Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, November 9, 1882

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 9 November 1882


First published abridged in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full 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 46, p.368

TO SORGE IN HOBOKEN

London, 9 November 1882

Dear Sorge,

I have paid for The Labour Standard up till 3 December, 4/5d., and advised Shipton to send all future accounts to me.[1] Should you wish to cancel the subscription, perhaps you would let me have prompt notification.

Marx was here for 3 weeks, very much better; all he needs now is decent air and careful treatment. His minor ailments have been vanquished to the extent that he will certainly be rid of them next summer. The main thing is to get him through the winter without a recurrence of PLEURISY, and for that reason he has gone to Ventnor in the ISLE OF Wight[2] . whence I have just received a line or two from him.[3] So far as circumstances permit, the 3rd edition[4] will now be taken vigorously in hand there and won't, I trust, occupy too much time. For the rest he was very cheerful and sprightly and, if all goes well until next autumn, he will be stronger than he has been for years.

My thanks with regard to Lilienthal. I now know the man as well as if we had been at school together.

I'm glad to hear that your Adolph[5] is getting on well; I trust he will soon find a LINE that will give him the opportunity he wants of getting on quickly. His letters have arrived but, like many others, unfortunately still remain unanswered.

Hepner is a proper Schlemihl[6] ; moreover his campaigns, like the one he is waging against Schewitsch, are too much concerned with hair-splitting. Who, after all, is going to wax so enthusiastic about 'German culture'! He really ought to familiarise himself with American culture first. But that is typically German. Here we have someone arriving from a small town in the depths of Germany who cannot wait to enlighten America. However America will BREAK him IN all right and, since he has talent, and at one time also possessed a great deal of gumption, he may yet prove very useful.


16 November

That shows you what things are like here. Having had to break off a week ago I have only today got round to continuing this and, I trust, finishing it off.

Lafargue has been in Paris ever since the spring; his wife[7] followed later, during the summer; she spent a month with Marx in Vevey.[8] For Marx had first been in Algiers,[9] then in Monte Carlo (Monaco)[10] and in both places had suffered a recurrence of PLEURISY. After that he stayed with the Longuets in Argenteuil[11] where he availed himself of the sulphur springs at nearby Enghien for his chronic bronchitis. Then to Vevey and finally back here.

You might like to know that Lafargue (with a great deal of assistance from me, since he had absolutely no intention of learning German from his wife) has published in French 3 chapters from my Anti-Dühring (introduction and the two first chapters of Part III 'Socialism') under the title Socialisme utopique et socialisme scientifique.[12] It made a tremendous impression in France. Most people are too lazy to read stout tomes such as Capital and hence a slim little pamphlet like this has a much more rapid effect. I shall now publish the thing in German — with insertions calculated to give it a strong popular appeal; the ms. is already in Zurich and the first sheet has been printed.[13] I shall send it to you as soon as it is ready. Meanwhile you have, of course, in Dr Stiebeling a purveyor of popular knowledge to America in utraque lingua[14] . He is a well-meaning man but no theorist and accordingly he is somewhat muddle-headed.

The Egalité is now appearing daily and weekly. Whether the daily edition (in place of the Citoyen which our people were chucked out of thanks to a financial coup[15] ) can keep going depends upon negotiations with a man of means. The Sozialdemokrat is being much too weakkneed in regard to the split between our people and Malon, but the smooth, cunning, rascally Malon (one of the 17 founders of Bakunin's secret 'Alliance'[16] ) has so ingratiated himself with the Germans in Paris and our people have made a number of such colossal blunders that the Paris people are doing their utmost to bring pressure to bear on Zurich. What's more, Liebknecht also intrigued with Malon when passing through Paris on his way home from here. If, however, Lafargue and Guesde commit some altogether too extravagant follies, I shall talk the Sozialdemokrat round, never fear.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ In a letter of 22 August 1882, Sorge asked Engels to deal with the matter of subscription fees for The Labour Standard.
  2. ↑ Marx stayed in the south of England in Ventnor (the Isle of Wight) between 30 October 1882 and 13 January 1883.
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 364-67
  4. ↑ 3rd German edition of Vol. I of Capital
  5. ↑ Adolph Sorge jun.
  6. ↑ Peter Schlemihl—a character in Chamisso's story Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, who exchanged his shadow for a magic purse.
  7. ↑ Laura Lafargue
  8. ↑ A reference to a postcard from Johann Philipp Becker to Engels of 13 December 1882. For Engels' reply, see this volume, pp. 405-07.
  9. ↑ In early February 1882, following medical advice, Marx took a trip to Algiers, where he stayed from 20 February to 2 May. On the way there, he stopped over in Argenteuil (a Paris suburb) to visit his daughter Jenny Longuet (9-16 February).
  10. ↑ Having left Algiers on 2 May 1882 on his doctor's advice, Marx travelled to Monte Carlo via Marseilles and Nice, and lived there for a month, up to 3 June.
  11. ↑ Between 6 June and 22 August, Marx stayed with his daughter Jenny Longuet in Argenteuil
  12. ↑ A reference to the introduction to the French edition of Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, which appeared in Paris in 1880 in Paul Lafargue's translation under the title Socialisme utopique et socialisme scientifique. Engels produced the pamphlet at Lafargue's request, having rewritten three chapters of Anti-Diihring (Chapter I of the Introduction and chapters I and II of Part III) to form a popular work in its own right. It was first printed by the French socialist magazine La Revue socialiste, Nos. 3, 4 and 5, 1880, and then published, also in 1880, as a pamphlet. The French socialist Benoît Malon embarked on an introduction to it, but his effort was deemed unacceptable, and the introduction as it appeared was written by Marx, who had first consulted Engels (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 335-39). In the pamphlet, the introduction carried the signature of Lafargue, whom Marx requested to 'polish the phrases, leaving the gist intact' (see this volume, p. 16).
  13. ↑ A reference to the preparation of the German edition of Engels' work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (see Note 360). As he had promised, Engels prepared the German text by making additions to and changes in it, and wrote a preface (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 457-59). He also supplemented it by his essay 'The Mark' (ibid., pp. 439-56) on the emergence and development of landed property in Germany. The work was finished in September 1882, and the pamphlet was printed in Hottingen-Zurich at the end of the year and was on sale in early 1883 under the title Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft.
  14. ↑ Here: in two tongues (German and English).
  15. ↑ See this volume, pp. 343-44 and 346-47.
  16. ↑ The Alliance of Socialist Democracy was founded by Mikhail Bakunin in Geneva in October 1868 as an international anarchist organisation. In 1869 the Alliance approached the General Council of the International Working Men's Association with a request to be admitted to the International. The General Council agreed to admit individual sections of the Alliance provided the latter dissolved as an independent organisation. On entering the International, Bakunin did not actually comply with this decision and incorporated the Alliance into it under the guise of a section (called 'the Alliance of Socialist Democracy. Central Section'). Marx, Engels and the General Council fought the Alliance, exposing it as a sect hostile to the working-class movement (for details, see present edition, Vol. 23). The Hague Congress of the International (1872) dealt a severe blow at the anarchists and expelled the Alliance's leaders Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International.