| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 27 August 1881 |
ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY
IN ZURICH
London, 27 August 1881
Dear Mr Kautsky,
In a day or two you will be getting by post 1. The Labour Standard containing your article,[1] in connection with which there have been sundry comic interludes, 2. a Nature of 18 August, 3. your ms. back.
After I had somewhat revised what was an altogether bungled translation, I sent it to Shipton for a leading article. However, the worthy Shipton got it all wrong and complained to me,[2] but as usual too late. God knows what the man took the bit about 'State interference' in favour of the workers to mean — certainly not what it said, nor that such State interference has long existed in England in the shape of FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS ACTS. Still worse: into the words WE DEMAND A GENEVA CONVENTION FOR THE WORKING CLASSES he read a demand by you for the convening of a conference of delegates in Geneva to settle the matter!! What can one do with such an oaf? I made this business the occasion to go ahead with my decision and break with The Labour Standard, as that paper is getting worse rather than better.
In Nature you will find a speech made by John Simon[3] before the international Medical Congress here in which the bourgeoisie is virtually put on the mat by medical science. J. Simon is MEDICAL OFFICER TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL, virtual head of Britain's entire public health inspectorate, and the same who is so frequently and approvingly quoted by Marx in Capital, a man — perhaps the last of the old really professional and conscientious officials of the 1840-60 period who, in the performance of his duty, everywhere found that bourgeois interests were the first obstacle he was obliged to combat. Hence, his instinctive hatred of the bourgeoisie is as violent as it is explicable. Now he, a doctor, finding his own special field invaded by the Church-led bourgeoisie and their anti-vivisection movement, has turned the tables on them. Instead of preaching dull and colourless sermons like Virchow, he goes into the attack comparing the fine scientific experiments made by doctors on animals with the vast commercial experiments made by the bourgeoisie upon the popular masses, thereby placing the question for the first time in its true perspective. An extract from this would make a splendid feuilleton for the Sozialdemokrat.
The Congress, by the way, declared unanimously that vivisection was essential to science.
Your fly-sheet shows that you have inherited something of your mother's gift for short story writing. It pleased me more than anything you have written hitherto. A little more polishing might have enabled you to improve one or two expressions and turns of speech, and I would advise you to do this in the case of a second edition. Literary German is a very clumsy idiom for narrative prose and erudite words such as reaction, which mean nothing to the peasant, ought to be avoided. The thing is worthy of being seriously revised by you along these lines. It is the best fly-sheet I have ever seen.
Your Mostian chaps in Austria will have to learn by painful experience; there are no two ways about it. It's a process during which many otherwise good elements come to grief, but if those elements are positively intent on conspiring for the fun of it and with no particular purpose in mind, there's no helping them. Luckily the proletarian movement has an enormous reproductive capacity.
Viereck and wife had an awful lot of bad weather in Scotland, after which they left for Copenhagen where they have now arrived. They will be remaining there for the time being — address poste restante, Copenhagen.
Our French friends, it seems, are still not satisfied with the many stupidities perpetrated over the past 2 years out of officiousness, cliquism, an itch for oratory, etc. Le Citoyen has, it seems, been sold to the Bonapartists who have not yet unceremoniously kicked our men out, but have stopped their pay and otherwise treated them en canaille, as though trying to push them into striking and so get rid of them. On top of that, all our chaps have fallen out with one another, as so often happens when things go wrong. One of the most unhappy is Brousse, a thoroughly honest chap but a consummate muddle-head and one who positively insists that the entire movement should devote itself to converting erstwhile anarchist friends. It was he, too, who was originally responsible for the crazy resolution concerning the rejection of candidature. For the rest, the steady, peaceful course of events in France can, in the long run, only prove favourable to us. Not until the provinces have been drawn into the movement, as has been happening since 1871, and emerge, as they are increasingly doing, as a power in the land — along normal legal lines, that is,— can an end be put in the interests of us all to the spasmodic form hitherto assumed by developments in France, derived from coups in Paris and for years retarded by reaction in the provinces. Then, when the time has come for Paris to act, it will not have the provinces against it, but behind it.
Kindest regards from all,
Yours
F. Engels