Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, May 29, 1890

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 May 1890


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. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Printed according to the original
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, 29 May 1890

Dear Sorge,

Have received letters of 30 April and 15 May, likewise Volkszeitung containing passage from my letter.[2] Your statement will be appearing in the Sozialdemokrat but, when I arrived at the office with your statement yesterday, I found that they already had it there, in print in the Berliner Volksblatt. So Schlüter had sent it off before. That's what I call Schlüter's excess of zeal and what tends to be a bit embarrass- ing to a chap like me when he turns up at a newspaper office with an allegedly brand new ms. only to find the thing has already appeared in another paper. Not that I've had any other indiscretions to complain of since he's been in America, but I know him from days of yore.

I must now burden you with another piece of gossip about Schlüter which I would not otherwise have thought worth mentioning. But Motteler, a mortal enemy of Schlüter's, who was also responsible for Schlüter's leaving here, has recounted his version of the affair to Jonas and so it is necessary for you, at any rate, to know the true story.

Motteler is a crib-biter of the first water and is very difficult to get on with; he's a faux bonhomme,[3] a Swabian and an unrecognised genius who feels he has been downgraded because, though he was at one time solely responsible for managing the Sozialdemokrat and for party affairs abroad, others had to be appointed alongside himself, things having expanded. Not only is he absolutely reliable in money matters, however, but, more important still, he is generally recognised to be so by the whole of the party, and no one would venture to doubt him. In the post of party treasurer abroad, therefore, he is a most valuable man, and the others can only be glad to have been relieved of that responsibility for so long. Well, should anyone he dislikes happen to join the business, the results will be perpetual squabbling and never-ending persecution. That's what happened, first with Derossi and then with Schlüter, both of whom were hounded out by him. He now brings two charges against Schlüter—first, that he embezzled money. There is absolutely no proof of this save that, in accounts that were over a year old at the time and had already been passed by the auditors, Motteler discovered a sum of 150 marks in respect of which Schlüter had failed to provide either proof of payment or a signed receipt. No one in Germany or over here, save for Motteler, cares a rap about this, for the sums paid out by Motteler himself are said frequently to have been certified only by the entries he made, and the way the chaps run the business, while egregiously pedan- tic like everything Motteler does, is far from businesslike and accurate. That Schlüter was careless and guilty of small oversights—which he glossed over in such a way as not himself to be the loser—may well be. But nothing more could be alleged against him.—Again, Schlüter is much given to the pursuit of the Eternal Feminine, and likes variety at that, and it would seem to be a fact that he had flirtations with one or two of the book-binding girls they employed in Zurich and even seduced them. But since there aren't any girls in the business over here, that no longer applied and the only grounds for quarrelling with Schlüter was Motteler's ineradicable dislike of him. That's the whole story and, if Schlüter had only stood up to Motteler a bit more, things might have gradually settled down. We others didn't make anything of it because the affair of the girls had long been a thing of the past, because Motteler himself had refused to have the matter out with Schlüter in the presence of the party's auditors, and because the same thing could not have recurred over here.

So if Jonas should start spreading gossip, you will be in possession of the true facts.

Jonas did indeed come to see me, somewhat embarrassed, but found Tussy and Edward Aveling here (it was just after the Hyde Park meet- ing)[4] who gave him a very cool reception (on applying to the Central Committee[5] for a journalist's pass for the meeting, Jonas had already been told by Aveling that he hoped the Volkszeitung would be more truthful in its report than heretofore). So he very soon went away again when the Bernsteins had to leave on account of their children. The more elegantly the man tries to dress, the commoner he looks.

One more thing. For the new edition of the Origin etc.[6] I have got to have Morgan's last work,[7] but cannot go to the British Museum early enough in the morning to compete for a seat in the Reading Room with the novel-readers. I am therefore sending you the enclosed letter for the department concerned, and two copies of the book. The question now is how these things—the letter and 1 copy—should be conveyed, whether direct to the department or through an intermediary who would vouch for me? Aveling believes that Ely in Baltimore would be glad to oblige. You are better acquainted with the chap, and I shall therefore leave it to you to decide what the best procedure would be. In case you should decide on an intermediary, I have included a second copy for him. I also include a note for Ely in case you think fit to use him as an intermediary.

