Letter to Eduard Bernstein, November 13, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 13 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, 13 November 1883

Dear Bernstein,

Encl. for Vera Zasulich.[1]

As to Quarck,[2] you have taken a load off my mind. I have written telling him that you were the first to apply and that you would be translating The Poverty etc. The man has thus been disposed of. His pamphlet[3] is 'Quarck'. Marx would wring my neck were I to agree to his being translated by this boastful Hohenzollern-worshipper and conservative state socialist.

But it behoves us to make a proper job of it. Nothing pedestrian; the thing is by no means so easy. You might, if you have got as far, send me the ms. of the first sheet; that would give us an opportunity to agree upon the whole modus operandi.

I have not been sent Plekhanov's pamphlet[4] ; only the Manifesto and Wage Labour and Capital. From this I learn that it has appeared in a German edition.[5] Why has no one deigned to send me and Marx's heirs a copy?

Nor have I ever received a copy of the new edition of the Manifesto (German).[6] Nor yet of the 3rd edition of Entwicklung.[7] And I have never heard a word of what became of 'The Mark', which had been trimmed to size expressly for a separate edition. This, of course, only happens to one when 'easy-going' Germans are involved.

Of the portraits of me in existence there is only one that you have got; I don't imagine that the man (in Brighton) would quote a cheap price for prints in bulk, but I shall do what I can. So you see, I bear no grudge against your office,[8] but their worships could be a little less touchy about a bad joke, especially since they devote a full half column of every number to that kind of thing.

Beware of the Droit à la paresse. Parts of it were too much even for the French and it was much exploited by Malon and Brousse at Lafargue's expense. You must certainly see it that the wailers[9] are not provided with an easy excuse just now; even friend Bebel is still somewhat Germanic in this respect. Which reminds me of the poem about the 'arse'. If the author is responsible for all the heroic deeds enumerated therein, he is entitled to celebrate them in song. Besides, I am speaking of the sex organs, and it is difficult for me to enter into discussion with people who include their bottoms under that heading.

It certainly must have been hard for our friend Lavrov to have set his hand to a document saying that he and his Russians 'had definitively broken with their anarchist traditions'.[10] Not that he set much store by them, but all the same there was about them something attractively 'Russian'. Besides, he is a thoroughly honest old fellow who is, however, invariably the hen that hatches out ducks' eggs in the form of 'Russian youth' and watches aghast as the ducklings set out across the HORRIBLE water. This has happened to him umpteen times.

Kautsky's visit will give me much pleasure; I trust I shall be up to the mark again by then.

Yours,

F. E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 65-66.
  2. ↑ Ibid., p. 66.
  3. ↑ [M. Quarck,] Kommerzienrath Adolf Fleischmann als Nationalökonom... In German 'Quark' = curd or cottage cheese; fig. rubbish.
  4. ↑ G. V. Plekhanov, Социализм и политическая борьба (Socialism and Political Struggle).
  5. ↑ Engels is referring to Georgi Plekhanov's translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels which appeared in 1882 (see Note 78) and also to Marx's Wage Labour and Capital which was published in Russian in Geneva in the autumn of 1883 as the fourth book in the Russian Social-Revolutionary Library. The cover carried the note 'translation from the German edition of 1880 (Breslau)'.
  6. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party.
  7. ↑ F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
  8. ↑ i.e. Der Sozialdemokrat
  9. ↑ Wailers (Heuler) — the name the republican democrats in Germany in 1848-49 applied to the moderate constitutionalists; here Engels uses the label to describe adherents of the Right wing of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany.
  10. ↑ Engels is quoting from the announcement of the publication of the Library of Contemporary Socialism series issued by Russian Social-Democratic emigres in Geneva on 25 September 1883. The announcement set out the main aims and tasks of the first Russian Marxist organisation, the Emancipation of Labour group. It read in part, 'In now changing their programme to serve their struggle against absolutism and the organisation of the Russian working class in a separate party with a definite socio-political programme, the former members of the Black Redistribution group hereby form a new group — Emancipation of Labour — and definitively break with the old anarchist tendencies'. The group regarded the following as its main tasks: 1) the translation into Russian and dissemination of the major works of K. Marx and F. Engels and their followers; 2) a critique of the Narodniks and efforts to deal with current problems of Russian life.