Letter to Eduard Bernstein, December 16, 1882

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 16 December 1882


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


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

London, 16 December 1882

Dear Mr Bernstein,

Schorlemmer complains that he has not received the Sozialdemo- krat for some little while; his subscription expired and he sent me the encl. CHEQUE (which I forgot about) no less than a month ago with the request that his annual subscription be renewed and 'the balance be used for party purposes'.

The ms. of the Mark has had to be completely rewritten 3 times; on top ofthat I again had to go through about 5 or 6 of Maurer's 10 fat volumes,[1] besides which there were other sources to compare. I have now sent it to Marx who has slogged away at the subject much more thoroughly and for much longer than I have 4 7 5; I expect it back on Monday.

Malon se moque de[2] Vollmar. Otherwise he would certainly have corrected the latter's howler to the effect that the 'Alliancists' at- tacked by the Egalité were understood in the sense of the Bakuninist Alliance.[3] Far from it. The Possibilists were thus described because they are now wholly indistinguishable from the people in the Alliance socialiste 4 7 6 which was founded some 4 years ago by Jourde, the ex- Communard for finance, with the help of past and present Proudhon- ists (e.g. Longuet) and which constitutes La Justice's socialist re- serve. You must certainly have seen this Alliance mentioned in con- nection with elections; it put up candidates for the recent general election to the Chamber and obtained nearly as many votes — in some arrondissements at any rate — as the Parti ouvrier.[4] If Vollmar knew nothing of this, despite his year and a half in Paris, it was because Malon deliberately kept it from him like much else. That's what happens when you give a gang your uncritical sup- port.

I have to chuckle when Vollmar praises Malon as the party disci- plinarian and accuses the others of a breach of discipline.[5]

Who, I ask, is guilty of indiscipline — he who carries the old flag high or he who recruits people with the express aim of deserting the colours and exchanging the old flag for a new one? Where, I ask, would Malon have got his majority at St-Etienne from[6] if he hadn't first recruited people whose intention from the start, and this was precisely why they had been recruited, was to subvert the old programme?

That was a choice row between Malon and his Clovis Hugues over Louis Blanc. And they call themselves a party!

You will have seen that the Fédération du Nord 4 5 4 has declared outright for Roanne.

Some of Lafargue's articles in the more recent issues of the Egalité have been truly delightful, e.g. on Bontoux's candidature.[7]

Witticisms are better suited to them than doctrinaire pontifica- tions.

Would you please be good enough to see that the issues are sent on to Schorlemmer.

Yours very sincerely,

F. E.

  1. ↑ A reference to Guillaume's resignation from the Jura Federation (it fell apart in 1878) of the so-called anarchist International and his departure from Switzerland to Paris in May 1878.
  2. ↑ is making fun of
  3. ↑ The section 'What's Going on at Home?' in Vperyod! (Vol. Ill, London, 1874) carried an anonymous article from Irkutsk dated February 1874; its actual author was Hermann Lopatin, who described a group of religious dissenters he met in Siberia called 'Not Ours'. They denied the existence of God and opposed government authority, property, family and all existing laws and customs in protest against the existing system in Russia.
  4. ↑ Workers' Party
  5. ↑ In the late 1850s, the Mexican government of Zuloaga and Miramön issued state bonds that became an object of large-scale speculation in France (see present edition, Vol. 19, p. 197).
  6. ↑ In a letter to Engels of 26 April 1878, Bracke praised the railway project and the tobacco monopoly introduced by Bismarck. But he still regarded as wrong 'any participation by the party in implementing these measures'.
  7. ↑ An extract from this letter was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Correspondence. 1846-1895. A Selection with Commentary and Notes, Martin Lawrence Ltd., London, 1934. In a fuller form, it appeared in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters on 'Capital', New- Park Publications Ltd., London, 1983.