Letter to Philipp Pauli, July 30, 1878

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 July 1878


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO PHILIPP PAULI

IN RHEINAU

London, 30 July 1878

Dear Pauli,

Let us hope our people will today do their duty, as we are entitled to expect after all that has happened.[1] Since Bismarck has perpetrated the colossal bloomer of trying to exploit all that shooting business to topple the liberals, and is now using the socialists simply as a pretext,[2] it is with even greater pleasure that we can observe the champions of law and order squabbling amongst themselves. I cannot comprehend Bismarck; his 'nerves' must have gone completely to pieces, together with what little intelligence he still had. Passe encore[3] that he should fail to see that what his Bonapartist game effectually boils down to is the alternate playing off of the workers against the bourgeois and of the bourgeois against the workers, thus doing both in the eye. But it's plain madness for him to want to overthrow the liberals, those 'we are but dogs'[4] yes-men who will go on licking the boot that kicks them up the backside in return for a bare minimum of cajolery—those liberals who are his only protection against the out-and-out feudal-orthodox-reactionary court—and thus to deliver himself up irrevocably to the reactionaries, the very people he has betrayed and persecuted and by whom he is mortally detested. And he calls himself a 'statesman'! And proposes to bring about the downfall of the socialists by means of a policy that can benefit no one save the socialists! Were the worthy fellow in our pay, he could not work better on our behalf. What is more, he actually postpones the sitting of the Reichstag until the last moment, simply in order that the anti-socialist battue may have time to peter out, the bourgeois to become ashamed of his abject role of denouncer, and the parties of law and order to fall so thoroughly foul of each other as to lose all hope of sorting themselves out again. And while socialism is having its roots so lavishly manured at the base, it is supposedly being killed off by the pruning of a few of its topmost shoots in September! No, dear Bismarck, cacatum non est pictum[5] !

Thanks for the newspaper. Three-quarters of all the hullaballoo is sheer fabrication on the part of the Londoner Journal (Dr Juch, an old good-for-nothing wastrel of the most disreputable kind, and Schweitzer, book-printer, who received a drubbing during the Crown Prince[6] demonstration but was too much of a coward to complain!); what is more, this paper is intent on being purchased by the reptile fund[7] which, however, already possesses a paper here in the shape of the Hermann and takes the view non bis in idem[8] . The truth of the matter is that, in two associations over here, a few louts of German origin, likewise most disreputable, are kicking up a great row so that they may, apropos the business of the shootings in Berlin, cut a dash as representatives here of the workers of all countries. The seductive prospect of having a rôle to play has misled little Ehrhart of Mannheim into consorting with this gang. For the third time now in approximately four years they have proclaimed themselves the international central council of the proletariat.[9] Should this shouting and scribbling go beyond a certain point, we shall be obliged to unmask these gentry in public so that people shan't think we are at the back of this balderdash — something it is wholly in the interests of reaction to disseminate.

The prospect of a trip to Germany this year would seem to be poor, even if politics were not becoming ever more obstructive. I shall be glad if I can get my wife to the nearest seaside town for a couple of weeks; hitherto it wasn't even to be thought of. Last week she scarcely ever left her bed. The thing is exceedingly grave and might turn out very badly. Mrs Marx, too, is unwell with liver and stomach trouble, and has been told by the leading specialist here that, while there's no getting rid of it altogether, it might be made bearable. We don't yet know what spa he will prescribe.

Marx is comparatively well for this time of year. His eldest daughter has had another baby, a boy.[10] Congratulations from us all on your 'No. 8'.[11] So if Mrs Marx isn't sent to the Continent, you are unlikely to have any visitors from over here this year.

Pumps is as lazy about writing as ever, if not more so. But in other respects the school in Manchester has done her a lot of good.[12]

Kindest regards from us all to you, your wife[13] and the children.

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ On 24 May 1878, the majority in the German Reichstag (251 to 57) voted down the government bill directed against socialists, after which the Reichstag was dissolved on 11 June, and new elections were scheduled for 30 July. The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany polled 437,158 votes this time.
  2. ↑ On 11 May and 2 June 1878, assassination attempts were made on William I, the first by unemployed tinner Max Hödel and the second by anarchist Karl Eduard Nobiling, who had never belonged to the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. These events provoked a vicious campaign against the socialists and provided a pretext for the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law in October 1878 (see Note 462).
    In his turn, Bismarck used the assassination attempts to break down the resistance of the National Liberals (see Note 540), who had a short while before voted down the government proposal to introduce protective tariffs on iron. As a result of Bismarck's policies, the National Liberal Party lost about a quarter of its seats in the 1878 Reichstag elections.
  3. ↑ It's not so bad
  4. ↑ 'We are but dogs!' ('Hunde sind wir ja doch!'). This is how, according to August Bebel, the German democratic political writer Luis Bamberger described the treatment which the National Liberals received from Bismarck.
  5. ↑ Cacking isn't painting.
  6. ↑ Frederick III
  7. ↑ The reptile fund—the special fund at Bismarck's disposal for bribing the press and individual journalists. Reptiles was the name used by the left-wing press to designate periodicals which defended the interests of the government and had been bribed by it.
  8. ↑ not to pay twice for the same thing
  9. ↑ See this volume, pp. 364 65.
  10. ↑ On 4 July 1878, Jenny Longuet, Marx's eldest daughter, gave birth to a baby boy, Henri Longuet, whom the family called Harry.
  11. ↑ Engels is referring to the birth of the eighth child in Philipp Pauli's family, of which the latter informed him on 17 July 1878.
  12. ↑ In 1877-78, Mary Ellen Burns (Pumps) lived with her relatives in Manchester.
  13. ↑ Ida Pauli