Letter to Eduard Bernstein, November 8, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 8 November 1883


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Book I, Moscow, 1924
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

London, 8 November 1883

Dear Bernstein,

I have been keeping to my bed for the past few weeks in order to rid myself of a chronic ailment, mild in itself but tiresome and long neglected; I shall be up again in a few days. Hence my silence. Please accept my apologies and also convey them to Kautsky; I don't know whether he is still in Stuckert.[1]

The article on the right to work[2] was very good and very much à propos. Kautsky had already bombarded me about the same subject[3] and I shall be perfectly willing as soon as it becomes necessary, but I think one should first let these gentlemen compromise themselves a little more; they ought first to formulate more precisely what they mean by it; one must never stop people from giving 'complete and full' expression to their nonsense; only then does one get something really tangible. I hope your article will commit the chaps to this course.

If the Germans in Paris have not had their eyes opened to Malon & Co. now, there's no helping them. Their open alliance with the traitors of the English labour movement, the official representatives of the TRADES UNIONS, has earned them the applause of the entire English bourgeois press from The Times and The Daily News to The Standard.[4] A good thing that Guesde and Lafargue were doing time, thereby enabling this magnificent performance to be put on with no interruptions whatever!

Apropos. Do you know a Dr Moritz[5] Quarck (sic!) In Rudolstadt? This man, with whom I am totally unfamiliar, has referred me to a pamphlet,[6] with which I am equally unfamiliar, attacking one Fleischmann with whom I am even less familiar, and wants to translate The Poverty of Philosophy into German. I have my misgivings.

Well, let me know sometime soon what is going on in the world. I have become so stupid, lolling about in bed, that I can no longer marshal my thoughts.

Yours,

F. E.

  1. ↑ See Engels' letter to Laura Lafargue, 21 March 1887 (present edition, Vol. 48).
  2. ↑ [E. Bernstein,] 'Das Recht auf Arbeit', Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 44, 25 October 1883.
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 56.
  4. ↑ The Times, The Daily News and The Standard of 21 September 1883 carried accounts of a banquet held in London on 20 September by the trade unions in honour of the French Social-Radicals Jules Guesde, Paul Lafargue and Paul Brousse.
  5. ↑ A mistake; should be Max.
  6. ↑ [M. Quarck,] Kommerzienrath Adolf Fleischmann als Nationalökonom und die Thüringer Hausindustrie. A. Fleischmann, Die Sonneberger Spielwaaren Hausindustrie und ihr Handel. See this volume, pp. 66 and 67.