Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, May 4, 1887

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 4 May 1887


First published, slightly abridged, in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Job. 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[1]

IN HOBOKEN

London, 4 May 1887

Dear Sorge,

I trust you are feeling better and that your fears about becoming quite incapable of writing will not be realised. I too have found writing difficult; since the New Year I have had chronic ophthalmia, which has greatly restricted my reading and particularly my writing. Next week I shall be consulting one of the leading ophthalmologists here.

What you say about the New York louts in your letter of 20 April last[2] is certainly quite right, but you mustn't forget that I can only answer the points you yourself raise, not those about which you say nothing.

The Manifesto has been translated, and only these damned eyes of mine are preventing me from going through it. In my desk I have one French, one Italian and one Danish ms. which are also waiting to be gone through![3] Besides, you were Germans 40 years ago, with a German sense of theory, and that was why the Manifesto was effective, whereas it had no effect at all on other peoples, although it had been translated into French, English, Flemish, Danish, etc. And for the untheoretical, matter of fact Americans different, plainer fare will, I believe, be more wholesome, since we took part in the events depicted in the Manifesto while they did not.

As to my book,[4] the business has been well and truly bungled by la Wischnewetzky, who gave Miss Foster plein pouvoir[5] which Miss Foster then gave to the Executive.[6] —I immediately protested, but the thing had been done. Up till now la Wischnewetzky has bungled everything she has laid her hands on and I'll never give her anything again; she can do as she pleases and I shall be happy if she accomplishes something, but I've had enough and she must leave me in peace in the future. I replied to her last letter a week ago today.[7]

At Liebknecht's request I have sent him the copy of the circular you sent me, but on condition he returns it. He has promised to send the necessary piece for publication.[8]

Aveling is doing famously with his agitation in the East End of London.[9] The American example is proving a draw there and the Radical Clubs—which the Liberals have to thank for their 12 seats out of 69 in London—have approached him about lectures on the American movement and he and Tussy are hard at work. The immediate intention is to found an English labour party with an independent class programme. This would, if all went well, push both the Social Democratic Federation[10] and the Socialist League[11] into the background, which would be the best way of resolving the impending rows. Hyndman knows that it is a matter of life or death to him, especially as he has made enemies of nearly all his people. He has therefore taken up in Justice the Executive's charge against Aveling.[12] This is just as well, as it will put an end to the backbiting, while Aveling will have an opportunity to air the matter in public. At Whitsuntide the attitude of the Socialist League will also be clarified, I hope; the Anarchists must be chucked out, or the whole business will be ruined.[13]

The Avelings arranged to send you Time with their articles on America. I imagine you must have got them (March, April, May numbers).[14] Even the Tory Standard praises them! At the moment the Avelings are doing more and to much better effect than anyone else over here and yet I'm supposed to reply to Mother Wischnewetzky about her childish misgivings over the grave charge under which Dr Aveling will stand until he has disproved the circular of the Executive! Surrounded as she is by her tongue-wagging German sisters, Madame has evidently lost sight of the fact that it is not for Aveling to disprove but rather for the Executive to prove. Commonweal, Gleichheit and To-Day are going off to you by today's steamer. You will be amused by De Paepe's tall stories in Gleichheit about the Belgian socialists.[15] The movement over there is doing very well, now that the Flemings and the Ghent people have taken matters out of the hands of the Walloons and the Brussels people respectively, but the little chap can't stop telling tall stories. The funniest thing about it is that, whereas the Brussels people would like to found a new International in which they would be the General Council, Powderly has suggested that they join the Knights of Labor.[16] So it's Pope Powderly competing against Pope De Paepe!

This comes with my best wishes and my hopes for your speedy recovery. Yesterday the Avelings and I were in America, i.e. in Buffalo Bill's camp[17] —very nice.

