| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 17 July 1894 |
ENGELS TO VICTOR ADLER
IN VIENNA
London, 17 July 1894
Dear Victor,
I am glad that those few marks should have arrived so opportunely and trust you will use them to treat yourself to the rest and recuperation out in the country which are so absolutely essential to you. You simply must go away; what you need more than anything else is to recover from the wear and tear of your time in prison. 349 You yourself say you feel done in and that, if truth be told, is not surprising, so the moment you are released, out into the country with you! This would also be the best way of ensuring your wife's complete recovery.
The additional chapter (it is only the enlargement of an already extant one) in Anti-Dühring is by Marx, so the only work I had to do on it consisted in copying and editing. 382
About 36 sheets of Volume II[1] have been set up and there will probably be more than 50 all told. Since it is wholly in Meissner's interest to get the thing out by September, it will doubtless be ready by then.
I wish your daily paper well and am already looking forward to seeing it. 377 It is really essential to set the insufferable Vorwärts an example of 'how things are done'. The chaps can hardly fail to follow it. However, when you are in jug, one sometimes becomes aware that the Arbeiter Zeitung, too, has men who are unsuitable and who push themselves to the fore where they have no business to be. But once the daily is in existence, your activities as a speaker will automatically be confined to a few occasions of crucial importance, and this will mean your spending less time in jug, while a dummy editor is in any case indispensable to the paper as such, if only as the sacrificial lamb who takes upon himself the sins of the editorial department.
And again, in Vienna, you have just now a soil more favourable to a daily than that proffered by Berlin. The political movement to which you belong is in the ascendant; you are assured of getting electoral reform 270 and the very fact of fighting for a goal such as this, for an immediate political advance is of tremendous advantage to your paper. Electoral reform, however, is no more than the impulse that will set the ball rolling and will necessarily entail other concessions relating to the press, association, assembly, legal practices, etc. In short, you are engaged in an offensive and one, which, to begin with at any rate, is assured of victory. In France, Germany and Italy, on the other hand, our people are engaged in what is a by no means always promising defensive action and have to withstand the onslaught of a reaction constantly reinforced by the adherence of the most disparate parties. It is proof that—in Germany, at least,—our people have really become a power in the land, while in France, a country riddled with revolution, it is proof that our people are at least looked upon as a power. But none the less you are, at the moment, in a better position to fight—you are attacking, gaining ground step by step, and every fresh bit of ground you seize and occupy not only strengthens your position but brings you vast numbers of fresh reinforcements. Your primitive constitutionalism is such that there are still at least a few positions for the workers to capture, and by lawful means at that, i.e. means whereby they themselves will be politically educated—positions which ought to have been captured by the bourgeoisie. In our country, too, there are still positions of this kind to be taken, but these we shall only get if the impulse comes from without, from a country where the amalgamation of the old forms— feudalism, bureaucracy and police—with more or less modern, civil institutions, has given such preponderance to the first as to produce a situation of impossible complexity. And that is the happy state in which you find yourselves, not to mention the even hap-
pier one of having a workers' movement big enough and strong enough to bring things to a head and thus, I hope, provide the impulse required by Germany, France and Italy if they are temporarily to disrupt the far too premature formation of the 'one reactionary mass', 214 and replace chronic reactionary oppression with a number of civil reforms such as freedom of movement for the masses. Not until you have fought for and won electoral reform—of no matter what kind—not until then will the agitation against the three-class electoral system in Prussia 291 have any significance. And even now the fact that there is going to be some sort of electoral reform in Austria has already averted the threat that hung over universal suffrage in Germany. So at this moment you people have a very important historical mission. It is you who will constitute the vanguard of the European proletariat, and initiate the general offensive which we can only hope will not falter again before we achieve victory all along the line—and it is you yourself who will be leading that vanguard; so unless you go out into the country forthwith and thoroughly recoup your strength, you will be neglecting what is your foremost duty.
And how serious that duty is becomes all the more apparent when you reflect that the only rivals whom you might have as a vanguard are the French. You wrote and told Louise that you would like me to report on the latter. I have put it off until today because 1. last week Tussy returned from the Glassworkers' Congress in Paris and 2. Bonnier came to see us the day before yesterday and I wanted to hear their side of the story first. WELL, SO far as I can see, the position is this:
The last elections 208 brought some twenty-five 'Socialists'—Marxists, Broussists, 30 Allemanists, 21 Blanquists 20 and Independents—into the Chamber. At the same time they eliminated what had hitherto been the 'Radical group', also describing itself as républicains socialistes, 86 notably by excluding all its former leaders. Thereupon some thirty members of that group, who had been re-elected, combined under the leadership of Millerand and Jaures and suggested that they and the 'Socialists', should join forces. 169 It was a very safe move on their part for not only were they more numerous then the old Socialists, they were also united whereas the latter were fragmented into umpteen groups. In this way they once more formed in the Chamber a respectable group some fifty or sixty strong without having to offer the old Socialists anything more than a highly platonic socialist programme, the politically radical articles of which had already formed part of their earlier programme as had their general pro-
working class attitude, while the [2] still remained an innocent chimera which might perhaps acquire practical significance three or four generations hence, but certainly not any sooner.
