Letter to Eduard Bernstein, August 22, 1884

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 August 1884


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


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

[Worthing, 22 August 1884]

[...][1] index for Capital would be highly desirable.[2] But why not all at one go when the whole thing is done? That will be next year for sure, provided I don't collapse, of which there is no prospect at present. For your own information, The History of Theory has also been largely completed. The ms. of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1860-62 contains, as I think I showed you when you were here, approx. 500 quarto pages on Theories of Surplus Value, a great deal of which must, it is true, be deleted because it has since been rewritten, but there will still be enough of it.

In his Schulze-Bastiat, Lassalle cited Rodbertus in a connection that might in anyone else's case have earned him intense hostility, i.e. as the authority for and/or discoverer of a trifle. The Briefe[3] may, it is true, have contributed to the Rodbertus cult. But what has done so more than anything else is, firstly, the desire among non-communists to set alongside Marx a rival who is himself a non-communist and, secondly, those people's unscientific confusion. To all those who loiter on the state socialist fringes of our party, make sympathetic speeches but nevertheless want to avoid the hostility of the police, His Excellency Rodbertus is a godsend.

The move of the Neue Zeit to Hamburg may after all be only the prelude to its end.[4] Of course I know nothing about those presently in charge of the Hamburg office.

Last Tuesday[5] we had a revolution here in Worthing. A shop belonging to a Salvation Army fanatic was attacked and broken up; the man fired his revolver, wounding three people. Next day windows were smashed in the lock-up; that same evening 40 dragoons and 50 police moved in (the little place has about 10,000 inhabitants) to clear the streets, whereupon the good citizens, knowing themselves to be innocuous, refused to budge and in several instances received a merciless beating; now all is calm. Really, the tomfoolery one witnesses. Both sides, SALVATIONISTS and ANTI-SALVATIONISTS, are secretly in the pay of the bourgeoisie.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ The first part of the letter is missing.
  2. ↑ On 18 August 1884 Eduard Bernstein wrote to inform Engels that translation work had been completed on Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (see Note 118). He also offered to compile an index to Capital together with Karl Kautsky.
  3. ↑ The reference is probably to Rodbertus' Briefe und Socialpolitische Aufsaetze.
  4. ↑ In their letters to Engels of 16 July 1884 Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein informed him that the Stuttgart publisher Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Dietz was planning to cease issuing Die Neue Zeit because of financial difficulties. However, a month later, on 18 August, Kautsky wrote to tell Engels that he and Dietz had discussed plans for moving the journal's place of publication to Hamburg. This plan was not carried out and Die Neue Zeit continued to appear in Stuttgart up to 1923.
  5. ↑ 19 August