younger generation of heddicated bourgeois. I shall doubtless soon have to do something to put an end to the ominous increase in my popularity (which the chaps are not fostering
WITHOUT A CONSIDERABLE EYE TO BUSINESS). Meanwhile I shall make a bit of an example of Achille Loria in the preface to the 3rd volume.e
The war between China and Japan [409] signifies the end of the old China and with it the total if gradual revolution of the entire economic base until the old ties between agriculture and rural industry have been dissolved
a E. Bernstein, ‘Der dritte Band des Kapital’, Die Neue Zeit, Nos, 11-14, 16, 17, 209 1894-95, Vol. I - b Schattner - c F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific -d E. Ferri, Socialismo e scienza positiva (Darwin, Spencer, Marx), Roma, 1894 - e P. Engels, Preface [to K. Marx’s Capital, Vol. II I] 1894
by big industry, railways, etc., the result being a mass exodus of Chinese Coolies, to Europe included and hence, for ourselves, an acceleration of the debaclea and an intensification of the conflict to the point of crisis. Here we have another splendid quirk of history — China is all that is left for capitalist production to conquer, yet the latter, by the very fact of having finally conquered her, will itself be hopelessly compromised in its place of origin.
Many regards from one household to the other.
Yours,
F.E.
We shall shortly be moving to 41 Regent’s Park Road, nearer to St Mark’s Church; more details anon.
Engels Briefwechsel mit Published in English in full Kautsky, Prag, 1935 for the first time
207. Engels to Emile Vandervelde 21 October
Dear citizen Vandervelde,
Allow me to express my congratulations to you personally on your election, and also to our Belgian comrades in general on their splendid successes these last two Sundays. [412] This second victory of the Belgian proletariat is of great importance for us all.b Small countries such as Belgium and Switzerland are our modern political laboratories, the testing ground
a ruin - b The following phrase is crossed out by Engels: “If a small country like yours is not destined to resolve the great problems of our epoch on its own...”
1894
where experiments are carried out which can be later applied to the large states. It is often from these small countries that there comes the first impulse of a movement destined to overturn Europe. Thus, before the February revolution,a there was the Swiss war of the Sonderbund. [273]
At the moment we are, it seems to me, in a period of high tide, a period which dates from the suffrage victory of the Belgian workers. [276] After Belgium, Austria joined the suffrage movement; following Austria, proletarian Germany has just requested that universal suffrage be extended from the Reichstag to the parliaments of the federal states. The repressive laws launched against the worker parties in France [383] and Italy, [401] similar laws being prepared in Germany, will have no more success than the violent measures of the Austrian government. Today the socialist movement everywhere is more powerful than the so-called public force.b
As for the Belgian workers, 14th October assures them an even stronger position. For the first time they have learned to know precisely their own forces and those of the enemy; thus henceforth they will be able to base their tactical decisions on knowledge of the situation; and you and the other socialist representatives will be able to raise your heads still higher, and will be listened to with considerably more attention following official recognition of the fact that you are the mouthpiece of 350,000 Belgian citizens. It is with you that the Belgian proletariat is making its ‘joyous entry’ into parliament, an entry that is joyous not only for you, but for the proletarians of the whole of Europe!
a of 1848 in France - b the following words are crossed out by Engels “This splendid victory of the Belgian socialists marks a new stage...”
1894
208. Engels to Maria Mendelson 26 October
Dear Madame Mendelson, At last we are able to receive our friends — even though the house still bears as it were the marks of seige and bombardment — we will have the pleasure of seeing both of you on Sunday evening.a Louise and the doctorb send their greetings,
Yours sincerely,
F. Engels
209. Engels to Georgi Plekhanov 1 November
My dear Plekhanov, It goes without saying that I will do all I can to assist the examination of the Neue Rheinisehe Zeitung, etc., [413] and I do not exactly see why you should be embarrassed to speak to me frankly on the subject. At the moment my books are still not in order; this work was interrupted by a
a 28 October - b Freyberger 1894
number of other matters to be dealt with, trips into town, legal consultations, and other nuisances caused by the legal formalities and material difficulties without which it is impossible to rent a house in England, and particularly in London. Nor is it yet finished.
As my books are not organised, I can hardly begin, and therefore I must ask you to continue to have patience. However, rest assured that you will have all the books, newspapers, etc., that I am able to find on the subject that interests you. We shall discuss it on the first occasion that I have the pleasure to see you.
Yours,
F. Engels
I have just learned that a new oven range is being fitted in our kitchen, and that this will prevent us from cooking until after Sunday. We will not therefore be able to entertain you on Sunday evening,a since we will not be able to give you anything to eat. However, if you would like to call on any evening after eight o’clock, we can talk about the question of the books.
Truda”, No. 2, 1924 Translated from the French
210. Engels to Carl Hirsch 8 November
Dear Hirsch,
While thanking you very much for your regular despatch of the Rheinische Zeitung, I would ask you to be so kind as to change the address from 122 to No. 41, Regent’s Park Road, London, N. W. It is on the
a 4 November 1894
other side of the road, but at the bottom of Primrose Hill and closer to the entrance to the Park. All well in other respects.
Yours,
F.E.
211. Engels to Eleanor Marx-Aveling 10 November
My dear Tussy,
Of course we expect you to-morrow to dinner — the hour is unchanged, 2.30 or a little later, as the capabilities of the new kitchen-range are not yet quite known.
Here everything goes on well. Shall be glad to see Edward, [11] especially if he is a good deal better as I hope.
Look at to-day’s Vorwärts re Hyndman. [416]
Ever yours F.
E.
1820-1870. Referate. Diskussionen. Published in English for the first time Dokumente, Hannover, 1971
a Aveling
First published in: Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 39, Berlin, 1973 1894
212. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 10 November
Dear Sorge,
From the above address you will see that I have moved house. After Louise’s marriage our old home had become rather too cramped and, since the consequences of that marriage soon manifested themselves, we could no longer make do. We therefore took a larger house which became available a little further down the road, close by the gates into Regent’s Park and, after a great bother, moved in four weeks ago — bother with house agents, solicitors, contractors, furniture salesmen, etc., and it’s not yet over, my books being still in great disarray. Downstairs we have our communal living-rooms, on the first floor my study and bedroom, on the second Louise, her husband, the baby daughter, born on Tuesday the 6th of this month, and nursery maid, on the third floor the two housemaids, lumber-room and visitor’s room. My study is at the front, has three windows and is so big that I can accommodate nearly all my books (eight cases full) in it and yet, despite its size, very nice and easy to heat. In short, we are a lot better off. In the circumstances Louise and her baby are very well, and everything went off swimmingly.
Today, you will get two fat parcels, 3 copies of the (Berlin) Sozialdemokrat, 3 of the Pest Volksstimme, the rest of the proceedings of the Party Conference in the Vorwärts [418] and a Critica Sociale containing a letter by me. [1] Because of the removal, we have not been able to send things quite so regularly. The Workman’s Times no longer exists, more’s the pity. Tussy’s articles in it were the only ones in which the truth about the Continental movement was neither withheld from the English workers nor falsified.
The movement in this country continues to resemble the American one except in being a little more advanced than yours, The instinct of the
a F. Engels, ‘International Socialism and Italian Socialism’ 1894
masses which tells them that Labour must form a party of its own in opposition to the two official parties is growing ever stronger and was more than ever in evidence at the municipal elections on 1 November. But old traditional memories of various kinds, combined with a lack of people who might be capable of translating that instinct into conscious action and crystallising it throughout the land, are conducive to the prolongation of this preliminary stage — a stage at which thinking is ill-defined and action isolated and localised. Anglo-Saxon sectarianism is also rife in the Labour movement. The Social Democratic Federation. [44] just like your German Socialist Labor Party, [367] has succeeded in turning our theory into the rigid dogma of an orthodox sect and is not only narrowly exclusive but, thanks to Hyndman, has a thoroughly rotten tradition where international politics is concerned, a tradition which, although shaken from time to time, has nevertheless remained intact. The Independent Labor Party [114] is excessively vague in the matter of tactics, while its leader, Keir Hardie, is an over-canny Scot whose demagogic tricks one cannot trust for a moment. Although a poor devil of a Scottish miner, he has started a big weekly, The Labour Leader, something that could not have been effected without a great deal of money, and this money he obtains from a Tory or at any rate Liberal-Unionist, [206] i.e. anti-Gladstonian and anti-Home Rule quarter [171]—of that there can be no doubt, as is confirmed not only by first-hand information and his own political attitude, but also by the literary connections he is known to possess in London. Consequently he might — through the defection of the Irish and Radical voters — very easily lose his parliamentary seat in the General Election of 1895 [345] and this would be fortunate, for at the moment the man is the greatest stumbling-block of all. He appears in Parliament only on demagogic occasions, so as to draw attention to himself by spouting hot air about the UNEMPLOYED to no effect whatever, or else to address inanities to the Queena on the birth of some princeb which, in this country, is cheap and trivial to the utmost, etc. Otherwise, and particularly in the provinces, there are some very good elements, both in the Social Democratic Federation and in the Independent Labor Party —elements which, though scattered, have at least succeeded in frustrating every attempt made by the leaders to set the two organisations at each other’s throats. John Burns is something of a lone wolf politically; he is furiously attacked by both Hyndman and
a Queen Victoria - b Edward Albert, Prince of York 1894
Keir Hardie and acts as though, having despaired of a political Labour organisation, he is now pinning his hopes solely on the Trades Unions. True, his experience with the former has not been altogether happy and he might starve if the Engineers Union did not pay his parliamentary salary. He is vain, having let himself be rather excessively soft-sawdered by the Liberals, i.e. by the ‘social wing’ of the Radicals, and definitely sets too much store by the many individual concessions he has obtained, but is for all that the only really honest man in the whole movement, i.e. among its leaders, and has a thoroughly proletarian instinct by which he will, or so I believe, be guided more surely at the crucial moment than will the others by their cunning and calculated self-interest.
On the Continent success has kindled an appetite for more success, and peasant-catching in the literal sense of the terma is coming to be all the rage. First the French declare at Nantes, through Lafargue, [419] not only that it is no business of ours (I had already written and told them as muchb) to precipitate the ruin of the small peasant by direct intervention, a task that may safely be entrusted to capitalism, but also that it behoves us actually to protect the small peasant against taxation, usury and the big landowner. But we cannot go along with this, firstly because it is stupid and secondly because it is impossible. Next, Vollmar [418] goes to Frankfurt and actually proposes to bribe your peasant as such; nor is the peasant with whom he is concerned in Upper Bavaria, your small, debt-ridden Rhenish chap, but your middling if not big peasant who exploits his farmhands, male and female, and sells cattle and grain in quantity. And that would not be feasible unless one were to abandon the whole principle of the thing. We can only win over the Alpine peasants and the big peasants of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein at the cost of betraying their ploughboys and day labourers, and in so doing we should lose politically more than we should gain. The Frankfurt Party Conference failed to come to any decision on this question and that is a good thing, in as much as the matter will now be properly gone into; the people who attended it knew far too little about peasants, or rural conditions, which vary so greatly from province to province, to do anything more than form resolutions out of thin air. But the matter will have to be settled sooner or later.
a In German peasant-catching {Bauernfängerei) also means confidence trick. - b See this volume, p. 348 1894
Here a question occurs to me about the Paris Socialiste; is it still alive or is it dead? No one seems to know, When Tussy was in Paris this summer it was not yet defunct, but anyone who wanted a copy had to go to the office and get one!! I haven’t set eyes on it since February or March. Dereure has gone off his head. He was manager and, having got things into a mess, did nothing whatever about it. Typically French.
Following the electoral victories in Belgium, [412] the Belgians and French are making arrangements for the socialist parliamentarians in the various countries to keep in regular touch with each other and hold periodic conferences. Whether anything will come of this is questionable. At the moment the fifty French parliamentarians (among them some twenty-six Radical [86] converts of a somewhat dubious kind) are very pleased with themselves, but there are snags. Amongst the twenty-four old Socialists a fierce but silent struggle is going on between the Marxists on the one hand and the Blanquists [20] and Allemanists [21] (Possibilists [30]) on the other; whether it will result in an open breach is hard to say.
Besides other socialist papers, I am now also sent the Romanian one (Munca) and the Bulgarian (formerly Rabotnik (Working Man), now (Socialist), and am gradually familiarising myself with those languages, The Romanians are going to bring out a daily in Bucharest.a
More than any other world event, the death of the Russian Tsar is likely to bring about a change, either as a result of an internal movement or as a result of a financial crisis and the impossibility of obtaining money abroad. I cannot suppose that the existing system will continue to subsist if it brings to the throne an idiot whose health, both physical and mental, has been shattered by onanism. (This fact is notorious in all the faculties of medicine. Krause, a professor at Dorpat,b who attended Nicholas, informed Tsar Alexander at the latter’s request that this — onanism — was the immediate cause of the illness, was boxed over the ears for his pains, resigned, returned the Order of Vladimir sent him after his departure, and went back to Germany where he related the story.) If the fun begins in Russia, however, young William, too, will become aware that something novel is afoot. For then a liberal wind will blow through Europe — a wind which now can only be of benefit to us.
The war in China [409] has given the coup de grâce to the old China. Isolation has become impossible, for the introduction of railroads, steam
a Lumea noua. - b Modern name: Tartu 1894
engines, electricity and large-scale industry is essential if only for reasons of military defence. But this means the collapse of the old economic system of small farms, a system in which the family also manufactured its industrial products, and with it that of the whole of the old social system which admitted of a relatively dense population. Millions will be evicted and compelled to emigrate and those millions will find their way as far, even, as Europe, whither they will come in droves. But in your country as in ours, Chinese competition will, as soon as it attains massive proportions, quickly bring things to a head and thus the conquest of China by capitalism will at the same time provide the impulse for the overthrow of capitalism in Europe and America.
I hope you and your wife are feeling better than when you wrote last. Though I am not feeling at all bad myself, one does notice after a while how wide is the gap between 73 and 37.
Cordial regards to yourself and your wife,
Yours,
F.E.
First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
213. Engels to Laura Lafargue 12 November
My dear Lö hr,
Qui s’excuse s’accuse,a you began your letter of 24th October, and your
a one who offers excuses accuses oneself
First published abridged 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 and in full, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works, 1894
last note of Saturday, received this morning, shows how little time it has taken you to pass from ‘excusing’ to ‘decusing’. However you will have to come it considerably stronger before you upset my good humour, and so I will only just state that since 9th October we are in No. 41, that I have had no end of trouble with lawyers, house-agents, contractors etc, before I got the house put into tenantable condition, so much so that I only got yesterday the last heap of books from my study-floor into the book-cases, where they await sorting; that no sooner was the place something like ship-shape when last Tuesday Louise became the mother of a little girl (both doing very well); that to crown all, London is becoming flooded with proscrits:a Russian, Italian, Armenian etc. etc. who duly honour me with their visits; that at the same time I had to hurry off the very badly printed proofs of the last 5 or 6 sheets Capital (proofs and revision); and that in consequence of all this not only my correspondence but also your French Manifestob in the Ere Nouvelle got sadly neglected.
