ENGELS TO KARL KLEIN AND FRIEDRICH MOLL
IN SOLINGEN
Manchester, 8 February 1870
86 Mornington Street, Stockport Road
Dear Friends,
I must apologise very much for having left your letter of 3 December unanswered until today.[1] My only excuse is that I wanted to write something really nice, so I had to look around first, also in the interests of the cooperative. If I now have no very good news, this is, as you will see, not my fault.
I remember Solingen well from anno 48 and 49. Not only were the workers of Solingen at that time the most developed and most determined in the Rhine Province, as was also shown by the Elberfeld affair; I have a reason to be personally grateful to them, since the Solingen column, with which I marched to Elberfeld, supported me and guarded me there against the cowardly and treacherous Committee of Public Safety of the bourgeois 'radicals'. Had it not been for the Solingers, these bourgeois would have bunged me into jail, where I would probably have been left as an expiatory sacrifice for the Prussian gentlemen.[2] And I know full well that, during the whole period of the Lassallean triumphal processions, the Solingers did not behave as disciples of the new teaching, but as people who had belonged to the socialist movement for many years, who could, of course, join the new Association,[3] but did not need to learn anything from it. And I know very well, how, when Lassalle was being idolised as a new messiah, Friend Klein had the courage to remind him and the workers that the people round the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had already contributed something towards the independence of the workers.[4]
Thus, it is doubly painful to me that my own means do not permit me to give the cooperative a helping hand in a way that would be of special use to it. The little money I have is so tied up that, with the best will in the world—and certainly for the next few years at least — I cannot get at it, not even for my personal ends. I can thus only dispose of my income, which is not brilliant in the circumstances here. But to show my good will, at least, I enclose 50 thaler in one Prussian banknote I. Lit. C. N. 108,126; I would ask you to send me the relevant bond title; the interest,
however, should be credited not to me, but to the reserve fund of the cooperative.
Together with Marx, with whom I have discussed the matter,[5] I have looked around to see whether we might drum up money for the cooperative in some other way. Marx knows some people who have means, and who can be assumed to have good will. But the man[6] through whom we would have to manoeuvre this is away for a number of months, and until then nothing can be done. We intend to do the following: if we succeed in interesting these people in the matter, we shall ask them to send somebody to Solingen to inspect the state of the cooperative himself. It would then be necessary for this person to be shown all the books and records and be provided with all the necessary explanations with the greatest frankness. Otherwise, you cannot ask people to put money into a business and, if I were myself in a position to advance a larger sum, then I would come to Solingen and ask for the same. In business matters everybody has the duty to look out for himself, since anybody can make a mistake, particularly somebody who is interested in a certain thing. In addition, such a person—who naturally would be a complete stranger to Solin- gen—would have to give his word of honour that he would make no use of the information thus obtained. And when this person has convinced himself of the reliability of the business and the trustworthiness of the management, we hope a decent sum will be taken up in bonds.
I naturally give you this simply as our plan of operations, and would not like you to set great hopes in it already, as it is clear that we cannot just dispose of other people's money. I would not for the world wish the cooperative, basing itself upon such prospects, which might come to fruition at the earliest in months, or perhaps not at all, let itself in for transactions that would tie up its means, and get it into difficulties. I can only promise that we shall do our best in this matter, and remain, with best wishes for the success of the cooperative and the prosperity of all members, with greetings and a handshake
Frederick Engels
My address is now as above.
- ↑ A reference to the letter from Klein and Moll to Engels of 3 December 1869. They wrote about the financial difficulties encountered by the Solingen cooperative for the production of steel and iron goods (see Note 330) and requested Engels for assistance. Inscribed on the letter in Engels' hand is: 'Answered on 8 February 1870. Fifty thaler sent by registered mail, with the interest to be added to the cooperative's reserve fund'.
- ↑ A reference to the revolutionary events that took place in Elberfeld in May 1849. The city Committee of Public Safety appointed Engels supervisor of all works to build defensive works and barricades, and commander of the artillery. Local bourgeoisie, who feared that Engels' authority might become too great, demanded that the Committee issued an order for his arrest. The Solingen workers, with whom Engels had arrived in Elberfeld, and also the workers of Elberfeld were outraged by the bourgeoisie's behaviour and resolutely rose to his defence. Unwilling to be the cause of a split in the insurgents' camp, Engels left Elberfeld for Cologne on 15 May. He gave a detailed account of these events in his report 'Elberfeld' to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 300, 17 May 1849 (see present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 447-49), and in his work 'The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution' (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 159-71).
- ↑ The General Association of German Workers—a political organisation of German workers founded in Leipzig on 23 May 1863, at a meeting of workers' societies. Its foundation was an important step in the advancement of an independent nation-wide working-class movement in Germany and promoted the workers' emancipation from the ideological domination of the liberal bourgeoisie. However, Lassalle, who had been elected chairman, and his followers chose to direct the Association's activities along reformist lines, restricting it to a public campaign for universal suffrage. One of the items on the programme was the establishment of production cooperatives financed by the state, which were expected to resolve social contradictions. The Lassallean leadership of the Association supported the Prussian government's policy of the unification of Germany from above, through dynastic wars.
Thanks to the experience of the working-class movement, and especially the International, and supported by Marx and Engels, the more advanced section of the Association began to drift away from the Lassallean dogmas. The Lassallean leaders, who were afraid to lose their influence among the workers, were forced to manoeuvre. The programme of the Hamburg Congress of the Association (which in its final version appeared in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 98, 21 August 1868) contained points that went against Lassalle's doctrine, i.e., advocated complete political freedom, positively assessed Marx's Capital, and urged the international cooperation of the working class. In the letter 'To the President and Executive Committee of the General Association of German Workers" (see present edition, Vol. 21), a reply to the invitation which had been extended to him, Marx gave his opinion of the programme and, as he remarked in a letter to Engels of 26 August, congratulated the members of the Association on 'having abandoned Lassalle's programme' (see this volume, p. 90).
The Hamburg Congress (22-26 August 1868) adopted important decisions: it approved the strike movement in principle, unanimously acknowledged that 'Marx had rendered outstanding services to the working class with his work Capital', and pointed to the necessity for joint action by the workers of different countries. In fact, however, the Lassallean leaders continued to oppose its affiliation with the International and adhered to their former standpoint.
At the Gotha Congress (May 1875), the General Association of German Workers merged with the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party (the Eisenachers) founded in 1869 and headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht. The united party assumed the name of the Socialist Workers' Party.
- ↑ Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, a leader of the Irish national liberation movement, who was under arrest at the time, was elected to the House of Commons as member for Tipperary on 25 November 1869.
An amnesty in Italy—Engels means a partial amnesty announced in Italy in November 1869 covering individual categories of political offences, specifically, service misdemeanors in the National Guard.
- ↑ See this volume, pp. 395, 396 97.
- ↑ presumably Menke