Letter to Victor Adler, October 23, 1892

ENGELS TO VICTOR ADLER

IN VIENNA

London, 23 October 1892

Dear Victor,

There is no need for you to worry about the Trades Unions' International Congress. 24 In the first place the whole business was probably only a device for getting the anti-Zurich resolution 27 accepted and might well not even be raised by the Parliamentary Committee. 28 Secondly, the attendance of individual Continentals is neither here nor there, seeing that even the Paris bourse du travail 29—still, if no longer altogether, dominated by the Possibilists 30—resolved that the Trades Unions be asked to abandon their plan. So who else might one expect to go? Maybe Mr Gilles, as representative of the German Independents 16?!

It would be a great help if the Austrian Trades Unions 31 were to send their resolution to the Parliamentary Committee. I shall ask Aveling for the address which I cannot find.

Yesterday I walked up Primrose Hill for the first time and, provided I'm careful, think I shall have made some slight progress by the end of the week. I shall make a note of MacEwen. He is at any rate a CONSULTING SURGEON which means that he can only advise other doctors and not the public direct. But I shall find that out. You have no idea of the extent to which everything here, including medicine, is governed by etiquette and how one breach of that etiquette is infinitely more frowned upon than ten of the sexual code. I recall a dictum of the Mancunian Medico-Ethical Society which sat in judgement over my friend Gumpert in Manchester. While paying a visit of condolence (this was around 1866-67) to a family who were not his patients, he had expressed slight misgivings about their family doctor's having permitted other children to approach the bodies of two children who had died of scarlet fever. The other doctor lodged a complaint and the verdict was:

THAT DR GUMPERT HAD COMMITTED A BREACH OF MEDICAL ETIQUETTE,

THOUGH HE WAS MORALLY RIGHT! Well, again my best thanks—I shall follow your advice.

Tomorrow I shall again write to Stepniak about his work 32. If you haven't had anything by the end of the fortnight, by 7 or 8 November say,

please write to me again, then I'll send him a reminder. It's the only way you can get anything out of a Russian.

I am now on Volume II I of Capital. If, just once during the past four years, I had been able to see three clear months ahead of me, it would have been finished long ago. But I never had any such luck. On this occasion I am making time for it by forcibly suppressing and by totally neglecting all my correspondence and other concerns. I found that I had made very good headway with the most difficult passage the last time I tackled it and up till now it's been going pretty smoothly, though admittedly I have now come up against the chief obstacle which has long been standing in my way. 33 But I work with a will and, so far, with undiminished vigour and doubtless something will come of it this time.

Herewith a document typical of anarchists of Czech nationality. The gentlemen are beginning to bludgeon one another with the principle that voting is a revolutionary act. I am prepared to excuse its deficiencies on the grounds that, not being Germans, the louts were not altogether aware of the full impact their rhetorical flourishes would have on a German.

We were all absolutely delighted by the good news about your wife.^[1] We hope the improvement will continue and that before long you will be able to send us further glad tidings.

Warm regards from Louise^[2] to you, your wife and your children, and the same also from

Your

F. Engels

Add. of the Parliamentary Committee, C. Fenwick, Esq., M.P., 12, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C.