Letter to Karl Kautsky, February 3, 1891

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 3 February 1891


First published in full in Aus der Frühzeit des Marxismus. Engels Briefwechsel mit Kautsky, Prag, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY

IN STUTTGART

London, 3 February 1891

Dear Kautsky,

You'd have thought that we over here would have been bombarded with letters about Marx's article[1] — on the contrary; not a sign nor a word have we had.

When the Neue Zeit failed to arrive on Saturday,[2] I thought something had gone wrong again. On Sunday Ede arrived and showed me your letter, whereupon I believed that the attempt at suppression had been successful. The issue finally arrived on Monday and, not long after, I found the piece had been reprinted in the Vorwärts.[3]

The disciplinary action à la Anti-Socialist Law having failed,[4] this daring move was the best thing the chaps could have done. But it was also good in another way, namely in going a fair way towards repairing the almost unbridgeable gulf alluded to by August[5] in the first moment of alarm.[6] Not that that alarm was in any way unjustified, arising as it did out of concern for what their opponents might make of the thing. By printing it in the official organ, they forestalled hostile exploitation and put themselves in the position of being able to say: 'See how we criticise ourselves — we are the only party that can afford to do so; just you try and do the same!' This was, in fact, the correct attitude and one the chaps should have adopted from the start.

Another consequence is that it will be difficult to initiate disciplinary action against yourself. My request that the thing might be sent to Adler[7] was intended on the one hand to put pressure on Dietz and, on the other, to relieve you of responsibility by presenting you with Hobson's choice. I also wrote and told August that I was prepared to take full responsibility.

If anyone else is to be held responsible, that person is Dietz. As he is aware, I have, where he is concerned, always shown myself very coulant[8] over such matters. I have not only complied with, but actually exceeded, every request he has made to tone things down. Had he side-lined anything else, that too would have received consideration. But if a thing met with no objection from Dietz, why should it not be passed by me?

Come to that, having once got over their initial alarm, almost everyone save Liebknecht will be grateful to me for having published the thing. It will eliminate all possibility of prevarication and phrase-mongering in the next programme and will provide irrefutable arguments such as the majority of them would hardly have had the courage to advance on their own initiative. Their failure to change a bad programme while the Anti-Socialist Law was in force because unable to do so is no cause for reproach. And they have after all now voluntarily relinquished that programme. Nor need they hesitate to admit today that, 15 years ago, they behaved like boobies over the matter of unification 63 and allowed themselves to be done in the eye by Hasselmann, etc. At all events, the programme's 3 ingredients— 1. specific Lassalleanism, 2. vulgar democracy à la People's Party 1 5 4 and 3. balderdash, have not improved as a result of 15 years' pickling qua official party programme, and if this can't be openly said today, when if ever can it be?

If you hear anything new, please let us know. Many regards,

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ Critique of the Gotha Programme
  2. ↑ This refers to the item 'Tell Tale Straws' in Justice, No. 337, 28 June 1890.
  3. ↑ The International Socialist Workers' Congress in Paris — virtually the inaugural congress of the Second International — opened on 14 July 1889, the centenary of the capture of the Bastille. Some 400 delegates from 20 countries of Europe and America attended. The congress heard the reports of the representatives of socialist parties on the state of the labour movement in their respective countries and worked out the fundamentals of international labour legislation, demanding a legal eight-hour day, the outlawing of child labour, and measures to protect working women and juveniles. It stressed the need for the political organisation of the proletariat and a struggle to ensure satisfaction of the workers' democratic demands. It also spoke out for the disbandment of standing armies and the universal arming of the people. The congress's most important resolution was the decision to hold demonstrations and meetings in all countries on 1 May 1890 to back up demands for an eight-hour working day and labour legislation. The anarchists opposed the congress resolutions but were overwhelmingly outvoted.
  4. ↑ This refers to the attempt by Wilhelm Liebknecht and other leaders of German Social-Democracy to prevent the distribution of No. 18 of Die Neue Zeit, which contained Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (see this volume, pp. 126 and 181). For the Anti-Socialist Law see Note 11.
  5. ↑ August Bebel
  6. ↑ 31 January
  7. ↑ See this volume, p. 103.
  8. ↑ cooperative