I am very glad that the Volkszeitung and the Workman's Advocate put in the piece about the preliminaries to the Hyde Park meeting; through doing so they have made possible a rapprochement between the Avelings and the Americans. Even Mr Jonas cannot fail to have realised while here what a blunder he had made when he contented himself with simply parroting the Executive's accusations against Aveling.

The meeting, by the by, did not mark the end of the matter over here. You will have seen from the last People's Press that the Central Committee is remaining in existence and is founding a Legal Eight Hours and International Labour League.[8] The constitution has been drafted and will be submitted on 22 June to a delegates' meeting to which all London labour organisations, radical clubs, etc., have been invited. The constitution demands 1. the implementation of the resolu- tions of the Paris Congress[9] in so far as these are not yet law in England, 2. such further measures for bringing about the full emancipa- tion of the workers as may be decided upon by the Association, 3. the founding of an independent labour party with its own candidates for all constituencies in which they would stand some chance of getting in. You may publish this.

In the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung (by the next post) there is a longish article of mine[10] about the happenings over here.

Cordial regards to your wife,[11]

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ A fragment of this letter in English was first published in Labour Monthly, London 1934, No. 6, p380.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p.488 91
  3. ↑ speciously benevolent
  4. ↑ A reference to the first May Day demonstration of London workers held on Sunday, 4 May 1890. Despite the attempts of reformist trade union leaders and Henry Hyndman, a Socialist with opportunist leanings, to foist class collaborationist slogans on the demonstration, it showed the readiness of the broadest masses of London workers to wage a struggle for socialist demands. The bulk of the demonstrators - about 200,000 strong -supported the slogans of the British supporters of Marx. Playing the chief role in the demonstration were Gas Workers and the London Dockers, who were the first to launch a struggle in the 1880s for 'new' mass trade unions to be set up (see note 489) and for legal eight hours. The demonstration culminated in a huge rally in London's Hyde Park. For more detail about the first May Day celebration and the demonstration of May 4 in London, see Engels' article 'May 4 in London' (present edition, Vol. 27).
  5. ↑ The reference is to the 'Central Committee of representatives of ' new trade unions' and of radical and socialist clubs (about the radical clubs, see note 22) set up for organising the 4 May demonstration in London. The Committee continued its activities in subsequent months in pursuit of the struggle for a law on a eight-hour working day and for implementing the decisions of the socialist International Working Men's Congress of 1889; it came out for setting up a workingmen's party. The leader of the Central Committee was E. Aveling, who maintained close contacts with Engels. In July 1890 the Committee gave rise to an organisation which came to be known as 'The Legal Eight Hours and International Labour League'.
  6. ↑ Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (see present edition, Vol. 26)
  7. ↑ L. H. Morgan, Houses and houselife of the American aborigines
  8. ↑ A reference to 'The Legal Eight Hours and International Labour League' founded in 1890 by a group of British Socialists with E. Aveling and Eleanor Marx-Aveling at the head and with Engels' participation. The League sprang from the Central Committee that organised the first May Day demonstration in Britain in 1890.
  9. ↑ The International (Socialist) Working Men's Congress was in session in Paris on 14-20 July 1889, on the centennial of the storming of the Bastille. In fact, it became a constituent Congress of the Second International. Taking part were 393 delegates, representing the worker and socialist parties of 20 countries of Europe and America.
    The Congress heard the reports of representatives of the socialist parties on the situation in the labour movement in their countries; it outlined the principles of international labour legislation in respective countries by supporting demands for a legislative enactment of an 8-hour working day, prohibition of child labour and steps toward the protection of the work of women and adolescents. The Congress stressed the need of political organisation of the proletariat and of a struggle for implementation of democratic demands of the working class; it spoke out for a disbandment of regular armies and their replacement by armed detachments of the people. It resolved to hold, on 1 May 1890, demonstrations and meetings in support of an 8-hour working day and labour legislation.
  10. ↑ 'May 4 in London'
  11. ↑ Katharina Sorge