However this morning I hunted up the October and September Nos. of that revue from my higgledy-piggledy books and compared them with the original. Je vous en fais mes complimentsc—this is better then even the Feuerbach! [310] It is the first French translation of the old Manifest I read with real and unbroken pleasure. Unfortunately the November No. which contains the Conclusion has not yet come to hand, so I cannot look them over. A few suggestions follow, they are very unimportant.
You may well say trois déménagements valent un incendiéd more than once I felt inclined to throw all my books into the fire, and house and all, such a bother it was. But now I expect the worst is over — that is to say the only little evil to contend with now is a flooded coal cellar and a sweating wine cellar! But that, too, must at last be vanquished.
The Czare is dead, vive lé Czar,f and indeed the poor beggar does require all the encouragement the French bourgeoisie and press can give him by their shouts. He is next door to an idiot, weakly in mind and body, and promises just that vacillating reign of a man a mere playball of other people’s cross-purpose-intrigues which is wanted to break up finally the Russian despotic system. Financial difficulties will help. Mother Crawford let it out the other day that France now holds not less than eight milliards of Russian Rentesg which accounts for the failure of the
a exiles -b K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. -c My compliments to you - d three removals amount to one fire - e Alexander II I - f Nicholas II - g loans 1894
last Russian loan [123] and makes very improbable the success, in France, of the impending one. Out of France Nicholas will get no cash. When 6 or 7 years ago an attempt was made to raise the wind in Berlin, the bankers replied unanimously: With the guarantee of a National Assembly, any amount; without it, not a farthing; could not that cry be raised now, when the opportunity offers, in the Petite République? To tell the French gogosa that a constitution must come in Russia and that therefore it will not be safe to entrust their money to a moribund absolutism? Or does le patriotisme render such a proceeding too dangerous?
Many thanks for your offer to translate my Urchristentum; [420] but do you really think that theological subject — especially II and II I — attractive enough for French readers? I have my very strong misgivings. The I article might perhaps pass: les Internationaux sous l’empire des Césarsb or something like it — however that I leave entirely to you.
Bebel confirms in a letter today that Vollmar had said in Frankfurt, [418] had expressly approved the new programme agricole of Nantes; [406] now the only thing I wrote to anybody about it was to youc: that I was afraid the French would stand alone with their appeal to support, in this present condition, the petits propriétaires and even les fermiers qui sont obligés d’exploiter des ouvriers.d So Vollmar’s assertion is an invention of his own. Unfortunately it will compel me to reply in public [421] and in order to avoid provoking fresh misunderstandings, I shall be obliged to speak of the peasant question more fully, and then I cannot pass by the Nantes debates. I shall send it to the Neue Zeit,e perhaps you will find that more interesting than Christianity.f
This is how one gets always interrupted! This confounded peasant question will take me another week. And yet I have my hands full with work urgently needed, even before I come to start what I ought to do: the history of Mohr’s part in the International. And that leads me to something: in the Berlin (anarchist) Sozialist they publish from the Société Nouvelle a letter of Bakounine — very long — in which he gives his version of the Hague affair [115] etc.g Is that to be had in Paris? Or does it appear in Brussels? The German text I have only received in fragments, possibly in
a simpletons - b the Internationals during the Caesars’ empire - c See this volume, p. 348 - d small proprietors and even farmers who are obliged to exploit labourers — e F. Engels, The Peasant Question in France and Germany —f F. Engels, On the History of Early Christianity -g M. Bakunin, ‘Ein unbekanntes Schreiben’, Der Sozialist, Nos. 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, September 29, October 6, 27, November 3, 10, 24, December l, 1894— 1894
consequence of seizures by the police.
Paul says he wants to dedicate to me his Evolution de la propriété. [568]
Very much obliged to him. In general I would rather remain undedicated, but I leave it entirely to him.
Praise no one happy before his death, said Solon. He must have foreseen the case of my présidence d’honneura over the présidence effectivea of Regnard! Who ever would have thought that! of all men, Regnard!
Ever yours F.E.
September No.
Page 4 - alinéa 2, Verkehrsmittel is given moyens de communication.c
Verkehr we used in the Manifesto generally in the sense of Handelsverkehr,d
and later on it is always translated correctly échange. In this passage échange would be better, though it is of no importance.
Page 7 alinéa 1: La Bourgeoisie, the e left out in the text. Page 10: alinéa 2: der Hausbesitzer,e der Krämer,f is rendered: le petit propriétaireg; would it not be more textual to say: le propriétaire,g le boutiquier,f le prêteur sur gagesh?
Page 12, line 5: misprint: garantie locale for: légale. Page 15, “ 3: Courgeoisie instead of Bourgeoisie:. You see I must take refuge in common misprints in order to find fault! with the text in the October No. I cannot even manage to do that.
214. Engels to August Bebel and Paul Singer 14 November
To August Bebel & Paul Singer
The thousand pounds I have bequeathed to you for ‘electoral pur-
a honorary presidency - b actual presidency - c means of communication - d trade relations -e landlord -f shopkeeper -g small proprietor -h usurer 1894
poses’—from which death duty will be deducted — had to be bequeathed in this form because I could not bequeath the money to the party in any other form if it was to be regarded as a legally valid legacy in this country. That was the only reason for the above proviso. So first of all make sure that you get the money and, when you have got it, that it does not fall into the hands of the Prussians. And while passing a resolution on these points mind you drink a bottle of good wine; do this is memory of me.
Friedrich Engels
Volksblatt, No. 125, Published in English for the first time 22 October, 1895
215. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 14 November
Dear Ede,
Herewith two sheets,a nos. 21/22. Meissner wants to know whether there are any more errata. If you have any to hand, please let me have them; [407] otherwise don’t bother; for in that case I shall write to Meissner tomorrow, telling him to close the list. Should you be writing to the Baron today, please let him know that I am sending him Ferri’s Socialismo e scienza positiva with Labriola’s notes and at Labriola’s request. No hurry about this if your letter has already gone off. Many regards; all well here.
Yours
F. E.
a K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II I 1894
216. Engels to Laura Lafargue and Eleanor Marx-Aveling 14 November 364
To Laura Lafargue and Eleanor Marx-Aveling
My dear girls,
I have to address to you a few words with regard to my will. First you will find that I have taken the liberty of disposing of all my books, including those received from you after Mohr’s death, in favour of the German party. The whole of these books constitute a library so unique, and so complete at the same time, for the history and the study of Modern Socialism and all the sciences on which it is dependent, that it would be a pity to disperse it again. To keep it together, and to place it at the same time at the disposal of those desirous to use it, has been a wish expressed to me long ago by Bebel and other leaders of the German Socialist Party, and as they do indeed seem to be the best people for that purpose, I have consented. I hope that under the circumstances you will pardon my action and give your consent too.
Second. I have had many a discussion with Sam Moore as to the possibility of providing, in my will, in some way for our dear Jenny’s children. Unfortunately, English law stands in the way. It could only be done under almost impossible conditions, where the expense would more than eat up the funds to be taken care of. I therefore had to give it up. Instead, I have left each of you three-eighths of the residue of my estate after defraying legacies etc. Of these, two -eighths are intended for yourselves, and the third eighth is meant to be held by each of you in trust for Jenny’s children, to be used as you and the children’s guardian, Paul Lafargue, may think best. In this way you are freed from all responsibility with regard to English law and can act as your own moral sense and love for the children may dictate.
The money I owe to the children for shares of profits on Mohr’s writings are put down in my ledger, and will be paid by my Executors to the party who, according to English law, will be the children’s legal representative.
And now good bye, My dear, dear girls. May you live long and healthily 1894
in body and soul and enjoy it!
Frederick Engels
Tussy will have to inform Meissner, Dietz, and the Vorwärts Buchhandlunga of Berlin that they will henceforth have to pay to her direct any sums due to the heirs of Karl Marx for honorarium etc. As to Sonnenschein, that will have to be settled in some other manner, the agreement about Capitalb being between him and me.
F. E.
217. Engels to Kaul Kautsky 15 November
Dear Baron,
I have just been going through Tussy’s articlec with her — at one point there is an amendment by which she rightly, or so it seems to me, sets store but which, because it was written on a sheet of paper, she failed to include. It belongs at the end of the preface, which should read: ‘in general Mr Brentano’s manner of writing history is distinguished by three characteristics: 1.’ etc.
Will you still be able to add this?
By the time this arrives you may already have seen from the Vorwärts [421]
a book-shop - b about English translation of Vol. I - c E. Marx-Aveling, ‘Wie Lujo Brentano zitirt,’ Die Neue Zeit, No, 9, 1894-95, Vol. I 1894
that I am being forced to write an agrarian articlea upon which I am working at this moment and which I shall very shortly have the honour of placing at your disposal.
Yours,
F.E.
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Published in English for the first time Prag, 1935
218. Engels to Eduard Bernstein 20 November
Dear Ede,
The Sozialdemokrat (Berlin) contained a translation of Lafargue’s report on the programme agraire. [419] Lafargue has drawn my attention to it since he has no copy of the original to hand. Now I cannot find my copy of the Sozialdemokrat (it was in the issue of 18 November and possibly an earlier one as well). Can you lend them to me for a day?
I have a bad cold but am getting better.
Yours,
F.E.
Many regards.
a F. Engels, ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’ 1894
219. Engels to Karl Kautsky 22 November
Dear Baron, The agrarian articlea goes off to you today by registered book post. Since the handwriting is rotten, may I have the proofs? They will be promptly attended to.
Am just reading Ledebour’s reply to you. [424] The chap’s trying to be too clever by half. As though, two years ago, you could have foreseen what Vollmar would be like today. And it really is a bit much to conclude, merely because the small peasant has been told there is no intention of forcibly evicting him, that the intention is to provide economic conditions such as will enable him to continue farming on his own account. Obviously, as things are today, you would have worded this or that passage differently. But nobody is proof against verbal hair-splitting and my article might suffer exactly the same fate.
I look forward to seeing how the polemic initiated by Bebel is going to develop. [425] It was long overdue.
I simply have not got the time just now to go into the matter of the International’s attitude to the question of land ownership. Besides, it has been a ticklish point so far as the International is concerned. Firstly because of the Proudhonists in France, Belgium, etc., and their enthusiasm for parcels of land, and secondly because of Bakunin’s hobby-horse, the abolition of inheritance, which tended to obscure the issue. [426]
Needless to say, the Vorwärts has come down in favour of unity, i.e. of hushing things up. Nothing can be done about this for the present. But anyone who hushes things up can now only be of assistance to Vollmar and will have to bear the consequences. The only correct thing for me to do is, I think, to intervene in an absolutely objective way and leave personalities completely out of it. Otherwise it will again be said that I am
a F. Engels, ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’ 1894
trying to influence the party from without, etc.
Apropos, could you, when convenient, insert the enclosed review [427] in such a way that people don’t realise it emanates from me? I don’t want to put a correction in the Vorwärts, or Liebknecht would again append some rigmarole or other, and yet I cannot allow the thing to pass.
Congratulations on son no. II I — as you will have heard, we have also had a lying-in here; Louise having born a strong girl, everything went off all right and the baby girl ought to be called ‘tippling Amalie’!
Yours,
F.E.
Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky Published in English for the first time Prag, 1935
220. Engels to Paul Lafargue 22 November
My dear Lafargue, I have found your report in the Sozialdemokrat. [419] That was lucky, for it has allowed me to put the responsibility for quite a few things on a somewhat careless editorship and to conclude that, although I did not agree with what the Nantes resolution [406] said, I think I agree with what it tried to say. At the same time I have tried to be as friendly as possible; but in view of the way this resolution is being abused in Germany, it is no good remaining silent about it.
The fact is you allowed yourself to lean a bit too much towards the opportunist tendency. At Nantes you came near to sacrificing the future of the Party to a momentary triumph. There is still time to call a halt: if my articlea can contribute towards this, I shall be happy. In Germany—
a F. Engels, ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’ 1894
where Vollmar went so far as to suggest that the large peasants in Bavaria, each with the 10-30 hectares, should enjoy all the benefits that you had promised to the small French peasants [418]—in Germany Bebel took up the challenge, and the matter will be exhaustively discussed; it will not come off the agenda until it has been thrashed out. You will have seen in Vorwärts Bebel’s speech in the 2nd electoral constituency of Berlin. [425] He complains with reason that the party is going bourgeois. That is the misfortune of all extreme parties when the time approaches for them to become ‘possible’. But our Party cannot go beyond a certain limit in this respect without betraying itself, and it seems to me that in France as in Germany we have now reached that point. Fortunately there is still time to call a halt.
For some while I have not seen your letters in Vorwärts, and I thought there was some misunderstanding; last Wednesday I was happy to receive a number of ‘Gallus’.a If there are difficulties with the editorial board, let me know, perhaps I could be of some use to you.
If the Russian Government is spending money to strengthen its currency, that is an infallible sign that a new loan is in the air; the French are the only ones who might be tempted; let’s hope they aren’t. But when Russia needs gold, she must naturally try to get it!
Loria will be even more pleased when he reads the preface,b he is treated there as he deserves and without the least regard for ‘il primo economista dell’ Italia’.c
Young Williamd is behaving admirably. He gets it into his head to combat ‘subversive tendencies’ [428] ‘and starts by subverting his own government. [429]
Ministers fall like lead soldiers. The poor young man had to keep quiet and lie low for over eight months; he can’t stand it any longer, he blows up — and there you are! At a time when we are winning a quarter of Belgium, [412] when electoral reform in Austria is about to send our people into Parliament, when in Russia everything is in a state of uncertainty about the future — the young man gets it into his head to outdo Crispi and Casimir Périer! You can tell the effect this will have in Germany from the fact that at the Frankfurt Congress
[418] the delegates, or at least many of them, called for a new repressive law as the best means for the Party to gain ground!
a [P. Lafargue] Gallus, ‘Der landwirtschaftliche Kredit in Frankreich’, Vorwärts, No. 259, 6 November 1894. -b F. Engels, - c Preface [to K. Marx’s Capital, Vol. II I] -d ‘the foremost Italian economist’ — e William II 1894
The situation in Austria is interesting. Since the death of his son,a the Emperorb has been afraid of the fall of his dynasty in the near future. His heir presumptivec is an arrogant imbecile of the utmost unpopularity. The Hungarians are not likely to tolerate him, they are demanding personal union pure and simple to start with, to be followed by total separation and complete independence. To tie his successor’s hands in advance, Francis Joseph is trying to strengthen Parliament and make it more genuinely representative. That is why he has agreed with his friend Taaffe on a fairly extensive electoral reform. [270] But Parliament, an assembly of privileged persons, a real States General of 1789d (elected by categories: large landowners, commerce, towns, rural areas), turns it down, and Taaffe goes out. Thereupon the Emperor, like a true constitutional monarch, appoints a Minister from the majority,e a coalition of Liberals, Poles, etc., all arch-reactionaries. But he makes them promise that in return they will introduce an electoral reform of their own kind and that within a year. The year runs out with all kinds of abortive attempts. Thereupon the Emperor puts them in a position to keep their word — and that is why for the last 3 weeks Vienna has been talking of nothing but electoral reform. But the coalition is incapable of producing anything; at the first positive proposition they start fighting among themselves. So that probably Taaffe will shortly replace them and re-table his Bill, and if Parliament turns it down he will dissolve it and grant the reform, which the Constitution allows him to do. So here you have ‘fellow traveller’ Francis Joseph pushing from one side and Victor Adler from the other! But what an irony of history that this Emperor, created in December 1848 deliberately to crush the Revolution, should be called upon to inaugurate a fresh one AG years later!
