Letter to Eduard Bernstein, August 27, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 27 August 1883


First published abridged in Le Mouvement socialiste, Paris, t. IV, No. 45, novembre 1, 1900 and in full, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Book I, Moscow, 1924
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

Eastbourne, 27 August 1883
4 Cavendish Place

Dear Bernstein,

Herewith money order for £4 for old Becker.[1] I am still hoping that the news — and it wouldn't be the first time — is being exaggerated by his family. But he is, of course, very old, has been through a great deal and, or so I was told by Mme Lafargue, looked considerably older last year in Geneva by comparison with his hearty appearance at The Hague.[2]

I shall not be able to write a great deal today. The post leaves here at one o'clock in the afternoon and here beside me, for proof-reading, lies sheet 19 of Capital[3] which also has to go off.

Many thanks for your suggestion about Kaler-Reinthal,[4] but I cannot, unfortunately, take advantage of it. With the exception of trifles, all my extra jobs are of a kind that call for my personal attention. And in so far as I could pass anything on, it would have to be to a man who spoke fluent English and was intimately acquainted with London and local conditions, thus being able to save me running errands.

I am staying here until about 12 September,[5] until when the above address holds good; then back to London.

Besides proofs and arrears of correspondence, I must, while here, attend to:

1) Deville's ms., French popularisation of Capital.

2) Ms., part of the English translation,[6] both of them sorely in need of revision. So you see, no peace here either. Luckily I live right next to the sea and sit besides an open window through which the sea air comes wafting in.

I was very sorry that you didn't come over here. I had a number of things to discuss with you. We have in any case got to resign ourselves to the fact that some of Marx's unpublished works will have to appear abroad and you alone could give me practical information or suggestions relating to this; it is, however, something that has to be discussed verbally — by letter it would be endless. But please say nothing about this, otherwise it might arouse false hopes in the people who run the printing works out there; my experience of party presses is such that I would think twice before entrusting a major and important work to any of them.

I shall retain the money order here, it being expressly stated thereon that it is of no use to the recipient. I gave your address, 137 alte Landstraße Riesbach, from memory; if wrong, please put this right at the main post office in Zurich.

My suggestion about the impudent ms. was, as it were, a bad joke.[7]

So long as the Anti-Socialist Law is in force,[8] and the Sozialdemokrat is the only possible organ, it is imperative not to sow discord among the party merely for the sake of such secondary issues, and that is what would happen if one sought to make a 'question of principle' out of this issue.

It would seem to me that, in the treatment of the 'republic', especially in France, the most important aspect did not emerge clearly enough in the Sozialdemokrat,[9] namely this:

In the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie, the Bonapartist monarchy (the characteristics of which have been expounded by Marx in the Eighteenth Brumaire and by myself in The Housing Question, II, and elsewhere) adopted a role similar to that of the old absolute monarchy in the struggle between feudalism and bourgeoisie. But just as that struggle could not be fought out under the old, absolute monarchy but only under a constitutional one (England, France 1789-92 and 1815-30) so, too, that between bourgeoisie and proletariat can only be fought out in a republic. Inasmuch, then, as the French were helped by favourable conditions and revolutionary antecedents to overthrow Bonaparte and establish a bourgeois republic,[10] they have the advantage over us, who remain stuck in a farrago of semi-feudalism and Bonapartism, of already possessing the form in which the struggle must be fought out and which we must first master for ourselves. Politically they are a whole stage ahead of us. Hence, the inevitable consequence of a monarchist restoration in France would be that the struggle for the restoration of the bourgeois republic would again appear on the agenda; continuance of the republic, on the other hand, means mounting intensification of the direct, undisguised class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie until a crisis is reached.

Similarly in our case the first, immediate result of the revolution can and must, so far as form is concerned, be nothing other than a bourgeois republic. But in this instance it will be no more than a brief, transitional period since fortunately we do not possess a purely republican bourgeois party. A bourgeois republic with, perhaps, the Party of Progress at the helm, will serve us at first to win over the great mass of the workers to revolutionary socialism — which will have been effected in a year or two — and will be conducive to the thorough erosion and self-destruction of all possible intermediate parties but not ours. Only then can we successfully take over.

The great mistake made by the Germans is to imagine the revolution as something that can be achieved overnight. In fact it is a process of development on the part of the masses which takes several years even under conditions that tend to accelerate it. Every revolution that has been achieved overnight has merely ousted a reactionary regime doomed from the outset (1830) or has led directly to the exact opposite of what was aspired to (1848, France).

Yours,

F.E What do you think of this:

'The last so-called red number of the "Rheinische Zeitung" (third edition) of 19 May 1849, which carried the Neue Rheinische Zeitung's farewell message by Ferdinand Freiligrath at the top of its front page, was again confiscated by the police here not long ago. A second-hand dealer had bought as waste paper a number of copies of this last farewell issue of the sometime organ of democracy and was selling them at 10 pfennigs a piece. The police put a stop to this by confiscating such of the papers as the dealer still had left. If the confiscation was effected on the grounds that the sheet's wretched pale red print was bound to harm its readers' eyes, the public has cause to thank the police; today, the text would be most unlikely to inflame anyone's feelings.'[11]

  1. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker
  2. ↑ In 1872 Johann Philipp Becker was a delegate to the Hague Congress of the International Working Men's Association.
  3. ↑ of the third German edition of Volume I of Capital
  4. ↑ Eduard Bernstein recommended Engels the Austrian Social Democrat Emil Kaler-Reinthal as a secretary to prepare Marx's works for publication.
  5. ↑ Between 17 August and 14 September 1883 Engels was on holiday in Eastbourne on the south coast of England.
  6. ↑ of the first volume of Capital (see Note 56)
  7. ↑ See this volume, p. 37.
  8. ↑ The Exceptional Law Against the Socialists (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie — the Law against the Harmful and Dangerous Aspirations of Social Democracy) was introduced by the Bismarck government, supported by the majority in the Reichstag, on 21 October 1878 to counter the socialist and workers' movement. This law, better known as the Anti-Socialist Law, made the Social-Democratic Party of Germany illegal, banned all party and mass workers' organisations, and the socialist and workers' press; on the basis of this law socialist literature was confiscated and Social Democrats subjected to reprisals. However, during its operation the Social-Democratic Party, assisted by Marx and Engels, uprooted both reformist and anarchist elements and managed to substantially strengthen and widen its influence among the people by skilfully combining illegal and legal methods of work. Under pressure from the mass workers' movement, the Anti-Socialist Law was abrogated on 1 October 1890. For Engels' assessment of this law, see his article 'Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
  9. ↑ The question of a republic in France was raised in Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 27, 28 June 1883, which carried an article entitled 'Louise Michel vor Gericht' containing excerpts from her speech for the defence (see Note 74), and in No. 28, 5 July 1883, in an article on the same subject under the title 'Republik oder Monarchie? Zum Jahrestag des Bastillesturmes'.
  10. ↑ On 4 September 1870 in Paris, following the routing of the French army by Prussian forces at Sedan, a mass revolutionary uprising took place which led to the fall of the Second Empire and the proclamation of the Third Republic headed by a bourgeois government (see K. Marx, The Civil War in France, present edition, Vol. 22, p. 307).
  11. ↑ See Kölnische Zeitung, No. 119, 20 July 1883.