Letter to Oscar Schmidt, July 19, 1878

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 July 1878


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


ENGELS TO OSCAR SCHMIDT

IN STRASBOURG

[Draft]

[London, 19 July 1878]

Dear Sir,

In yesterday's no. of Nature I see an announcement of a lecture to be given by you at the natural scientists' conference in Kassel 'on the relation of Darwinism to Social Democracy'.[1]

That the advocates of Darwinism in Germany would not be able to evade the necessity of adopting a position vis-à-vis the socialist world outlook was something socialists had foreseen long before Mr Virchow so amiably tipped the wink.40S Whatever that position may turn out to be, it can only contribute to the clarification of the situation and of men's minds. On the other hand, it is desirable from both points of view that this should be done in full awareness of the facts.

By way of making a contribution of my own, I am taking the liberty of sending you by post a copy of my work Herr Eugen Dühring's etc., which has just come out.[2] In it, I have endeavoured to give, among other things, an outline of the relation of scientific socialism to the propositions of modern theoretical natural science in general, and to Darwin's theory in particular. The passages relating to Darwinism are marked.

With your permission, I shall in due course and from my own standpoint subject your lecture to the kind of ruthless criticism which alone does justice to free science and which any man of science must welcome, even when applied to himself.[3]

  1. ↑ On 18 July 1878, the London journal Nature (Vol. XVIII, No. 455, p. 316) printed the programme of the 51st congress of natural scientists and physicians scheduled for 18-24 September in Kassel. Among the reports to be read was Oscar Schmidt's 'On the Relation of Darwinism to Social Democracy'. On 23 July, Oscar Schmidt stated his willingness to send Engels a copy of his report, which was to appear in the November issue of the Deutsche Rundschau. It also came out as a pamphlet: O. Schmidt, Darwinismus und Socialdemocratie, Bonn, 1878.
  2. ↑ The first complete edition of Engels' Herrn Eugen Dühring's Umwälzung der Wissenschaft. Philosophie. Politische Oekonomie. Sozialismus, with the author's preface, was published in Leipzig in early July 1878.
  3. ↑ Engels intended to subject to criticism the Darwinians', including Oscar Schmidt's, writings against socialism in his Dialectics of Nature (see present edition, Vol. 25, p. 314), but did not carry out this plan.