Letter to Karl Marx, July 19, 1877

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 July 1877


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

Ramsgate, 19 July 1877
2 Adelaide Gardens

Dear Moor,

I too shall write to Wiede[2] saying that, owing to lack of time, I can make no promises, let alone keep them. Unfortunately one cannot give the true, or rather intrinsic, reasons which you so rightly adduce. Besides—what do we know about Mr Wiede's ability to run a scientific review? Or even—on crucial occasions, of which surely there will shortly be more—about his reliability or merely his good will?

Herewith the latest from Wilhelm.[3] As regards the manuscript,[4] all I told him in my reply was that I would send the letter to you.[5]

While in the cachot[6] he actually polished off three complete articles which appear in Nos. 80 and 81 of the Vorwärts[7] Pitiable prevarication, a splendid example of how he would paraphrase your Critique of the Programme, turning it into a glorification of the same. I rebuffed his request for an article on the war, saying I had no wish to compete for space in the Vorwärts with the worthy socialists of the future, or to give further cause for clamorous protests that I fill the paper with abstruse stuff of no interest to the bulk of the readers, who evidently prefer fantasy to fact.[8]

It's only a pity that our people in Germany have such lamentable opponents. If there were, on the bourgeois side, just one competent man with a knowledge of economics, he would soon put these gentlemen in their places and open their eyes to their own confusion. But what can be the upshot of a battle in which the only weapons on either side are commonplaces and philistian drivel! As a counterpart in Germany to the learned bourgeois noddle, a new German vulgar socialism is evolving that is a worthy successor to the old 'true socialism' of 1845.[9]

The Turks will have to hurry if the affair is to turn out satisfactorily. Should they allow the Russians in Bulgaria and on the southern slopes of the Balkans to establish a quadrilateral of Russian fortresses,[10] the situation might become chronic there, and in that case a thrust towards Constantinople would not be impossible, i.e. one having an eye to the purely moral effect as in 1828—or to treachery. And treachery would seem to be quite on the cards. That treachery there was at Nikopol—otherwise of no great importance after the Russian crossing—seems clear to me. Never before have 6,000 Turks, with a ditch and wall in front of them, surrendered without assault—except at Varna in 1828.[11] I get quite nervous, what with the newspapers arriving twice a day and bringing news of the Russians' activity and the unfailing inaction of the Turks; it was no worse than this even in 1828 when there was no Turkish army at all.

You really ought to go and see Gumpert and get him to give you something for your insomnia; he's still there and the trip will do you good. Don't let the thing go too far this time—I imagine you will be going to Karlsbad again in the middle of August, and until then you have a month which you would surely do better to spend in decent health. Things aren't going too well here either.[12] Since yesterday, for no apparent reason, Lizzie has been extremely unwell; the magic powers of sea-bathing have failed her for the first time and I'm beginning to get seriously alarmed.

Kindest regards to your wife, Tussy and Lenchen as well as the Longuets and Lafargues and yourself from us all.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ This letter was published in English for the first time, in an abridged form, in: K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Letters. The Personal Correspondence, 1844-1877. Edited by Fr. J. Raddatz, Boston, Toronto, [1981].
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 241.
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Liebknecht
  4. ↑ After the leaders of the Eisenach party had read the Critique of the Gotha Programme, the manuscript was returned to Marx. Planning a pamphlet devoted to the Gotha Programme, Liebknecht asked Engels in a letter of 13 July 1877 for a copy of Marx's manuscript as he did not have one.
  5. ↑ Engels' letter has not been found.
  6. ↑ cell
  7. ↑ W. Liebknecht, 'Das Ketzergericht in Berlin', Vorwärts, No. 80, 11 July 1877; 'Die Rothen wider die Blauen. MI', Vorwärts, Nos. 80 and 81, 11 and 13 July 1877.
  8. ↑ At the 29 May sitting of the Gotha Congress of the German Socialist Workers' Party (27-29 May 1877), Dühring's followers demanded that the publication of Engels' Anti-Dühring be stopped in the party's central organ. The proposal was made by Johann Most and Julius Vahlteich. August Bebel proposed that Engels' work appear as a separate edition rather than in the Vorwärts. Referring to the resolution of the 1876 congress concerning the publication of Engels' articles, Wilhelm Liebknecht suggested that they should be carried either by the scientific supplement to the Vorwärts or in the Zukunft magazine, or as separate pamphlets. Parts II and III of Anti-Dühring appeared in the supplement to the Vorwärts.
  9. ↑ 'True socialism'—an ideological trend widespread in Germany in the mid-1840s. The 'true socialists'—Karl Grün, Moses Hess, Hermann Kriege and others—indulged in the sentimental preaching of love and brotherhood and of pseudo-socialist ideas, and denied the need for political action and a revolution. Marx and Engels criticised this trend of the reactionary German petty bourgeoisie particularly in The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5), in the Circular Against Kriege, German Socialism in Verse and Prose, and also in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Vol. 6).
  10. ↑ Engels is referring to the establishment of a quadrilateral of Russian fortresses to counterbalance the Turkish one on Bulgarian territory. Rustchuk, Shumla, Silistria and Varna were a stronghold where the main Turkish forces were concentrated at the outset of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.
  11. ↑ On 15-16 (3-4) July 1877, after a fairly brief storming of the besieged Turkish fortress of Nikopol (southern bank of the Danube), its garrison headed by the commandant surrendered, and the Russian troops had no difficulty seizing the town. Varna had been captured by the Russian army on 11 October (29 September) 1828 during the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-29.
  12. ↑ Engels and his sick wife stayed in Ramsgate between 11 July and 28 August 1877.