Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, November 26, 1890

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 26 November 1890


First published 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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 26 November 1890

Dear Sorge,

Since the time I informed you of the death of my good Lenchen,[1] Louise Kautsky — the one who's divorced, not No. II — has come to live with me for a time and, with her, a little sunshine has returned. She is a quite marvellous woman and Kautsky must have been out of his senses when he divorced her.

Good wishes for my 70th birthday the day after tomorrow are already coming in and now Singer, Bebel and Liebknecht have announced their intention of visiting me. I wish the business was all over; I'm far from being in a birthday mood, and on top of that there's all the unnecessary FUSS which I cannot abide even at the best of times. And after all, I am, to a large extent, simply the chap who is reaping what Marx has sown in the way of fame.

The Halle Congress went off brilliantly. Tussy was there and was quite delighted with the delegates but not so much with the parliamentary group,[2] which includes a fair number of philistines. But steps have been taken to ensure that this shouldn't happen again at the next elections. Meanwhile the chaps in the Reichstag are observing better discipline than might have been hoped, and are keeping their mouths shut, otherwise they'd have been bound to make fools of themselves.

Our campaign for a joint congress in 1891 was wholly successful. You will have read about the resolutions passed at the international conference at Halle — a congress to be held in Brussels, on the understanding that the congress has full sovereignty. That is all we wanted, and the Belgian Anseele himself proposed that the Swiss and the Belgians, the mandatories of both the 1889 congresses,[3] should jointly send out the convocation. Since, moreover, the Possibilists are hopelessly divided amongst themselves and openly engaged in internecine strife,[4] and since the collapse of Parisian Boulangism will mean that the socialist elements by whom it was previously favoured will accrue to us and not to the Possibilists, we shall, so to speak, WALK OVER THE COURSE. Hyndman has had the abysmal stupidity to join forces with the noble Brousse against Allemane,[5] which again will do him an enormous amount of harm.

The Germans would certainly be glad to get in touch with the AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR; I shall talk to the chaps over here and bring influence to bear on Fischer who's a member of the Party Executive. Fischer is one of our best men, highly intelligent, can read French and English, and is acquainted with the movement in both countries. He will counterbalance the one-sided influence exerted by Liebknecht in international affairs.

You have made an excellent début in the Neue Zeit; just carry on as you are and you will soon get into the way of writing again. The fee is about twice what is paid to contributors over here (5 marks a page); once you've got back into your stride and are able to work faster, it won't seem so small to you. I'd like to see further evidence in support of what Schlüter told you. That I and others are paid 5 marks a page by the Neue Zeit, and that this is the customary fee in Germany, is a fact. I have myself written and told Kautsky[6] that you must be offered more. Schlüter is apt to trot out remarks without really thinking what he's saying. By American standards, of course, $ 2 a page isn't much and, if you think you ought to be paid American rates, you are quite right to ask for them. But Kautsky, who is certainly doing all he can for you, is also obliged to consider Dietz, who is paymaster, and I wouldn't like it if such considerations were to be responsible for one of the Volkszeitung or Sozialist people gaining admission to the Neue Zeit. Think the matter over again and, if you are intent on getting a rise, write and tell me and I'll approach Kautsky about it; that would leave all doors open.

Rosenberg & Co. had already pronounced a boycott against me and if the Nationalists now do the same,[7] it only serves me right. Why can't I give up the class struggle? In this country Marx and I are suffering just the same fate at the hands of the Fabians who also wish to see the emancipation of the workers brought about by the 'heddicated'.[8]

I shall save up the articles about George in the Labor Standard and read them at my leisure, of which I have so far had none. You have no idea of the mass of papers, pamphlets, etc., that people send me.

Volume One of Capital has been brought out in Polish by Kasprowicz of Leipzig and has been sent me from Warsaw.[9]

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 67.
  2. ↑ the Social-Democratic group in the German Reichstag
  3. ↑ In the autumn of 1890 the General Council of the Belgian Workers' Party, acting on a mandate from the Possibilist congress (see Note 53), sent out invitations for an international workers' congress to be held in Brussels in 1891. Since the executive committee of Swiss socialists set up on the instructions of the 1889 Paris International Socialist Workers' Congress (see Note 51) for the purpose of convoking another congress had failed to take any action until September 1890, the danger arose of two international congresses being held simultaneously in 1891.
  4. ↑ Engels means the signs of a forthcoming dissociation within the Possibilist Workers' Party (see Note 3). At their congress in Châtellerault, 9 to 15 October 1890, the Possibilists split into two groups — the Broussists and the Allemanists. The latter formed an organisation of their own, the Socialist Revolutionary Workers' Party. The Allemanists retained the Possibilists' ideological and tactical principles but, in contrast to them, attached great importance to propaganda within the trades unions, which they regarded as the workers' principal form of organisation. The Allemanists' ultimate weapon was the call for a general strike. Like the Possibilists, they denied the need for a united, centralised party and advocated autonomy and the struggle to win seats on the municipal councils.
  5. ↑ Engels has in mind the editorial 'The Split in France' in Justice, No. 353, 18 October 1890.
  6. ↑ See this volume, p. 5.
  7. ↑ The Nationalists were members of a social movement in the USA which sought to relieve society of the worst evils of capitalism through the nationalisation of production and distribution and a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism. The first Nationalist club was set up in Boston in 1888, under the impact of Edward Bellamy's Utopian novel Looking Backward 2000-1887. By 1891 there were more than 160 such clubs all over the country. The clubs, consisting mostly of members of the petty and middle bourgeoisie, were vehicles for the propagation of Nationalist views. In 1889, the newspaper Nationalist began to appear. The Nationalist movement exerted a certain influence on America's socialists. For instance, the newspaper Sozialist, organ of the Socialist Labor Party of North America (see Note 133), echoed its propaganda, and Daniel de Leon, one of the party's leaders, held Nationalist views. Engels compared the Nationalists to the Fabians (see Note 87). That the Nationalists boycotted Engels' works, ignoring them or declaring them harmful, was told to Engels by Sorge in a letter of 14 October 1890.
  8. ↑ In the original: jebildeten (Berlin dialect).
  9. ↑ Kapital. Krytyka ekonomii politycznej. Tom I.