Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, April 23, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 23 April 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 full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 23 April 1887

Dear Sorge,

I wrote to you on the 9th inst.[1] Postcard and packages received with thanks. The publication in the Volkszeitung of my preface[2] in a translation made over there is doubly scandalous. Firstly because I wish to have nothing to do with the paper so long as it goes on behaving so despicably towards Aveling. Secondly, however, because I cannot approve of my English works being rendered into German by a stranger, especially when the said stranger makes a mass of mistakes and misconstrues the most important passages. The person[3] has had my preface since the beginning of February (posted on 27 January) and in the only letter I have received since then, dated 19 March, postmarked 8 April, she merely mentions her intention of bringing out a German edition and asks for my assent—she knew I had no copy here. I wrote at once[4] asking her to return me the original so that I could translate it; there are passages in it where every word must be meticulously weighed. And meanwhile she has been conniving with Jonas & Co. behind my back.

I immediately protested. You should ask her to show you my letter.[5]

This is the last straw. It's utterly impossible to work with someone who keeps on playing such tricks.

But there's one more thing she's got coming to her. Her last long letter about the Aveling affair[6] may be summed up in one word: abominable. An attempt by someone who is weak, who is swayed by every puff of wind, to uphold the rightness of a cause she herself knows to be rotten. I shall reply to her next week con amore. A person like that mustn't imagine that I can be bamboozled like a baby.

Hyndman's letter to The Standard[7] is both pitiful and pusillanimous. He wants to remain in George's good graces when the latter is becoming ever more embroiled with his hobby-horse, land,[8] and hence must suppress everything of a socialist nature. He is down on his luck again. The sensational effects have vanished into thin air, nor are new ones to be had every day. Without them, however, Hyndman cannot sustain his role. On the other hand the Avelings have begun agitating to considerable effect in the Radical Clubs[9] of the East End and in so doing are laying special emphasis on the example of an independent labour party set by the Americans.[10] And the American example is the only one that has any pull here—along with that of the German elections.[11] The cause is progressing well and may—if things go on in America as they have been doing—cost the Liberals the entire East End of London before the year is out.

In the Socialist League, too, matters are slowly approaching a crisis. At Whitsun the delegates hold their conference when a decision will, I hope, be reached in the struggle with the anarchist elements who have wormed their way in and have Morris as a supporter.[12]

In Germany there are reprisals upon reprisals.[13] It's as though Bismarck wants to get everything ready so that when revolution breaks out in Russia, in what is now probably only a matter of months, the fun can likewise begin in Germany.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 45-7
  2. ↑ Engels' article 'The Labor Movement in America' opened the American edition of his The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in New York in 1887. That same year the article appeared, in Engels' German translation, under the heading 'Die Arbeiterbewegung in Amerika', in the Sozialdemokrat (10 and 17 June). In July separate prints, in German and English, were distributed in New York. The article was also published as a pamphlet in London (see present edition, Vol. 26) and, in French, in Le Socialiste (9, 16 and 23 July). Even before the publication of the book the article was, without Engels' knowledge, translated into German by Alexander Jonas, editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, and published in this paper in April 1887. Engels, displeased with the quality of the translation, lodged an official protest.
  3. ↑ Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky
  4. ↑ The whereabouts of this letter is unknown.
  5. ↑ The whereabouts of this letter is unknown.
  6. ↑ This concerns the charges levelled at Aveling by the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America. This letter was the first of the many Engels wrote to American and German working-class leaders in defence of Aveling.
  7. ↑ H.M. Hyndman, 'England's Democracy', The Standard, 9 April 1887. See this volume, pp. 8-9
  8. ↑ The American economist Henry George favoured a uniform progressive state tax on land values as an alternative to nationalisation of the land, thus 'resolving' all the contradictions of the capitalist system. George's theory enjoyed wide currency in the USA, England, Ireland and Australia. Engels gave his assessment of George's agrarian views in 'The Labour Movement in America' (present edition, Vol. 26).
  9. ↑ Radical Clubs began to emerge in London and other cities in the 1870s. They consisted of bourgeois radicals and workers. In the Clubs of London's poorer areas, such as the East End, the workers predominated. The Clubs criticised the Irish policy of Gladstone's Liberal government and urged an extension of the suffrage and other democratic reforms. From the early 1880s they engaged in socialist propaganda. In 1885 London's Radical Clubs united in the Metropolitan Radical Federation.
  10. ↑ After their return from the USA Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling launched a large-scale socialist propaganda campaign in London's Radical Clubs. Their purpose was, among other things, to familiarise the British workers with the experience of the US labour movement.
  11. ↑ 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.
  12. ↑ On 29 May 1887 the third annual conference of the Socialist League was held in London. Delegates from 24 sections attended. The anarchists gained the upper hand; a resolution was adopted saying: 'This conference endorses the policy of abstention from parliamentary action, hitherto pursued by the League, and sees no sufficient reason for altering it.'
  13. ↑ This refers to the fresh wave of government reprisals against Social Democrats and the trade unions that swept Germany in 1886, after the third promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law. On 11 April 1886 the Prussian minister of the Interior Puttkamer issued a circular on strikes, spearheaded against the trade unions. In the spring of that year the authorities expelled from Berlin the leaders of the city's stonemasons and disbanded their union with a view to paralysing the building workers' movement. This was also the lot of three women's unions and all the district workers' unions. Workers' mutual aid funds were being closed down and their assets, like the trade unions', confiscated by the state. From the beginning of 1878, public meetings in Berlin could only be held with police permission. As a result, 47 meetings, including 33 trade union ones, were banned that month. Similar measures were taken in the provinces. In the early years of the Anti-Socialist Law a number of trumped-up trials of Social Democrats were staged, resulting in the imprisonment of prominent working-class leaders. During the Reichstag elections the workers' party was made the object of terrorist attacks.