| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 11 October 1884 |
ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL
IN PLAUEN NEAR DRESDEN
London, 11 October 1884
Dear Bebel,
I really must apologise for not having got round to answering your two letters of 8 June and the 3rd inst. until today. But since the begin-ning of June I have been able to sit at my desk and write only at the cost of some pain and in defiance of doctor's orders. For almost 18 months now, my movements have been hampered by a peculiar ail-ment which somewhat mystifies the doctors; I have had to abandon completely my old way of life, which entailed much movement, and have, in particular, been prevented from writing. Only for the past 10 days or so have I been enabled by mechanical appliances to move about with a certain amount of freedom and I believe that, once these appliances have been properly adjusted, I shall be more or less my old self again; apart from the discomfort I have suffered, the thing is of no great significance and will, I hope, gradually disappear altogether.
However, if I could not write, I could at least dictate — I dictated the whole of the 2nd book of Capital from the ms., and practically got it ready for the press, as well as revised the first 3/8 of the English translation[1] and have, besides, perused all kinds of other things, so that I have got through quite a fair amount of work.
At the same time as this, you will be getting a copy of my newly published work[2] ; I shall make sure it goes off.
All day my head has been full of electoral agitation.[3] Our great triennial trial is an event of European significance by comparison with which the anxious journeyings of no matter how many empe-rors 297 are as nothing. I well remember how thunderstruck Europe was in 1875 by our people's electoral victories[4] and how Bakuninist anarchism was banished from the scene in Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain. And just now another such result is urgently required. In Europe, at any rate, those caricatures of anarchists à la Most, who have already sunk from the level of a Rinaldo Rinaldini to and below that of a Schinderhannes[5] if not lower, would in their turn — at least so far as Europe was concerned — succumb to a similar knock-out blow, and thus save us a deal of toil and trouble. In America, where sects continue to proliferate, these could then simply be allowed to die off gradually; after all, did not Karl Heinzen manage to remain alive there for 25 years after he was dead and buried in Europe?[6] The French in the provinces, who are forging ahead most manfully, would be considerably encouraged and the Parisian masses be given a further impulse towards emancipating themselves from their posi-tion as appendage of the extreme Left. Here in England, where the Reform Bill has given new power to the workers,[7] the impulse would come just in time for the next elections in 1885 and might pro-vide the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION—which merely consists on the one hand of literati, on the other of the remnants of old sects and, thirdly, of a sentimental public — with the opportunity of becoming a real party. In America, it only requires an event of this kind to make the English-speaking workers at last realise what power is theirs if they choose to make use of it. And in Italy and Spain it would deal a fresh blow to the doctrinaire anarchist rhetoric which still continues to flourish there. In short, the victories you achieve will take effect, from Siberia to California, and from Sicily to Sweden.
But how will the new 'parliamentary group' turn out? Many of the new prospective candidates are quite unknown to me and what I know of the majority of 'educated' ones is not altogether to their credit. The Anti-Socialist Law makes it all too easy for bourgeois and bourgeois-inspired socialists to satisfy the electorate and to in-dulge their own urge for self-advancement. Not that it isn't perfectly in order for such men to be put up and elected in comparatively backward constituencies. But they are likewise invading the old con-stituencies, which deserve better representatives, and in this they are supported by people who ought to know better. I am not at all sure how the new parliamentary group will turn out, and still less what it will do. The division into proletarian and bourgeois camps is becom-ing ever more pronounced and, once the bourgeois elements have plucked up the courage to outvote the proletarian, a breach might be provoked. This is a possibility which should, I think, be kept in view. If they provoke the breach — something that will call for a bit more Dutch courage — it won't be too bad. I am still of the opinion that, so long as the Anti-Socialist Law continues in force, the breach should not be provoked by us; but if it does come, then you should go to with a will, in which case I shall also put my shoulder to the wheel.
I am glad to hear that the colonial racket is not proving attrac-tive.[8] It is the best card Bismarck has played, nicely calculated to appeal to the philistine and replete, not only with illusory hopes but also with horrendously heavy costs, which will be recovered only by degrees. Bismarck and his colonies remind me of the crazy (really idiotic) last Duke of Bernburg[9] who remarked in the early forties: I am going to have a railway, even if it costs me a thousand talers. What 1,000 talers are to the cost of a railway, so the colonial budget adumbrated by Bismarck and his fellow-philistines is to the actual costs involved. For in this case I consider Bismarck fool enough to be-lieve that Lüderitz and Woermann would bear the costs.
Apropos Bismarck. At a conference of engineers, a friend of ours met Bismarck's partner in the Varziner Paper Mill (Behrens), and from him learned a good deal about Bismarck's uncouth behaviour. A true Prussian Junker, on rare occasions and by a painful effort ca-pable of good manners at most in the drawing-room, but who other-wise allows his brutality free rein. You know all about that, however. Having asked a factory inspector what his salary was and learned that it was 1,000 talers, he remarked: 'In that case you are dependent on bribes.' But the really interesting thing was Bismarck's telling the afore-mentioned Behrens that the only speaker in the Reichstag worthy of the name, and one to whom everyone always listened, was August Bebel.
The more often you write and tell me about the situation in Ger-many, and in particular about industrial developments, the better pleased I am. If I do not always reply in detail it is because, in this in-stance, I am merely your pupil — the more gladly in that the only in-formation I can regard as wholly reliable is that provided by you. On the whole, German industry remains what it has always been: it man-ufactures those articles which the British consider too insignificant, and the French too common, but does so on a very large scale; Ger-man industry still depends for its subsistence on 1) the theft of pat-terns from abroad and 2) the free gift of ordinary surplus value to the purchasers, whereby it is alone enabled to compete, and the exaction of inordinate surplus value by forcing down wages, which alone en-ables it to exist. This means, however, that while the struggle between worker and capitalist may stagnate in some places (where abnormal wages have already become the norm), in most it is growing more acute by reason of ever-rising pressure. At all events, 1848 marked the beginning of an industrial revolution in Germany which will yet give the worthy bourgeois pause for thought. Goodbye for now.
Your old friend
F. E.