| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 8 November 1884 |
ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY
IN ZURICH
London, 8 November 1884
Dear Kautsky,
Between the time your letter arrived and today the elections — i. e. five years — have supervened.[1] So I shall revert to it only briefly.
Herewith Liebknecht's letter — typical. Why you should not be able to edit the Neue Zeit just as well from London as from Zurich is in-conceivable. Equally so, why your being in London should mean that you'll be lost to the German party. However, this letter provides no proof that Liebknecht — under the influence of different surround-ings and a different frame of mind — might not very soon think and write quite differently. The fact that he was only partially successful at Offenbach — we over here don't yet know the results of the second ballot — may have given him reason to pause.[2] The bit about the 'impregnable' position in Stuttgart[3] is killing. Like the NCO in the French revolutionary army telling his bare-footed squad about the speech made by the people's representative: Le représentant a dit: Avec du fer et du pain on va jusqu'en Chine. Il n'a pas parlé de chaussures[4] Impregnable — if there were no police!
I am writing to Dietz telling him to send me the proofs of the preface[5] in galley form since a number of alterations will be neces-sary. With this sort of thing, one cannot be too careful about one's mode of expression if one is not to find oneself pinned down to some ill-chosen or ambiguous word.
The elections will elicit an echo throughout Europe and America. And what a triumphant day it was! The Kölnische concedes us 3/4 of a million votes and, in the hope of obtaining their support in the sec-ond ballot, is grovelling before the 4,000 who voted for Bebel in Cologne. To me the Kölnische is more important than any other paper because the Rhenish bourgeois are still the most advanced bour-geois in Germany and the Kölnische is their mirror. And hence this complete volte-face, this sudden respect for a new power, is all the more significant.
But how truly splendid it is! For the first time in history a strong, coherent workers' party exists as a real political power, evolved and come of age amidst the harshest persecution, irresistibly capturing one position after another, free of all philistinism in the most philis-tine, free of all chauvinism in the most cock-a-hoop country in Europe. A power the existence and rise of which is as incomprehensible and mysterious to governments and the old ruling classes as was the rising tide of Christianity to the authorities of the declining Roman Empire, but which is working its way to the fore as certainly and in-exorably as once Christianity — so certainly that the rate at which its velocity will increase, and hence the actual time of its ultimate vic-tory, already permits of mathematical calculation. Helped on its way rather than suppressed by the Anti-Socialist Law,[6] it deigns only to spurn Bismarck's social reform and the last desperate measure to suppress it momentarily — by fomenting a premature coup — would elicit nothing but immortal laughter.
It's strange. The best aid to our progress is precisely the backward-ness of Germany's industrial position. In England and France the transition to large-scale industry is pretty well complete. The condi-tions in which the proletariat now finds itself have already become stable; agricultural districts and industrial districts, large-scale indus-try and cottage industries have become separated and, as far as is in fact possible in modern industry, firmly established. Even the fluctua-tions inseparable from the ten-year cycle of crises have become habi-tual conditions of existence. The political, if not actually socialist, movements that arose during the period of industrial revolution — immature as they were — have failed, leaving behind them discourage-ment rather than encouragement. Bourgeois capitalist develop-ment has proved stronger than revolutionary counter-pressure; if there is to be another revolt against capitalist production there must be another, more powerful impulse, such as the ousting of England from the dominant position she has hitherto occupied in the world market, or some special revolutionary opportunity in France.
In Germany, on the other hand, large-scale industry goes back no further than 1848 and is the greatest legacy of that year. The indus-trial revolution is still going on, and doing so under the most unfa-vourable conditions. Cottage industries, based on small-, free- or lease-holdings, still continue to struggle against machinery and steam; the foundering smallholder looks to a cottage industry as his last sheet anchor, but no sooner is he industrialised than he is again subjected to pressure from machinery and steam. Subsidiary income from the land, the domestic potato plot, provides the capitalist with the most powerful pretext for depressing wages; he can now present his foreign customers with the entire normal surplus value — the only way he can compete in the world market—the whole of his profits being derived from what he deducts from the normal wages. Along-side this there is the complete subversion of all living conditions in the industrial centres as a result of the enormous strides made by large-scale industry. Thus the whole of Germany, with perhaps the exception of the Junker-dominated North-East, is becoming swept into the social revolution, the smallholder drawn into industry, and patriarchal circles being precipitated into the movement, and thus is far more fundamentally revolutionised than England or France. This social revolution of which the eventual outcome is the expro-priation of the smallholder and handicraftsman is, however, taking place at the very time when a German, Marx, was destined to make a theoretical analysis of the results of historical developments, both theoretical and practical, in England and France, to elucidate the whole nature of capitalist production and hence its ultimate historical fate, and thus provide the German proletariat with a programme such as the English and the French, its precursors, have never pos-sessed. A more fundamental revolutionising of society on the one hand, greater lucidity of intellect on the other — that is the secret of the irresistible progress made by the German workers' move-ment.
I had meant to write to Ede as well, but it has grown too late — moreover Pumps has arrived with her little girl with whom I shall have to play. Aveling and Tussy are arriving at 5 and at 7. Morris wants to hold a grand consultation with me. So for the time being Ede will have to content himself with my good wishes.
Your
F. E.