Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, March 7, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 March 1884


First published 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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 7 March 1884

Dear Sorge,

After suffering continuously throughout the whole autumn and winter from a minor if very tiresome disorder, and spending 2 months resting in bed, I am at last sufficiently recovered to be able to work regularly and to pay off the letters I owe. I trust that you and your wife will also gradually get over the after-effects of your far more serious illness and then gradually resume your old way of life.

Since I am not yet completely mobile and my excursions are limited to the immediate neighbourhood, and not having anyone to send out on errands, I carried out your commission in rather a different way. Your copy of Capital, 3rd edition,[1] and likewise one of Deville's Le Capital, were despatched to you in 2 parcels per BOOK POST; I shall send the photographs in the same manner, having now found out how to pack them. No doubt you will be able to obtain the other 2 copies of Capital easily enough over there.

I have taken out a year's subscription to To-Day for you and you will, no doubt, be getting it regularly. The chaps are very well-intentioned but damnably ignorant; which may be all right for To-Day, but now the DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION is bringing out a weekly journal, Justice, which is conspicuous for the exceeding boredom of its invariably repetitive contents and for its total inability to get hold of the right end of the stick even when dealing with a question of the day. I shall send you a couple of issues; it's not worth taking. All in all, the DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION cannot simply be taken on trust; it harbours all manner of dubious elements. Hyndman, who sets himself up as a party leader in partibus infidelium,[2] is a pretty unscrupulous careerist, and only a few years ago stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate for Parliament[3] ; moreover, he treated Marx very shabbily. I will have nothing whatever to do with the DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION, a handy excuse being want of time, and am on closer terms only with To-Day, more notably Bax. The latter is a very good chap, save only that he is most unseasonably swotting up on Kant. If you have no objection, I shall publish in To-Day an English version of the letter Marx wrote to you about Henry George.[4] Then you will be able to make further use of it over there.

I shall hardly have time to enter into a debate with Stiebeling.[5] Such little tin gods can safely be left to their own devices. In any case, it will be years before anything can be done to inhibit sectarianism in America. Thus the great Most will, no doubt, eventually end up as Karl Heinzen II. I get the Wochen-Volkszeitung,[6] but there's not much in it.

What the position is as regards Bebel's, Liebknecht's or anyone else's going to America, I don't know.[7] When they asked me, I told the chaps that it probably wouldn't do to go tapping America for election funds every third year. In Germany, by the way, the position is very good. Our lads are conducting themselves really splendidly. Everywhere the Anti-Socialist Law is involving them in local struggles with the police, to the accompaniment of all manner of jokes and dirty tricks, struggles which usually turn out in our favour and are a source of the best propaganda in the world. Every now and again one or other of the bourgeois papers vents a sigh about the enormous progress made by our people, and they all of them dread the coming elections.[8] A fortnight ago one of my nephews from Barmen was over here — a liberal conservative. 'In Germany,' I told him, 'we have got to the stage when we can sit with our hands in our laps and let our opponents do the work for us. No matter whether you repeal, renew, tighten up or moderate the Anti-Socialist Law, whatever you do plays into our hands.' 'Yes,' said he, 'it is remarkable how circumstances are working for you.' 'To be sure they are,' I said, 'but they wouldn't be if we hadn't diagnosed them aright forty years ago, and acted accordingly.' No reply.

In France, too, things have been going better since Lafargue, Guesde and Dormoy were released from prison. They are very active, spend much time in the provinces where, luckily, their chief strength lies, possess little news-sheets in Rheims and St Pierre-les-Calais,[9] and will be holding a congress at Roubaix in a month's time.[10] Every Sunday, what is more, they give a very well-attended lecture in Paris, when Lafargue speaks on the materialist view of history, and Deville on Capital. I shall write and ask them to send you the things, all of which are printed. It's fortunate that they haven't got a daily in Paris just now, since it's much too early for that. A new edition of The Poverty of Philosophy is coming out in Paris.[11]