Our twenty-five old Socialists seized on the opportunity with both hands. They were not in a position to lay down conditions, being far too disunited for that. The intention was, it is true, that they should act in concert in the Chamber, as during the elections, but that, for the rest, all the separate organisations should continue to exist alongside one another; indeed, an attempt on the part of any one group to lay down specific conditions for the new Socialists would have brought it into conflict with the others. For that matter, they would not have been Frenchmen, had not the immediate prospect of swelling their numbers in the Chamber from twenty-five to fifty- five or sixty filled them with enthusiasm, and had not present victory, or a semblance thereof, blinded them to the dangers that lay ahead. Damn it all, aren't the Germans for ever crowing about their forty-four deputies? And at one fell swoop we've got fifty-five if not sixty! [3]
The thirty or thirty-five new Socialists have entered into a marriage of convenience with Socialism. They would just as soon not have done so, but taking the plunge was the shrewdest thing for them to do. Having realised that they would not, after all, be able to carry on without the workers, they have had to ally themselves with the latter for better or for worse. But for no- one was that alliance an altogether voluntary affair at first, as it certainly still is not for many today.
Of its leading representatives, Millerand is the shrewdest and, I believe, the most sincere, but I fear that some of his bourgeois-legal prejudices are more deep-seated than he himself realises. Politically he is the most capable of the whole bunch. Jaurès is an academic and doctrinaire who enjoys the sound of his own voice and whose voice the Chamber enjoys listening to more than to that of Guesde or Vaillant because he is more closely akin to the gentlemen of the majority. I believe it is his sincere intention to turn himself into a decent Socialist but, as you know, the zeal of such neophytes is in direct relation to their lack of practical knowledge which, in the case of Jaurès, is very great. Which explains how it was that in Paris Jaures tabled as socialist the self-same motion as that put forward in Berlin by Count Kanitz in the interest of the Junkers—the nationalisation of the import of grain with a view to raising the price of corn. 356 And since the old Socialists in the Chamber evince a lack of practical knowledge in [4] hardly less extreme—Lafargue's defeat at Lille means there is no one on the spot who knows anything about the subject—Guesde could not abstain from supporting at least part of the motion as 'socialist' and directed against 'speculation'. To propose to do away with 'speculation' by handing over the grain trade to a government and a government party consisting of Panamite confidence tricksters 60 is indeed a splendidly socialist idea. I have, through Bonnier and Lafargue, conveyed to the gentlemen concerned my unvarnished opinion of this colossal blunder.
I further told them that, though fusion rather than a mere alliance with the new Socialists might be their inevitable fate, they should bear in mind the possibility of there being bourgeois elements amongst the latter and that this might involve them in a conflict over principles, in which case a split might become inevitable. They must, I went on, prepare for this so that in the event the transition to a simple alliance could proceed smoothly and not surprise them into making blunders. Above all, should the chaps in the joint group put forward anything they felt unable to endorse and they be outvoted, they should repudiate any obligation to take the floor in the Chamber in support of such measures, but rather reserve the right to justify their adverse opinion in their press even if, for the sake of unity, they had had to vote in favour of the said measures.
Well, we shall have to see if it does any good. Thus, on the one hand there are the new Socialists who are imposing a certain unity on the most disparate groups of old Socialists. On the other, our chaps abroad, who find it puzzling that a group of some sixty men should suddenly have appeared 'out of thin air' and that its chief spokesmen, Millerand and Jaurès, should not hitherto have been known to be Socialists; hence the very natural doubts as to the authenticity of the aforementioned sixty, particularly after the brilliant impression left behind in Zurich by the French delegates. 250
Beneath the surface, the intrigues and mutual recriminations of the various sects continue unchecked. In particular the Marxists complain about Vaillant who is constantly touring the provinces for propaganda
purposes and is alleged to be spreading all manner of false calumnies about the Marxists there. At one time Vaillant used almost always to act in concert with the Marxists but 1. He is a strictly Blanquist party man who carries out the party's resolutions no matter what the circumstances, and for two years there has been trouble between the Blanquists and the Marxists; and 2. There are a great many Possibilists 30 in his constituency; he needs these people and this is partly why he has gone over to them.
It is very possible that the new reactionary measures in France 383 will act as a spur to the new Socialists and that the group of sixty will gradually become a truly socialist group. But that is not yet the case and things might well turn out differently.
In this country life is proceeding in the usual English leisurely fashion. Economic and political developments alike are increasingly impelling the majority of English working men in our direction, but it may be years before these 'pragmatists', wholly unaccustomed to taking a theoretical view of things and incapable of seeing beyond their own noses, become conscious of their own feelings and requirements unless virtually forced to do so. In the meantime political intrigue of the bourgeois-parliamentary variety continues to flourish mightily amongst the 'leaders', and never a day goes by without one's hearing of some startling instance of this.
Ludwig is today sitting his examination for admission as MEMBER, (not merely LICENCIATE) OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. The thing goes on for a fortnight. Soon after it is over we shall, with any luck, be able to go to the seaside—this year I shall be prevented from leaving England by domestic business.
Louise sends her love and says that there is no question of umbrage having been taken; you will shortly learn the reason for your not yet having had a reply.
Warm regards to your wife, Adelheid, Popp and all our friends.
Yours,
F. E.