Letter to August Bebel, March 18, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 18 March 1886


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Vol. I (VI), Moscow, 1932. Printed according to the original. Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL[1]

IN PLAUEN NEAR DRESDEN

London, 18 March 1886

Dear Bebel,

I am up to my eyes in the revision of the English translation of Capital, Volume I, which is at last on the point of coming out,[2] but since the business of Liebknecht's fund is urgent, I shall have to take a moment or two so as to be able to answer your letter quickly. Herewith, then my contribution,— a cheque for £10 on the UNION BANK OF London.[3]

Many thanks for the Anti-Socialist Law and spirits monopoly debates[4] and the Bürger-Leitung.

It is indeed striking how faithfully the Anti-Socialist Law debate reflects the mood of the majority in the parliamentary group. Unable, presumably, to do as they wished they had, willy-nilly, to voice relatively correct opinions, and the impression made by the debate is, on the whole, very good, particularly since Singer was compelled by the Ihring case[5] to speak pretty sharply. In general these people, not excepting even Frohme, are not too bad when they have to come out against the police, either in their own interests or in those of their constituents and hence keep the worthy citizen well out of sight, for one of their besetting sins is this very worthiness which seeks to convince an opponent rather than fight him because 'our cause is, after all, so noble and so just' that any other worthy citizen is bound to come over to us if only he can be made to understand it aright. This appeal to worthy sentiments, which neither recognises nor wishes to recognise the interests by which those sentiments are unconsciously motivated, is one of the chief characteristics of the philistinism which is peculiar to Germany and would be impossible over here or in France, either in parliament or in literature.

Never have I come across anything so tedious as the spirits debate; even Bamberger's jokes were as bad as ever, if not worse. So what matter if, after that, Schumacher also spoke tediously, proceeding to make what amounted to a naked appeal for 'étatisation" [Verstaatlichungs]. Richter's speech, based on statistics, was quite the best.

I would not venture to pass judgment on Liebknecht's speech as reported in the Bürger-Leitung. So much depends on nuances and the manner in which something is said and, in a summarised report, all that gets lost.[6]

I have not seen the account by Kautsky of which you speak. But as regards Hyndman, his behaviour in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park on 8 February did far more harm than good.[7] Revolutionary ranting, which in France would be seen as the outmoded rubbish it is and do no harm, is sheer folly over here, where the masses are totally unprepared; it puts off the proletariat, encouraging only the worthless elements and, in this country, lends itself to but one interpretation, namely incitement to looting which in fact ensued, so that we shall be lastingly discredited over here, even in the eyes of the working class. As for its having drawn attention to socialism, you over there cannot know the extent to which, after centuries of freedom of the press and of assembly and its accompanying publicity, the public has become completely impervious to such methods. True, the initial alarm of the middle classes was quite funny, and brought in a subscription of some £40,000 for the unemployed — in all about £70,000 — but that has already been spent, nothing else is forthcoming and poverty is as before. What has been achieved is to equate socialism with looting in the minds of the bourgeois public and, while this may not have made matters much worse, it has certainly got us no further. You might think that Hyndman showed great courage and so it might seem. But Hyndman, as I have learnt from Morris and others, is a coward and has behaved as such on crucial occasions. This doesn't prevent him, having once got himself into a dangerous fix, from drowning his cowardice in his own clamour and giving vent to the most bloodthirsty utterances. But this only makes him all the more of a menace to his colleagues — for no one, neither he nor they, can tell beforehand what he is going to do. Fortunately the whole business has been pretty well forgotten over here.

