Letter to Eduard Bernstein, November 28, 1882

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 28 November 1882


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Book I, Moscow, 1924
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 46


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

London, 28 November 1882

Dear Mr Bernstein,

To begin with, my best thanks for the information about the nation- alised railways. It is amply sufficient.[1] I have received from Bebel the Accident and Health Insurance Bills of 1882, but must, of course, also have those of 1881, the original wording 144 being precisely the one in which Bismarck's soul, filled with ardour for the poor, has am- ple space to flap its wings; in the second wording, in which the said wings have already been substantially clipped as a result of bourgeois divisions, we no longer find Bismarck in his entirety.

Marx used to get the Arbeiterstimme, but as he has probably failed to renew his subscription it no longer arrives.

Aside from a few minor points, Vollmar's article4 3 8 is pure Malon at one remove. In it the history of the French workers' movement since 1871 is completely falsified, and that sort ofthing simply should not happen. For instance, in the 2nd article Guesde is blamed for not having joined up with the few small cliques (later the progenitors of the Prolétaire or, in other words, the out and out coopérateurs against whom he was just then conducting a campaign)! As though the chaps who were subsequently to bring out the Prolétaire would have even considered admitting a 'non-worker'! But more falsified than anything else is what Deville has correctly depicted in the Egalité of 19 November {'Il y a cinq ans',* history of the Egalité), name- ly, the fight for the 'collectivist' programme[2] at the congresses and the victory of that programme in 1879 at the Marseilles Congress.* *3

This is completely suppressed in Vollmar's article. I cannot assume that Vollmar deliberately perpetrated this falsification, but nor is it any easier to explain his ignorance of the subject and the fact that he appears to know nothing at all about the French workers' movement save what Malon thought fit to tell him.

Hence, by omitting the Marseilles Congress, he suppresses the vital fact that the French workers' party had accepted the collectivist

'Five Years Ago'.

programme 3 years ago, so that Malon's abandonment of it was a def- initely retrograde step. Since it is now essential that our people in Ger- many should be told the story of the French movement, not as it ought to have happened to fit in with Malon's present requirements, but as it really did happen, this is something which must unquestion- ably be put right. In my view, the simplest way of doing so would be to relate it to the above-mentioned article by Deville, precisely be- cause this is so utterly unpolemical. Should you no longer have it, I can send it you forthwith on a postcard.

Malon, by the way, had better watch out. Should we at any time wish to portray his faits et gestes'3 more accurately if as minutely as he got Vollmar to depict those of Guesde, he would have a rough time of it. We still have all the documents in which, on 18 March '71, he dis- avowed the rising, only to join it after the event, when things were doing better than he had expected.

Now as regards the strength of the two factions, I have obtained a report on the subject from Lafargue.[3] In Paris the Roanne people have 15 groups with whose help they have kept the Egalité going for a whole month now, which does at any rate say something for the quality of these chaps. In the provinces they are, so Lafargue says, very strong. The Fédération du Nord 4 5 4 is, in essence, on their side; they do not wish to prendre part aux querelles des Parisiens'h but they uphold the old collectivist programme which also features prominent- ly in their Forçat; the Roanne people are holding their next congress at Roubaix, to which all the delegates of the North will be going, and are constantly in the closest touch with the Federation du Nord. The other provincial workers' paper, L'Exploité de Mantes, has simi- larly printed the old programme together with the considérants[4] in a prominent position. It reprints articles from the Égalité, and Deville is a contributor. This means that the only two workers' organs in the provinces are both on their side. En province',d aside from the North, partout où il y a un groupement ouvrier, à Reims, Epinay, Lyon, dans tout le bassin houillier de l'Allier, à Bordeaux, Angoulême, Rochefort, nous battons les Possibilistes qui n'ont de force qu'en Bretagne at à Mar- seille— et encore. '

a goings-on-b take part in the squabbles of the Parisians-' preambles-d 'In the

[5] [6]

