Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, January 29, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 January 1886


First published abridged in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A.an F.A.Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 29 January 1886

Dear Sorge,

At last I have some time to spare and hence shall hasten to write to you before anything else comes to claim it.

I hope your Adolf[1] has made a success of his new business. For he understands it and is a hard worker; besides, it's not a particularly speculative business — a great danger, in America as here — so I don't see why all should not be well. I therefore wish him every success.

I should greatly like to have Marx's comments re an English translation.[2] At last I have with me, here under my roof, the complete ms. of the English translation upon which I shall set to work next week. As soon as I know approximately how long the revision is going to take, and can thus determine the date when printing may begin, I shall make definite arrangements with the publisher. You will have seen (in To-Day) how Mr Hyndman, alias Broadhouse, endeavoured to put a spoke in my wheel.[3] This has forced me to get a move-on so as not further to impair my position vis-à-vis the publisher, but otherwise no harm has been done.

An American woman[4] has translated my book on the working class[5] into English, and has also sent me the ms. for revision — parts of which will be very time-consuming. Its publication in America is assured, but what this lady sees in the old thing I cannot imagine.

I further have in hand — to mention only revisions: 1) The Eighteenth Brumaire,[6] French — about 1/3 already done. 2) Wage Labour and Capital by Marx — Italian. 3) The Origin of the Family — Danish. 4) Manifesto[7] and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, etc., Danish; these two already in print but stiff with mistakes. 5) The Origin of the Family, French.[8] 6) Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, English.[9]

PLENTY MORE LOOMING IN THE DISTANCE. As you can see, I'm turning into a mere schoolmaster correcting exercise-books. It's lucky that my knowledge of languages is not more extensive, for if it were, they'd be piling Russian, Polish, Swedish, etc., stuff on to me as well. But it is work of which one easily tires — in any case all these nice little bits and pieces (at any rate Nos. 2 to 5) will have to give way before Volume III of Capital which I have finished dictating from the ms., though the editing of some of the most important chapters will involve a great deal of work, these consisting in little more than an assemblage of building blocks. That is the only task to which I look forward.

I have not yet had the New Yorker Volkszeitung. I shall, if possible, send off To-Day, September, by the same post as this. You've no idea how difficult these things are to get hold of here — the slovenliness of the publishers is quite disgraceful.

If you haven't yet seen it, get Dietzgen to give you Hubert Bland's piece on Hyndman's simultaneous machinations with the Tories and Liberals over the elections.[10] It is absolutely true. After this, and provided it doesn't disintegrate, the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION[11] will be morally defunct. Hyndman must be mad to act as he does. You will have read all about his insane attack on Aveling, and will also have seen the relevant documents in Justice and Commonweal.[12]

Unfortunately, none of the other leaders of the FEDERATION are worth much more than he, being literati and political speculators. Indeed, the movement in this country has hitherto been quite bogus, but should it prove possible to educate within the SOCIALIST LEAGUE[13] a nucleus with an understanding of theoretical matters, considerable progress will have been made towards the eruption, which cannot be long in coming, of a genuine mass movement.

Give my regards to Dietzgen. It's uphill work for him, but he'll manage all right.[14] AFTER ALL, the movement in America has made tremendous strides. True, the Anglo-Americans want to do things their own way with a total disregard for reason and science, nor could one expect anything else, yet they are drawing closer and will end up by coming all the way. Over there capitalist centralisation is going ahead like a house on fire — unlike here.

I trust your health is completely restored. I'm pretty well on the whole, otherwise I should never get through my work.

I've been working on Bebel with a view to his visiting the States with Liebknecht.[15] Tussy and Aveling might go too. But that remains to be decided.

My kindest regards to Adolf.

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ Adolf Sorge jun.
  2. ↑ 526
  3. ↑ In October 1885 To-Day began to publish the English translation of the first volume of Capital done by Henry Mayers Hyndman (pseudonym John Broadhouse). Engels criticised the beginning of this translation (of the first and a part of the second sections of Chapter One) carried by To-Day, vol. 4, No. 22, in his article 'How Not to Translate Marx' (see present edition, Vol. 26). The translation was published in the journal up to May 1889 inclusive; it covered the first seven chapters and a large part of Chapter Eight of the first volume.
  4. ↑ Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky
  5. ↑ F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
  6. ↑ K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
  7. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party.
  8. ↑ 403
  9. ↑ 528
  10. ↑ 496
  11. ↑ Social Democratic Federation — an English socialist organisation founded in August 1884 and based on the Democratic Federation (see Note 99); it united different socialist elements, mainly drawn from the intelligentsia and part of the politically active workers. The Federation's programme stated that all the wealth should belong to labour — its only source, it called for the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, for the set-up of society of'complete emancipation of labour'. It was the first socialist programme in England, which was on the main based on Marx's ideas. The leadership of the Federation was in the hands of Henry Mayers Hyndman, who was prone to use authoritarian methods, and his supporters, who denied the need to work in the trade unions. This doomed the organisation to isolation from the working masses. As a counter to Hyndman's line, a group of socialists within the Federation (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, Tom Mann, William Morris and others) campaigned for the establishment of close links with the mass workers' movement. The disagreements in the Federation over questions of tactics and international cooperation (attitude to the split in the French Workers' Party; see notes 201 and 348) led in December 1884 to a split and the foundation of an independent organisation called the Socialist League (see Note 346). In 1885-86 the local branches of the Federation took an active part in the unemployed movement, supported the strike campaign and the fight for an eight-hour working day.
  12. ↑ The reference is to two notes by Henry Mayers Hyndman published in Justice, No. 90, 3 October and No. 92, 17 October 1885 where he accuses Edward Aveling of offending against an agreement concluded between various socialist organisations about speeches to be made by socialists at the Dod Street demonstration of 27 September 1885. Hyndman's accusation was refuted in a statement signed by 31 members of socialist organisations. The statement together with both notes from Justice was carried by The Commonweal, No. 10, November 1885 in an article entitled 'Free Speech and the Police'.
  13. ↑ 346
  14. ↑ 529
  15. ↑ See this volume, p. 391.