Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, June 14, 1873

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 14 June 1873


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: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 14 June 1873

Dear Sorge,

Work on the Alliance[1] has interrupted my correspondence. In addition the newspapers have only just started to arrive regularly again now that we have ordered them, and so it is only now that I can report properly again.

First, to deal with the points raised in your letters. The ones from the General Council[2] are answered in the enclosure.

14 May.—The business about the shortage of funds is as old as the International itself. The Americans were the only ones to pay, and if it hadn't been for you, we would have been unlikely to receive even that.—Postponing the Congress[3] is absolutely out of the question; it would mean abandoning the field to the other side and anyway is not at all necessary, as you will see.

23 May.—The people in Geneva I am supposed to be giving a kick do not even answer us. Even old Becker[4] does not reply to Marx. Outine is we know not where. We ourselves do not receive the Bulletin jurassien, and only see extracts quoted in the Liberté and the Internationale.

27 May.—The statement on France[5] —very good!—has gone off in English to the BRITISH FEDERAL COUNCIL and will go off today in French to the Plebe, the Spanish Federal Council and Portugal. BY THE BYE the Portuguese are complaining that they are not receiving anything at all from you and yet they are very, very important for us!—Serraillier has absolutely nothing to write about, since he does not have a single address in France any more; everyone has been caught. However, he will send in a little report on the trials[6] for your own report to the Congress—there were trials everywhere where there were sections, in Béziers, Lisieux, etc., etc.—Correspondence for the Arbeiter-Zeitung: Who is to do it? Marx and I are so overworked that Marx has been limited by his doctor to 4 hours work a day because of blood-congestion in the head, so that I have to deal with everything together with Lafargue. Frankel works in his SHOP until 9 p.m. The others cannot write.—The Hamburgers[7] are numbskulls. I shall write and tell Liebknecht.—For Holland the German version of the statement will be adequate.—The Arbeiter-Zeitung should make more use of the Volksstaat.

And now for some news, and this time it is no message of ill-tidings.

1. The British Congress, held in Manchester on 1 and 2 June, was a success.[8] 26 delegates.—Report from the Tory paper going off by BOOK-POST herewith; ditto 1 issue of the Brussels Internationale. The Federal Council to remain in London, although the locals wanted it transferred to Nottingham. The Eastern Post, hitherto the organ of Jung and Hales, has written a satirical article on the Congress which nevertheless acknowledges it as the real representative of the English International, and since then I observe that they have stopped publishing reports on BOGUS meetings in Hales' house; they seem to have shut up shop. Up to now they had always alternated these reports with reports from all of their 2 sections: Stratford and Limehouse, and Limehouse and Stratford; but this no longer seems to work.—Mottershead turned up in Hyde Park on Whit Monday[9] for the TRADES UNION MEETING, completely drunk as usual.—I have not received The International Herald for the past 2 weeks, so that too seems to have folded up. It's no misfortune since there are the other publications of the English press. The new French section here (Dupont and Serraillier) have some chance of starting up a French paper here, though French assurances cannot be relied on very much.

2. The Jurassians have carried out their decisive retreat.[10] You will see from the Internationale that they have resolved to propose to their colleagues in the Alliance: not to send representatives to any congress [11] but to hold a separate congress at a place in Switzerland to be determined by their federations.

Translated that means: we cannot put in an appearance in Geneva, otherwise we shall be thrown out on our ears. So they will meet in some corner of the Jura; after the Olten Congress (see below) they cannot show their faces anywhere else in Switzerland.—Other reasons are: 1. Bakunin's old reluctance to appear in debates personally, 2. Guillaume's and his own expulsion, which would raise the crucial issue from the very outset in a purely personal form, added to which there is also the fact of Bakunin's escroquerie,[12] which would immediately finish him off, and 3. the certainty that in reality they are in as bad a way as we are and that internal squabbles have exhausted and irritated their people too. At their great Jura congress only nine sections were represented! In Italy, for all their bluster, they cannot put a single newspaper on its feet, and in Spain, in the movement as it stands, their stock is=0. More, they have had to renege on their own policy of abstention at once, and sent 8 members (10 according to them) into the Cortes.

3. In Rome a committee of the International has been disbanded. It was called Società del Silenzio, clandestine society, oath of absolute obedience, the sacramental formula at the end of letters—the one proclaimed by Bakunin last year: Salute e liquidazione sociale, anarchia e collectivismo[13] —in short, the secret Alliance, with its whole bag of tricks. It comes just at the right time.