Kiss Laura for me.
Ever yours,
F. E
Louise and the child are well, she and Freyberger send their greetings.
1900 and in full in F. Engels, Translated from the French P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II I, Paris, 1959
a Rudolf - b Francis Joseph - c Francis Ferdinand - d in France - e Alfred von Windischgrätz 1894
221. Engels to Jossif Atabekjanz 23 November
IN STUTTGART
London, 23 November 1894 41 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. Dear Comrade, Many thanks for having translated my Entwicklung des Sozialismus and, recently, the Communist Manifestoa into your Armenian mother tongue. Unfortunately I am not in a position to comply with your request that I send you a short introduction to the latter translation. I cannot very well write anything that is to be published in a language which I do not understand. Were I to do so as a favour to yourself, I could not refuse to oblige others, in which case it might happen that my words were ushered into the world in unintentionally, if not deliberately, garbled form, while I might not learn about it for years, if ever.
Then there is another reason — grateful though I am to you for your interesting exposé of the Armenian situation — namely, that I do not regard it as right or fair to try and express an opinion on matters of which I have not acquired a knowledge from personal study. Particularly in this instance when the people concerned belong to an oppressed nationality unfortunate enough to be trapped between the Scylla of Turkish and the Charybdis of Russian despotism, a situation in which Russian Tsarism speculates on playing the role of liberator and the servile Russian press never fails to make the most of every word uttered in favour of Armenian liberation by turning it to the advantage of a Tsarism bent on conquest.
If, however, I am to tell you honestly what I think, it is this — that Armenia’s liberation from the Turks and Russians will become a possibility only on the day when Russian Tsarism is overthrown.
With best wishes for the welfare of your people,
Yours,
F. Engels
a F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific; K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party First published in: Dokumente Printed according to the original des Sozialismus, Bd. II I, Heft 12, Stuttgart, 1903 Published in English for the first time
222. Engels to Nikolai Danielson 24 November
My dear Sir,
I am in possession of your kind letters 7 and 11 June, 15 October and 12 November.
Of Mr. Struve’s works I have only seen the article in Braun’s Centralblatt,a and cannot therefore speak as to what assertions he may have made. If in my letters you find any facts that may be useful to you in your reply, you are welcome to make use of them. [430] But as to any opinions of mine, I am afraid, your opponents — not perhaps Mr. Struve but the Russian press generally — would use them in a way they do not warrant. I am daily and weekly assailed by Russian friends to reply to Russian reviews and books in which the words of our authorb are not only misinterpreted but misquoted and where they say my interference would suffice to set the matter right. I have constantly declined doing so, because I cannot, without giving up real and serious work, be dragged into controversies going on in a faraway country, in a language which I do not yet read with as much ease as the better known western languages, and in a literature whereof at best I but see occasional fragments and where it is utterly impossible for me to follow the debate closely and in all its phases and passages. There are people everywhere who, in order to defend a position once taken up by them, do not shrink from any distortion or unfair manoeuvre; and if this is the case with the writings of our author, I am afraid I should get no better treatment and be compelled, finally, to interfere in the debate, both for other people’s sake and my own. In fact, if my
a P. Struve, ‘Zur Beurtheilung der kapitalistischen Entwickelung Russlands’, Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt, No. 1, 2 October 1893 - b Karl Marx 1894
opinions as stated in private letters, did appear in the Russian press with my sanction, I should then have no defence via-à-vis my Russian friends here and on the Continent, who urge me actively to interfere in Russian debates and to set this or that man right on this and that point; I should not have any valid reason to decline, as they would be able to tell me: you have already once interfered in Russian debates; you must own that our present case is quite as important as that of Mr. D., so if you please, treat us as you have treated him. And then, my time would be no longer my own, and my interference in Russian debates would after all be extremely inefficacious and incomplete.
These are the reasons which compel me, to my very great regret, to request you, not to insist on quoting opinions of mine, at least not as mine.
I will try to forward to you some continuation of what you have already received.a
Yours very truly
L. K.b
1908 Published in English for the first time
223. Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht 24 November
Dear Liebknecht,
I have written to Bebel, [25] suggesting that, in political debate, one should always consider things calmly and do nothing in haste or in the heat of the moment. I myself having often come a cropper in consequence. On the other hand, however, I also have a small bone to pick with yourself.
a proof-sheets of Capital, Vol. II I - b Louise Kautsky’s initials are used as Engels’ pen-name in correspondence with Danielson.
1894
Whether Bebel’s conduct in the assembly was inept is open to question. [425]
But in point of fact he was absolutely right. As to editor of the central organ you are, of course, bound to cast oil on troubled waters, to argue away even what are very real differences, TO MAKE THINGS PLEASANT ALL ROUND, and to promote unity in the party until the day the breach comes. Thus as editor you may have deplored Bebel’s conduct. But what was displeasing to the editor should have been welcome to the party leader, namely the fact that there should be men who do not always have to sport an obligatory pair of editor’s spectacles upon their noses, and who also remind the editor that, in his capacity as party leader, he would do well now and again to view the world with the naked eye rather than through rose-tinted spectacles.
On the very eve of the Frankfurt Party Conference the Bavarians formed what was tantamount to a Sonderbund at Nuremberg. [431] They arrived in Frankfurt with what was manifestly an ultimatum. To add insult to injury, Vollmar spoke of marching separately, while Grilloa declared: ‘Resolve any thing you like; we shall not conform.’ They claimed special rights for the Bavarians and dubbed their opponents in the party ‘Prussians’ and ‘Berliners’. They demanded that the grant of supplies be approved, as also an agrarian policy which is actually further to the right than that of the petty bourgeoisie. Instead of promptly putting a spoke in their wheels, as had always been done before, the Party Conference did not venture to pass a resolution. So if that wasn’t the time for Bebel to speak of the penetration of the party by petty-bourgeois elements then I’m at a loss to know when he should have done.
And what did the Vorwärts do? Fasten upon the form of Bebel’s attack, say things weren’t so bad after all and place itself in such ‘diametrical opposition’ to him that only the — in the event inevitable—’misunderstanding’ of Bebel’s opponents forced you to declare that your diametrical opposition referred simply to the form taken by Bebel’s attack, but that, so far as its substance was concerned — the matter of supplies and the agrarian question — he had been right and you were on his side. [432] I should have thought that the mere fact of your having been forced to make this statement after the event would have proved to you that you had strayed much further to the right than Bebel could have strayed to the left.
And after all, the whole debate hinged solely upon the two points in which the action of the Bavarians culminated, namely, the opportunism
a Karl Grillenberger 1894
of granting supplies in order to catch the petty bourgeoisie, and the opportunism of Vollmar’s agrarian propaganda intended to catch the middle and big peasants. These, and the sectarian attitude of the Bavarians were the only practical questions under consideration, and if Bebel took them up at the point at which the Party Conference had left the Party in the lurch, you ought to be grateful to him. If he described the impossible position created by the Party Conference as attributable to the growing influence of philistinism in the party, he was merely placing a particular question in the general context in which it belongs, and that is also worthy of recognition. And if he forced a debate on all this, he was only doing what absolutely had to be done and ensuring that, when confronted by urgent questions, the next Party Conference should act in full knowledge of the facts instead of being left gaping, as at Frankfurt.
The danger of a split cannot be laid at the door of Bebel who called a spade a spade. It must be laid at the door of the Bavarians who presumed to act in a way hitherto unprecedented in the party, much to the glee of the vulgar democrats on the Frankfurter Zeitung who recognise in Vollmar and the Bavarians men of their own stamp, while the latter rejoice and become ever more audacious,
You say Vollmar is not a traitor. Maybe. Nor do I think he regards himself as such. But what would you call a man who asks of a proletarian party that it should oblige the Upper Bavarian big and middle peasants, owners of anything between ten and thirty hectares, by perpetuating a state of affairs based on the exploitation of farm servants and day labourers? A proletarian party, expressly founded for the perpetuation of wage slavery! The man may be an anti-Semite, a bourgeois democrat, a Bavarian particularist and anything else you care to name, but a Social Democrat? Come to that, in a growing workers’ party, the accretion of petty-bourgeois elements is inevitable, nor does it do any harm. Any more than the accretion of ‘academics’,a failed students, etc. A few years ago they still constituted a danger. Now we are able to digest them. But the process of digestion must be allowed to run its course. And for this, hydrochloric acid is needed; if there is not enough of it (as Frankfurt went to show), we ought to be thankful to Bebel for giving us an extra dose, thereby enabling us properly to digest the non-proletarian elements.
For it is in this that the restoration of true harmony in the party con-
a persons with higher education 1894
sists, not in seeking to do away with every question involving genuine internal controversy by ignoring or denying its existence.
According to you, what is at stake is ‘the bringing about of effective action’. Very nice, too, but when exactly is the action going to start?a
224. Engels to Mrs Karpeles 30 November
Dear Madam,
May I tender my warmest thanks for the delightful present you were so kind as to send me for my birthday? I value it all the more highly, not only for being your own handiwork, but also and above all for your having found leisure to do it at a time when you already had enough and more than enough to do for the little one that is on its way. For during that self-same time I was again afforded an opportunity of seeing, here in my own house, what a multitude of cares and preoccupations the expectation of motherhood involves.b I have all the more reason to pride myself in a present made for me at such a time.
I put it to use at once, on my birthday, when I took a short siesta. One sleeps upon it as sweetly as the proverbial ‘quiet conscience’ upon a ‘good pillow’. In fact I feel pretty sure that it would be able to cope without difficulty even with a pretty uneasy conscience.
a the end of this letter is not extant - b Engels is referring to Louise Freyberger’s expectant child 1894
I was glad to hear from Ludwig that you and your little one are still keeping well and trust that you will continue to do so.
Again, many thanks and kindest regards to you and to Dr Karpeles from
Yours very sincerely,
F. Engels
225. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 4 December
Dear Sorge,
Thank you and your wife for your good wishes. Between ourselves, my 75th year doesn’t hold out quite so much promise as previous ones. True I am still nimble enough on my pins, besides having an appetite for work and a reasonable capacity for it, but nevertheless I find that stomach upsets and colds, which I could once afford to treat with supreme contempt, now demand the most respectful treatment. But that is nothing so long as it amounts to nothing more.
Yesterday I sent you three copies of the Preface to Volume II I.a One for the luckless Stiebeling who has sent me several specimens of his stuff.b One for P. Fireman, D. Phil., if you know or can discover his address. Please give the third, after you have done with it, to Schlüter who might be able to put it to good use. In about a week’s time at the most I hope to be able to send you a copy of the actual book, having been notified that this is on its way. In addition today, rolled up and sent Book Post;
1. Sozialdemokrat 2. Justice, which I shall again be sending you regularly because of the a of Capital- b G. C. Stiebeling, Das Werthgesetz und die Profit-Rate, New York, [1890] 1894
wrangling with the Germans, from which they can’t desist. [433] Nearly everything the paper says about the triumphs of the Social Democratic Federation [44] is a lie; compared with other organisations, especially the Independent Labour Party, [114] the Social Democratic Federation is dwindling and, if things go on like this, it will soon dwindle into nothingness. Unfortunately the Independent Labour Party no longer has a proper paper.
3. Glühlichter from Vienna and Wahrer Jakob from Stuttgart, so that you may acquaint yourself with the ‘wit’ the party has at its disposal.
4. Bebel’s speech in Berlin and his four articles attacking Grillenberger and Vollmar. [434]
The latter is the most interesting of the lot. The Bavarians, who have become very, very opportunistic and are already almost an ordinary People’s Party (i.e. most of the leaders and many of the party’s more recent recruits), had voted in favour of the general estimates in the Bavarian Landtag, while Vollmar, in particular, had begun to agitate on behalf of the peasants so as to catch the big peasants of Upper Bavaria — men with 25-80 ACRES of land (10-30 hectares) and thus quite unable to manage without wage labour—but not their labourers. Having no high hopes of the Frankfurt Party Conference
[418] they organised, a week before the latter, a Bavarian Party Conference of their own in the course of which they constituted what amounted to a Sonderbund, [431] in as much as they agreed that at Frankfurt the Bavarian delegation should, on all questions relating to Bavaria, vote as a body and in accordance with the Bavarian resolutions previously settled upon. So, having arrived there, they declared that they had had to grant the general estimates in Bavaria, there having been no other alternative and that it was, furthermore a purely Bavarian question in which no one else had any business to poke his nose. In other words, if you resolve anything we Bavarians do not like, if you reject our ultimatum, then it will be your fault if there’s a split!
Such was the claim, unprecedented in the annals of the party, with which they confronted the other delegates who were utterly unprepared for it. And to such extremes has the clamour for unity been taken in recent years that, having regard to the influx of as yet insufficiently trained elements during the same period, it is small wonder that this attitude, incompatible as it is with the party’s continued existence, should have got by without the peremptory rebuff it deserved, and that no resolution should have been taken on the question of supplies.
1894
Now let us suppose the Prussians, who are in the majority at the Party Conference, were also to hold a preliminary congress and were to pass resolutions there on, say, the attitude of the Bavarians — resolutions binding upon all the Prussian delegates so that the whole lot, both the majority and the minority, voted as a body for those resolutions at the General Party Conference, what would be the good of holding General Party Conferences at all? And what would the Bavarians say if the Prussians were to do exactly what they themselves have just done?
In short, the matter could not be allowed to rest at that, and it was now that Bebel stepped into the breach. He simply put the question back on the agenda and it is now being debated. Bebel is by far the most lucid and far-sighted man of the lot.
I have been corresponding with him regularly for some fifteen years and we see eye to eye about almost everything. Liebknecht, on the other hand, is very hidebound in his outlook and the old democrat of South German-federalist, particularist complexion in him is forever coming to the surface. Worse still, he cannot tolerate the fact that Bebel, who has long since out-grown him, refuses to submit to his guidance although he puts up willingly with his presence at his side. Furthermore, so badly has he managed the central organ, the Vorwärts—mainly because of the jealousy with which he guards his LEADERSHIP, wanting to direct everything and in fact directing nothing, i.e. placing obstacles everywhere — that the paper, which could be the best in Berlin, serves only to provide the party with profits amounting to 50,000 marks but no political influence whatsoever. Needless to say, Liebknecht is now intent on acting as mediator and pours scorn on Bebel, but in my view, it’s the latter who will turn out to be right. In Berlin the Executive and the best of our chaps are already taking his side and I am convinced that, if he appeals to the party at large, he will get a big majority. Meanwhile we must wait and see. I would also send you the Vollmariad, etc., but have only got one copy of the same for my own use.
Louise and the baby both well. Warm regards to you and your wife. I trust your eyes will soon be better again, as also your other infirmities.
Your old friend,
F.E.
