Letter to J. Gugenheim, June 16, 1879

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 16 June 1879


First published in Russian in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1929
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO J. GUGENHEIM

IN LONDON

[Draft]

[London,] 16 June 1879

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your esteemed letter of 29 May and regret that under present circumstances I cannot comply with the wish expressed in the same that I deliver a lecture to your Society.[1]

The organ of that Society, the Freiheit, has thought fit publicly to attack the attitude of Social-Democratic deputies in the Reichstag.[2] Now even though statements have been made in the Reichstag by certain of our members which I, too, regard as inept (and about which I have not hesitated to express my views privately and in an appropriate place),[3] I can in no way declare myself in agreement with the kind of criticism chosen by the Freiheit and still less with its having felt obliged to pursue this kind of criticism in public.

You will understand that if I were willing to deliver a lecture to the Society under these circumstances, this would inevitably give rise to the view in Germany and elsewhere that I condoned the attitude adopted by the Freiheit.

  1. ↑ J. Gugenheim, the secretary of the German Workers' Educational Society in London (see Note 55), had asked Engels to deliver 'a scientific lecture' there.
  2. ↑ On 24 May 1879, the 'Socialpolitische Rundschau' column of the Freiheit criticised the Social-Democratic deputies' stand in the Reichstag on protective tariffs (see Note 502).
  3. ↑ On 16 May, 1879 Engels sent a letter to Wilhelm Bracke (not extant) with the request that he forward it to August Bebel. As follows from Bebel's reply to Bracke of 24 May, Engels criticised Wilhelm Liebknecht's Reichstag speech on the introduction of the state of siege in Berlin (see Note 486) as evidence of the Social-Democrats' submission to the Anti-Socialist Law.