Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, April 24, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 24 April 1883


First published abridged in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F.A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE 2 7

IN HOBOKEN

London, 24 April 1883

Dear Sorge,

Enclosed a line or two for Gartman from his friend Brocher, a mud- dle-headed anarchist but a sterling chap. Perhaps you would be good enough to send it on.

The Volkszeitung has perpetrated follies enough, though still not as ma- ny as I expected. Nevertheless they have all contributed their share, Schewitsch, Cuno, Douai, Hepner. Here was a quartet performed by would-be know-alls who, JOINTLY AND SEVERALLY, knew damned little. However I felt impelled to write a line to the editors,[1] pointing out that they had printed my telegram to you b as though it had been addressed to them and had, in my second to them,c inserted a false state- ment to the effect that Marx had died in Argenteuil.[2] We did not, I told them, stand for that sort ofthing over here; as a result they had made it impossible for me to send them any further reports and, in the event of their again venturing to make such misuse of my name, I should be compelled to ask you to announce at once in public that the whole thing was a falsification on their part. Those gentlemen ought to confine their Yankee HUMBUG to themselves. Besides, the Americans are far more honest; according to the Volkszeitung, I was sent a tele- gram 28 which I never received and I was almost inclined to believe that the gentlemen on the Volkszeitung had pocketed the money for themselves. Now Van Patten writes to say that there hadn't been any money in the first place. I am now compelled to make this publicly known over here, for otherwise it would be said that I had withheld the telegram from the Paris press and the Sozialdemokrat. The answer re Most, which I sent Van Patten in response to his enquiry,[3] will doubtless have already been published by him by the time this ar- rives.

At the Copenhagen Congress ' 5 it was resolved that Liebknecht's and Bebel's trip to America should take place next spring.[4] It has to do with money for the election campaign in 1884-85. (All this is be- tween ourselves.) Liebknecht has proposed to Tussy that she should ac- company him as his secretary and she is very keen to go; so it might easily be that you see her there before long. Generally speaking we have not made any plans yet. The literary work (third edition, Volume I of Capital, editing of Volume II, the ms. of which has been found though as yet there is no knowing to what extent it is ready for printing or requires supplementing, ' 7 biography based on the enormous correspondence,[5] etc.) takes up all my spare time, besides which Tussy has a mass of literary ENGAGEMENTS to get through.

You are, of course, fully entitled to print the passages on Henry George in Marx's letters.3 ' The question is, however, whether it might not be better to wait until I am able to sort out for you the marginal notes made by Marx in his copy of George's book and then do the whole lot at one go. Resumes of the kind Marx provides, theo- retically acute but brief and unaccompanied by examples, are surely still above the head of your average American and after all there is no hurry. I shall take a closer look at the things as soon as I have time. If, in the meanwhile, you send me a copy of the relevant passage in Marx's letter, it will make the job simpler.[6]

Pamphlet herewith. I have only received a few copies myself; the 2nd edition is in the press.2 5 Does Weydemeyer know English now?3 2

His earlier translations were grammatically and stylistically quite un- printable; they would have made us look appalling asses and at the same time exposed the author to ridicule. Anyhow I should like to see a specimen.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'To the Editors of the New Yorker Volkszeitung (18 April 1883). b of 14 March 1883 c F. Engels, 'To the New Yorker Volkszeitung (16 March 1883).
  2. ↑ Marx died in London.
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 9-11.
  4. ↑ The trip was planned for the spring of 1884 with the aim of collecting funds from the workers to finance the election campaign for the Reichstag in the autumn of that year. However, Wilhelm Liebknecht was not able to go to the United States until the autumn of 1886, and with a different aim in mind (see Note 600).
  5. ↑ Engels attached a great deal of importance to publicising Marx's theoretical and practical revolutionary activity. With this aim in mind, he wrote three biographies of Marx at different times — in 1869, 1877 and 1892 — and for different publica tions (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 59-64, Vol. 24, pp. 183-95 and Vol. 27, pp. 332-43). The new biography which Engels planned, taking account of the extensive correspondence and other materials which had survived, and to which he refers in this letter, was not written.
  6. ↑ Ibid., p. 42.