Likewise a German one in Zurich and a Russian in Geneva. I don't believe I have yet sent you a copy of my Entwicklung, never having received more than one or two myself. (The oafs!) Now the thing has come out in a 3rd edition, as well as in French, Italian, Russian and Polish. Aveling wishes to translate it into English.[12] He, too, is an admirable young man, but he has TOO MANY IRONS IN THE FIRE and is currently engaged in time-consuming strife with his former friend Bradlaugh; the socialist movement here is cutting the ground from under the latter's feet — and with it his livelihood. That means he must fight for it, but it isn't easy for that narrow-minded and rascally fellow.

So far, all is well with Tussy who generally comes here on Sundays. Lenchen is, as you know, keeping house for me. In a fortnight's time I shall be able to settle down in real earnest to Volume II of Capital — another huge task, but I look forward to it.

You should read Morgan (Lewis H.), Ancient Society, published in America in 1877. A masterly exposé of primitive times and their communism. Rediscovered Marx's theory of history all on his own, and concludes by drawing communist inferences in regard to the present day.

Kindest regards to Adolf.[13]

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ The London monthly The Republican carried a short obituary entitled 'Karl Marx' in its issue of April 1883 containing a reference to the November issue of 1882 which had published a biography and photo of Marx.
  2. ↑ It means literally: in parts inhabited by unbelievers; here: nominally.
  3. ↑ In the 1880 general election Henry Mayers Hyndman stood as an independent candidate for Marylebone constituency. However, his extremely moderate programme (he did not support the demand for the nationalisation of land and opposed universal suffrage) lost him votes among the workers and provided Gladstone, who was registered as a voter in the said constituency, with the occasion to denounce him as a Tory. Hyndman's attempt to be elected to Parliament failed.
  4. ↑ On 19 March 1883 Friedrich Adolph Sorge informed Engels that Henry George's propaganda in America was leading the labour movement astray and suggested the publication of the letter Marx had written to him on 20 June 1881 (see present edition, Vol. 46). This letter contained a critique of Henry George's book Progress and Poverty which had been published in New York in 1880. However, Engels considered that it would be rather premature to publish Marx's letter in the American press (see this volume, p. 42, and Engels' letter to Sorge of 18 June 1887, present edition, Vol. 48). Engels gave a critical exposé of George's views of the nationalisation of land in the Preface to the American edition of his book The Condition of the Working-Class in England (see present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 437-39).
  5. ↑ On 10 February 1884 Friedrich Adolph Sorge informed Engels that George Stiebeling was about to criticise Marx's concept of history.
  6. ↑ Wochenblatt der N. Y. Volkszeitung
  7. ↑ The trip was planned for the spring of 1884 with the aim of collecting funds from the workers to finance the election campaign for the Reichstag in the autumn of that year. However, Wilhelm Liebknecht was not able to go to the United States until the autumn of 1886, and with a different aim in mind (see Note 600).
  8. ↑ The reference is to the regular elections to the German Reichstag which took place on 28 October 1884.
  9. ↑ La Défense des travailleurs and Le Travailleur
  10. ↑ The congress of the French Workers' Party met in Roubaix from 29 March to 7 April 1884. It was attended by 26 delegates representing about 60 groups, circles and trade unions. The delegates unanimously endorsed the programme adopted at Le Havre in 1880 (see also Note 201). Also present at the congress were Ernest Belfort Bax and Harry Quelch, representatives of the Democratic Federation (see Note 99). An address was read out from the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, proclaiming solidarity between the workers of all countries. The reply to this address adopted at the congress expressed regret that no German delegation was present and stated that no government measures could destroy the solidarity between the French and German proletariat.
  11. ↑ The reference is to the second French edition of Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy which was being prepared at that time by Laura Lafargue (see also Note 169). The preparatory work on this edition was protracted and it did not appear until 1896 (in Paris), after Engels' death.
  12. ↑ See this volume, p. 394.
  13. ↑ Adolf Sorge jun.