Letter to Johann Philipp Becker, December 19, 1879

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 December 1879


First published in: F. Engels, Vergessene Briefe (Briefe Friedrich Engels' an Johann Philipp Becker), Berlin, 1920
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO JOHANN PHILIPP BECKER

IN GENEVA

London, 19 December 1879

Dear Old Man,

I was supposed to be getting some money yesterday and it had long been understood that you would thereupon at once be sent a remittance. But it came too late for me to draw a money order that same day, and all through the afternoon I kept thinking: A letter's bound to arrive from Philipp this evening! And sure enough, it did arrive. So you've deprived me of the pleasure of giving you an unexpected Christmas treat. Well then, I have drawn a money order for five pounds sterling, against which, according to the rate here, 126 frs should be paid to you over there — as will, no doubt, be done without delay.

Over here we are all so-so; I can't complain, Marx is fitter than last year, although he still isn't really up to the mark. Mrs Marx has long been subject to bouts of indigestion and is seldom entirely well. The second volume[1] is making slow progress, nor is it likely to progress any faster until a summer better than the last one enables Marx to recover properly for once.[2]

Yesterday I wrote and told Bebel[3] that we couldn't contribute to the Sozialdemokrat. From Höchberg's subsequent letters it emerges that he intends, as a matter of course, to continue advocating in the Sozialdemokrat the views expressed in the Jahrbuch.[4] And as long as the Leipzigers remain on their present footing with him and his philistine colleagues, I cannot see how they can refuse to allow this. But it also means that we are excluded. Having combatted this same petty-bourgeois socialism ever since the Manifesto[5] (indeed, since Marx's anti-Proudhon piece[6] ), we cannot go hand in hand with it at a moment when it is using the Anti-Socialist Law[7] as a pretext for raising its banner again. And it is better so. We would involve ourselves in an endless debate with these gentry, the Sozialdemokrat would become a battle- ground, and in the end we should after all be forced publicly to announce our resignation. Not that all this would be of use to anyone save the Prussians and the bourgeois, and so we would rather avoid it. But this should not be regarded as a model by other people—those who, unlike us, have not themselves been forced by these particular negotiations to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Höchberg and Co. I see no reason at all why you, for example, should not contribute to the paper.[8] The articles from German working men are the only things in it that give one any pleasure, and things of yours could only enhance the paper; and since it does exist, a paper that's as good as it's possible to make it is, after all, preferable to one that is merely bad. I say this on the assumption that these people pay you properly, for it would be asking altogether too much of a man in your position that he should, into the bargain, work for nothing. In fact, we're not particularly incensed against the Leipzigers over this business. We saw it coming for years. For Liebknecht cannot resist mediating and making friends left and right, nor is he exactly fussy about what elements have been imported so long as the party gives the appearance of being really strong and having plenty of members and, if possible, funds. And so he'll go on until one day he burns his fingers. When that happens the better men will no doubt revert to the right course.

The Freiheit is all sound and fury, quite devoid of content or meaning, and Most, who in other respects is not without talent, has here shown himself incapable of producing a single idea since he uprooted himself from the bedrock of the party. If I've got to have undiluted abuse, then give me the late Karl Heinzen any day; he succeeded in being even more ham-handed.

The powers of attorney have all gone off to New York,[9] since when nothing more has been heard. There's no relying on Liebknecht's expectations, of which he always has more than is good for him.

For years Lessner has had nothing much to do with the Society here[10] ; he seldom turns up, and then doesn't do anything much except grumble and grouse about the course of things generally.

In Russia matters are going splendidly! They'll soon come to blows there. And when that happens, the bowels of the great men of the German Empire will instantly turn to water—a veritable flux! That will be the next turning point of world history.

You shouldn't allow the poor anarchists to irritate you so.[11]

They, too, are in a truly forlorn state. In the West they have nothing left to do save be anarchical amongst themselves and tear one another's hair out, and in Russia all their murderous deeds achieve—as they have just discovered to their dismay—is pulling the Constitutionals'[12] chestnuts out of the fire for them!

Regards from Marx and

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ of Capital
  2. ↑ Following the publication of Part One of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859 (see present edition, Vol. 29), Marx wrote a lengthy economic manuscript in 1861-63. It was a second rough draft of Capital (the first being the 1857-58 manuscript). In 1863, he definitively decided that the work was to have four books, the first three being theoretical, and the fourth, presenting a historical and critical survey. In August 1863, having completed work on the manuscript of 1861-63, Marx began preparing Capital for the press.
    This work resulted in a third rough draft of Capital—the Economic Manuscript of 1863-65, consisting of three theoretical books. The draft for the fourth book (Theories of Surplus Value) formed part of the 1861-63 manuscript. Subsequently, Marx returned to the first book. On Engels' advice, Marx decided it would be the first to be published, and was preparing it for the press throughout 1866 and the first half of 1867. The first German edition of the book appeared in September 1867 as Volume One of Capital. Under the plan agreed with the publisher Otto Meissner, the second and third books, analysing the process of circulation of capital and the forms of capitalist process as a whole, were to appear as Volume Two, and the fourth book, dealing with 'the history of economic theories', as the third and final volume of Capital.
    Marx, however, did not manage to prepare the second and third volumes of Capital for the press. After his death, Engels completed the work and published Marx's manuscripts of the second and third books as Volume Two (1885) and Volume Three (1894). Engels also intended to prepare for the press and publish the above-mentioned manuscript of the fourth book as Volume Four of Capital but died before this plan had been carried out. In the present edition of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, this book of Capital has been included in the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63 (vols 30-34), while the first three volumes of Capital make up vols 35-37 respectively.
  3. ↑ See previous letter.
  4. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in: K. Marx, On History and People, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1977. It appeared in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  5. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party.
  6. ↑ K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy.
  7. ↑ 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).
  8. ↑ August Bebel's letter to Engels of 23 October 1879 (see notes 541, 543 and 544) and that of Friedrich Wilhelm Fritzsche and Wilhelm Liebknecht of 21 October enclosed with it, were a reply to Marx's and Engels' Circular Letter to the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party (see this volume, pp. 394-408).
    Fritzsche and Liebknecht considered Marx's and Engels' criticism of their conciliatory attitude to the reformist policies advocated by Karl Höchberg, Carl August Schramm and Eduard Bernstein to be unwarranted.
  9. ↑ See this volume, pp. 392 93, 410, 422.
  10. ↑ The reference is to the German Workers' Educational Society in London founded in February 1840 by Karl Schapper, Joseph Moll and other members of the League of the Just. After the establishment of the Communist League in 1847, the leading role in the Society was assumed by the League's local communities. Marx and Engels were actively involved in its work in 1847 and 1849-50. On 17 September 1850, Marx, Engels and some of their followers left the Society in protest at the domination of the Willich-Schapper group, and rejoined it only in the late 1850s. After the foundation of the International Working Men's Association, the Society with Lessner among its leaders, became its German section in London. The London Educational Society existed until 1918, when it was closed down by the British government.
  11. ↑ In a letter to Engels of 16 December 1879, Johann Philipp Becker raved against the activities of the anarchists in Geneva.
  12. ↑ Constitutionals—representatives of the liberal opposition movement advocating moderate constitutional reform in Russia.