4. Serraillier has had an exchange in the Liberté with the Blanquists about the French trials[14] in which the latter took a very impudent line, but were duly boxed around the ears for it. What really finished them off was that after the letters of authority of those with mandates had been annulled at The Hague and the General Council was alone empowered to issue new ones,[15] Cournet and Ranvier issued a new letter of authority to Heddeghem in their names—and while still at The Hague!

5. Swiss workers' congress at Olten[16] —70 delegates, 5 Jurassians, proposed decentralisation, defeated with all votes against their 5—they withdrew at once. But you will have known this long since from the Tagwacht[17]

I hope that your arm and voice are now recovered and that your prospects for the Congress have also improved. Even if the Congress is not very brilliant, it is nevertheless necessary and with some effort will turn out well. Don't forget that according to the Rules you must convoke it and prepare a programme 2 months in advance, i.e. by 1 July. Alliance as good as finished—in French; a mammoth task in this tricky language—shall hit out and surprise even you.

Must catch the post. Cordial regards.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association.
  2. ↑ F. Engels, 'To the General Council of the International Working Men's Association'.
  3. ↑ A reference to the next regular congress of the International scheduled for September 1873.
    The 6th Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held in Geneva between 8 and 13 September 1873. Of the 31 delegates present at the Congress, 28 were representatives of the International's Swiss branches or its émigré sections in Switzerland. When considering the General Rules, the majority headed by Johann Philipp Becker endorsed the decisions of the Hague Congress of 1872 on extending the functions of the General Council (against opposition from Henri Perret and a number of other Swiss delegates). The Congress stressed the need for the working class to engage in political struggle. New York was left as the General Council's headquarters until the next Congress scheduled for 1875. The Geneva Congress of 1873 was the last congress of the International Working Men's Association.
  4. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker
  5. ↑ A reference to the General Council's statement on the credentials for France of 23 May 1873, which countered attempts by the Bakuninists and the Lassalleans to place the blame for L. Van Heddeghem's and Emile Dentraygues' betrayal on the General Council. The English translation of the statement was the work of Engels, who also edited the French translation by Lafargue.
  6. ↑ Between 10 and 25 March 1873 a major trial of members of the International's French sections was held in Toulouse. Its organisers made wide use of the evidence received from Emile Dentraygues, a member of the Toulouse section, who gave information about the composition and activities of nearly all the International's sections in Southern France. Twenty-two out of the 38 defendants were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment; Charles Larroque, a representative of the General Council who had managed to escape to Spain under an alias of Mortimer Latraque, was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in absentia. Apart from Toulouse, trials of the arrested members of the International were held in other towns of Southern France, including Cannes, Béziers, Narbonne, Perpignan, Montpellier, and Avignon.
  7. ↑ The Dresden Congress of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party held between 12 and 15 August 1871 decided on Hamburg as the Party Committee headquarters.
  8. ↑ The Second Congress of the International's British Federation was held in Manchester on 1-2 June 1873. The congress was attended by 26 delegates from 23 sections. The congress heard the report of the British Federal Council and passed resolutions on the organisation of the British Federation, on propaganda, and on the need to set up an international Trades' Union. They voted that the Red Flag be declared the banner of the British Federation, and the land and all means of production be nationalised. Of particular importance was the resolution 'On Political Action,' which stressed the need to establish an independent proletarian political party in Britain.
  9. ↑ 9 June
  10. ↑ Engels probably means the congress of the Jura Federation held on 27-28 April 1873 in Neuchâtel (a report on the congress appeared in the Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne, No. 9, 1 May 1873). The Federation reiterated its refusal to recognise the Hague Congress resolutions and proposed sending delegates to an international anarchist congress scheduled to open on 1 September 1873 (see Note 671).
  11. ↑ which the so-called General Council might be tempted to convene
  12. ↑ swindling
  13. ↑ Greetings and social liquidation, anarchy and collectivism
  14. ↑ On 13 April and 8 June 1873 La Liberté carried two letters by Auguste Serraillier to the editorial board of 1 April and 27 May, which blamed the Blanquists Frederic Cournet and Gabriel Ranvier for the activities of Emile Dentraygues, who had betrayed a number of the International's members at the Toulouse trial (see Note 677). Serraillier wrote that Cournet and Ranvier had granted Dentraygues powers for France without the General Council's approval.
  15. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Resolutions of the General Congress Held at The Hague from the 2nd to the 7th September, 1872. VI. Powers Issued by the General Council, and by Federal Councils'.
  16. ↑ The chassepot—a breech-loading rifle named after its inventor, was adopted by the French army in 1866. It was much superior to Dreyse's needle gun used by the Prussian army.
  17. ↑ 'Der Kongreß in Olten und die Gewerkschaftsbewegung der Schweiz', Die Tagwacht, No. 23, 7 June 1873.