Printed according to the original 1894
von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Published in English in full Friedrich Engels. Karl Marx u. A. an for the first time F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
226. Engels to Filippo Turati 4 December
41 Regent’s Park Road
My dear Turati,
Where the deuce do you find the patience to keep writing to this dear Monsieur E.? But let’s leave aside the bourgeois titles. As to your students, I regret infinitely that I am unable to come to their aid other than by giving them my best wishes. [435] My time is so occupied that I cannot get down even to the most urgent matters at hand. The same day as I receive your card, one addresses the same request to me on behalf of Berlin students; I am obliged to send them the same refusal as I do to your friends. These little things are but trifles if taken separately, yet when all this happens day after day with a desperate regularity, it all adds up to a considerable loss of time. Be so kind as to make my excuses to your young friends to whom, nevertheless, I wish complete success.
I enclose my preface to the 3d volume of Capital for the benefit of citizeness Anna — there are several lines in which one might become interested in Italy.
It was good of you to cite Bebel in the Critica Sociale. [425] Bebel has said bitter, but quite necessary truths. This was more opportune than the opportunism of his adversaries.
Yours truly,
F. E.
Please note the change of my address.
1894
227. Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge 12 December
Dear Sorge,
Today one copy of Marx’s Capital, Vol. II I, has gone off to you by registered Book Post. I trust you will get it.
‘What has earned us such an undeserved stroke of luck as the ‘lese-majestie’ suit brought at little Willie’sa behest against our chaps for having remained seated in the Reichstag, is beyond my comprehension. [436] No one could have done us a greater service. Little Willie and ‘Mr von Kö ller, Whatever they do there’s worse to foller’ are a fine pair and as if cut out to get everything into a mess and us — out of it.
Bebel has emerged victorious. In the first place, after Bebel’s articles Vollmar broke off the controversy, [434] in the second, his appeal to the Executive was most resolutely rejected and, in the third, he appealed to the parliamentary group but the latter, having been declared incompetent by Bebel, admitted its incompetence, which means that the matter will come up before the next Party Conference, when Bebel can be certain of a majority of two-thirds or three-quarters.
It is the third campaign Vollmar has fought for a leading position in the party outside of Bavaria. On the first occasion he demanded that we should actively support Caprivi and become government socialists. [437] On the second, that we should go in for state socialism and assist the present German Empire in its socialist experiments. [438] On both he got a flea in his ear. And now he has got another.
a William II 1894
The act of staying seated in the Reichstag has impressed the French more than all the work the party has done over the past thirty years. Between ourselves, the Parisians — and I mean the Parisians, not the French — have gone very much to seed. Their love of fine phrases and their respect for the melodramatic are gradually becoming intolerable. I hope you and your wife are well. Warm regards to you both.
Yours,
F. E.
Out of gratitude to Schlüter for sending me the CENSUS REPORTS, A etc., I have also sent him a copy of Volume II Ib by registered BOOK POST. But since I do not know whether his address, 935 Washington, still holds good, I have sent it to him care of the Volkszeitung, P. 0. Box 1512, N. Y. City. Would you be so good as to let him know this?
Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
228. Engels to Victor Adler 14 December
Dear Victor,
Your letters of 12 and 26 safely received. So the K. Kautsky business has been settled. Best thanks for your good wishes for my birthday. I can assure you that it has been brought home to me and impressed upon my
a Department of the Interior, Census Office. Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890, Parts III , Washington, 1892-1894 - b of Capital 1894
mind that I can no longer, in my seventy-fifth year, permit myself those imprudences you reprehend. On the contrary, I am on the strictest of diets, treat my alimentary canal like a grumpy bureaucratic chief whose every whim must be obeyed and, to ward off coughs, bronchial catarrh and the like, submit to being wrapped up, kept warm and generally maltreated in every conceivable way, as is only meet and right for a decrepit old man. But enough of that.
I need hardly tell you how pleased I was about the resolute stand Bebel adopted after the feeble Party Conference. [425] I was also pleased to have been indirectly compelled by Vollmar to throw in a word or two on this account.a We have in fact been victorious all along the line. First, Vollmar’s exit from the lists after Bebel’s four articles [434] in itself an unequivocal retreat, then the rebuff administered by the Executive; then the repudiation by the parliamentary group of the claim that it, rather than the Party Conference, should act as arbiter. I.e. Vollmar has suffered defeat after defeat in this, his third unsuccessful campaign. That should suffice even an erstwhile papal Zouave. [439] I have written Liebknecht two letters about this,b from which he will have derived little pleasure. The man is becoming ever more obstructive. He still claims to have the best nerves in the party — no great shakes, to go by his rotten speech in the Reichstag the day before yesterday. [440] Nor, it seems, has this gone unnoticed in government circles where an attempt is clearly being made to help him onto his legs again by accusing him of lese -majestie,
[436] allegedly committed a posteriori.
That affair proves, by the way, either that Williamc and von Köller are completely crazy or that they are deliberately trying to engineer a coup d’état. Hohenlohe’s speech has demonstrated that he is an utterly gormless,d
feeble-minded, weak-willed old gentleman, and nothing but Mr von Köllers man of straw. Köller himself is a typical Junker — vain, forceful and narrow-minded, and is capable of presenting himself to Little Willie as the man who will put paid to ‘subversion’ and carry out to the very letter His Majesty’s intentions with regard to the restoration of the royal prerogative. And William is capable of saying in reply: ‘You are a man after my own heart!’ If that’s how matters stand — and every day brings fresh indications that it is— then vogue la galere!e We’ll be in for a merry time.
a F. Engels, The Peasant Question in France and Germany —b See this volume, pp. 373 -75 ; the editors do not possess the second letter. - c William II - d lacking awareness, dull, stupid, uncomprehending - e let the worst happen But now for the most important thing. You express surprise at not having heard from Louise. In which case, might I suggest that you be so good as to answer the extremely urgent letters she has written to you, not only those about her acting as correspondent for you over here and whether you would also like articles from anyone else and, if so, who — but also and above all those about the offer of money.
Months ago, in September or early October, she wrote to you saying: ‘There is now a group of people who, though not members of the party, nevertheless have confidence in you and in particular believe that you are the man to help the daily Arbeiter-Zeitung [377] along the road to financial success as well, always providing that you are given the leading position.’ They are therefore prepared to assign to you a considerable sum for the daily Arbeiter-Zeitung—amounting, I understand, to some 5,000 fl., on condition that:
1. You accept the senior position on the paper. 2. The thing is treated purely as a business investment and interest is regularly paid.
3. All negotiations, payments, etc., are dealt with by you in Vienna and by Louise over here.
These, to the best of my recollection, were the conditions upon which the offer was made. ‘Well, there has been no response of any kind from you, either to the above or to any of Louise’s subsequent letters. Last week she wrote again, asking for an immediate reply which had to be here by Tuesday, the 11th, at the latest. In vain. Now this can only mean one of two things: Either you in your correspondence are so enmeshed in a web of postal and other kinds of intrigue that it is virtually impossible to get a letter to you, or your disinclination to answer letters is such that you would rather forego the money that has been offered you than write to Louise.
Either way we have got to know where we stand. The chaps are pressing for a decision for, if you refuse the money, they will invest it elsewhere. We have therefore been compelled to send this letter to Mrs Anna Pernerstorfer, with the request that she deliver it to you in person and to no one else. We would now ask you—-for the very last time—if you would kindly let us know whether or not you wish to negotiate with us and or Louise regarding the money. If you do, you must tell her how letters are to be addressed to you, whereupon we shall send a reply by ‘registered’ mail.
1894
Louise and her baby are both very well. The baby grows, flourishes and screams; she is suckling it herself and has plenty and to spare. She and Ludwig send their love, likewise
Yours,
F.E.
229. Engels to Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz 14 December
Dear Jodko,
I certainly would not have the least objection to your translating my article on the peasant question and should be glad if it could also prove helpful to your compatriots. [441]
Yours,
F. Engels
As you see, we have moved house.
First published, in the Printed according to the original language of the original, in: Z Pola walki, No. 4 (12), 1960 Published in English for the first time 1894
230. Engels to Laura Lafargue 17 December
My dear Löhr,
You say, after finishing the 3rd volumea and before beginning with the 4th, I must long for a little rest. Now I will just tell you what my position is.
I have to follow the movement in five large and a lot of small European countries and the U. S. America. For that purpose I receive 3 German, 2 English, 1 Italian dailies and from January 1 the Vienna daily, 7 in all. Of weeklies I receive 2 from Germany, 7 Austria, 1 France, 3 America (2 English, 1 German), 2 Italian, and 1 each in Polish, Bulgarian, Spanish and Bohemian, three of which in languages I am still gradually acquiring. Besides that, calls of the most varied sorts of people (just now, a few min utes ago, Polak from Amsterdam sent me a German sculptor penniless and in want of employment) and an ever increasing crowd of correspon dents, more than at the time of the International! many of whom expect long explanations and all of them taking away time. With all this and the 3rd volume, I have not, even during the proof-sheet-time, that is the whole of 1894, been able to read more than one book.
Now the next thing is the publication of Lassalle’s letters to Mohr. [284]
Tussy has typed them, they are in my desk, but — thanks to the removal — I have not been able to touch them. That means notes, references to facts long gone by as well as to my own old correspondence with Mohr— and a preface to be written diplomatically.
Then the heaps of arrears of my own. First the complete rewriting of the Bauernkrieg [235] which has been out of sale for years, and has been promised as my first work after Vol. II I. That requires a considerable study; I hoped to do that along with the proof-sheets, But impossible. Anyhow I shall have to look myself up how to do it.
Then — not to speak of other little jobs hanging over me — I want to write at least the chief chapters out of Mohr’s political life: 1842-1852,
a of Capital 1894
and the International. The latter is the most important and urgent, I intend to do it first. But that requires freedom from interruption, and when shall I get that? [316]
All these things are wanted from me, and moreover a re-edition of Mohr’s and my own earlier smaller writings. For that I have been collecting; but have not succeeded in much—. Some more bits are in the Parteiarchiv in Berlin.
[442] But a good deal is short yet, for instance a copy of the first Rheinische Zeitung. If I could get, say 2/3 of the old 1842-50 articles collected, I should start, as I am sure then that for a 2nd edition a lot more would come to light. But we are not so far advanced as yet.
And then Vol. 4. [443] Now of that there is a very rough manuscript, of which up to now it in impossible to say how much can be used. I myself cannot again undertake to unravel it and dictate the whole as I did Vol. 2 and 3. My eyesight would break down completely before I was half through. I found that out years ago and tried another dodge. I considered it would be useful to have one or two intelligent men of the younger generation broken in to read Mohr’s handwriting. I thought of Kautsky and Bernstein. Kautsky was then still in London (some 6 or 7 years ago). I asked him and he assented; I said I would pay one hundred pounds for the complete ‘fair copy’ of what there is, and assist him where he could not decipher. He began. Then he left London, took one Hefta with him, and for years I heard no more, He was too busy with the Neue Zeit, so I had Manuscript and copy returned, as far as the latter went — perhaps 1/8 to 1/6 of the whole.b Bernstein too is not only very busy, but suffers from overwork, has not yet completely overcome his neurasthenia, and I hardly dare ask him. I shall see whether Tussy will; if he volunteers, all well; if not I do not intend to run the risk of having it said that I brought on a relapse of his illness by overloading him with work.
That is my position: 74 years the which I am beginning to feel, and work enough for two men of 40. Yes, if I could divide myself into the F. E. of 40 and the F. E. of 34, which would just be 74, then we should soon be all right. But as it is, all I can do is to work on with what is before me and get through it as far and as well as I can.
Now you know my position, and if you have now and then to wait for a letter from me, you will know the reason why.
Last night Bonnier came from Edinbro’ and left to-day for Oxford. He
a notebook - b See this volume, p. 71 1894
has cooled down considerably from his first anger over my Bauernfragea— vous nous traitez d’imbéciles,b he wrote to me. Anyhow he was very pleasant and I think he is convinced that they have made a blunder at Nantes. [406] He really believed that it was not only possible but necessary to gain over the mass of the French peasants to Socialism between now and next general elections.
Post time. Must close. I owe you for your share of the
Sonnenschein account for Capital (English).......................... £1.31.-1/3 Share of £5.—received from Neue Zeit for the 2 chapters
from Vol. II Ic ........................................................................ £1.13.4 And allow me to add as a remembrance that
Christmas is coming ............................................................... £ 5. -. -Covered by cheque herewith ................................................. £7.16.5. Puddings could not be made this year, the little girl of Louise’s (which is prosperous and gaining nearly a pound a week in weight) has stopped that. But Paul will have his cake.
Ever yours
F. Engels
Voprosi istorü KPSS, No. 1,1957; first published in the language of
the original (English) in: F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II I, 1959
231. Engels to Pyotr Lavrov 18 December
My dear Lavrov,
Mme Lafargue has sent me your letter, and I hasten to assure you that
a F. Engels, The Peasant Question in France and Germany -Capital
you call us imbeciles - c of 1894
I have not at all forgotten about you, But
1) Dühring,a 3rd edition — I had only 6 copies, which I sent to no one except Mme Lafargue and Mme Aveling. The rest have been taken, as always happens. I have found one more copy which I will send to you immediately.
2) Capital, 3rd volume. If it is on sale in Paris and elsewhere, this is because the editor has displayed exemplary avarice towards me. There were copies in Rome before I had received a single one! However, I am expecting another delivery in a few days, and then I will be able to send you the copy long since intended for you.
I hope you are keeping well — as for me, I cannot complain, but I am beginning to realise that 74 is not 47. However, events should help us to maintain our vital forces, the whole of Europe is warming up, crises are brewing everywhere, particularly in Russia. The situation cannot last much longer over there. So much the better.
Yours
F. Engels
Please note the change of address!
in: K. Marx and F. Engels,
Works, First Russian Edition, Translated from the French Vol. XXIX, Mosoow, 1946
232. Engels to Paul Lafargue 18 December
41 Regent’s Park Road
My dear Lafargue,
I am returning Lavrov’s letter to Laura. I replied to him at once to say
a F. Engels, Anti-Dübring 1894
that he shall have the two booksa as soon as I myself shall have copies.b
Meissner supplied me, and still supplies me, after he has supplied everyone else. I am also sending you a copy for Deville.
As I said: the (Nantes) programme [406] itself has only one pointless clause: the reduction of LEGAL rates of interest, i.e., the revival of the ancient laws against usury whose total uselessness was demonstrated 2,000 years ago. You cannot effectively reduce the rates of interest paid by mortgaged peasants without turning all mortgages on property into debts against the State, in which case you are free to reduce the interest — except that you lose money yourself, when it falls due. And also the clause on hunting, as it is drafted, is self-contradictory.
Not only is young Williamc cracked, but this time he is pushing things to a crisis. The new chancellord is simply a man of straw, the moving spirit in the new government is Köller (der macht as immer döller,e as Kladderadatsch said of him years ago). They are provoking a conflict with the Reichstag. They are going to prosecute Liebknecht for lese-majesty after the closure. [436] They are pressing for a dissolution which will mean a recalcitrant Reichstag in Berlin and then — a little coup d’état. We may look forward to some nice happenings in Germany if everything turns out as these gentlemen visualise.
