Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, February 12, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 12 February 1887


First published, slightly abridged, 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 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 12 February 1887

Dear Sorge,

Got your letter of 30 January yesterday, and the day before yesterday sent off sundry items to you. More to follow in a few days' time. Capital in English[1] [2] is selling very well; the jackass of a publisher,[3] who had no idea what he had got hold of, is quite astonished.

I trust your health is improving. Abstemiousness is something I, too, am obliged to observe; every day brings some little physical contretemps that cannot be ignored and interferes with one's customary devil-may-care way of life. Well, that's something that can't be helped.

When Lafargue was here at Christmas he promised me to send you the Socialiste regularly. Not until after his return did I get a few extra copies of the article Situation, etc.[4] It has opened the eyes of the French to the fact that, for them, war would mean the end of the Republic—unless, of course, circumstances were quite exceptionally favourable, so that it might provoke a European revolution, which, however, is wanted neither by the bourgeois, the petty bourgeois nor the peasants. No one had thought of this before and now everyone's saying it. I am now reading the article in Romanian, in Revista Sociala, a muddle-headed publication, appearing in Jassy, and learning the language as I go along.

The gentlemen of the Socialist Labor Party's Executive are behaving quite outrageously towards the Avelings.[5] When, thanks to their indiscretion, if not at their instigation, the article appeared in the Herald, another quite outrageous article, for which, at the moment, I can only hold Mr Douai responsible, appeared in the Volkszeitung.[6] The Avelings' reply to the calumny in the Herald was the enclosed circular, which was sent off from here on about 18 January to all sections and also to the Executive.[7] Well, on the 28th January the latter induced someone,[8] whom I may not name for the present and whose identity you must therefore guess, to write me an embarrassed letter in which it is stated as fact, indubitable fact, that Aveling had attempted to swindle them and that—or so their Christian charity led them to suppose—he had fiddled the accounts he submitted in order to cover his wife's hotel expenses (the party only paid Tussy's rail fares), nor did the return of the $176 alter the case, for that was in no way the point at issue, etc. Nothing but insinuations and not one solitary fact, not even a definite accusation. Then it goes on to say that a resolution had already been obtained from the New York sections and was to be endorsed by the remaining sections after which a circular denouncing Aveling would be issued to all the European parties. And I am requested to warn Kautsky against printing anything else by a blackguard like Aveling, who is to be chucked out of all the party organs!

You can imagine what kind of reply I made to these base assertions. If I can find someone to copy out the letter, I shall send it to you for, having an inflamed eye, I cannot make a third copy. These people haven't the shadow of a pretext. For on 23 December, when Aveling first learnt in a letter from Rosenberg that the Executive proposed to query some of the items in his account, he at once replied to Rosenberg, sending the following letter per special messenger:

'I cannot discuss money matters with the Party, and am ready to accept anything without discussion that the National Executive of the Socialist Labor Party thinks right!'

And that was before he knew what they were going to say and how they would treat him! And then the chaps go and pocket the $176, which, by their own calculation, belongs to the Avelings, and declare, for that very reason, that not they, but Aveling, is a swindler!

Well, we shall clear the matter up all right. But unfortunately we over here don't know anyone in New York save for yourself on whom we can rely, now that even the Volkszeitung has behaved so egregiously. I should be grateful if you could let us know how Shevich and the others are behaving and whether or not they have already succumbed to the lies of the Executive. Then we should at least know to whom we could turn in New York without having to bother you. But I can't help wondering how it is that those same New Yorkers who fulminate against the Chicago jury[9] should, in this instance, outdo the jury in turpitude, and pass judgment on people without even giving them a hearing or, for that matter, telling them what they are charged with.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ In a letter dated 10 December 1886 Kelley-Wischnewetzky asked Engels to write a preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which she had translated into English. She argued that Engels' Afterword, written for this edition in February 1886, was out of date (see present edition, Vol. 26), and suggested that the new preface should, above all, contain a critique of Henry George and that the words 'in 1844' should be omitted from the title. In reply to her request Engels wrote the article 'The Labor Movement in America', which was to open the book.
  2. ↑ Volume I
  3. ↑ William Swan Sonnenschein
  4. ↑ F. Engels, 'The Political Situation in Europe'
  5. ↑ This concerns the charges levelled at Aveling by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America (see note 3). This letter was the first of the many Engels wrote to American and German working-class leaders in defence of Aveling.
  6. ↑ In January 1887 the Daily News reported that the Bismarck government intended to demand that the French government explain the concentration of French troops on the German border. On 25 January the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine zeitung emphatically denied this report.
  7. ↑ On 30 December 1886 The New York Herald published an article headlined 'Aveling's Unpaid Labor', containing accusations against Aveling (see note 3). Cabled to London, it was reprinted, abridged, in The Daily Telegraph (1 January 1887) and The Evening Standard (13 January 1887). After the publication of the article in England, Aveling cabled a denial to America, which appeared in The New York Herald on 10 January 1887. An official denial by the Avelings addressed to the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party was published in the Herald on 15 January 1887.
  8. ↑ Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky
  9. ↑ On 11 November 1887 the US Supreme Court sentenced four leaders of the Chicago Labor Union - Albert K. Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel - to be hanged. In the spring of 1886 a mass working-class movement for the eight-hour day developed in America's leading industrial centres (Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, Boston, Baltimore and Milwaukee). In Chicago, up to 65,000 struck in the early days of May. On 3 May, workers clashed with police at a rally. At another rally, held in Haymarket Square on the following day, an agent provocateur threw a bomb, killing seven policemen and four workers. The police opened fire. Several people were killed and over 200 injured. Many people were arrested, including the leaders of the Chicago Labor Union. Despite the broad campaign in the US and Europe in defence of the four convicted men, they were executed. In commemoration of the Chicago events of 1886, the 1889 International Socialist Congress in Paris proclaimed the 1st of May international workers' solidarity day.