Letter to Eduard Bernstein, December 22, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 December 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, 22 December 1883]

If you have still got The Labour Standard, will you please send it to Lafargue straight away; he gave Shipton's remarks a lambasting in the Cri du Peuple, and wants to have the original as the thing is creating a furore.[1] I wouldn't be able to get hold of another copy before Monday, not to say Thursday[2] (and perhaps not even then).

Have been up again since Saturday[3] but still very wobbly. You gave von der Mark his deserts all right! The fool imagines peo- ple should take account of what he understands by 'State'! [4] Just as Rodbertus criticised Marx for supposing capital to be real capital, rather than Rodbertus' 'notion of capital'.[5] German to the core.

Kautsky back?

Regards, yours,

F.E.

  1. ↑ On 19 December 1883 the Paris newspaper Le Cri du Peuple published an article by Paul Lafargue headed 'L'Assassinat d'O'Donnell'. It denounced the hostile position adopted by George Shipton, editor of the English trade union newspaper The Labour Standard, to the trial, taking place in London at the time, of Patrick O'Donnell, a member of an Irish secret society. On 6 May 1882 members of this society had killed Lord Frederic Cavendish, Principal Secretary for Irish Affairs, and his deputy T. H. Burke. The main witness for the prosecution, James Carey, himself one of the murderers, had subsequently been killed by O'Donnell. Flying in the face of democratic public opinion, The Labour Standard sharply condemned O'Donnell.
  2. ↑ 24 and 27 December accordingly
  3. ↑ The reference is to the third congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany which was held illegally in Copenhagen from 29 March to 2 April 1883, with 60 delegates taking part. The congress was to work out the German Social Democrats' political line on the social reforms being carried out by the bourgeois government, to decide on the party's tactics and the position to be taken by Der Sozialdemokrat, its printed organ, given the Anti-Socialist Law in Germany (see Note 37). The congress unanimously called on the party to expose the demagogy of Bismarck's do mestic policy, endorsed the stance of the main printed organ and the general line of conduct of the parliamentary group (see Note 49). It further made it incumbent on every party member, including the Social-Democratic representatives in the Reichs tag, to observe party discipline and help carry out party decisions (see also Note 16).
  4. ↑ 15 December
  5. ↑ Engels is referring to Johann Karl Rodbertus' letter to Rudolf Hermann Meyer of 20 September 1871. It was published in the book Briefe und socialpolitische Aufsaetze von Dr Rodbertus-Jagetzow. Published by Dr R. Meyer, Vol. 1, Berlin, [1882], p. 111.