Letter to August Bebel, July 7, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 July 1892


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX. Moscow, 1946
Extract: Marx & Engels on the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971, p. 355;
Published in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49
Collection(s): Ireland and the Irish Question (Marx-Engels)

To Bebel in Berlin

London, July 7, 1892

Dear August,

This is what comes of your forbidding me to write to you![1] Yet another letter. The obituary numbers of the Vorwärts turned up this morning[2] , so all is well in that quarter.

The elections are going swimmingly.[3]

1. The Liberal victories are such minor ones and so much offset by counter-victories and other unmistakable symptoms (diminished majorities, often to the extent of being virtually non-existent, etc.) that the next parliament is likely to show at most a narrow majority for Gladstone, and maybe none at all (i. e. practically none at all) either for him or for the TORIES. That would mean early dissolution and another election, but also preparations for the latter in the shape of legislation which would ensure extra votes for the Liberals, and those could only be new Labour votes. In fact even were the TORIES to remain at the helm — which hardly seems likely — they would have to try and strengthen their position by acquiring additional votes and these again they could only get from the workers. So there's a prospect of 1. a cessation of the harassment which has hitherto made it difficult for individual workers to assert their right to the universal suffrage they have been conceded and 2. social measures favourable to the workers.

The Liberals have won 16 of their opponents' seats: the last government majority was 68. If you take away the 16 seats lost and also the above 16 won from their opponents, you get 32. That still leaves a TORY majority of 36. So if another 18 seats are won, the parties will be all square. I believe that a few more will be won; the so-called country boroughs are those in which opposition to the feudal pressure exerted by the big country landowners is strongest and where the lower middle classes do not therefore, as here in London and in other large towns, vote Conservative out of opposition to the now enfranchised workers and out of philistine habit. Gladstone might quite likely obtain a majority of 20, including, of course, the Irish, and he won't be able to govern with that. The Irish are bound to demand HOME RULE and a majority of 20 won't enable him to put that through in the teeth of the Upper House. And that will mean a rumpus.

2. The only startling victories are those of the new Labour Party. Keir Hardie has turned what was, in the last elections, a TORY majority of 300 into a majority of 1,200 for himself. John Burns — whose Liberal predecessor had a majority of 186 — has got one of 1,560. And in Middlesbrough (the iron-working district of Yorkshire) Wilson, Secretary of the UNION of Seamen and Coal Trimmers — a careerist but pledged neck and crop to the new unionism, obtained 4,691 votes, thus beating the Liberals (4,062) and the TORY (3,333). The measly Liberal majorities look pitiful by comparison.

3. In three places where a Labour candidature, etc., was both apposite and had been properly prepared for in advance, the Labour candidates were in fact beaten, but they also caused the downfall of the Liberals.

In Salford, Hall, Labour, obtained 553 votes but the Liberal was beaten by only 37.

In Glasgow (Camlachie) Cunninghame-Graham was beaten (906 votes), but so was the Liberal who needed 371 votes to obtain a majority. In Glasgow (Tradeston) the Labour candidate Burleigh (in other respects a ne'er-do-weel) got 783 votes while the Liberal got 169 fewer than the TORY.

What's more, in a number of other places (Aberdeen, Glasgow — College—, Bradford), though the Liberals did in fact win, they nevertheless forfeited anything from 990 to 2,749 votes to Labour candidates standing against both parties, which means that next time Labour will constitute a direct threat.

In brief, the Labour Party has declared itself clearly and unequivocally[4] , meaning that in the next election the two old parties will offer it alliance. The Tories are out of the question so long as they are led by the present dolts. But the Liberals must be considered, and likewise the Irish. Since the public outcry for that ridiculous business with adultery[5] , Parnell has suddenly become friendly to the workers, and the Irish gentlemen in Parliament will follow suit once they see that only the workers can get them Home Rule. Then there will be compromises, and the Fabians[6] , conspicuous by their absence in this election, will come forward again. But that is unavoidable in the circumstances. There is headway, as you see, and that is what matters.

By a splendid quirk of history, both of the two old parties have now got to appeal to Labour and make concessions to Labour if they want to retain or take the helm, and at the same time each of them senses that by so doing they are giving a leg up to their own successors. And yet they can't help it! What is our little jest compared with the colossal jest now emerging from the turn history is taking?

Many regards from Louise and myself to Mrs Julie[7] and yourself.

Your

F.E.


If you write to Shaw you might recommend Conrad Schmidt's article in the Neue Zeit[8] as a refutation of their 'AUSTRIAN THEORY OF VALUE'.

  1. ↑ Writing to Engels on 29 June 1892 Bebel, presumably in reply to Engels' letter of 20 June concerning the pressure of work, remarked that he did not expect an answer to his letter.
  2. ↑ F. Engels, 'Carl Schorlemmer', Vorwärts. No. 153, 3 July 1892.
  3. ↑ The summer 1892 parliamentary election in Britain was won by the Liberals. The campaign brought success to the workers' and socialist organisations, which had put up a considerable number of independent candidates. Three of them—James Keir Hardie, John Burns and John Havelock Wilson — were elected.
  4. ↑ Engels is referring to the success of the workers and socialists in the Parliamentary elections in England in the summer of 1892. The English workers' and socialist organisations nominated a large number of candidates, three of whom — Keir Hardie, John Burns and J. H. Wilson — were elected to Parliament. The elections were won by the Liberals.
  5. ↑ Engels is referring to the persecution by English and Irish reactionaries of C.S. Parnell, the leader of the Irish national movement. At the end of 1889, the Liberal Unionists (former members of the Liberal Party, who left it in 1886 because they opposed Home Rule) had Parnell brought to court on a charge of adultery. The court (November 1890) found Parnell guilty and this let loose a smear campaign against him. Both Liberal and Conservative M.P.s demanded that he be removed from the post of leader of the Irish Parliamentary faction. The attacks against Parnell, which played on bourgeois hypocrisy in questions of morals, pursued the aim of removing him from the political scene and weakening the Irish national movement. The smear campaign against Parnell was supported by the Right wing of the Irish faction and the Irish Catholic clergy, who feared his influence and did not share his aspirations for Home Rule. All this led to a split of the Irish Parliamentary faction and weakened the Irish national movement. The campaign was largely responsible for Parnell's early death in 1891.
  6. ↑ The Fabian Society was founded in 1884. The name was derived from Quintus Fabius Maximus, a Roman general of the 3rd century BC, nicknamed the "Cunctator" (or Delayer) because he achieved success in the second Punic war against Hannibal by avoiding direct battle and using dilatory tactics. Most of the Fabians were bourgeois intellectuals, chief among whom were Sidney and Beatrice Webb. They rejected Marx's teaching on the class struggle of the proletariat and the socialist revolution and maintained that a transition from capitalism to socialism could be effected by petty reforms and the gradual transformation of society, through so-called municipal socialism. The Fabian Society diffused bourgeois influence among the working class and propagated reformist ideas in the English labour movement. Lenin defined Fabianism as "the most consummate expression of opportunism and of liberal-labour policy." In 1900 the Fabian Society was incorporated in the Labour Party. "Fabian socialism" is still one of the sources of the ideology of class conciliation.
  7. ↑ Julie Bebel
  8. ↑ C. Schmidt, 'Die psychologische Richtung in der neueren Nationalökonomie', Die Neue Zeit, 10 Jg. 1891/92, 2. Bd., Nr. 40, 4 1