Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, April 17, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 17 April 1889


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG

London, 17 April 1889

Dear Liebknecht,

I never doubted for one moment that you aborigines of Borsdorf were the better men—better, I might almost say, to the point of incorri- gibility.

Your conference at The Hague[1] gets funnier and funnier. Lafargue and Bonnier (who is over here) know nothing about one resolution— what was to happen after the Possibilists' refusal—and neither Lafargue, nor Bonnier, nor Ede know anything about the other, the maintenance of secrecy. It must have been a curious sort of presidency and an odd sort of secretariat for something like that to have happened. So what we didn't know about we couldn't have abided by.

That silence should have been observed until the Possibilists had refused goes without saying and this is what in fact happened. But after- wards it was essential to let fly at once. And if, as usual, you yourself were unlucky enough to be prevented by unforeseen circumstances from doing so and if none of the rest of you stepped into the breach and Lafargue sent me the resolution precisely for the purpose of getting it published, it was damned well up to us—especially so, considering the circumstances over here—to take this responsibility upon ourselves and commit this horrendous breach of etiquette.

Your joint protest,[2] you say, would certainly have had an effect alto- gether different from that of our pamphlet[3] —indeed it would, if it had ever appeared in the first place. Why then hasn't it yet done so? What the devil is stopping you? You know as well as I do that it will never mate- rialise or not at any rate until six months post festum.[4]

Your little scheme for busting up the Possibilists by means of moral exhortations from Borsdorf and coming to an understanding with them over Brousse's head is a childish chimera from the execution of which, come to that, our 'railing' at the Possibilists will not be able to deter you.

After all, you can protest your innocence to the gentlemen for all you are worth. So long as the gentlemen you correspond with sail under Brousse's flag, they too are responsible for his intrigues, and to present these in the right light could not, one might have thought, be other than helpful to you. If everything that Brousse gets them to do is good and apparently they have, after all, absolutely no cause to oppose him.

If Ede, who throughout the pamphlet speaks on his own behalf and adopts a line no different from the one he adopts in the paper[5] itself, has provided the public prosecutors with grist for their mill, the paper itself constitutes a far greater danger to you people than the pamphlet. In which case for heaven's sake write to the chaps over here, telling them to attack rather than defend you, or better still to shut up shop. And if you're on such uncertain ground, you ought above all to avoid meddling in such things as international congresses, etc.

As to the Schlesinger business,[6] we should like to discuss this further by word of mouth. I haven't seen the piece yet, but this really cannot go on, a situation in which something of the kind—if only the advertisement—is able to appear under your own aegis and without you yourself protesting. What I myself shall feel it necessary to do about the matter will of course depend on the concoction's contents.

Schorlemmer has been here since Saturday. He and Lenchen send you their regards.

Your

F.E.

Your letter to Ede[7] will not be used. It would be far better if you wrote to Lee[8] along the same lines.

In lighter vein: Last Friday Ede was at a socialist soirée for the eddi- cated socialists here[9] and was told by Mr Sidney Webb, who is professor of political economy at the Working Men's College and has actually refuted Marx's theory of value, that 'we are only 2000 socialists in England but we are doing more than all the 700,000 Socialists in Germany'

  1. ↑ The International Socialist Conference was held in the Hague on 28 February 1889. It was attended by representatives of the socialist movement of Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. The conference was convened at the suggestion of the Social Democratic faction in the German Reichstag with the aim of framing the conditions for the calling of an International Socialist Working Men's Congress in Paris. The Possibilists refused to attend the conference despite the invitation and did not recognise its decisions. The conference defined the powers of the forthcoming congress, its date and agenda. The International Working Men's Congress took place on 14 July 1889.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp.292-3
  3. ↑ A reference to the pamphlet The International Working Men's Congress of 1889. A Reply to 'Justice', London 1889. Its original version was written by Eduard Bernstein at Engels' suggestion in reply to the editorial comment entitled The German 'Official' Social Democrats and the International Congress in Paris and carried by the newspaper Justice on 16 March 1889, No. 270. Having been edited by Engels, the pamphlet appeared in English in London, and then it was published by the German newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat and signed: E. Bernstein.
  4. ↑ after the event
  5. ↑ Der Sozialdemokrat
  6. ↑ In the book series Volks-Bibliothek, with Wilhelm Liebknecht as one of the editors, his son-in-law, Bruno Geiser, published Maximilian Schlesinger's pamphlet Die soziale Frage, Breslau 1889. In it Schlesinger attempted to 'make a critical revision' of Marxian ideas. Liebknecht did not come forward with an open protest against this work. Subsequently Liebknecht dissociated himself from the book, a fact that made Engels indignant.
  7. ↑ See this volume, pp.292-3
  8. ↑ Henry William Lee
  9. ↑ Living in London, E. Bernstein made regular visits to the Fabian Society meetings at which problems of socialism were being discussed - The Fabian Society, see note 176.