Letter to Eduard Bernstein, June 26, 1879

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 26 June 1879


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1932
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

[Draft]

London, 26 June 1879

122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Comrade,

I am sorry you didn't tell me from the start that in making your inquiry you had my reporting in mind[1] ; had you done so, you would have received a definite answer straight away.

When, after being much pressed to do so, I decided to tackle the tedious Mr Dühring, I told Liebknecht that this was positively the last time I would allow journalistic activities to interfere with my more substantial work[2] unless political events made this absolutely imperative—something I alone must decide.[3] During the nine years I have spent here in London, I have learnt that it's no good trying to complete more substantial works while simultaneously engaging in practical agitation. I grow no younger with the passage of time and must at long last restrict myself to definite tasks if I am to get anything done at all. I wrote and told Mr Wiede as much when he founded the Neue Gesellschaft.[4]

As for Mr Höchberg, you are mistaken if you think that I feel any 'antipathy' towards him. When Mr Höchberg founded the Zukunft, we got invitations to contribute signed 'the Editorial Board'.[5] Unless I am much mistaken, Mr Höchberg was not even known to us by name at that time, and it goes without saying that we paid no attention to anonymous communications of this kind. Soon after, Mr Höchberg made known his programme of the Zukunft,[6] according to which socialism was to arise out of the concept of 'justice'. Such a programme directly excluded from the outset all those who ultimately regarded socialism, not as the logical outcome of any idea or principle such as justice, etc., but as the ideal product of a material-economic process, of the social process of production at a given stage. Thus Mr Höchberg had himself precluded all possibility of our collaborating with him. But aside from the above programme, nothing has come to my notice on the strength of which I could form any authentic idea of Mr Höchberg's philosophical views. Not that all this is in any way a reason for feeling any 'antipathy' towards him, or prejudice against a literary venture for which he is responsible. On the contrary, I adopt the same attitude towards it as I do towards any other prospective socialist publication until I know what's going to be in it—one of sympathy and expectation.

But that is all by the way—the fact of the matter is that I must restrain myself from contributing to journals if I mean to finish work that really ought to be of greater importance to the movement as a whole than an article or two in periodicals. And, as you can see, I have for several years observed this rule impartially vis-à-vis all-comers.

I am also interested to see from your letter that people over here have led you to believe that I, and presumably Marx as well, am 'in complete agreement' with the policy of the Freiheit. Precisely the reverse is true. We have not seen Mr Most since he began his attacks on the Social-Democratic deputies.[7] Nor was he able to learn what we thought of this until the middle of the month when I replied to an invitation from the secretary[8] of the Workers' Society[9] to go and lecture there.[10] I refused outright because it could only lead people in Germany, etc., to conclude that I agreed with the kind of polemic the Freiheit is conducting, and publicly at that, against the Social-Democratic deputies; little though I may approve of certain statements in the Reichstag, this is by no means the case.

As we have heard much the same thing from another quarter, we would be glad to be in a position that would enable us to scotch these misrepresentations once and for all. The simplest way of doing this would be for you, if you would be so kind, to let us have a copy of the relevant passages from letters so that we may know precisely what has been said about us and conduct ourselves accordingly. Your allusions could, of course, be only of a general nature, but for that very reason it is all the more desirable that we should have some definite information so that we can act upon it direct. After almost forty years, revolutionary tittle-tattle is something that has ceased to surprise us.

Should Mr Most fall into the hands of the anarchists, or even of Russians of Tkachov's stamp, it would at most spell his own undoing. These chaps will fall victim to the anarchy they have themselves created. Which is not to say that it mightn't be quite a good thing to knock them on the head every now and again.

Unless one or two of the works you mention are still to be had at the booksellers, I would not be able to get hold of copies for you; I myself no longer possess a copy of some of them and have tried in vain to get them second-hand.

As regards the French movement, besides our contacts with party members over here, we also maintain direct relations with Paris nor, for that matter, were the links we established at the time of the International ever broken at all. Thus, for instance, only quite recently we received a new socialist paper appearing in Oporto, O operario.

  1. ↑ See previous letter.
  2. ↑ The writing of Anti-Dühring, which Engels began in late May 1876, caused him to postpone a number of scientific works he was planning or had already started, notably the Dialectics of Nature (see also Note 169).
  3. ↑ Cf. this volume, pp. 257-58.
  4. ↑ See this volume, pp. 253-54.
  5. ↑ On 20 July 1877 the Zukunft editors wrote to Marx and Engels inviting them to contribute to the magazine and referring to the relevant decision of the Gotha Congress to start a scientific review (see Note 314). The letters were signed 'The Zukunft editorial board' and gave the forwarding office of the Berliner Freie Presse, edited by Johann Most, as its address.
  6. ↑ Die Zukunft. Socialistische Revue. Prospect. See also Höchberg's leading article, 'Der Socialismus und die Wissenschaft', published in 1877 in the first issue of the Zukunft.
  7. ↑ 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).
  8. ↑ J. Gugenheim
  9. ↑ Engels is probably referring to José Mesa's letter of 24 August 1874. The latter wrote that despite his enforced move to Paris he still kept in touch with members of the Spanish section of the International Working Men's Association in Madrid, on which Engels could rely, and supplied a number of addresses.
  10. ↑ See this volume, pp. 359-60.