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ This letter was first published in English, abridged, in Labour Monthly, No. 2, London, 1934, and, without the first paragraph, in: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895. A Selection, International Publishers, New York, 1953.
  2. ↑ In the letter in question Sorge, replying to remarks contained in Engels' letter of 10 March 1887, pointed out that the leaders of the Socialist Labor Party of North America had, by their mistaken tactics, to a considerable extent nullified the successes achieved in the US labour movement by Marx's adherents at the time of the First International.
  3. ↑ This refers to the English translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party made by Samuel Moore (published in 1888). The three manuscripts mentioned are those of a French translation of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see note 23), an Italian translation of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital and a Danish translation of Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (see note 74).
  4. ↑ The American edition of The Condition of the Working-Class in England
  5. ↑ full powers
  6. ↑ On behalf of Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, the translator of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England, Rachel Foster, Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was trying to find a publisher for the book in America. On 8 February 1886 the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party, which she had approached for support, set up a special committee to deal with publishers, but the negotiations dragged, and the book was published in May 1887, independently of the Executive.
  7. ↑ The whereabouts of this letter is unknown.
  8. ↑ Engels received the second circular letter of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America, dated 30 March 1887, from Friedrich Adolph Sorge on 18 April. On Aveling's statements see notes 47 and 65. Wilhelm Liebknecht issued a statement in defence of Aveling on 16 May.
  9. ↑ After their return from the USA (see note 3) Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling launched a large-scale socialist propaganda campaign in London's Radical Clubs (see note 22). Their purpose was, among other things, to familiarise the British workers with the experience of the US labour movement.
  10. ↑ The Social Democratic Federation was a British socialist organisation, the successor of the Democratic Federation, reformed in August 1884. It consisted of heterogeneous socialist elements, mostly intellectuals, but also politically active workers. The programme of the Federation provided for the collectivisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Its leader, Henry Hyndman, was dictatorial and arbitrary, and his supporters among the Federation's leaders denied the need to work among the trade unions. In contrast to Hyndman, the Federation members grouped round Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, William Morris and Tom Mann sought close ties with the mass working-class movement. In December 1884, differences on questions of tactics and international co-operation led to a split in the Federation and the establishment of the independent socialist league (see note 21). In 1885-86 the Federation's branches were active in the movement of the unemployed, in strike struggles and in the campaign for the eight-hour day.
  11. ↑ The Socialist League was founded in December 1884 by a group of English socialists who had withdrawn from the Social Democratic Federation (see note 62). The League's organisers included Eleanor Marx Aveling, Ernest Belfort Bax and William Morris. 'The Manifesto of the Socialist League' (see The Commonweal No.1, February 1885) stated that its members advocated 'the principles of Revolutionary International Socialism' and sought 'a change in the basis of Society ... which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities'. The tasks of the League included the formation of a national socialist party, the conquest of political power through the election of socialists to local government bodies, and the promotion of the trade union and co-operative movement. In the League's early years its leaders took an active part in the working-class movement. However, in 1887 the League split into three factions (Anarchist elements, 'parliamentarists and 'anti-parliamentarists'). With sectarian tendencies growing stronger, the League gradually distanced itself from the day-to-day struggle of the British workers and finally disintegrated in 1889-90.
  12. ↑ An item headlined 'A Costly Apostle', published in Justice No. 172, 30 April 1887, reproduced the contents of the circulars of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party of North America attacking Edward Aveling (see notes 32 and 98). Aveling answered in a Letter to the Editor, published in Justice, No. 174. 14 May 1887.
  13. ↑ On 29 May 1887 the third annual conference of the Socialist League (see note 21) 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.
  14. ↑ Ed. Aveling and El. Marx-Aveling, 'The Labor Movement in America', Time, March, April, May 1887
  15. ↑ C. De Paepe, 'Der Kongreß von Charleroi', Gleichheit, No. 18, 23 April 1887
  16. ↑ Justice, No. 164, 5 March 1887, carried an item by Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg, secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of North America, headlined 'Letter from America - The Great Strike', which characterised the longshoremen's strike in New Jersey as an unmitigated defeat for the workers, incurred through the fault of the Knights of Labor leaders. The party, Rosenberg stressed, must not support this organisation. The Knights of Labor (The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor) was an American workers' organisation founded in Philadelphia in 1869. Originally a secret society (up to 1878), it included mostly unskilled workers, among them black workers. The Knights' aim was the promotion of co-operatives and mutual aid societies. They took part in a number of working-class actions, but the organisation's leadership opposed workers' participation in political struggle. It forbade members of the organisation to take part in the 1886 general strike; however the rank and file ignored the ban. After the strike the Knights' influence among the workers began to shrink. Towards the end of the 1890s the organisation disintegrated.
  17. ↑ An American exhibition opened in London in May 1887, the programme including the show Buffalo Bill's Wild West.