| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 5 June 1884 |
ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN
IN ZURICH
London, 5 June 1884
Dear Ede,
Have spent a week at the seaside.[1] While there I got a nasty cut on my right index finger and hence can only write briefly and badly. So Kautsky will have to wait, the Sozialdemokrat being more important than the Neue Zeit and, in the latter's case, the circumstances are such that it makes no difference anyway whether I stick my oar in or not. Besides I consider that all Kautsky's moves, in so far as he has told me about them and in so far as I am able to judge the situation, have been absolutely correct.[2]
As regards the Sozialdemokrat, it is a rather different matter. Now that their worships, the wailers, have formally combined into a party and constitute a majority in the parliamentary group, now that they have recognised, and are exploiting, the power they have acquired thanks to the Anti-Socialist Law, I consider it to be more than ever our duty to defend all our own vantage points to the utmost, especially our vantage point on the Sozialdemokrat, which is the most important of all.
These people live off the Anti-Socialist Law. Were there to be free discussion tomorrow, I should be all for letting fly at once, in which case they would soon come to grief. But so long as there is no free discussion, so long as they control all the papers printed in Germany and their numbers (as the majority of the 'leaders') enable them to make the very most of gossip, intrigue, whispering campaigns, we, I believe, must steer clear of anything that might lead to a breach, or rather might lay the blame for that breach at our door. That is the universal rule when there is a struggle within one's own party, and now it applies more than ever. The breach must be so contrived that we continue to lead the old party while they either resign or are chucked out.
Then the timing. Just now everything is in their favour. We cannot, after the breach, stop them from slandering and reviling us in Germany, from posing as the representatives of the masses (for the masses do elect them after all!). We have only the Sozialdemokrat and the foreign press. They can gain a hearing, we can only do so with difficulty. So if we precipitate a breach at this moment, the great mass of the party will claim not without justification that we have sown discord, have disorganised the party at the very time when, beset by dangers, it is laboriously reorganising itself. If we can avoid it, the breach ought to be postponed, and this is still my view, until some change in Germany gives us rather more elbow room.
If a breach becomes inevitable nevertheless, it must not be of the personal kind, it must not involve any rows (or what could be represented as such) between e. g. you and the Stuttgarters; rather the occasion for it must be a quite specific point of principle, i. e. in this case of an infringement of the programme. Rotten though the programme may be, a cursory perusal of it will enable you to find enough in it to support your argument.[3] The programme, however, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the parliamentary group. The breach must be prepared in advance to the extent that Bebel, for one, agrees to it and at once goes along with you. And, thirdly, you must know what you want and are able to do once the breach has been made. To allow the Sozialdemokrat to pass into the hands of these people would be to make the German party the laughing-stock of the entire world.
The worst thing of all in such a case is impatience; decisions made on the spur of the moment and dictated by passion always seem to oneself tremendously noble and heroic, but they regularly lead to blunders, as I know only too well from a hundred examples from my own practical experience.
So: 1) postpone the breach for as long as possible, 2) if it becomes inevitable, make sure that it emanates from them, 3) get everything ready in the meantime, 4) do nothing without Bebel, for one, and possibly also Liebknecht, who will again be good for something (possibly too good) once he sees that the thing is inevitable and, 5) defend your vantage point on the Sozialdemokrat envers et contre tous,[4] down to your last cartridge. That is my view.
You could certainly repay the 'condescension' of these gentlemen a thousand times over. You're certainly never at a loss for a ready answer in other respects and can certainly confront those jackasses with enough irony as well as disdain to make them rue this behaviour. There can be no serious discussion with ignoramuses like these who glory in their own ignorance; rather, they must be derided, hoist with their own petard, etc.
Don't forget either that, should things come to a head, my hands are very much tied by the vast amount of work ahead of me and I shan't be able to join in the fray to the extent I might wish to do.
I should also be grateful if, instead of general complaints about the philistines, you could give me a few details of what they object to and what they demand. Nota bene, the longer you negotiate with them, the greater the amount of self-incriminating material they must inevitably supply you with!
Write and tell me how far I ought to go into these matters when corresponding with Bebel; I shall have to write to him shortly and intend to put off doing so until Monday the 9th inst., by which time I may have had a reply from you. Regards to Kautsky.
Your
F.E.