In Italy, too, the monarchy is hard pressed. The Crown Princef is involved in the Banca Romana to the tune of 300,000 francs, the Kingg in the name of various nominees, for very much larger amounts. All that is well known. Crispi is mortally wounded by Giolitti’s sensational move [445]—the whole of Parliament as well as all the higher officials are compromised by it, and in simple-minded Italy they are still so Catholic, that is to say, pagan, that all this is done in broad daylight and there is no means of concealing the corruption, of which, on the contrary, they boast — until there is a crisis.
And then, Russia — the unknown, where only one thing is certain: that the present regime will not be able to stand a change of tsar, and there will be a crisis there too.
What you say about the effect produced by the little scene in the Reichstag goes for England as well. All the years of work, all the electoral and real victories count for nothing; a little melodramatic scene — that is
a K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II I. -b See previous letter. -c William II - d Prince zu Hohenlohe - e Who lets himself go more and more. - f Vittorio Emmanuele - g Umberto I 1894
the striking, the dazzling thing. How petty people are!
I shall write to Adler about your letters. But there, with the small working strength they have, it seems to me very unlikely that a regular correspondence would suit them, unless it were written in German and ready for the printer. So, strictly speaking, one ought to ask Frankel first. But we shall see.
Ever yours,
F. E.
Laura should have received my letter of yesterday.
Correspondance, t. II I. Paris,1959 Translated from the French
233. Engels to George William Lamplugh 21 December
We have moved to 41 Regent’s Park Road. You’ll see Dr. Freyberger’s name on the door — and shall be glad to see you there whenever you find time to look in — in the meantime a merry Xmas you and your family.
Yours truly
F. Engels
21/12/94, the shortest day, and with a vengeance!
1926 Published in English for the first time 1894
234. Engels to Victor Adler 22 December
Dear Victor,
So the offer of moneya has at last reached the stage at which we can get down to business. Louise will be letting you have further details.
As regards correspondents over here, please give M. Beer a pseudonym that will so distinguish him from all the other correspondents as to obviate any possibility of confusion. The man is very green so far as England is concerned and sees things through Galician-Talmudic spectacles.—I hardly imagine that E. Bernstein will be able to send you a great deal; as it is, he seldom has much time to spare for articles for the Vorwärts and prefers to work for the Neue Zeit.
Lafargue has asked whether you could make use of him as a contributor. I told him that in the first instance you would have to consider Frankel but that I was unaware of all the circumstances and would write.b He — Lafargue — is a lively and interesting writer but his stuff, like the Gallus reports he sends to the Vorwärts, is all in French. His wife does not write German either and speaks it only on fairly rare occasions. Nor is she as fluent as Tussy. I don’t know whether it would be convenient for you to do the translating over there yourselves. Lafargue would naturally have a fee in mind, since he has lost his deputy’s salary. I couldn’t tell him anything about that either.
Things are getting complicated on the Continent. In your country electoral reform is assured — and nowadays, when something like that gets under way, it is not so easy to stop — while Russia is seeing the beginning of the end of Tsarist omnipotence, for it is improbable that autocracy will survive this latest change of monarch; in Italy they are heading straight for a revolution that may cost the monarchy its head, and in the German Empire Little Williec seems intent on crossing the Halys and destroying a great empire. You could hardly wish for a better moment at which to found a daily newspaper— material in plenty and what’s more, of a kind
a See this volume, p. 384 - b See this volume, p. 391 -c William II 1894
that the other parties are bound to distort and misconstrue, whereas our party is the only one that will construe it aright from the very start.
And now a Merry Christmas to you, your wife (to whom please convey my warm regards) and your children.
Yours,
F.E.
Erstes Heft: Victor Adler und Published in English for the first time Friedrich Engels, Vienna, 1922
235. Engels to Paul Singer 26 to 29 December[447]
...incidentally, your conditions are very favourable. The English workers would leap as high as St. Paul’s Cathedral if they got a labour exchange that could force the bourgeois either to justify his refusal to employ a worker before a court of arbitration or take him, etc....
Published in Vorwärts. Berliner Printed according to the newspaper Volksblatt, No. 1, 1 January 1895 Published in English for the first time
236. Engels to Victor Adler 27 December
I would ask you to convey my congratulations to the Austrian workers on their daily paper. [377] Its first daily paper invariably signifies a tremen-
1894
dous step forward in the life of a party, especially of a workers’ party. It is the first position from which it can tackle its opponents with the same weapons, at least in the field of the press. You have won this position; now the second is at stake: suffrage, parliament. And you are certain of this too, if you exploit the political situation — becoming ever more favourable to you as it is with the same skill as [you have done] in the past fifteen months; if you are determined to act at the right time, but also, as so often necessary, determined to wait at the right time; if you know how to let circumstances act on your behalf.
Good luck and success to the daily Arbeiter-Zeitung!
Yours
237. Engels to Laura Lafargue 29 December
My dear Löhr,
Thanks for your news of the 23rd about the Allemanists [21] and their dissensions — this sets me up again as far as the personalia of the Parisian movement are concerned. I hope the whole set of Allemanists will soon be smashed up and whatever is decent among them joining our people who, if they wait patiently, seem to stand the best chance of absorbing gradually all the rest.
May the new dailies flourish [449] and soon bring forth a Parisian daily! As to the preface to the French Manifest,a my proposal would be that
a K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
First published abridged in the Arbeiter-Zeitung. No. 1, 1 January 1895 and in full, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946 1894
you work out some sort of preface out of the four German ones, giving such information about the fates of the work as may interest your readers, then send me the Manuscript for additions to be proposed by me (I have just received an Armenian translationa) to which I might add a few words in my own name. [450] Don’t you think that would solve the difficulty?
Last Sunday Tussy being in Manchester sent me your letter to her about Vol. IV. [443] I am quite willing and shall be glad to assist her if she will undertake the work of writing out the original Manuscript.
As to what you say about Mohr’s papers and their treatment in case of my death, the matter is simple enough. All these things I hold in trust for you, that you know; and consequently on my death they revert to you. In the last will I made (when Sam Moore was here last time but one) there is no special provision, but in the instructions to my executors accompanying it, there is a distinct direction to them, to hand over to Tussy, as the administrator of the will, the whole of Mohr’s Manuscripts that are in his own handwriting, also all letters addressed to him with the sole exception of my own correspondence with him.b And as Tussy seems to have some doubt about the matter, I shall as soon as Sam Moore comes back in Summer ask him to draw up a new will in which this is distinctly and unmistakably declared. If you have any other wish please let me know.
Adler writes about Paul’s correspondence for the daily Arbeiter Zeitung: ‘was Lafargue anlangt so habe ich nichts gegen französische Korrespondenzen, ich werde viel übersetzen müssen. Natürlich wird Frankel regelmässig schreiben — Lafargue ist ein Korrespondent wie ich es für den Vorwärts bin, selten, aber dann lang. Nun wäre mir ja mit seinen geistsprühenden Artikeln sehr gedient, wenn ich nicht fürchtete dass er mir dieselben schickt wie an Vorwärts und Echo.c Kannst Du arrangieren dass er mir etwa zweimal im Monat oder bei besondern Anlässen schreibt, so wäre es mir ein grosser Gefallen, wir können nur nicht viel zahlen, 20 fr. für den Artikel müsste ihm genügen.’d
a See this volume, p. 371 - b See this volume, pp. 364 - c Hamburger Echo — d ‘As regards Lafargue, I have nothing against French correspondence, I shall have a lot to translate. Naturally Frankel will write regularly — Lafargue is a correspondent of the kind that I am for Vorwärts, infrequent, but then long-writing. Of course his scintillating articles would be very welcome if I were not afraid that he would send me the same as those for Vorwärts and Echo. Can you arrange for him to write for me, say twice a month or on special occasions; that would be a great help to me, only we cannot pay much, he would have to make do with 20 francs an article.’ 1894
There. Paul might write to Vienna during the odd week when he does not write to Berlin, and on some other general subject.
We have not been able to see anything in the English papers about G. Richard’s election. [451] Is he en ballottage? Your figures 1,802 votes do not look very encouraging.
In Germany we shall have a busy year. We drank the Umsturz-Kaisers
[428]jolly good health on Christmas day so he will now perhaps be satisfied.
A very happy and pleasant New Year to you and Paul from all of us here!
Ever yours
F. Engels
The seaside at Eastbourne 1895
1895
Endnotes
[317] Edouard Vaillant framed a draft law on abolishing the regular army and replacing it with a national milita; all the Socialist deputies put their signatures to it.
[278] In view of the Socialists’ success at the elections to the French Chamber of Deputies in August-September 1893 (see Note 208), the reactionary press mounted a campaign of slander accusing them of being German agents on the pretext that German Social-Democrats had donated 2,500 francs to the election fund. In this connection P. Lafargue wrote to Engels on 5 September 1893 that French Socialists had better not receive money from Germany in the future.
[318] At the trial of Spanish anarchists in Madrid in 1890 it came out that one of them, Munoz, was a police agent. All the defendants were sentenced to 7 years of forced labour.
[319] Speaking of the harmony between Carnot and the Russian tsar, Engels implied the Franco-Russian alliance sealed in those days (see Note 177). About the anarchist police bombs, see Note 309.
[320] Engels sketched out a version of his reply on the reverse side of Giuseppe Cànepa’s letter of 3 January 1894. Cànepa asked Engels to find an epigraph to the weekly L’Era nuova due to appear in Geneva as of March 1894 ‘which in a few words could synthesise the Socialist ideal and set off the new era against the old era that is epitomised in the Dantesque words: one people rules, and the other languishes’. For the quote given by Engels, see present edition, Vol. 6, p. 506.
[322] The first congress of the Austrian trade unions, held in Vienna from 24 to 27 December 1893, set up a single centralised organisation and endorsed a single strike statute for all the unions. The congress spoke out against a general strike as a tool in the struggle for universal suffrage. The Czech Social-Democrats held their congress on 24-26 December 1893 in Budweis (the present name, Ceské Budejovice). It passed a decision on forming a Czechoslavonian Social-Democratic Party [Ceskoslovanská Sociálne domekraticka strana] on the basis of the principles proclaimed by the Unification Congress of the Austrian Social-Democrats at Heinfeld in 1888 (see Note 272). The proceedings of the congresses held by the Austrian trade unions and the Czech Social-Democrats were covered by Die Arbeiter-Zeitung (NN 1 and 2) on 2 and 5 January 1894.
[327] Engels alludes to Karl Höger’s speech at the congress of the Austrian trade unions (see Note 322).
[290] Karl Kautsky asked Eduard Bernstein to write an article on the general strike for publication in Die Neue Zeit, he hoped this would start a discussion on the subject. Engels’ advice to Bernstein was apparently not taken into account, for in February 1894 Die Neue Zeit published Bernstein’s article ‘Der Streik als politische Kampfmittel’.
[330] On 26 January 1894 the newspaper Vorwärts published a lengthy article entitled ‘Ein edles Brüderpaar’ which claimed that Theodor Reuß and Heinrich Oberwinder had, beginning in 1886, been publicly exposed by the press as police spies. As R. Fischer wrote in his letter of 27 January 1894, Reuß had voiced protest over this article and denied any connection between his departure from The Daily Chronicle and the exposures in Vorwärts. On 14 January 1894, Fischer also asked Engels if he remembered a second publication on Reuß in Vorwärts .
[331] The Erfurt Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party took place on 14 to 20 October 1891. Among the other issues, the Congress discussed and adopted a new Party Programme which, despite some shortcomings, was essentially based on Marxist principles. The criticism of the original draft of the Programme, which Engels made in his work A Critique of the Draft of the Social-Democratic Programme of 1891’ (see present edition, Vol. 27), applies in part to the adopted Programme. The decisions of the Erfurt Congress sealed the Marxist trend in Germany’s working-class movement.
[332] Apparently a reference to the fee for the Engels pamphlet Internationales aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ (1871-75) published in Berlin by the Vorwärts Editorial Board.
[335] Engels probably means the violent repression by the crew of the German cruiser Die Hyäne of a mutiny of native soldiers in the Cameroons on 21 December 1893.
[282] Engels had the fee for his works printed by the Dietz Publishers in Stuttgart sent to V. Adler for the needs of Austrian Social-Democracy.
[336] Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky and other authors were preparing a series of works on the history of socialism. In this connection Kautsky asked Engels in his letter of 7 February 1894 whether it would not be better to call it History of Communism. The book appeared in Stuttgart in 1895 under the title Die Geschichte des Sozialismus in Einzeldarstellungen.
[339] Eduard Bernstein advised Engels to read Giordano Bruno’s book Del’Infinito, Universo e Mondi which appeared in 1893 in Berlin; the title of the German translation was Von Unendlichen, dem All und den Welten.
[340] Pertaining to the Socialist Party of the Italian Working People [Il Partito socialista dei lavo-ratori italiani] founded in 1892 at a congress in Genoa. The Party took a resolute stand in distancing itself from the anarchists; in 1895 it changed its name and came to be known as The Italian Socialist Party [Il Partito socialista italiano].
[341] Engels congratulated Adelheid Dworzak and Julius Popp on their marriage which took place early in February 1894.
[342] In February 1894 the French Chamber of Deputies debated the issue of corn tariffs. Jean Juarès proposed a law which provided for a state monopoly on grain imports. Jules Guesde supported this motion.
[343] The Congress of the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany in Wyden (Switzerland) was held in August 1890. That was the first illegal congress of the German Social-Democrats following the introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law of 1878 (see Note 15). The Congress criticised the anarchist stand of Johann Most and Wilhelm Hasselmann, who rejected all legal means of struggle, advocated individual terror and launched an open campaign against the Party leadership; it expelled them from the Party. The Congress unanimously decided to strike out the word ‘legal’ from the statement contained in Part II of the Gotha Programme of 1875 to the effect that the Party was working to attain its goals ‘with all legal means’. The Congress confirmed the status of Der Sozialdemokrat as the Party’s official organ.
[344] As August Momberger wrote to Engels on 26 February 1894, he wanted to take part in disseminating socialist ideas among foreigners resident in Wiesbaden, the English in the first place. He asked Engels to recommend the significant socialist, socio-political and natural science works, as well as some English journal similar to the German Die Neue Zeit.
[346] Speaking in the Commons on 19 March 1894, Randolph Churchill proposed a bill banning members of the Liberal cabinet from interfering in the course of future parliamentary elections and from speaking in the constituencies.
[163] The Parish Councils Bill was tabled in Parliament by the Gladstone cabinet in 1893 and approved on 1 March 1894. The entire system of local self-government was reorganised with this Bill. The Parish councils, which had been performing the functions of church and secular government in rural districts, now retained their prerogatives only in ecclesiastical affairs, while secular government was turned over to Parish Assemblies elected by local tax-payers. In larger rural communities such assemblies elected Parish Councils from their midst.
[347] Engels means the articles published anonymously by Der Arbeiter-Zeitung (Nos. 19-22) on 6, 13 and 16 March 1894; apparently they were written by Victor Adler. The article that Engels refers to appeared on 6 March 1894, likewise without a signature; it was entitled ‘Die Wahlreform Stadnicki’. It criticised the draft of an electoral reform suggested by the coalition government of Alfred von Windischgrätz. The bill envisaged only an insignificant increase in the Reichstag representation by setting up a fifth curia.