I wholly agree with your view that periods of prosperity of over 6 months will cease to recur. The only prospect of a reactivation of trade — directly where iron, at any rate, is concerned and otherwise indirectly — lies in the possible opening up of China to railway construction and hence the destruction of the only remaining closed and self-sufficient civilisation based on a combination of agriculture and handicrafts. But 6 months will be enough to discount that, after which we shall, perhaps, experience yet another acute crisis. Apart from destroying Britain's monopoly of the world market, the new methods of communication— the electric telegraph, the railways, the Suez Canal and the supplanting of sail by steam — have gone some way towards breaking down the ten-year industrial cycle. If China is opened up, not only will overproduction risk losing its last safety-valve, but emigration from China will assume such massive proportions that this alone will suffice to revolutionise conditions of production throughout America, Australia and India, even to the extent of affecting Europe — if it lasts itself till then.

Bismarck's folly is indeed becoming excessive. But it has one recurring theme — more money! His craziest schemes always and infallibly involve the voting of subsidies, and the National-Liberal gents[8] seem to have a positive passion for providing him with yet more cash.

Another victory in France. Camélinat's question[9] about Decazeville[10] provoked a three-day debate, while on Saturday,[11] 7 motions to proceed to the Order of the Day were thrown out, until finally the government and the Radical gents[12] agreed a resolution[13] unprecedented in French parliamentary history and which was passed on Monday 5 6 4: That this Chamber proceed to the Order of the Day, confident that the Government will move all the necessary amendments to mining legislation and that its conduct in Decazeville will be dictated by the rights of the State and the interests of Labour.

The rights of Labour—it's absolutely unheard-of! And as if that was not enough, a decision unfavourable to the company which is wholly dependent on a state concession and now sees the terms of that concession turned against itself. All this, of course, is still on paper, but for a first step it's enough. The whole political situation in France has been revolutionised by the initiative of the three working men. The Radicals, who also call themselves socialists and who are, in fact, the representatives of French national socialism, of what survives of Proudhon and Louis Blanc, but who, as ministerial candidates, must make sure of keeping in with the republican bourgeoisie, are now compelled to show themselves in their true colours. The cool, almost hostile attitude they adopted from the outset towards the labour deputies, has shown the mass of the workers what is what; suddenly the latter see, alongside the 'eddicated' Radicals, genuine working-class socialists whom they joyously acclaim. The Radicals, incl. Clemenceau, must either temporarily renounce their ministerial aspirations and follow in Basly's and Camélinat's footsteps, or jeopardise their re-election. All of a sudden the question of capital and labour is included in the agenda, albeit as yet in very elementary form (rates of pay, the right to strike and, possibly, mining on a cooperative basis), but nevertheless it's there and there to stay. Since the workers of France, however, had received such a first-rate grounding from their history and from the altogether outstanding behaviour of our people during the past 2 years, nothing more was required to spark off the explosion but an event such as the Decazeville strike, combined with the stupidity of the Radicals in including 3 working men in their list of candidates. Now things will move fast in France. You'll have seen how afraid the Radicals are from the resolutions taken by the municipal councils of Paris, Lyons, etc., to vote money for the Decazeville strikers[14] This again is unprecedented.

If that's the state your voice is in, don't go to America. The demands made on the vocal chords by what is universal practice there far exceed anything you can imagine. But anyway we shall look forward to seeing you over here in the autumn.

Time for the post, too late for registration. Please send me a postcard acknowledging receipt of the cheque.