That Malon should obtain a wide hearing for the empty verbiage of his considérants without a programme is not surprising. But if one founds a party without a programme in which everyone can have a say, it cannot properly be called a party. The impotence of the old sectarians, for whom Malon and Vollmar show such tender regard, has been in evidence for years and it would be best to let them wither quietly away. As for the Chambres Syndicales " — well, if one is going to account a member of the workers' party every STRIKE association which, like the English TRADES UNIONS, fights solely for high wages and short working hours but doesn't otherwise give a damn for the move- ment,— then the only party one will actually form is one for the pre- servation of wage labour rather than its abolition. And, or so Marx tells me,b these Parisian Chambres Syndicales are for the most part even more colourless than the English TRADES UNIONS. TO abolish a party programme just to please these people is no way to spur them on. And has the like ever been seen before — a party without a programme, a party whose wishy-washy considérants (written wholly in the spirit of the communist Miquel, who likewise believed communism to be fea- sible in 500 years' time 456) lead up to the conclusion that each group should concoct its own private programme?

Well, now, what benefit does Malon derive from the Chambres Syndicales? They pay no contributions, they send no delegates to the Federal Council, they were nominal members of the Union federa- tive 265 before the split and have nominally remained so — they are, as Lafargue puts it, complètement platoniques'. They are there for show. As for Malon's other groups, Lafargue writes:

Dans le XVII arrondissement nos amis ont organisé, après le congrès, un groupe qui immédiate- ment s'est trouvé composé de 29 membres. Pour nous faire pièce, les possibilistes ont subdivisé leur groupe qui, à ce que l'on me dit, ne se composait que d'une vingtaine de membres, en cinq sous-groupes réunis par un comité fédéral du quartier. Le tour est joli, mais ne trompe que les indifférents et ceux qui sont éloignés.'

That's just what the Bakuninists used to do. On the other hand, so Lafargue says, the Possibilists are really strong only in Montmartre, where they are also well-organised.

" Syndicalist Chambers-b See this volume, p. 385.- c 'In the XVII arrondissement our friends organised, after the Congress, a group of which the immediate composition

[7] [8] [9] [10]

To be momentarily in the minority — quoad" organisation — and have the right programme is at least better than having no pro- gramme and a large, though almost entirely nominal and bogus, fol- lowing. We have been in the minority all our lives and have thrived on it. And the comparative weakness (supposing it exists, which I am very much inclined to doubt — the Possibilists did not dare attend the Roanne people's conférence contradictoire^ on the two congresses[11] ), the comparative weakness where organisations in Paris are con- cerned would be outweighed two or three times over by journalistic influence.

So how your Paris correspondents are able to regard the St-Etienne folk as the 'genuine workers' party' is beyond me. In the first place they are not a party at all, let alone a workers' party, any more than are the workers over here. But they are in embryo what those over here have become in full maturity, namely the tail of the radical bourgeois party. The only thing that keeps them together is bourgeois radicalism, for they have no labour programme. And as for those labour leaders who descend to manufacturing a docile labour vote for the radicals, they are, in my view, downright traitors.

Your remarks also led me, just for fun, to ask about Godard.[12]

The said Godard, 'qui se dit anarchiste comme son maître Maret, écrit dans un journal opportuniste
de
Toulouse'.'
To
refuse a chap of this kind what is known as a rectification is quite in keeping with the customs of the Paris, as of any other, press.

On the other hand our friends have again perpetrated a really co- lossal bloomer in as much as they have, by their rrrevolutionary brag- ging, exposed themselves to prosecution before the paperd had found its feet. Guesde has been arrested, as you know, and Lafargue will probably soon follow in his wake. When both are in jug, the most ac- tive— not only writing, but fighting — men will have been got out of the way. Deville is lazy, Massard quite good for his post aï secrétaire de la rédaction, ' but they are hardly the people to keep a paper going in difficult circumstances. I won't mention the other 3 — Brissac and Bouis, old Communards, are so much ballast, and Picard is a com- mon-or-garden journalist.

Whatever you do, by the way, don't allow anyone to persuade you that Guesde and Lafargue intended, 'by hook or by crook, to make

[13] [14]

all organisations subject to their own directives'. It is a constantly re- curring catchword in Bakuninist tactics, and in other contexts in France it may always be resorted to in lieu of other arguments.

Treatment of other countries in the Egalitê\ If only you knew what disorder reigns and what the standard of German is like in that office! Should Lafargue remain at large, you would do best always to ad- dress yourself to him; he does at least forward the things. Otherwise I have no advice to offer.