[301] A reference to the controversy over the McKinley protectionist tariff adopted in November 1890 (William McKinley was one of the leaders of the Republican Party [and President of the United States in 1897-1901]). The new tariff provided for a dramatic rise in duties on merchandise imported to the United States and, as a consequence, sent consumer prices up. The situation of the worrking class deteriorated as a result. The tariff bill invested the President with the right to increase import duties in the future as well. Engels commented on this legislation in his arricle ‘The American Presidential Election’ (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 329-31).
[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.
[350] By using the conventional symbols adopted in biology (for the male sex and for the female sex), Engels meant Die Arbeiter-Zeitung, and Die Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung, a newspaper for the working women. Both were published in Vienna.
[352] Carlism—onslaughts of the feudal reactionaries who unleashed two civil wars in Spain, in 1833-40 and in 1872-76, in the form of dynastic feuds between two lines of the Spanish Bourbons. Defeated in these wars were the Carlists, supporters of Don Carlos the Elder, whom they had proclaimed king in 1833. The Carlists relied on the backward strata of the peasantry and opposed forces interested in Spain’s capitalist development. The two Carlist wars resulted in a weakening of the feudal-clerical strata and a strengthening of the positions of the bourgeoisie.
[353] The Spanish anarchists had been perpetrating acts of terrorism since the late 1880s (in 1889 they bombed the royal palace).
[354] Benno Karpeles sent Engels his book Der Arbeiter des mährisch-schlesischen Steinkohlen-Reviers. In his letter of 19 March 1894 he praised Engels as a scientist and author of the work The Condition of the Working-Class in England and as an outstanding socialist.
[355] In her letter of 11 April 1894 Laura Lafargue told Engels that the French anarchists (liber-taires) were out to publish one of the works of Eugen Dühring. In this connection Bonnet, the secretary of the Editorial Board of the journal L’Ere nouvelle, suggested that a translation into French of Engels’ work Anti-Dühring should be begun without delay so as to have it ready before the appearance of Dühring’s book. Such a translation did not materialise at the time.
[360] Engels means A. Loria’s article ‘Karl Marx’ published in La Nuova antologia di scienze, lettere ed arti on 1 April 1883 (see present edition, Vol. 47) as well as the preface to Volume II I of Capital (see present edition, Vol. 37).
[361] Henry William Lee, writing to Engels on 13 April 1894, asked him to give a lecture to members of the Social-Democratic Federation.
[363] The reference is to the proof sheets of the French edition of Marx’s Speech on the Question of Free Trade (see note 357).
[299] Bimetallism (double currency)—a monetary system based on two metals (chiefly, gold and silver) with a fixed ratio to each other as legal tender.
[371] On 7 June 1894 Nikolai Danielson told Engels he had not recieved the next sheets of Volume II I of Das Kapital. He recommended a translator for the German edition of his Essays on Our Post-Reform Social Economy.
[372] The Russian edition of Engels’ work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State appeared in St. Petersburg in 1894. It was published with deletions made by the censor, in particular relating to Marx and his works.
[373] N. Danielson had sent Engels the first two volumes of statistical data filed by the Department of Trade and Manufactories of the Russian Finance Ministry for the 1893 World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago: The Industries of Russia. Manufactures and Trade: with a General Industrial Map, St. Petersburg, 1893. Russia was among the countries participating in the exhibition sponsored by the U.S. Congress to commemorate the quadricennial of America’s discovery and its discoverer, Columbus.
[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.
[374] Eugéne Turpin, a French chemist who in 1885 invented melinite, a powerful explosive, was accused of trying to sell his invention to a foreign power; he was cleared of this charge. However, he was nevertheless sentenced to five years in prison for publishing in 1889 a pamphlet on this episode. Turpin was pardoned on 10 April 1893. The newspaper Le Temps said on 2 June 1894 that the aim of the whole affair was publicity for the firm exploiting the Turpin invention.
[375] An allusion to the case of the Building Society whose director, Spender Jabez Balfour, had fled overseas. Anthony John Mundells, an MP from Sheffield, President of the Board of Trade and, until 1892, Director of the New Zealand Loan Company, had to resign on 12 May 1894. Acting together with James Fergusson and John Gorst, he in 1893 closed down the company that had become the target of a public investigation.
[376] Stanislaw Zablocki in his letter of 3 June 1894 asked for permission to publish the Polish translation of Engels’ article ‘The Polish Proklamation’.
[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?’
[280] On 10 October 1893 P. Lafargue wrote to Engels about the plan to start a newspaper that could enable the Workers’ Party to rise to a leading position in the French Socialist press. Here Engels recalls that in 1892 Le Socialiste had announced that it would be a daily newspaper as of October 1892; the announcement began with the words ‘pour paraître en Octobre’ (‘to appear in October’). In actual fact, Le Socialiste continued as a weekly.
[378] The French President S. Carnot was assassinated by Santo Caserio, an Italian anarchist, on 24 June 1894. On 17 August 1893, the Aiguesmortes salt mines in Southern France were the scene of bloody clashes between French and Italian workers; the cause of the conflict was that the employers were paying higher wages to the French workers than to their Italian mates.
[380] Der Sozialdemokrat (Zurich) on 24 December 1887 promulgated a list of Berlin police agents. Among the agents exposed by Swiss Socialists was Heinrich Oberwinder, formerly a member of the First International (see also Engels’ letter to Paul Lafargue of 29 December 1887, present edition, Vol. 48).
[199] Concerning the publication of Carl Schorlemmer’s literary heritage; he died on 27 June 1892. Ludwig Siebold and Philipp Klepsch took charge of this job as the executors of Carl Schorlemmer’s will.
[311] Sir Henry Roscoe’s and Carl Schorlemmer’s work appeared in English under the title A Treatise on Chemistry. Volumes I-II I. London-New York, 1877-92; the whole edition comprised 9 books. The German name of the work was Ausführliches Lehrbuch der Chemie. Bände I-IV. Braunschweig, 1877-89. Julius Wilhelm Brühl continued the series beginning with Volume V; after C. Schorlemmer’s death the nine-volume edition was completed in 1901.
[313] A reference to the English edition of Carl Schorlemmer’s The Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry which came out in Manchester and London in 1879. The German text was published in 1889 as Der Ursprung und die Entwicklung der organischen Chemie in Brunswick. Arthur Smithells prepared a new English edition which was published in London and New York in 1894 under the same title as the 1879 edition.
[381] For cited passages see present edition, Vol. 37, Part I, K. Marx, Capital, Vol. II I, present edition, pp. 374, 378, 382.
[382] In connection with a third German edition of Anti-Dühring due for publication, Engels revised somewhat the Marx-written Chapter X of the second part of this work; the title of the chapter was From ‘CriticalHistory’(see present edition, Vol. 25, pp. 211-43, and also p. 15); the third edition of Anti-Dühring was off in Stuttgart in 1894.
[291] The three-class electoral system {Dreiklassenwahl) was introduced in Prussia in keeping with the electoral law of 30 May 1849, after the defeat of the 1848-49 Revolution. This system provided for high property qualifications and, consequently, contributed to unequal representation.
[208] At the elections to the French Chamber of Deputies on 20 August and 3 September 1893 the Socialists of various trends gained 700,000 votes and 30 seats (among the elected deputies 12 were from the Workers’ Party — J. Guesde, J. Juarés, E. Vaillant and others). The deputies representing the Workers’ Party agreed to form a united socialist group in the new Chamber; this group comprised 20 deputies who belonged to the bourgeois Left Wing, Radicals for the most part (also known as ‘independent socialists’) and other socialists. All in all the Socialist group in the Chamber of Deputies numbered 50 deputies. Engels more than once criticised the leadership of the Workers’ Party for concessions it had made to the Radicals in the matter of Programme and organisational principles for the sake of forming a joint Socialist parliamentary group. See, e.g., Engels’ letters to V. Adler of 17 July 1894 and to F. Sorge of 30 December 1893 (see this volume, pp. 249, 324-25).
[169] In his letter to Engels on 23 February 1893 Lafargue wrote in part that the French Workers’ Party (see Note 11) and the Radical Socialists (the Radical Left Wing, see Note 86), who were led by Etienne Millerand and Jean Jaurés, had agreed on cooperation in the August-September 1893 elections to the Chamber of Deputies and that they planned to launch an agitation campaign in Northern France on 5 March.
[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.
[250] Since the International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress in Zurich was being held on the eve of the election to the French Chamber of Deputies, the leaders of the French Workers’ Party were unable to attend. The French delegation comprised 41 men of whom only two (Bonnet and Bonnier) represented the Party. The other delegates were from non-Marxist parties and political groups: the Possibilists (see Note 30), the Independent Socialists (Jaclard), the Blanquists (see Note 20) [Degay and Rémy], etc. The French delegation distinguished itself by its inconsistent voting and its opposition to Bebel’s theses and to the majority at the Congress.
[384] Twenty-two German emigrés took part in the Scotch miners’ strike being held at the time. In their latter of 19 July 1894 signed by August Siegel and other German miners, they asked Engels to send their message to the Executive of the German Social-Democratic Party in which they requested a loan of 300 marks; they also asked Engels to approach Julius Motteler and other comrades in London with a request for material assistance.
[386] Concerning Paul Lafargue’s negotiations with the Paris publisher Charles Marie Delagrave about the publication of his work Origine et évolution de la propriété (see Note 567).
[388] In 1893-94 Sicily was the stage of sporadic peasant revolts caused by the aftermath of an economic crisis and abuses of the local administration. The revolts were crushed by brute force.
[389] It was stated on the reverse side of the letter that the parcel and the letter with it were for Victor Adler; the parcel contained newspapers that could not be sent to Austria, while enclosed in the letter was about two pounds sterling. Engels was asked to get this letter to the addressee; the signature was illegible.
[391] A reference to the Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union, the first union of unskilled workers in the history of the British labour movement. It was formed in late March-early April 1889 under the conditions of a mounting strike movement. A major contribution to the foundation and work of the union was made by Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling. The Union campaigned for the legal eight hours. It gained considerable influence within a short span of time; as many as 100,000 gas works employees joined it within a year.
[394] Engels probably refers to the speeches made at the Zurich International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress (see Note 229) by some members of the French delegation who leveled sharp criticism at the parliamentary activity of Socialists and put forward the idea of social revolution by means of a general strike. Among the members of the French delegation was Paul Arndt, a Paris correspondent of the newspaper Vorwärts.
[395] In his letter to Engels on 12 August 1894 Eduard Bernstein wrote about the International Congress of Textile Workers held in Manchester in July 1894; in his opinion, it was an attempt to divorce trades-union congresses from socialist congresses. In this context Bernstein also mentioned Paul Arndts article about the Manchester Congress, which appeared in Vorwärts on 2 August 1894. (Subsequently Engels received the issue of the newspaper Der Textil-Arbeiter with commentaries on the Congress.) Bernstein asked Engels what he thought of the Manchester Congress and of the decision of the conference of the Social-Democratic Federation (see Note 44) to convene an exclusively socialist congress prior to the congress of 1896 (see this volume, pp. 340-41, 343). The present letter contains Engels’ reply to Bernstein’s questions.
[400] Together with his letter of 2 August 1894 Filippo Turati sent Engels a photograph of a mold cast in Florence from the bust of K. Marx and asked him as well as Eleanor Marx-Aveling to confirm the likeness of the replica before it was cast.
[227] The International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress in Paris, which was actually the constituent congress of the Second International, opened on 14 July 1889, the centennial of the storming of the Bastille. About 400 delegates from 20 countries of Europe and America attended. The Congress heard the reports of Socialist representatives on the condition of the working-class movement in their respective countries, outlined fundamental principles of the international labour legislation by approving demands for the legal eight hours, prohibition of child labour and for labour protection of working women and adolescents. The Congress stressed the need of a political organisation of the proletariat and of a struggle for the implementation of workers’ democratic demands; it spoke out for a dissolution of regular armies which were to be replaced by a people’s militia. The most significant decision of the Congress was its resolution on holding demonstrations and meetings in all countries on 1 May 1890 in support of an eight-hour working day and of a fair-labour code. The anarchists, who opposed the congress resolutions, failed to enlist support from the absolute majority of the delegates.
[228] The International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress in Brussels was held on 16-22 August 1891. It was attended by 370 delegates from 16 European countries and the United States who represented, by and large, the Marxist trend in the working-class movement. Most of the delegates voted against anarchists participating in the Congress (who had sent their delegates). Attending the Congress were also representatives of the British trades unions, a rather positive factor according to Engels. Such issues were on its agenda as the labour code, work stoppage and boycott, and militarism. In its resolution on labour legislation the Congress called on workers of the world to join forces in the struggle against the capitalist rule; it urged workers, wherever they had political rights, to use these rights for their emancipation from wage servitude. The resolution on work stoppage and boycott recommended that workmen use both forms of the struggle. It emphasised the absolute need of trade unions for the workers. The attitude of the working class to militarism was the central issue on the agenda. The reports delivered by W. Liebknecht and E. Vaillant, as well as the resolution proposed by Liebknecht characterized militarism as an inevitable follow-up of the capitalist system; they stressed that a socialist system alone would be able to put an end to militarism and establish peace among the nations; that Socialists were a genuine party of peace. Yet these documents did not define specific tasks and ways of the struggle against the war threat. The resolution proposed by Liebknecht was attacked by the leader of the Dutch Socialists D. Nieuwenhuis, a man of anarchist leanings. He tabled a resolution urging the Socialists of all countries to appeal in the event of a war to their peoples to stage a general strike, but it failed to win support among the delegates. The overwhelming majority of votes was cast for the W. Liebknecht resolution (see also F. Engels ‘The Brussels Congress. The Situation in Europe’; present edition, vol. 27).
[403] The International Congress of Trade Unions, convened in London in November 1888 at the initiative of the British trades unions, involved delegates from Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy as well as representatives of the the trade-union organisations in France. However, Germany and Austria were not represented — trade unions were illegal there and could not send their delegates. The Congress called on the working people to wage a struggle for labour protection laws and for the legal eight hours; it adopted a decision on convening an International Working-Men’s Congress in Paris in 1889 (see Note 227).
[404] A reference to the 14th Annual Conference of the Social Democratic Federation, held in London on 5 and 6 August 1894.
[405] New Unionism—a development in the British trade-union movement at the end of the 1880s in the shape of the ‘new’ trades unions. Unlike the old craft unions — admitting craft workers exclusively — the new unions were open to labourers as well. The new labour organisations were formed by the various trades employed in a given industry (general unions). British Socialists, in particular Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Tom Mann, played a major part in setting up the new trades unions. Engels made an appraisal of New Unionism in his article ‘May 4 in London’ and in the Preface to the 1892 English Edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England (see, present edition, Vol. 27).
[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.
[408] As Eduard Bernstein wrote to Engels on 5 September 1894, Joseph Edwards invited him to write a series of articles on the situation of the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and its plans for the future; the proposed materials were intended for The Labour Annual, a publication that J. Edwards was editing. Bernstein also told Engels that Edward Aveling had advised him not to take part in that publication.