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ A fragment from this letter was published in English for the first time in The Labour Monthly, London, 1933, Vol. 15, No. 11, XL
  2. ↑ The idea of translating Capital into English occurred to Marx as early as 1865, when he was working on the manuscript (see Marx's letter to Engels of 31 July 1865, present edition, Vol. 42). The British journalist and member of the International's General Council, Peter Fox, was to help Marx find a publisher. However, this matter was not settled due to Fox's death in 1869. The English translation of the first volume of Capital, edited by Engels, did not appear until after Marx's death, in January 1887, and was published by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., London. The translation was done by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling between mid-1883 and March 1886. Eleanor Marx-Aveling took part in the preparatory work for the edition (see also this volume, pp. 33 and 127-28).
  3. ↑ In connection with Wilhelm Liebknecht's forthcoming 60th birthday, on 29 March 1886, a group of Social-Democratic deputies in the Reichstag (Ignaz Auer, August Bebel, Paul Singer and others) proposed setting up a fund to assist him and his family. Bebel attached the group's appeal to his letter to Engels of 9 March and requested him to make his contribution.
  4. ↑ See Berliner Volksblatt, Nos. 42, 43, 54-56; 19 and 20 February and 5-7 March 1886 (Supplement).
  5. ↑ At the sitting of 18 February 1886 in the Reichstag Paul Singer exposed Ferdinand Ihring, an employee of the police criminal investigation department, who had infiltrated a workers' society in Berlin under the name of Mahlow and incited the workers to carry out acts of terrorism for the purpose of provocation.
  6. ↑ This probably refers to Wilhelm Liebknecht's speech at the workers' meeting on 8 March 1886 in Berlin. Liebknecht rebuffed the claims by government circles that the Anti-Socialist Law was of an 'educative significance' for the Social Democrats and exposed the attempts to pass off the introduction of a state monopoly on spirits as a 'socialist' measure.
  7. ↑ The supporters of protective tariffs, including pro-Conservative trade union officials (S. Peters, T. M. Kelly, W. Kenny and T. Lemon, who were expelled at the Trades Union Congress in Manchester in 1882) held a meeting in Trafalgar Square on 8 February 1886. The Social Democratic Federation (see Note 300) organised a meeting and unemployed demonstration in opposition to the Conservative campaign for protective tariffs. This demonstration (see this volume, pp. 403-04 and 406-08) was joined by the lumpenproletarian elements, who began to behave in an unruly manner and loot shops. The police subsequently arrested Henry Mayers Hyndman, John Burns, Henry Hyde Champion and John Edward Williams, the leaders of the Federation, on a charge of making 'inciting speeches'. The trial ended on 10 April with their acquittal.
  8. ↑ The reference is to the National Liberals, a Prussian, and from 1871 all-German, Right-wing bourgeois party which existed from 1867 to 1918. It was one of the pillars of the Junker-bourgeois bloc. The party's programme called for civil equality and bourgeois-democratic freedoms, but as the workers' movement in Germany strengthened it abandoned these demands and contented itself with Bismarck's half-hearted reforms. Following the unification of Germany it definitively took shape as a party of the big, mainly industrial, bourgeoisie and for all practical purposes disavowed the demands it had made earlier.
  9. ↑ See Z. R. Camélinat's speech in the Chamber of Deputies on 11 March 1886 (Le Cri du Peuple, No. 866, 13 March 1886).
  10. ↑ 3,500 miners went on strike in Decazeville (department of Aveyron) on 26 (27?) January 1886 in response to the ruthless exploitation to which they were exposed by the owners of the Aveyron Association of Coalmines and Foundries. At the beginning of the strike, the miners killed Watrin, the manager of the collieries, who had refused to heed their demands. The government sent troops to Decazeville. The strike continued until mid-June and evoked a broad response in France; the events led to the formation in the Chamber of Deputies of a workers' group which supported the miners' demands. The strike ended in the surrender of the company to the miners; an increased rate was promised, and the obnoxious officials dismissed.
  11. ↑ 13 March
  12. ↑ The Radicals — in the 1880s and 1890s a parliamentary group which had split away from the party of moderate republicans in France ('Opportunists', see Note 236). The Radicals had their main base in the petty and, to some extent, the middle bourgeoisie and continued to press for a number of bourgeois-democratic demands: a single-chamber parliamentary system, the separation of the Church from the State, the introduction of a system of progressive income taxes, the limitation of the working day and settlement of a number of other social issues. The leader of the Radicals was Clemenceau. The group formed officially as the Republican Party of Radicals and Radical Socialists [Parti républicain radical et radical-socialiste) in 1901.
  13. ↑ 'Règlement de l'ordre du jour', Le Cri du Peuple, No. 867, 14 March 1886.
  14. ↑ See Le Socialiste, Nos. 28 and 29, 6 and 13 March 1886.