If you want to use the resume of the pamphlet,[15] I am quite agreeable. The concluding note will follow shortly. The affaire Schmidt[16] is very nice. Pollaky has been running a private detec- tive's office in London for some time. In the directory, under the head- ing INQUIRY OFFICER (of whom 18 are listed), there is an entry: 'Pollaky, Ignatius Paul, 13 Paddington Green, W. (not at all far from where I live), Correspondent to the Foreign Police Gazette."

I trust my congratulations on your attaining your 7th thousand3

will again prove outdated. I, for my part, am 62 years old today.

Kindest regards.

Yours,

F.E.

  1. ↑ The polemics in the Russian press on the first volume of Marx's Capital in 1877-79 involved scholars and political writers and were opened by Yuli Zhukovsky's article 'Karl Marx and His Book on Capital' (Vestnik Yevropy, September 1877). The article provoked a number of replies, two of which Danielson had sent to Marx: N. Sieber's essay 'A Few Notes Apropos Yu. Zhukovsky's Article "Karl Marx and His Book on Capital" (Otechestvenniye Zapiski, No. 11, November 1877) and N. Mikhailovsky's article 'Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of Mr Zhukovsky (Otechestvenniye Zapiski, No. 10, October 1877), which prompted Marx to write to Otechestvenniye Zapiski (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 196-201). In 1878, sharp criticism of Marx was levelled in B. N. Chicherin's article 'The German Socialists: 2. Karl Marx (Sbornik Gosudarstvennikh Znanii, Vol. VI, St. Petersburg, 1878). Sieber's article 'B. Chicherin contra K. Marx (Slovo, February 1879) was a reply to it.
  2. ↑ Marx finally received both books mentioned here. The name of the first appears on his list 'Russisches in my bookstall'.
    Marx intended to use the results of his research into the agrarian relations in Russia when putting the finishing touches to the section on ground rent in the second volume of his Capital (see Note 62). However, this intention was not fulfilled. After the Russian translation of the first volume of Capital appeared in print in 1872, Marx continued his study of Russian economic writings, making copious notes as he went along.
  3. ↑ The Civil War in America broke out in April 1861. The Southern slaveholders rose against the Union and formed the Confederacy of the Southern States. The war was caused mainly by the conflict between the two social systems: the capitalist system of wage labour established in the North and the slave system dominant in the South. The Civil War, which had the nature of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, passed two stages in its development: the period of a constitutional war for the maintenance of the Union and that of a revolutionary war for the abolition of slavery. The decisive role in the defeat of the Southern slaveholders and the victory of the North in April 1865 was played by the workers and farmers. Marx analysed the causes and the nature of the war in his articles published in the Viennese newspaper Die Presse (see present edition, Vol. 19).
  4. ↑ A reference to the following passage in the second German edition of Volume One of Capital: 'And, as a matter of fact, the value also of each single yard is but the materialised form of the same definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour' (see also K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part I, Chapter III, Section 2, present edition. Vol. 35).
  5. ↑ provinces'
  6. ↑ e 'wherever there is a concentration of workers, at Rheims, Epinay, Lyons, throughout the Allier mining district, at Bordeaux, Angoulême, and Rochefort, we are vanquishing the Possibilists who are strong only in Brittany and in Marseilles — if strong is the right word.'
  7. ↑ was 29 members. To play a trick on us the Possibilists subdivided their group, which by
  8. ↑ all accounts consisted of some twenty members only, into five sub
  9. ↑ groups convened by
  10. ↑ a federal committee in the quarter. It's a pretty trick, but one that can deceive only those who are indifferent or far away.'
  11. ↑ Cf. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Part V, Ch. XVI (present edition, Vol. 35).
  12. ↑ After a long search, Sorge sent Marx an 'Annual Report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for 1876-1877', Part III. Industrial Statistics, Vol. V, Harrisburg, 1878, containing information he needed on the situation in the mining industry of Pennsylvania.
  13. ↑ a as to
  14. ↑ b public debate 1 'who professes to be an anarchist like his master Maret, writes for an opportunist Toulouse journal d V Egalité secretary to the editors
  15. ↑ Under the Paris Peace Treaty concluded in 1856 at the end of the Crimean War (see Note 22), Russia lost the Danube delta and the part of Southern Bessarabia adjacent to it.
  16. ↑ From 1877 Johann Philipp Becker was editor and publisher of the Swiss socialist journal Le Précurseur.