Letter to Theodor Cuno, June 10, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 June 1872


First published in Die Gesellschaft, No. 11, Berlin, 1925
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO THEODOR CUNO

IN LIEGE

London, 10 June 1872

Dear Cuno,

A few words in all haste. I have today sent by first post to Herman 2 copies (one of them for you) of the circular of the General Council on the Bakuninist intrigues,[1] wrapped in a copy of the Kölnische Zeitung. You will find in it all the material you need from A to Z.

We now possess accurate information on the Spanish secret society, La Aleanza—it will be quite a surprise to that gang at the Congress. The same society doubtless exists in Italy. If only Regis could get down there! But the poor devil is now peddling newspapers in Geneva, to earn a living as best he can. Cafiero in Naples and someone else in Turin whom I don't yet know turned letters of mine over to the Jurassians[2] ; that doesn't matter to me in itself, but the very fact of their perfidy is unpleasant. The Italians will still have to pass through a school of experience to realise that a peasant people as backward as they are merely makes itself ridiculous when it tries to prescribe to the workers of big industrial nations the road they should take for their emancipa- tion.

Incidentally, I no longer receive any Italian newspapers, so I cannot send you any. Cafiero, who always used to send them, has obviously got a bad conscience.

You will have received the letter from Düsseldorf, which I sent on to you.

We know that affairs are in pretty bad shape in Belgium. The apathy of this neutral nation (sit venia verbo[3] ) is the underlying reason for the fact that a plotter and a jackass can call the tune there. The International is falling apart in Belgium by the day, thanks to the inertia of the intelligent and reliable men among the leaders. Incidentally, the clique's leaders have done us a tremen- dous service with their new draft Rules. The proposal for the abolition of the General Council[4] has put an end to the last vestiges of their influence (which was far from small, since this was one of the oldest federations). The Spaniards call this downright treason.[5] It's a pity that you're not going to Spain; you would like these people; après tout[6] they are the most gifted of all the Latins, and you could be very useful there. What they need is a dose of German theory, and they take it very well; besides, they are distinguished by a fanaticism and a class hatred of the bourgeois such as we northerners or the vacillating Italians cannot imagine.

The true author of the Belgian draft for the Rules is, of course, Bakunin again. The draft is by Hins and he is a tool of Bakunin both by virtue of a spiritual affinity and because of his Russian wife.

Liebknecht is going into the cachot[7] on the 15th of this month.[8]

As soon as my friends are back in Manchester, I shall again take a look around on your behalf. I can do nothing for the moment. For all your misfortunes, you nevertheless have the luck to have a profession which you can follow anywhere fairly easily, at least on the Continent, if needs be. Here, because of the different employment system, it is much more difficult.

Your recent description[9] of the impression Düsseldorf made upon you made me laugh heartily. Why, for us, the philistine Wuppertalers, Düsseldorf was always a little Paris, where the pious gentlemen of Barmen and Elberfeld kept their mistresses, went to the theatre, and had a right royal time. But the sky always looks grey where one's own reactionary family lives. Moreover, the process of industrial development, which has after all spread to Düsseldorf as well, is extremely depressing and deadly boring throughout Germany, so that I can well imagine that Wuppertal's dreariness and wretchedness have now conquered Düsseldorf as well. But one fine day we shall send them packing, and then we'll sing the old song again that they used to sing thirty years ago in Milan:

We, we, always we,
And if we go out on a spree,
Who'll have to pay for it? We! But it will be the bourgeois that will have to pay for the spree.

Yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Fictitious Splits in the International
  2. ↑ Engels is referring to a notice in the Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne, No. 6, 10 May 1872, stating that the editorial board was in possession of Engels' letters written in the autumn of 1871 to 'his Italian friends'. These letters had been handed over by Carlo Cafiero to the newspaper's editor James Guillaume.
  3. ↑ if that word can be used
  4. ↑ The congress of the Belgian Federation held in Brussels on 19-20 May 1872 considered the draft Rules which had been drawn up by the Belgian Federal Council on the instructions of the Federation's congress held on 24- 25 December 1871 (see Note 404). Under this draft, which was written by Eugène Hins, the powers of the General Council to all intents and purposes were to be annulled and the Council turned into a mere correspondence and statistical bureau. After heated debates the congress decided to submit the draft for discussion by the sections, and then for approval by the Federation's extraordinary congress scheduled for July 1872 (see Note 568).
  5. ↑ La Emancipacion, Nos. 52 and 53, 8 and 15 June 1872, featured an article entitled 'El proyecto belga de Estatutos générales', which sharply criticised the draft Rules drawn up by the Belgian Federal Council.
  6. ↑ after all
  7. ↑ gaol
  8. ↑ On 15 June 1872 Wilhelm Liebknecht began to serve in the Hubertusburg fortress the prison sentence to which he had been condemned at the Leipzig trial (see Note 274). He remained in prison until 15 April 1874.
  9. ↑ in Cuno's letter to Engels of 30 May 1872