Letter to Eduard Bernstein, October 8, 1885

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 8 October 1885


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


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

London, 8 October 1885

Dear Ede,

I enclose herewith the introduction[1] to the Revelations Concerning the Trial in Cologne.[2] If you want to print it initially as a feuilleton in the Sozialdemokrat, I should have no objection. Only you must come to some arrangement with Schlüter, who is probably awaiting it anxiously. Tell him he will be getting the notes and the proofs of Marx's text tomorrow, as also instructions about what to print of the enclosures from Stieber.[3]

Karl Kautsky will be sending you a few Kölnische Zeitungs containing the first rational report on events in Bulgaria.[4] The correspondent is in Belgrade and is well-informed, and since as yet Bismarck's interests have not provoked a hushing-up order, the report can, in fact, be regarded as an honest one. So the Russians have fallen into their own trap. They forgot that, as a lieutenant in the Prussian Guards, Alexander Battenberg is rightly relying on his 'comrade' William.[5]

You worry too much about someone 'succeeding' you on the Sozialdemokrat. But the best of it is that they couldn't really put anyone in your place; any attempt on the part of those gentry to put one of their milksops would fail because 1) no one of that ilk would voluntarily go into exile, 2) the party would soon put a stop to it, nor would they continue to support such a paper. If you go, the Sozialdemokrat goes with you, and this coincidence is all to the good. August[6] is likewise of the opinion that the Zurich establishments[7] should in all circumstances remain in our hands, as indeed they probably will, since they would only be a burden to others. It is up to you, I believe, to ensure that we retain the press and bookshop, in which case the matter of the Sozialdemokrat will resolve itself— if the worst comes to the worst — through the issue of a new paper after the demise of the present one. But you rate these gentlemen's offensive power too high.

The acquittal in Chemnitz is splendid.[8] So it was too much of a good thing even for a Saxon judiciary.

The French elections mark a great advance. As I had previously said,[9] the scrutin de liste has eliminated the Opportunists. But that it would eliminate them so thoroughly, that the upper, middle and part of the lower middle classes would take refuge with the Monarchists, and do so en masse, was something that could not have been foreseen — not, at any rate, outside France. The Opportunists played at being a 'Directory' and such was their corruption that it far outstripped even that of the Second Empire. But they didn't guarantee your bourgeois the peace and quiet that would be guaranteed him by a monarchy. The relapse into monarchism, here dubbed Orleanism, was all the more natural in that the entire Centre gauche[10] (Ribot, Journal des Débats, etc.) are simply Orleanists disguised as Republicans; so that people prefer genuine Orleanists, and are even content, if there is no other alternative, with Bonapartists and Legitimists. The second ballots may already witness a setback, the bourgeois having taken fright at his own electoral victory, and hence a swing to radicalism. If not there will soon be a set-to.[11]

This much, at any rate, has been won— the ousting of the parties of the Centre, Monarchists versus Radicals, the few Centre Party deputies compelled to choose between joining one or the other. The situation is thus a revolutionary one. No one in France seriously believes in the monarchy as such, if only because of the vast number of Pretenders. But there is some possibility of the Orleanists attempting a coup, in which case there would be a show-down. At all events, this is how the question is presented: either la république en danger,[12] or the setting up of a 'radical' republic. There would seem to be every probability that the latter will prevail. But then the Radicals[13] will not only have to abide by their promises[14] and replace Napoleon's centralised administration with the kind of self-government exercised by the departments and communes between 1792 and 1798; they will also have to rely on the support of the Socialists. We could wish for no more favourable situation. France remains faithful to her own logico-dialectical course of development. Contradictions are never suppressed for very long, but are constantly being fought out. And we can wish for nothing better.

That the Socialists have so few votes (a source of considerable chagrin to Lafargue) is perfectly natural. The French working man does not chuck away his ballot paper. And since in France there are still living parties and not, as in Germany, only dead or dying ones, it is far from politic to vote for a Socialist who has no prospects, if by so doing one puts a Radical in the minority and an Opportunist in the majority. The fact is that there are considerable drawbacks to the practice of nominating candidates as a measure of strength in France, as there may be in some parts of Germany as soon as life returns to the political scene there. When once the course of things in France enables the Socialists to become a political opposition, i.e. when Clemenceau finally comes to the helm, we shall instantly gain millions of votes. But one shouldn't try and insist upon the French developing along German lines, although that is what many of our best men in Germany are doing.

A final verdict will not, of course, be possible until the second ballot is over.

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'On the History of the Communist League'.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  3. ↑ Wermuth/Stieber, Die Communisten-Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.
  4. ↑ The reference is to the so-called Bulgarian crisis which began in September 1885. In the night of 5-6 September an uprising of Bulgarian patriots occurred in Plovdiv, the capital of Eastern Roumelia (Southern Bulgaria), which, according to the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, was under the control of Turkey (see present edition, Vol. 45, Note 430). The Turkish governor was overthrown. Roumelia was reunited with Bulgaria and Grand Duke (formerly Prince) Alexander Battenberg of Bulgaria proclaimed himself ruler of the united Bulgaria on 8 September. Russia, showing its displeasure at the rapprochement between Battenberg and Austria-Hungary which had begun some time previously, recalled its officers from the Bulgarian army. Reports on this were carried by the Kölnische Zeitung, Nos. 276, 277, 278 and 279, 5, 6, 7 and 8 October 1885. On the subsequent course of the Bulgarian crisis, see Engels' article 'The Political Situation in Europe' (present edition, Vol. 26, and also this volume, pp. 512-20 and notes 478 and 634).
  5. ↑ William I
  6. ↑ Bebel
  7. ↑ the editorial board, bookshop and the press of the newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat
  8. ↑ The reference is to the trial of a group of German Social Democrats at the Saxon provincial court in Chemnitz between 28 and 30 September 1885. Auer, Bebel, Dietz, Müller, Ulrich, Viereck, Vollmar, Frohme and Heinzel were charged with belonging to a secret society seeking by illegal means to hinder the implementation of laws and regulations issued by the authorities. The reason for the indictment was their participation in the 1883 congress of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany in Copenhagen (see Note 15). In the absence of proof of their guilt, the court acquitted them. The government appealed to the imperial court which passed on the case for re-examination at the provincial court in Freiberg, Saxony (see Note 602).
  9. ↑ On the back of this letter Engels wrote: 'London 11. Novbr. 1884 Friedrich beantw. 13 Novbr. wie immer' (London 11. Novbr. 1884 Friedrich repl. 13 Novbr. as always).
  10. ↑ left centre
  11. ↑ The views about the elections in France which Engels sets out in this letter were reflected in the leading article in Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 42, 15 October 1885.
  12. ↑ Here: endanger the Republic.
  13. ↑ The Radicals — in the 1880s and 1890s a parliamentary group which had split away from the party of moderate republicans in France ('Opportunists', see Note 236). The Radicals had their main base in the petty and, to some extent, the middle bourgeoisie and continued to press for a number of bourgeois-democratic demands: a single-chamber parliamentary system, the separation of the Church from the State, the introduction of a system of progressive income taxes, the limitation of the working day and settlement of a number of other social issues. The leader of the Radicals was Clemenceau. The group formed officially as the Republican Party of Radicals and Radical Socialists [Parti républicain radical et radical-socialiste] in 1901.
  14. ↑ Cf. this volume, p. 317.