Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, August 17, 1889

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	17 August 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

Eastbourne, 17 August 1889
4 Cavendish Place

Dear Liebknecht,

I have put off answering your letter of 19.4 until after the congress because there seemed to be no prospect of agreement beforehand; the fact is that our ways were utterly divergent. And even now I shall make no mention of your attempts to foist your sins of omission on to other people.

You say: 'Your complaint that, even in the matter of the congress, I was "as usual" prevented by "unforeseen circumstances" from carrying out my duty, is more than merely blunt; it is downright insulting.'

You can only make an insult of my words if you distort their meaning, turning something passive—that it is the usual thing for such and such to happen to you,—into something active—that you deliberately make a habit of such and such. You thereby turn a complaint of weakness into a complaint of wilfulness and there you have your insult ready-made.

But you must yourself by now have noticed that you very often happen not to be at home when someone wants to keep you to your word or to make a quite common or garden request. What about the Aveling business in America? At the beginning, while the turpitude of the New York Executive was still fresh in your mind, you wrote:

'The New Yorkers owe Aveling an apology; I shall demand one of them and, if they dig their heels in, shall come out publicly against them.'

But later on, when it came to doing as you had said, it was a different matter: You sent a statement that was neither one thing nor the other, and did Aveling no good and the New Yorkers no harm,—unforeseen circumstances! And it was only gentle pressure from me that induced you to make a statement containing at least part of what you had promised.

Even in your letter of 19.4. you can't help providing fresh proof. Under the aegis of your name as editor, your son-in-law brings out a series of books. You, knowing what he's like, entrust him with the selection, the editing—in short, the entire management of the thing. The inevitable happens. There appears, under your name, a trashy work by a more than dubious scoundrel, a really vile concoction in which the said ignorant scoundrel presumes to improve on Marx.^[1] This vile concoction is recommended to German working men as instructive reading along party lines by the appearance on the title page of your name as editor. That such a vile concoction should be published somewhere or other is, of course, a matter of complete indifference, nor would it be worthy of mention. But that it should be published by you, under your sponsorship, as having been sanctioned and recommended by you (for what else does the appearance of your name on it signify?)—that is what's intolerable. Of course your son-in-law pulled the wool over your eyes—you'd never have done it deliberately. But now, when it's your bounden duty to rid yourself of the said vile concoction, to declare that you have been scandalously imposed upon and that not so much as one more sheet of it will appear under your name—what happens? You devote an entire page of your letter to the unforeseen circumstances that prevent you from doing so.

Why then the moral indignation over my having for once called this habit of yours by its proper name? Anyhow, I'm not the only person to have remarked on it. And if anyone has been insulted on this occasion it is I rather than you.

If you have taken any further steps in the Schlesinger affair, I for one have heard nothing of it. But one thing I do know: if you put a stop to the publication of Schlesingers vile concoction, I shall be able to let the matter rest at that. But should a sequel or conclusion appear under your name I shall owe it to Marx to make a public protest. I trust you will not let things go as far as that, for I feel sure that this changeling that has been foisted onto you is altogether more than you can stomach. And as, no doubt, you yourself realise, Mr Geiser cannot be allowed to sell for a mess of potage the position you have attained in the party, the fruit of forty years' labour.

I have been here a fortnight and shall probably stay on through the first week in September—in the same house I was in when you left for America.^[2]

Warm regards,

Your

F. E.

↑ 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.
↑ An allusion to Wilhelm Liebknecht's trip to the United States for agitation purposes, which he undertook with Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling in September-December 1886.

[1] 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.

[2] An allusion to Wilhelm Liebknecht's trip to the United States for agitation purposes, which he undertook with Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling in September-December 1886.

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