Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, January 2, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 2 January 1886


First published in Leipziger Volkszeitung, Nr. 218, 15. September 1983
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

[IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG[1] ]

London, 2 January 1886

Dear Liebknecht,3

Borkheim's wife died some 8 years ago. No great loss to him — she drank. His son,[2] aged 19, is a clerk in Dunkirk. To begin with he himself was in business in Liverpool; during the Crimean War a speculative trip to Balaklava with a load of bits and pieces earned him £15,000 all at one go, which, however, he lost because he did the same thing again and peace supervened; became a wine merchant and discovered that his palate for Bordeaux was probably the finest in London; became the agent of a Bordeaux house, built up a clientèle for them, but was insufficiently circumspect and, when he sought a partnership, was given the push — they no longer needed him. No wiser for the experience, he tried to repeat this brilliant performance with another house, the result being the same, hence had to start from the beginning once more. Again promptly discovered two good connexions, lived like a lord as always, while at Badenweiler had an apoplectic fit (about 10 years ago), which completely paralysed his left side, whereupon it transpired that, rather than possessing money, he had been borrowing from his friends in order to support his madly extravagant mode of life. But in spite of it all he was so much liked that people calmly put up with their losses, while the two houses for which he had worked paid him a pension to live on. His housemaid, with whom there had undoubtedly been some highly intimate goings-on, looked after him up till his death — she was able to furnish a boarding-house in Hastings[3] and still do pretty well out of it during the season. A year ago, when the last of his pensions was stopped, we succeeded in persuading his CITY friends, all of whom were owed money by him, to provide a new and adequate pension. Absurdly ostentatious in his conduct while his luck was in, he behaved like a hero when suddenly assailed by the most atrocious ill-fortune. Never a word of complaint, unfailingly cheerful, no sign of his having been affected by this sudden downfall. Rarely have I met such resilience. He spent his time writing his autobiography, first in English, then in German; the latter is probably not quite finished.[4] If you could find a publisher for it as well as some money for the boy, who earns a wage of £70 after an upbringing that might almost suggest his having been born in the purple, you would be doing a good turn. The address is F. Borkheim, aux soins de Messieurs Bourdon & Cie, Dunkerque, France.

You are on the wrong track with your suppositions about the secret insinuations concerning you that have come to my ears. The only good friend who might possibly have managed to find some fault with you, the one 'who told you' this, 'who told you' that? — is called Wilhelm Liebknecht[5] and his insinuations have appeared in writing in his letters and in print in the Sozialdemokrat and any number of German newspapers. Thanks to this source I have known for years that you have a pleasing and insuperable weakness for all the 'eddicated' elements that hover round the fringes of the party and that you wish to win them over, even though 95 per cent of them can only do us harm. I further understand from this source that last year you only noticed personal differences within the parliamentary group whereas now you are already discovering 'backsliders'. I am also indebted to the above source for the knowledge that this same Wilhelm Liebknecht is on occasion inclined to forget what has been written if, at that moment, it doesn't suit his book and that he hopes others will be good-natured enough to do him a similar favour. Which is not, unfortunately, always possible. But as to your passion for picking up 'eddicated' elements and glossing over all differences, one must put up with such things and does so fairly readily for their being unavoidable. But don't ask that they be overlooked. And their inevitability causes me all the less concern because I know, and shall say as much at every opportunity, that, come the moment of decision between the conflicting elements, you will be on the right side.

And now a Happy New Year.

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ Following the introduction of a local state of siege in Leipzig in 1881 (see Note 67), Wilhelm Liebknecht, August Bebel and other German socialists had been forced to leave the city. They settled in the village of Borsdorf near Leipzig.
  2. ↑ F. Borkheim
  3. ↑ From 29 May to 4 June 1884 Engels stayed in Hastings with Sigismund Borkheim, a participant in the revolution of 1848-49 in Germany.
  4. ↑ Sigismund Ludwig Borkheim's autobiography was published posthumously in Die Neue Zeit, Nos. 3, 5, 6 and 7 for 1890 under the heading 'Erinnerungen eines deutschen Achtungvierzigers'.
  5. ↑ The reference is to the third congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany which was held illegally in Copenhagen from 29 March to 2 April 1883, with 60 delegates taking part. The congress was to work out the German Social Democrats' political line on the social reforms being carried out by the bourgeois government, to decide on the party's tactics and the position to be taken by Der Sozialdemokrat, its printed organ, given the Anti-Socialist Law in Germany (see Note 37). The congress unanimously called on the party to expose the demagogy of Bismarck's domestic policy, endorsed the stance of the main printed organ and the general line of conduct of the parliamentary group (see Note 49). It further made it incumbent on every party member, including the Social-Democratic representatives in the Reichstag, to observe party discipline and help carry out party decisions (see also Note 16).