| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 21 June 1882 |
ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL
IN LEIPZIG
London, 21 June 1882
Dear Bebel,
I shall have to answer your letter from memory, having given it to Tussy for forwarding to Marx[1] since when I have not seen it again.
For the past 3 weeks or so Marx has been staying with his daughter[2] at Argenteuil near Paris, is said to be looking very well, brown as a real 'Moor' (this being his nickname, as you know), and in very good humour, his only ailment now being a bronchial cough. In order to get rid of this he has at last had to do Vogt the favour of becoming a member of the Brimstone gang.[3] For he is undergoing a sulphur cure at the neighbouring town of Enghien. What further peregrinations he makes is for the doctors to decide.
That there will ultimately be a show-down with the bourgeois-minded elements in the party and a parting of the ways between right and left wings is something about which I have long harboured no illusions and, indeed, had already declared desirable in my hand-written commentary[4] on the Jahrbuch article. That you should have come to take the same view can only be most welcome to us. If I did not expressly mention the point in my last letter,[5] it was because I saw no immediate necessity for a split of this kind. Were the gentlemen to decide of their own free will to form a separate right wing, everything would soon be in order. But they are hardly likely to do so; they know they would be an army consisting solely of officers without soldiers, like the 'Robert Blum column' which came over to us in the 1849 campaign and insisted on fighting only 'under the command of that brave man Willich'.[6] Upon our asking how many effectives went to make up this heroic column, we were told — and you can imagine our mirth — one colonel, eleven officers, a bugler and two men. On top of which the colonel was at great pains to look like a stalwart Schinderhannes and had a horse he was unable to ride.— Every one of these gentry wants to be a leader, but they can't even act the part of leader except within our party, and so they will take good care not to provoke a schism. On the other hand they know that, subject as we are to the Anti-Socialist Law, we too have reasons for avoiding internal splits which we cannot debate in an open forum. Hence we shall have to put up with epistolatory and verbal cabalism and jeremiads from these people until we are again in a position to thrash out inside the country itself and before the workers those points on which we differ as to tactics and principles unless, of course, their antics are such that our hand is forced. Meanwhile the Anti-Socialist Law will, one way or another, shuffle off this mortal coil and, as soon as that's been got rid of, the position, or so it seems to me, must be fairly and squarely stated; what should be done next will automatically emerge from the attitude adopted by these gentry.
Once they have organised a separate right wing we shall be able, as and when occasion arises and in so far as it is admissible, to come to an agreement with them as to common action, or even enter into a compact with them, etc. Although this is unlikely to be necessary: the schism itself will lay bare their impotence. They have neither adherents amongst the masses, nor talent, nor knowledge — all they have is pretensions, and those in plenty. However, we shall have to wait and see. Whatever happens, it will serve to elucidate the situation and we shall be rid of an element that in no way belongs to us.
There is no need to fear that, in such a case, we shall no longer have any presentable candidates for the Reichstag. That is a pure figment. If a working man in the Reichstag now and then says I when he ought to say me, all we need ask is how long the Hohenzollerns, let alone field marshals, have been able to distinguish between I and me. Frederick William III and his adored Louise perpetrated more howlers in the matter of I and me than did even A. Kapell. And if Bismarck isn't afraid of appointing to his economics council workers who speak ungrammatically, but vote grammatically, can we afford to jib? But I know that to many it's an abomination. To us not in the least. And it would put an end to the utterly senseless practice of our deputies, which is supposed to be 'democratic' but isn't, whereby every man must speak in turn. How could any party possess as many good parliamentary speakers as that, and what is supposed to happen when there are, say, 200 of our men in the Reichstag?
But of one thing you may be sure: When it comes to a show-down with these gentry and the party's left wing declares itself, we shall go along with you whatever the circumstances, and do so actively and with our visors up. If I did not contribute to the Sozialdemokrat in my own name before,[7] this was due solely to the influence so long exerted upon the paper by these people and the prolonged absence of any guarantee that they would not regain it.
As you know, there's a split in the workers' party in Paris. The Egalité people (our best, Guesde, Deville, Lafargue, etc.) were unceremoniously thrown out by those on the Prolétaire (Malon, Brousse, etc.) at the recent congress of the Centre of France. The Sozialdemokrat rightly censured this procedure in a passage which the Égalité translated. Thereupon the Prolétaire replied, saying that its own point of view concerning this matter had been put to the German party leadership with whom it had since been in complete accord.[8]
Do you know anything about this? The Prolétaire people are the most egregious liars; but on the other hand I recall all too many instances of stupendous blunders perpetrated in the Leipzig Volksstaat and Vorwärts in regard to French affairs and persons. Can you tell me anything about what actually happened? I shall try and let you have the cutting from the Prolétaire. Malon, Brousse & Co. are finding their labours as workers' candidates unduly tedious and are therefore consorting with sundry radical bourgeois and literati, and inviting others of that ilk to join forces with them; they imagine that they will thereby get themselves elected more quickly. They are fighting the Egalité with the same old infamous weapons used by the Bakuninists.
Your
F. E.