[411] The fees for the articles which Engels wrote for Die Neue Zeit were being sent, according to his instructions, to V. Adler for the Austrian Social-Democrats. However, since the royalties due for the chapters for Das Kapital, published in the same periodical, had been remitted by mistake to V Adler’s account, Engels asked for the reimbursement of the sum to Marx’s heirs at the expense of his article ‘On the History of Early Christianity’ (see present edition, Vol. 27).
[273] Der Sonderbund-—a separatist union of the seven economicallly backward Catholic cantons formed in 1843 to resist progressive bourgeois reforms and to defend the privileges of the Church and the Jesuits. The decree of the Swiss Diet of 1847 dissolving the Sonderbund served as a pretext for the latter to start hostilities against other cantons early in November. On 23 November 1847, the Sonderbund forces, consisting largely of milita detachments, were defeated by the federalist army.
[276] The years 1890-93 saw a mass campaign for universal suffrage in Belgium. In April 1893 the General Council of the Belgian Workers’ Party (see Note 230) declared a general political strike for a revision of the acting electoral law. Under the pressure of mass actions and work stoppages the Chamber of Deputies was compelled, on 18 April 1893, to adopt a law on universal suffrage (with certain reservations, however); the franchise was granted to men over 25 on the condition they had been resident in the country for no less than a year (res-idential qualification). On the other hand, this law introduced a system of multiple voting whereby some categories of voters were eligible for an additional 1-2 ballots depending on their property status, education and government service record.
[413] Georgi Plekhanov in his letter of 30 October 1894 asked Engels for permission to look through the files of the newspaper Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung and the journal Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue which Engels had in his custody.
[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.
[416] The reference is to the anonymous note ‘Die Verleumderischen Hetzereien Hyndman’s carried by the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 262) on 9 November 1894. It said Hyndman’s attacks on the German Social-Democrats elicited disapproval among the British Socialists and workmen.
[123] Engels alludes to a three percent interest loan which France agreed to grant Russia in September 1891 to a sum of 125 million gold roubles (or 500 million francs). The loan was a great success initially, with the sum of 125 million being surpassed seven-and-a-half-fold during the subscription. But then, because of the dramatic fall in the rate of Russian secu-rities at European exchanges as a result of the 1891 famine in Russia and the country’s wors-ening economic situation, subscribers refused to accept the bonds. In a bid to prevent a total crash, the Russian government was compelled to buy up a portion of the bonds. As a consequence, bonds worth only 96 million roubles were sold.
[420] Engels’ work On the History of Early Christianity (see present edition, Vol. 27), translated into French by Laura Lafargue, appeared in the journal Le Devenir social (nos. 1 and 2, 1895) under the title Contribution a l’Histoire du Christianisme primitif.
[115] The Hague (Fifth) Congress of the First International held on 2-7 September 1872. It was in fact the last congress of the First International. Its work was directed by Marx and Engels.
[568] An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in K. Marx, Selected Works. In two volumes. Vol. 2, International Publishers, New York, 1936.
[407] This and the preceding paragraph deal with an article on Volume II I of Das Kapital which E. Bernstein intended to write for Die Neue Zeit (see Note 542); having read the proof sheets of Volume II I, he told Engels in his letter of 5 September 1894 about the errata he had found. Bernstein refused to fulfill H. Schlüters request to contribute an article on the same subject for New Yorker Volkszeitung.
[424] A reference to the polemics between Karl Kautsky and Georg Ledebour in the newspaper Vorwärts in a discussion after the Frankfurt Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party (see Note 418). On 20 November 1894 Vorwärts carried Kautsky’s protest against Ledebour’s contention to the effect that Kautsky — in his article on the Erfurt Programme — and Georg von Vollmar and others — in the debates on the agrarian question at the Party Congress — had said there would be only petty peasant property in a socialist society. Vorwärts published Ledebour’s objections on 21 November 1894.
[426] The agrarian programme sparked great controversy within the International Working-Men’s Association (First International). It was hammered out in an acute struggle against the Proudhonists, who were insisting on the immutability of petty private ownership of land, and the Bakuninists, out to prove that with the abolition of inheritance, private property — including private ownership of land — would wither away. After prolonged debates the Brussels Congress of the First International (1868) and then its Basel Congress (1869) recognised the abolition of private ownership of land and its transformation into public ownership as a necessary condition.
[427] The anonymous note ‘On the Fourth Volume of Karl Marx’s Capital’ (see present edition, Vol. 27) was written by Engels in reply to an editorial carried by the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 266) on 14 November 1894 about the publication of Volume II I of Capital. The editorial contained false data on the nature of the manuscript of Volume IV; in addition, the editors wrongly assumed Engels had given up his intention to have it published. Engels’ refutation was published by Karl Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit (No. 9), 1894-95, Vol. 1.
[429] On 26 October 1894 Reichskanzler Leo von Caprivi was forced to resign; he was succeeded by Fürst (Prince) zu Hohenlohe-Schillings.
[430] In his letter of 12 November 1894 Nikolai Danielson told Engels about the publication of Pyotr Struve’s book Critical Notes on the Question of the Economic Development of Russia and asked permission to quote passages from Engels’ letters to him in his comments on the above book.
[432] Engels means the two editorial materials probably written by Wilhelm Liebknecht: the leading article in the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 273, 23 November 1894) under the title ‘In eigener Sache’ and a note under the same name carried by Vorwärts (No. 274, 24 November 1894) in the section Zur Diskussion über den Frankfurter Parteitag. The editors said in the former article they were ‘diametrically opposed’ to what Bebel had said at the meeting in the second constituency of Berlin (see Note 425). In the latter publication the editors said that in the leading article in Vorwärts on 23 November 1894 they had meant only ‘Bebel’s pessimistic appraisal of the entire course of the proceedings at the Party Congress and its spiritual level’ (about the Frankfurt Congress see Note 418).
[433] Engels means the anonymous article ‘The Movement in Germany’ published in Justice (No. 568) on 1 December 1894. The author of that article reproached the editors of Vorwärts for their silence about the differences among the German Social-Democrats over the agrarian issue and the attacks on Justice and Hyndman. A reply to that article appeared in the next issue of Justice (No. 569) on 8 December 1894; it was E. Bernstein’s statement ‘The Vorwärts and Justice . To the Editor of Justice in which he rebutted the accusations.
[435] Filippo Turati wrote to tell Engels on 28 November 1894 that a Socialist group of Italian university students was planning to release an Almanocco socialista per l’anno 1895 and would like to have a short note from him.
[437] A reference to the speech made by Georg von Vollmar at an open Social-Democratic meeting in Munich on 1 June 1891 on the targets and tactics of the Party under the conditions of the ‘new course’ so-called proclaimed by the Caprivi government. He attempted to get the Social-Democratic Party to cooperate with the ruling classes in matters of both domestic and foreign policy, especially in the event of a war within Russia. Von Vollmar’s speech, which received approval from the bourgeois press, was condemned at Party meetings, by most of the Party’s newspapers and then at the Erfurt Congress which took place on 14-20 October 1891.
[438] Engels refers to the polemics of the newspaper Vorwärts with Georg von Vollmar, which was touched off by his article ‘Le socialisme de M. Bismarck et le socialisme de l’empereur Guillaume’ published by the French journal Revue bleue. Revue politique et littéraire in June 1892. Von Vollmar claimed that some of the planks of the Erfurt Programme of the German Social-Democratic Party were akin to the state socialism of Bismarck and Emperor William II . This article sparked off a wide discussion in the Social-Democratic press. The newspaper Vorwärts, in its editorials on 6,12,21 and 22 July 1892 (Nos. 155,160,168,169) censured von Vollmar’s views.
[439] In 1867 Georg von Vollmar served as a volunteer in a detachment in the employ of the Papal States.
[440] On 12 December 1894 Wilhelm Liebknecht spoke in the Reichstag in debates on the state budget for 1895-96 and other bills. Liebknecht devoted most of his speech to the Subversion Bill (see Note 428) and to the issue of lèse-majesté (see Note 436).
[441] On 13 December 1894 Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz asked Engels for permission to translate his work The Peasant Question in France and Germany (present edition, Vol. 27) for the Polish journal Przedsmit. The translation was published in No. 12 of this journal for 1894.
[284] The letter of Ferdinand Lassalle to Marx and Engels which Engels wanted published with his notes and a preface; this was done by Franz Mehring in 1902.
[235] Engels never realised this intention. For the available fragments and outlines, see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 554-56.
[316] Engels never realised this intention.
[442] The archives of German Social-Democracy were set up in 1882 to preserve for posterity the manuscripts of figures prominent in the German working-class movement (including those of Marx and Engels), the literature on German history and the international working-class movement as well as related press publications. With the abrogation of the Anti-Socialist Law (see Note 15) these archives were moved from Zurich to Berlin.
[445] On 11 December 1894 the Italian Prime-Minister Giovanni Giolitti had to hand to the Parliament the documents on abuses in La Banca Romana (Roman Bank); (see Engels’ article ‘The Italian Panama, present edition, Vol. 27) whereupon a commission of inquiry was set up.
[447] Only an excerpt from this letter to Paul Singer has come down; it was quoted in the article ‘Berlin Bierboykott’ published in the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 1) on 1 January 1895.
[449] AA9. On 23 December 1894 Laura Lafargue told Engels that the newspapers Le Peuple (Lyon) and Réveil du Nord (Lille) of the French Workers’ Party would thereforth be daily publications.
[450] The Manifesto of the Communist Party was published in the monthly L’Ére nouvelle (Nos. 9-11) in September-December 1894. Laura Lafargue, who wanted to have it published as a separate pamphlet, asked Engels on 23 December 1894 for advice about the preface. The pamphlet that appeared in 1895 with the L’Ère nouvelle Publishers had the short prefatory note which had preceded the text of the first publication. By referring to the ‘four prefaces’ to the Manifesto Engels meant one, to the London German-language edition of 1890; those to the German editions of 1872, 1883 and 1890, and probably the preface to the Russian edition of 1882 included into the preface of 1890.
[451] Alfred-Léon Gérault-Richard, a Blanquist, was the first to be convicted in keeping with the French law of July 1894 against the anarchists (see Note 383); he received the maximum punishment — one year in prison and a fine of 3,000 francs for his article in the newspaper Le Chambard in which he attacked President Jean Casimir-Périer. Thereupon, on 6 January 1895, Blanquists nominated his candidacy in the 13th constituency of Paris. Gérault-Richard was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and set free.
[309] In 1893 the anarchists committed a number of terrorist acts in Paris. Thus, on 9 December 1893 Auguste Vaillant threw a bomb into the hall where the French Chamber of Deputies was in session. The government retaliated by the laws against the anarchists (see Note 383) and by increasing the police budget.
[310] Laura Lafargue was at the time translating into French Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (see present edition, Vol. 26); the translation was published in the journal L’Ere nouvelle (No.4 and No. 5, 1894); Engels had read the MS of the translation.
[303] The Berne Copyright Convention was signed on 9 September 1886 by Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and other countries.
[321] On 5 January 1894 Die Arbeiter-Zeitung (No. 9) carried the article ‘Das allgemeine Wahlrecht eine “konservative Maßregel’”; cited in this article was a passage from K. Kautsky’s article ‘Ein sozialdemokratischer Katechismus’ published in December 1893 by Die Neue Zeit (Bd. I, NN 12 and 13, 1893-1894). The publication in Die Arbeiter-Zeitung proved the inadequacy and harm of a general political strike in the struggle for electoral reform.
[323] The fourth Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Austria was held in Vienna on 25-31 March 1894. The Congress passed a resolution stating that the Austrian workers intended to campaign for universal suffrage using all available means, including a general strike. The congress also adopted new Party Rules and resolved to continue with the annual May Day celebrations by holding demonstrations for an 8-hour day, universal suffrage and in support of international brotherhood among all working people.
[25] This letter has never been found.
[195] A reference to the publication of Engels’ work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State translated into French by Henri Ravé; this translation was edited by Laura Lafargue who did a stupendous amount of work to correct the numerous deficiencies contained in it. Having read the thus revised translation, Engels had a high opinion of the work done. The book was published in October 1893 under the title L’Origine de la famille, de la propriété privée et de l’état.
[229] The Third International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress was held in Zurich on 6-12 August 1893. Attending were over 400 delegates from 18 countries. The British delegation had a much broader representation than at the previous two congresses. The following issues were on the agenda: the legal eight hours, May Day celebration, the political tactics of Social-Democrats and the position of Social-Democracy in the event of a war. Since participation in the Congress was conditional on one’s recognition of political activity (something that the anarchists denied), the Congress began its work by considering the legitimacy of the mandates of the anarchist delegates. Following a heated debate a resolution was carried by a majority of votes. It interpreted the notion of political activity as the use of political rights and law-making institutions by working-class parties in the interests of the proletariat and for gaining political power. Upon the adoption of this amendment the anarchists, includ ing the representatives of The Young (see Note 129), had to leave the Congress. On the issue of May Day festivities the Congress rejected by a majority of votes the proposal of the German Social-Democrats to have the celebrations as late as the first Sunday of the month; it stressed the major political significance of a demonstration on May 1 as the day of proletarian solidarity. On the third issue of the agenda (the political tactics of Social-Democrats) the Congress adopted a resolution which recognised the need of combining the parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle depending on specific conditions in this or that country. Concerning the attitude of Social-Democrats to war, the Congress turned down the Nieuwenhuis proposal for a general strike to be declared in case of a war and reaffirmed the basic provisions of the Brussels Congress resolution on this issue (see Note 228); it added a clause urging workers to wage a disarmament struggle and obliging the Socialist MPs to vote against war credits.
[214] Engels hints at the thesis of ‘one reactionary mass’ which entered into the Programme of the German Social-Democratic Party adopted at its Gotha Congress in 1875. Thus, the Programme said this in part: ‘Emancipation of labour ought to be the cause of the working class in relation to which all the other classes consititute but one reactionary mass’. Marx censured this tenet in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp.75-99).
[333] Engels left for Eastbourne on 9 February or thereabouts because of poor health; he stayed there until 1 March 1894.
[334] The reference is to the Engels article ‘The Future Italian Revolution and the Socialist Party’ (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 437-40) published by Critica Sociale (No. 3) on 1 February 1894; Victor Adler probably did not finish the translation of this article for Die Arbeiter-Zeitung, however, it appeared in Der Sozialdemokrat on 12 July 1894 under the heading ‘Friedrich Engels über die Lage in Italien’.
[1] Probably another part of a Gobelin tapestry from the study of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Ludwig Kugelmann had sent two parts of this tapestry to Karl Marx on his birthday, 8 May 1870.
[270] A reference to the draft electoral reform tabled in the Austrian Reichskrat on 10 October 1893 by Ministerpräsident (Premier) Eduard Taaffe whose government represented the conservative bloc of the big landed proprietors and top bureaucracy. He was supported by the Polish, Czech and Slovenian feudal-clerical interests, A broad campaign for a reform of the country’s electoral system began in the early 1890s. On 9 July 1893 Social-Democrats organised a mammoth demonstration of Vienna’s workers for universal suffrage. Similar demonstrations and rallies were held countrywide. Under the circumstances the Taaffe government proposed a draft electoral reform which provided for a considerably wider range of prospective voters, but preserved the old curial system and the privileges for the landlords and the bourgeoisie. The reactionary political parties, however, opposed the draft law, and the Taaffe cabinet had to resign in October 1893. The country’s electoral system was reformed as late as 1896.
