Letter to Julie Bebel, March 12, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 12 March 1887


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO JULIE BEBEL

IN DRESDEN

London, 12 March 1887
122 Regent's Park Road, N.W.

Dear Mrs Bebel,

I am taking the liberty of writing to you today in the hope that you will be able to give me news of how my friend Bebel is getting on at the charitable institution in Zwickau.[1] I have heard nothing further of Bebel since Singer was over here in December. I know, of course, that detention will have no effect whatever on his intellectual powers, but I should also be very glad to learn that it is not adversely affecting his physical health. He must have found it very hard to be behind bars with nothing to do during the election campaign, but that is all the more reason why he should have been pleased with the results; they tally exactly with the prediction he gave me months ago: a big gain in votes but a drop in mandates.[2] The latter is not only easily borne—only Liebknecht's absence is a real loss—but in many ways is also an advantage. Indeed this is now being admitted by people of whom one would least expect it; people who themselves took a quiet pleasure in parliamentarism are now loudly proclaiming to all and sundry what a good thing it is that the party and, in particular, the parliamentary group should no longer be in danger of lapsing into parliamentarism! All to the good if grapes are sour now and again. On the other hand, the 225,000 new votes we have gained, despite the most cruel oppression, are a step forward which has made itself felt throughout Europe and America and has even soured the momentary triumph of the gentlemen in power. This very lack of undue haste, this measured but nonetheless inexorable advance, has about it something tremendously impressive which cannot but arouse in the rulers the same sense of dread as was experienced by the prisoners of the state inquisition in that room in Venice where the walls moved inwards an inch each day, so that as time went on they were able to estimate the day on which the walls must squash them.

Throughout the past autumn and winter Russian and Prussian diplomacy has been at pains to engineer a localised war and prevent a European one. The Russians would have liked to crush Austria alone, the Prussians France alone, while the rest were supposed to look on.[3]

Unfortunately these well-intentioned endeavours were mutually incompatible in that whoever attacked first would have provoked a world war. That the days of localised wars were over was, of course, obvious to any child, but not to the clever men who govern Europe; only now are the great statesmen finding this out and they really are somewhat afraid of a world conflagration, for its effects would be incalculable and more than even the Prussian and Russian armies could cope with. And so far as I'm concerned herein lies the only remaining guarantee of peace we have.

Would you please be kind enough to tell Bebel when you see him that the first edition of the English translation of Das Kapital[4] was sold out in 2 months and that the second is printing. And this before any of the bigger papers had devoted an article to the book!

Trusting you will be so good as to let me have early news of how Bebel is getting on,

I am,

Yours very truly,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ From mid-November 1886 to 14 August 1887 August Bebel was in prison in Zwickau. He was one of a group of German Social Democrats (others included Ignaz Auer, Johann Dietz, Georg Vollmar, Karl Frohme) condemned on trumped up charges of belonging to a 'secret union' whose purpose it was to obstruct by illegal means the enforcement of laws and government regulations. The indictment was based on the defendants' participation in the 1883 Copenhagen Social Democratic Party Congress. The court brought in a verdict of not guilty. However, the government appealed to the Imperial Court, which sent the case for re-examination to the Saxony State Court in Freiberg. On 4 August 1886 the latter sentenced the defendants to various prison terms. In the subsequent two and a half years another 55 trials of socialists were staged, resulting in the conviction of 236 people.
  2. ↑ On 14 January 1887, Bismarck dissolved the Reichstag in view of its refusal to endorse the proposed seven-year military budget (the bill on the septennate). The elections to the new Reichstag, held on 21 February, were attended by a brutal campaign of terror, directed above all against the Socialist Party. Nevertheless, the Social Democrats polled 763,128 votes (10.1 per cent of the total), 213,038 more than in the 1884 elections. However, owing to the undemocratic additional ballots law the number of Social Democratic deputies declined to 11, as against 24 in the previous Reichstag.
  3. ↑ Russo-German rapprochement appeared to be on the cards in early 1887. In the course of negotiations between the two countries, the Russian ambassador, P. Shuvalov, proposed to Bismarck that the 'alliance of three emperors', which was expiring in the summer of 1887, should be resumed, but without Austrian participation. Shuvalov's proposal also envisaged Russia's neutrality in the event of another Franco-German war and a free hand for Russia in the Balkans. Addressing the Reichstag on 11 January 1887, Bismarck urged the need for friendly relations with Russia. An anti-French press campaign, the mobilisation of reservists and other steps on the part of the German government gave rise to fears of an imminent military clash with France (the 'war alarm' in January 1887). However, the Russian government refused to back up Shuvalov's proposals and Bismarck's actions.
  4. ↑ Volume I