Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, June 10, 1891

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 June 1891


First published 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
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 10 June 1891

Dear Sorge,

I am up to the eyes in the new edition of the Origin of the Family, etc.[1] ; it has been necessary to go through all the relevant literature of the past 8 years and its quintessence must now be worked into the book, which is no joke, especially in view of the many interruptions. However the worst is behind me and I shall at last be able to get back to Volume III.[2] I have had to cut down on the whole of my corre- spondence, otherwise I should make no progress at all.

In Berlin — strictly between ourselves, for Schlüter must not know that it is / who have given you the information; he cannot always keep his mouth shut and if you tell him, he's sure to know that it comes from me — in Berlin, then, the chaps have finally come round to the view that Liebknecht is a windbag and nothing more. Earlier on the position was such that they had to give him the post of editor of the Vorwärts and at the same time make him an honorary member of the Executive. I had long been aware that this was bound to bring matters to a head; it was inevitable. They now find that he is editing the paper out of existence, for in the first place he does nothing him- self and, in the second, he is standing in the way of others who could do something. So it's scandalous that he should allow his son-in-law Geiser to write botched leading articles for it, articles of such dreary arrogance and tedious ineffectiveness as to be beyond the capabilities of anyone save their author — and this is the Geiser who, morally speaking, was chucked out of the party at St Gallen.[3] For the mo- ment there's no telling how the affair will end. They have offered Liebknecht another position in which he would act both as a popular speaker and in his earlier capacity of journalistic franc-tireur, but this he construes as a dismissal. Now they don't know how to set about pensioning him off in a decent manner, and to do so in such a way that he will accept — for that is what it really boils down to. The oddest part of all is that while the Anti-Socialist Law[4] was in force, precluding the outbreak of this conflict, Liebknecht hardly changed at all, or at most continued along a course upon which he had long since embarked, and that the chaps now find that, upon his transfer to Berlin from his Borsdorf retreat, he no longer bears the slightest re- semblance to the Liebknecht of old — in other words Liebknecht as they had imagined him. The real point is that the others have pro- gressed and now suddenly notice the difference; they imagine that it is they who have remained as they were, which is by no means the case.

Now for something else. Stanislaw[5] writes to tell me that Anna[6] has approached Paris for money and has actually got some, or will be doing so; these attempts at extortion are really a bit thick, he says, and suggests we write to America lest there should be further useless expenditure over there on the young madame's behalf. Accordingly he has already written to you and asks me to do the same. He de- scribes her, Anna's, way of going about things as downright blackmail.

Today we have at last had a semblance of summer; the vegetation is a whole month behind and in that respect the spring is not yet properly over, though otherwise we've seen no sign of it.

Thank you for the pirated American edition. Schlüter has told me some curious things about it.[7] Please thank him for his very de- tailed letter which I cannot unfortunately reply to just now.

Over here the movement is making fine progress. The UNION of GAS- WORKERS and GENERAL LABOURERS is gradually coming to the fore, thanks above all to Tussy. The movement is advancing English- fashion, systematically, slowly but surely, and it is an odd, if highly significant phenomenon that both here and in America the people who make themselves out to be orthodox Marxists and have changed the concept of our movement into a rigid dogma to be learned by rote — that these people should figure both here and over there as a mere sect. But what is even more significant is the fact that whereas in Amer- ica these people are foreigners, i. e. Germans, over here they're Eng- lishmen born and bred, i. e. Hyndman & Co. Tussy has just arrived so I'll close.

Regard from her, Louise and your old friend to you, your wife[8] and Schlüter,

F.E.

Tussy has just told me that at Whitsuntide — when she was on the point of leaving for the GASWORKERS' congress in Dublin —she too received a letter from Anna similar to the one sent to the Paris people.

N o NOTICE TAKEN, of COUrSC

  1. ↑ the fourth German edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
  2. ↑ of Capital
  3. ↑ The St Gallen (Switzerland) Congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (2-6 October 1887) discussed the conduct of a group of Social-Democratic Reichstag deputies who had refused to sign the appeal for the convocation of the congress for fear of reprisals. The congress unanimously passed a resolution cen suring those deputies who had had no valid grounds for behaving in this manner and expressed the hope that no responsible party posts would be given them in the future. Bruno Geiser was among those censured.
  4. ↑ The Anti-Socialist Law, initiated by the Bismarck government and passed by the Reichstag on 21 October 1878, was directed against the socialist and working-class movement. The Social-Democratic Party of Germany was virtually driven into the underground. All party and mass working-class organisations and their press were banned, socialist literature was subject to confiscation, Social-Democrats made the object of reprisals. However, with the active help of Marx and Engels, the Social- Democratic Party succeeded in overcoming both the opportunist (Eduard Bern stein et al.) and 'ultra-Left' (J. Most et al.) tendencies within its ranks and was able, by combining underground activities with an efficient utilisation of legal means, to use the period of the operation of the law for considerably strengthening and ex panding its influence among the masses. Prolonged in 1881, 1884, 1886 and 1888, the Anti-Socialist Law was repealed on 1 October 1890. For Engels' assessment of it see his article 'Bismarck and the German Working Men's Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 407-09).
  5. ↑ Stanislaw Mendelson
  6. ↑ Stanislaw Padlewski
  7. ↑ In sending a copy of the US edition of Volume I of Capital published without En- gels' knowledge in New York in 1890, Hermann Schlüter wrote to tell Engels on 11 May 1891 that the book had been sold out quickly since the publisher had adver tised it as being about 'how to accumulate capital'.
  8. ↑ Katharina Sorge