[114] The Independent Labour Party was founded by leaders of the new trades unions at the Bradford Conference on 13-14 January 1893 in a situation characterised by the mounting strike action and the movement for a greater say of the British working class in politics. This party was headed by Keir Hardie. In its programme the Independent Labour Party championed collective ownership of the means of production, an eight-hour day, prohibition of child labour, social insurance, unemployment allowances, among other demands. The party leadership focused on parliamentary forms of struggle in its practical activities. In 1900 the Independent Labour Party joined the Labour Party.
[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.
[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).
[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).
[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.
[345] On 12-29 July 1894 Britain had a parliamentary election which gave the Conservatives a majority of over 150 votes in the Commons. Many candidates from the Independent Labour Party, among them Keir Hardie, were blackballed.
[171] Home Rule—the demand for Irish self-government within the British Empire, as put forward by the Irish liberal bourgeoisie in the 1870s. Home Rule provided for an independent Irish parliament and national bodies of government. However, the British government was to retain the key positions in Ireland.
[206] Liberal Unionists—a group led by Joseph Chamberlain which, in 1886, broke away from the Liberal Party because of the differences over Home Rule for Ireland (see Note 171). The Liberal Unionists were advocating continued Union with Ireland (1801). They leagued themselves with the Conservative Party and, a few years later, joined its ranks.
[349] In the summer of 1894 Victor Adler had to serve a prison term of 2.5 months on several counts: 14 days for a public insult to the district commissioner of the town of Ceska-Lipa, one month for his speech at a public rally in Vienna’s Schwender Coliseum on 30 October 1893 and yet another month for his speech in the same ‘coliseum’ on 28 January 1894.
[189] From 1 August to 29 September 1893 Engels made a tour of Germany, Switzerland and Austria-Hungary; he visited Cologne and then, together with A. Bebel, went to Zurich via Mainz and Strassburg; thence he went to the Canton of Graubünden for several days to meet his brother Hermann. Upon his return to Zurich on 12 August, Engels attended the final session of the International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress in Zurich (see Note 229), where he made a short speech in English, French and German (see present edi-tion,Vol. 27, pp. 404-05) and, on behalf of the Bureau, closed the session. After a fortnight’s sojourn in Switzerland, Engels left for Vienna through Munich and Salzburg; in Vienna, on 14 September, he addressed a meeting of Social-Democrats (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp.406-07). Then, via Prague and Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), he went to Berlin and stayed there from 16 September to 28 September; on 22 September he spoke at a Social-Democratic meeting (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 409-10). Thereupon Engels returned to London by way of Rotterdam.
[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.
[356] Speaking in the Reichstag on 7 April 1894, Earl von Kanitz proposed a state monopoly of grain imports and exports; the state was likewise to fix grain prices. The Social-Democrats voted against; on 14 July 1894 the motion was rejected by 159 votes against 49.
[357] Marx’s Speech on the Question of Free Trade was published by L’Ère nouvelle (no. 6, 1894) and by Le Socialiste (No. 194-196, on 23, 30 June and 7 July 1894).
[358] The English translation of Marx’s Speech on the Question of Free Trade was published in Boston in 1888; it was prefaced by an introduction (Free Trade) written by Engels; it was published in Boston and London in 1889. The Italian translation of Marx’s speech was published in La Critica Sociale (Nos. 7 and 8) on 1 and 16 April 1894; the same periodical carried Engels’ introduction on 1 and 16 May and 1 June 1894 (Nos. 9, 10 and 11) [see also this volume, p. 297] ; both works then appeared in a booklet published in Milan in 1894.
[364] The Italian translation of Marx’s Speech on the Question of Free Trade, put out in La Critica Sociale, was made from the Russian text published as a supplement to Marx’s work Misère de la philosophie (Poverty of Philosophy) and translated from the German edition of 1885 by Georgi Plekhanov.
[367] This is how Engels referred to members of the Socialist Labour Party of North America founded in 1876, in which German emigrés continued to figure prominently.
[368] Boris Krichevsky, a Russian emigré Socialist, had sent Engels the Russian translations of Marx’s works The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Wage Labour and Capital with Engels’ introduction to the 1891 edition (see present edition, Vols. 11,9,26); both works, published in Geneva in 1894 in the series Social-Democratic Library, were translated into Russian by Krichevsky. He told Engels in his letter that the same publishers undertook the printing of Engels’ article ‘On Social Relations in Russia’ (in the series of his articles Refugee Literature) [see present edition, Vol. 24]. Krichevsky asked Engels to write a preface to the Russian edition of the above article. However, the printing was stopped because of protest from Engels who had earlier given Vera Zasulich the copyright. This article appeared in V Zasulich’s translation in The Library of Contemporary Socialism (Geneva, 1894) under the title ‘Friedrich Engels on Russia. 1) A Reply to P.N. Tkachev (1875), 2) The Afterword (1894)’.
[370] Some of the works written by Engels in 1871-75 were republished in Berlin in 1894 in a separate edition entitled Internationales aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ (1871-75).
[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.
[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.
[377] The central organ of the Austrian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party Die Arbeiter-Zeitung was a weekly newspaper in 1893; it became a semiweekly in 1894 and a daily as of January 1895.
[383] Using the anarchist acts of terror as a pretext, the French government enacted laws against anarchists, the vague wording of which made it possible to apply them against Socialists as well. The first enactment was endorsed in December 1893 after August Vaillant had thrown a bomb in the French Chamber of Deputies (see Note 309); the second enactment was approved at the end of July 1894 after the assassination of President Carnot by the Italian anarchist Caserio (see Note 378), against heavy resistance from the Socialists and some of the Radicals. These two bills imposed restrictions on freedom of the press and provided for special courts to handle cases of violation of the laws on the press.
[390] At the request of Pablo Iglesias, Engels wrote the appeal ‘To the English Socialist and Working Men’s Organisations’ (see present edition, Vol. 27) in which he gave notice of the forthcoming 4th annual Congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. He sent similar appeals also to the Social-Democrats of Austria and Germany. The Fourth Congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party took place in Madrid from 29 August to 1 September 1894. The Congress heard reports of the Party’s National Council and of a delegate who had attended the International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress in Zurich (held in 1893, see Note 229); it discussed the issue of the Party press and adopted the new Party Rules. The Congress received numerous messages of greeting from the British organisations to which Engels had appealed, as well as from the Socialists of Britain, Austria, Germany and other countries.
[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.
[197] Engels means The Legal Eight Hours and International Labour League founded in 1890 by a group of English Socialists with Engels’ participation on the basis of a Committee which had organised Britain’s first ever May Day demonstration in London in 1890. The League set as its aim the struggle for the liberation of the working class and action on the decisions of the Paris Congress of the Second International (see Note 227). In 1893 League representatives took part in setting up The Independent Labour Party (see Note 114). London Trades Council was established at a conference of delegates representing London’s trades-unions (May 1860). Among its members were the leaders of major trades-unions and men from the so-called worker aristocracy. In the early 1860s the Council led the action of the British workers against intervention in the American Civil War, in defence of Poland and Italy, and later, for legalisation of trades-unions. Early in the 1890s the Council, which embraced predominantly the old trades-unions, took a negative stand on the movement for new trades-unions and for the legal eight hours. Yet the mass character of this movement compelled the Council to join in the May demonstrations of the 1890s.
[392] A reference to the Fourth International Socialist Working-Men’s Congress (Second International) which met in London in July 1896.
[393] Engels was taking a rest in Eastbourne from 14 August to 18 September 1894.
[396] The 27th Annual Congress of the British Trades-Unions was held in Norwich on 3-8 September 1894. The Trades-Union Congress spoke out for the legal eight hours and for the nationalisation of all means of production, distribution and exchange; for Engels’ assessment of this congress, see this volume, pp. 341, 343-44, 347.
[398] Filippo Turati wrote to Engels in his letters of 2 and 6 August 1894 he had made inquiries about Felice Pasquali, an Italian emigré in London (see this volume, pp. 333, 338-39) and received contradictory references; thus, some called him ‘seccatore di prima sfera’ (‘a burr of the first water’).
[401] Engels means the Exceptional Law on Public Security passed by the Italian Parliament on 14 July 1894. This law, enacted with the aim of combatting the anarchists, was used by the Crispi government against the working-class movement and Socialists as well. It banned the Socialist Party of the Italian Working People (Il Partito Socialista dei lavoratori italiani), closed worker organisations and worker periodicals; arbitrary arrests, searches and trials assumed mass proportions. All this notwithstanding, the Italian Socialists kept up their struggle and, in January 1895, they convened in Parma illegally for a third congress of their party.
[402] Belfast was the venue of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Trades-Union Congress. It recognised the principle of collective ownership of the means of production and distribution and supported the demand for the legal eight hours.
[406] The 12th Congress of the French Workers’ Party {Le Parti ouvrier français) took place in Nantes on 14-16 September 1894 in a situation characterised by a mounting peasant movement, reactionary onslaughts and growing differences in the French Socialist movement. The Congress pointed to the heavier commitment of the French working people against the anti-Socialist laws of 1893-94 (see Note 383) and distanced itself from the anarchists who, by their terrorist acts, provided a pretext for adoption of these laws. In one of its major decisions the Congress adopted the motivational part of the Party’s agrarian programme and incorporated a number of specific demands into it. For Engels’ critique of the Nantes agrarian programme see The Peasant Question in France and Germany (see present edition, Vol. 27).
[418] Engels refers to a congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany held in Frankfurt am Main on 21-27 October 1894. The co-report on the main issue on the agenda — the agrarian question — was made by Georg von Vollmar, the leader of the Bavarian Social-Democrats; he insisted on augmenting the agrarian programme by clauses expressing the interests of all the peasantry, including the affluent strata. Some of the delegates, August Bebel among them, voiced objections. The congress elected a commission that was to draft the final text of the Party’s agrarian programme as a supplement to the general programme. In addition, delegates heard the reports of the Party Executive Board and the Party group in the Reichstag; it considered such issues as the role of trusts and other major capitalist amalgamations, May Day celebrations, etc. The final account of the proceedings of the Frankfurt Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party was published by the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 254) on 31 October 1894.
[409] An allusion to the Chino-Japanese War of 1894-95 which ended in China’s defeat. By the Peace Treaty of Shimonoseki, Korea, overrrun by Japan, received nominal independence. China ceded a number of its islands (including Taiwan) to Japan. China was also to pay a war indemnity of 200,000,000 taels.
[412] On 14 and 21 October 1894 Belgium had its first elections in accordance with the new electoral law adopted on 18 April 1893 (see Note 276). The Belgian Workers’ Party succeeded in having 30 of its representatives elected to the Chamber of Deputies. By calling the Belgian elections a second victory, Engels meant to say that the first victory was won in April 1893 when the Belgians gained universal suffrage.
[419] A reference to P. Lafargue’s report ‘La propriété paysanne et l’évolution économique’, presented on behalf of the National Council of the French Workers’ Party to its Nantes congress (see Note 406). Lafargue’s report was also published by Der Sozialdemokrat (No. 38, supplement) on 18 October 1894.
[421] All. In his Letter to the Editors of ‘Vorwärts’ {see present edition, Vol. 27) Engels refuted the statement made by Georg von Vollmar at the Frankfurt Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party.
[425] On 14 November 1894 August Bebel spoke at a party meeting in Berlin’s second constituency with a critique of the stand taken by Georg von Vollmar and other Bavarian Social-Democrats at the Frankfurt Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party (see Note 418) and of the resolution adopted by the Congress on the agrarian question. Bebel’s speech was published by the newspaper Vorwärts (No. 268) on 16 November and reprinted in La Critica Sociale (No. 23) on 1 December 1894.
[428] Engels refers to the Draft of a Law on amendments and addenda to the Criminal Code, the Military Criminal Code and the legislation on the press (‘Der Entwurf eines Gesetzes, betreffend Änderungen und Ergänzungen des Strafgesetzbuchs, des Militärstrafgesetzbuchs und des Gesetzes über die Presse), known for short as the Subversion Bill (‘Umsturzvollage’). It envisaged harsh punishment for ‘the intention to effect an overthrow of the existing state system’ even in the absence of a criminal act, and also for an encroachment on religion, monarchy, matrimony and property. The government tabled the draft law in the Reichstag in December 1894, but the top German legislature rejected it in May 1895.
[431] A reference to the second congress held by the Bavarian Social-Democratic organisation on 30 September 1894 in Munich. It was attended by 160 delegates. Two questions were on the agenda: 1) the activity of Social-Democratic Deputies in the Bavarian Landtag and 2) agitation among the peasants. Georg von Vollmar and Karl Grillenberger drew support from the majority of the congress which approved the activity of the Social-Democratic parliamentary group and adopted a decision on setting up a special organisation of the Bavarian Social-Democratics under the central guidance of the Landtag deputies — von Vollmar, Karl Grillenberger and others. Sonderbund—an ironic analogy with the separatist union of reactionary Catholic cantons in Switzerland in the 1840s (see Note 273); here Engels means the separatist leanings of the Bavarian Social-Democrats.
[434] A reference to A. Bebel’s speech in the second constituency of Berlin on 14 November 1894 (see Note 425). Georg von Vollmar and Karl Grillenberger replied with a press polemic. Thus, on 17 and 21 November 1894 Grillenberger published notes in his newspaper Frankische Tagespost in which he commented on the above speech and which were reprinted by the newspaper Vorwärts (Nos. 271 and 274); on 20 and 24 November 1894 von Vollmar burst into print in the newspaper Münchener Post with a series of articles entitled Bebel’s Fahnenerhebung which soon after were reprinted by the newspaper Vorwärts (Nos. 273, 274 and 276) on 23, 24 and 27 November 1894. A.Bebel responded by two statements and four articles under the general title Zur Diskussion über den Frankfurter Parteitag. Zur Entgegnung which were published by Vorwärts in November-December 1894.
[436] On 6 December 1894 the members of the Social-Democratic faction in the Reichstag did not rise but remained seated as the Reichstag President von Levetzow had proposed the health of Emperor William II , and the other deputies had stood up to shout three ‘hurrahs!’ Such behaviour of the Social-Democratic group was qualified as lèse-majesté, thereupon the district court of Berlin decided to start criminal proceedings against Liebknecht. On 11 December the Reichskanzler, Prince zu Hohenlohe, demanded that the Reichstag approve the court decision. But on 15 December the Reichstag rejected this demand by 168 votes against 58.
[443] Marx died before completing the MS of his Theories of Surplus Value for publication; this work constituted a relatively independent part of a larger manuscipt dated 1861-63 (see present edition, Vols. 30-34). Nor could Engels realize in his lifetime the intention of publishing the Marxian manuscript as Volume IV of Capital. It was K. Kautsky who had The Theories of Surplus Value published in 1905-10.