Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 10, 1879

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 10 September 1879


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO ENGELS

IN LONDON

Ramsgate, 10 September 1879
62 Plains of Waterloo

DEAR FRED,

Yesterday I got a note from Kovalevsky saying he had had a letter from Russia which necessitated his immediate return to the land of his birth. He didn't send me the Jahrbuch.

Laura spent a week with us, and Paul a few days every now and again; the day before yesterday he returned with her to London. Laura, by the by, had let Pumptia know she was leaving.

My wife is still making very slow progress; I have got much better.[1] The air down here suits me extraordinarily well. Besides, I was kept in mouvement perpétuel[2] by Laura.

Herewith the letters received from you today.[3] (The others will go off at the same time, but under separate cover.) Liebknecht has no discernment. The letters prove what they are intended to refute, namely our original view that the business was bungled in Leipzig, whereas the men in Zurich proceeded in accordance with the terms prescribed for them.[4] Incidentally, their HORROR at the attack made by the otherwise so innocuous Laterne on that scoundrel Kayser[5] shows more clearly than anything else what is the calibre of these chaps. Schramm, though a sound man in other respects, has always been a philistine. The Leipzigers for their part are already so 'parliamentarily minded' that they regard criticism of one member of their Reichstag coterie as a crime de lèse majesté.

I altogether agree with your view that no further time should be lost in stating our views, forcibly and ruthlessly, as to the Jahrbuch bunkum,[6] i.e. pro nunc[7] 'presenting' it to the Leipzigers in black and white. Should they proceed to go ahead with their 'party organ' in this way, we shall have to disavow them publicly. In such matters, the line has to be drawn somewhere.

I haven't replied to Most,[8] nor shall I do so; as soon as I'm in London I shall write, inviting him to turn up in person. You ought to be present at the meeting.

The most typical thing about Bismarck is the way in which he came to be at odds with Russia. He wanted Gorchakov removed and Shuvalov put in his place. Since this miscarried, the obvious conclusion was—voilà l'ennemi![9] And you may be pretty sure that Bücher did not fail to exacerbate his master's irritation. On retourne toujours à son premier amour.[10] From the point of view of our movement and of Europe generally, nothing could be more injurious than the implementation of Bismarck's plan. So long as old William[11] is alive, this won't be so easy; it might always happen that Bismarck himself falls victim to the reaction he sparked off with the Anti-Socialist Law.[12] En attendant,[13] the black cloud in the east is already doing him a service; once again he is the 'man they need' and the liberals now feel it to be their 'patriotic' duty to kiss his arse. Not only will the iron military budget be renewed at the next sitting of the Reichstag; it might be 'perpetuated', as William originally wished. The secret of Russian diplomacy's success ABROAD was the deathly silence OF RUSSIA AT HOME, the spell being broken by the movement in that country. Its final victory was the Treaty of Paris of 1856.[14] Since then, nothing but blunders.

I HOPE POOR SCHOLLYMEYER'S HEALTH WILL IMPROVE. MY BEST WISHES FOR HIM.

Your

Moor

  1. ↑ On 21 August 1879, Marx interrupted his stay in Jersey (see Note 494) and arrived in Ramsgate to join his daughter Jenny and her newborn son Edgar. He returned to London on 17 September.
  2. ↑ perpetual motion
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 386.
  4. ↑ This refers to the preparations for the publication of the illegal newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat in Zurich, the new central printed organ of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. The need for such a newspaper emerged after a ban on the entire party press, above all the Vorwärts, following the introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law in October 1878 (see Note 462). In July-September 1879, extensive correspondence on the political line of the new paper and its editors was maintained between August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Louis Viereck (in Leipzig), Carl Hirsch (in Paris), Eduard Bernstein, Karl Höchberg, Carl August Schramm (in Zurich), and Marx and Engels (in London).
    The campaign Marx and Engels conducted for a sound political line of the party's future central printed organ is fully expounded in their Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others of 17-18 September 1879 (see this volume, pp. 394-408).
  5. ↑ In his articles 'Die Zolldebatte' and 'Zur Kaiser'schen Rede und Abstimmung' in Die Laterne, a weekly he was publishing (Nos 21 and 23, 25 May and 8 June 1879), Carl Hirsch scathingly criticised the speech made in the Reichstag by Max Kayser, who supported the government plan to introduce protective customs tariffs (see Note 502).
  6. ↑ A reference to the programmatic article 'Rückblicke auf die sozialistische Bewegung in Deutschland' which appeared anonymously in the Jahrbuch für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Jg. 1, 1. Hälfte, Zürich-Oberstrass, 1879, S. 75-96. Its authors were Karl Höchberg (pen-name Ludwig Richter), Eduard Bernstein and Carl August Schramm. Marx and Engels examined it in detail in the Circular Letter (this volume, pp. 401-08).
  7. ↑ for the time being
  8. ↑ See this volume, p. 381.
  9. ↑ That's the enemy!
  10. ↑ One always returns to one's first love (somewhat paraphrased words of a romance from Isouard's opera—libretto by Ch. G. Etienne—Joconde, Act III, Scene 1).
  11. ↑ William I
  12. ↑ The Anti-Socialist Law (The Exceptional Law Against the Socialists) was introduced by the Bismarck government on a majority vote in the Reichstag on 21 October 1878 to combat the socialist and working-class movement. It banned all party and mass workers' organisations and the socialist and workers' press, and sanctioned confiscation of socialist literature and persecution of Social-Democrats. But the Social-Democratic Party, in accordance with the Constitution, preserved its group in the Reichstag. By skilfully combining illegal and legal methods of work and suppressing reformist and anarchist tendencies within its ranks, the party managed substantially to strengthen and extend its influence among the masses. Marx and Engels actively assisted the party's leaders.
    Under pressure from the working-class movement, the law was repealed on 1 October 1890. Engels examined it in his essay 'Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
  13. ↑ Meanwhile
  14. ↑ In 1870, the Gladstone government introduced a reform of public education which provided for the opening of secular schools controlled by locally elected school boards (alongside parish schools) at which religious instruction was no longer compulsory. The reform was attacked by the Conservatives. In mid-July 1874, one of them, Lord Sandon, proposed an amendment to the law of 1869 which had established the Endowed Schools Commission. He suggested that the money be henceforth distributed by the Charity Commission, which would have allowed the church to regain the ground it had lost in school education. Sandon's Bill was strongly opposed by the Liberals.