Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, November 25, 1873

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 25 November 1873


First published in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 25 November 1873

Dear Sorge,

Having been summoned to Germany by the illness and death of my mother,[1] I returned from there a few days ago and found your letter of 22 October waiting for me. Quite unknowingly you do me an injustice to blame me for keeping you in the dark for so long about decisions and developments here. The facts are these.

After long hesitation and after receiving lukewarm reports from some places and no news at all from others, Marx and I had come to the conclusion that the Congress[2] would become essentially a local Swiss affair and that since no one would be able to come over directly from America, we would do best to stay away too. (An additional factor was that no mandates arrived for either Marx or myself, apart from the alternative one from America.) As soon as this had definitively been agreed, I went off to the seaside at Ramsgate[3] to join my family, a break I needed urgently in view of my constant insomnia and nervous irritability. While I was there, Marx wrote to me about the sudden revelations about the treachery of the Genevans[4] which made it necessary to decide that neither should Serraillier attend the Congress.[5] This was pretty clear to me from Marx's letter and I agreed to it on condition that Serraillier should inform you at once.[6] A few days later I went to London for 24 hours in order to pay the Alliance printer[7] and to organise the distribution. I had a look at the relevant documents and became convinced that it would have been the greatest folly for Serraillier to have gone there as your representative. Our absence and his, together with that of every German with one exception[8] stamped the Congress as a merely local assembly which still looked respectable enough when compared to the Alliance,[9] but which could lay no claim to any moral authority vis-à-vis the International. Furthermore, the general world situation was such that any congress was bound to end badly, as we can see from the fact that by now both the congress of the Alliance and that of the International have completely been forgotten. Well, I urged Marx to let you know at once and went off again, and until I received your present letter, I assumed that this had been done. For his part, Marx had thought that Serraillier would have given you the first news when he sent back the money and that he could therefore wait until he was in a position to give you information about the results of the Congress, etc.

Instead of that, Serraillier gave the money to Lafargue for safe keeping, as we discovered only last week, and I shall get it from Lafargue in the next few days and take care of the matter. I am very busy looking through the—extremely bad—German translation of the Alliance pamphlet, which has been sent to me—Bracke is bringing it out in Brunswick.[10] What I have of your version has been very helpful in correcting the other one. Of course, the matter is urgent and I have to work through it as the manuscript has to go back this week.

Marx and his youngest daughter[11] went to Harrogate in Yorkshire yesterday; both of them are to spend some time there convalescing.[12] He needed it badly; the severe symptoms he had felt in the spring had vanished, but chronic brain pressure set in, which made him unable to work and unwilling to write, and which, if allowed to go unchecked for too long, might have serious consequences. During the next few days he will go and see our friend Gumpert in Manchester, the only doctor in whom he has complete confidence and who also looked after him in the spring. His condition is another reason why you have had to wait so long for a reply.

Bakunin's answer to the pamphlet has been to send the Journal de Genève and the Jurassians a statement announcing his political demise[13] : I withdraw—dorénavant je ne troublerai plus personne et je ne demande que ce qu'on me laisse tranquille à mon tour[14] He is gravely mistaken in this. Apart from that, not the slightest attempt to reply to anything.

Outine has been here for 4 weeks or so and has told us still more wonderful stories about Bakunin. The fellow has really put his catechism[15] into practice; for years now he and his Alliance10 have lived exclusively from blackmail, relying on the fact that nothing could be put into print about this without compromising other people who have to be taken into account. You have no idea what a low-down gang they are. That aside, their pseudo-International is as quiet as a mouse; the pamphlet has exposed their frauds and Messrs Guillaume & Co. will have to let the dust settle first. In Spain they have put an end to themselves, see my article in the Volksstaat.[16]

The real International is equally silent. I have still not had an answer from Mesa, to whom I wrote in September.[17] In Portugal they are all being persecuted and have to watch their step. In Italy a section has been formed in Melegnano,[18] a fact I herewith bring to the attention of the General Council; for the address see below. The Plebe is still coming out, but very irregularly and with a strong emphasis on mediation. That is all I have to report. The federation here, having been badly shaken by Jung, Hales & Co., is now suffering badly from consumption; it is barely possible even to bring all the members together any more. With best wishes.

Your

F. Engels

Address for Melegnano: Luigi Zoncada, Melegnano, Provincia de Milano, Italia.

  1. ↑ Elisabeth Engels
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ In early August 1873 Engels went to Ramsgate to recuperate. He returned to London between 12 and 15 September.
  4. ↑ See this volume, pp. 523-24.
  5. ↑ A reference to Auguste Serraillier's planned trip to the Geneva Congress of the International as the General Council representative. As a member of the British Federal Council, he was also to hold credentials from the British sections. However, by the end of August, drawing on the reports from the International's local branches, Marx and Engels had already realised that under the conditions obtaining at the time the Congress had no chance of becoming a truly international forum. They were gravely concerned about the conciliatory tendencies being displayed by some of the International's activists in Romance Switzerland, and their readiness to go back on a number of the Hague Congress resolutions in order to work out a compromise with the anarchists. Marx and Engels thus considered it inexpedient to send a representative to the Congress and persuaded Serraillier not to go to Switzerland.
  6. ↑ Ibid., p. 525.
  7. ↑ Andrews
  8. ↑ A. Burchardt
  9. ↑ A congress of anarchist and reformist organisations within the International, which had refused to abide by the resolutions of the Hague Congress, was held in Geneva on 1-6 September 1873. Its organiser was the Bakuninist Geneva Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action (see Note 339). Having declared rejection of all authority as the basic principle of the international anarchist association, the congress abolished the General Council, revoked the right of congresses to pass any definite decisions on issues of principle, and removed from the General Rules Article 7a on the political action by the working class.
  10. ↑ A reference to the German edition of the pamphlet which appeared in Brunswick in the summer of 1874 under the heading Ein Complot gegen die Internationale Arbeiter-Association (in Samuel Kokosky's translation). Engels was directly involved in editing the German translation.
  11. ↑ Eleanor
  12. ↑ Marx, with his daughter Eleanor, stayed in Harrogate to recuperate from 24 November to 15 December 1873. On 27 November Marx went to Manchester for the day to consult Doctor Gumpert.
  13. ↑ Bakunin announced his decision to withdraw from politics in an open letter carried by the Journal de Genève on 25 September 1873 and in a letter 'Aux Compagnons de la Fédération jurassienne' published in the Supplément au Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne on 12 October 1873.
  14. ↑ henceforth I shall interfere with no one and in return ask only that others should leave me in peace too.
  15. ↑ A reference to the so-called Revolutionary Catechism, a copy of which was found in 1869 during the search at the home of Pyotr Uspensky, a member of Sergei Nechayev's organisation. The document was reproduced in the official reports on the Nechayev trial of 1871 (see K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association, present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 527, 544-49).
  16. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Bakuninists at Work'.
  17. ↑ This letter by Engels has not been found.
  18. ↑ Engels was informed by Enrico Bignami on 22 July 1873 about the establishment of a section of the International in Melegnano, which took the name of Gustave Flourens. The section voiced its support for the General Council.