ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY
IN NEW YORK
London, 7 May 1887
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
I have received your note of April 25 with thanks but no preface; if I receive it per next steamer on Monday I shall send you word at once. In the meantime as I received no copy of the book[1] as yet, will you please see that I get at least something to work upon, a proof-sheet or whatever it is, as the Volkszeitung translation[2] cannot pass under any circumstances, I shall work at the translation as fast as my inflamed eye will allow. I am only sorry you did not send the ms. or a proof as soon as the idea of a separate German edition occurred to you.[3]
Sorge writes to me:
'Wischnewetzky's bedauern sehr, durch die Verheimlichungen und Unterschlagungen der Executive zur Absendung des bekannten Briefs an Dich veranlasst worden zu sein, und haben sich alle erdankliche Mühe gegebeng, Aveling in der New Yorker Sektion Gerechtigkeit zu verschaffen.'[4] [5]
If this, as I must suppose, was written with your consent, then I am perfectly satisfied, and have no desire whatever to return to that subject in a spirit of controversy.
Nobody was more rejoiced than I when I learnt that the book was finally out of the hand of that despicable Executive and of the Socialist Labor Party[6] generally. Forty years' experience have shown me how useless and literally thrown away are all these publications, by small cliques, that by their very mode of publication are excluded from the general book-market, and thereby from literary cognizance. It was the same thing even with the party publications in Germany up to 1878; and only since the Sozialistengesetz[7] which forced our people to organize a book trade of their own[8] in opposition both to the government and to the officially organized Leipzig book-trade, has this been overcome. And I do not see why in America where the movement begins with such gigantic and imposing force, the same mistakes, with the same drawbacks in their wake, should be quite unnecessarily gone through over again. The whole Socialist, and, in England, Chartist literature has thereby been made so extinct that even the British Museum cannot now procure copies at any price!
I remain, dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
very sincerely yours
F. Engels
- ↑ The American edition of Engels' The Condition of the Working-Class in England
- ↑ Engels' article 'The Labor Movement in America' opened the American edition of his The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in New York in 1887. That same year the article appeared, in Engels' German translation, under the heading 'Die Arbeiterbewegung in Amerika', in the Sozialdemokrat (10 and 17 June). In July separate prints, in German and English, were distributed in New York. The article was also published as a pamphlet in London (see present edition, Vol. 26) and, in French, in Le Socialiste (9, 16 and 23 July). Even before the publication of the book the article was, without Engels' knowledge, translated into German by Alexander Jonas, editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, and published in this paper in April 1887. Engels, displeased with the quality of the translation, lodged an official protest.
- ↑ Kelley-Wischnewetzky had suggested that Engels's article, 'Die Arbeiterbewegung in America' ('The Labour Movement in America'), written as a preface to the US edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, should be issued in the form of separate German and English pamphlets. This was also suggested by Sorge in his letter of 26 April 1887. Engels translated the preface into German himself. The pamphlets appeared in New York in July 1887. Engels's German translation was also published in the Sozialdemokrat, Nos 24 and 25; 10 and 17 June 1887.
- ↑ 'The Wischnewetzkys regret very much having been induced—by the Executive's suppression of facts and misappropriation of funds—to send you the notorious letter and have been making every effort to secure justice for Aveling in the New York section.'
- ↑ Engels is quoting from Sorge's letter of 26 April 1887. Enclosed in it was a clipping from the New Yorker Volkszeitnng of 25 April with a report on a sitting of the New York Section that had concerned itself with the Aveling case.
- ↑ On behalf of Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, the translator of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England, Rachel Foster, Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was trying to find a publisher for the book in America. On 8 February 1886 the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party, which she had approached for support, set up a special committee to deal with publishers, but the negotiations dragged, and the book was published in May 1887, independently of the Executive.
- ↑ The Anti-Socialist law (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefahrlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie) was introduced by the Bismarck government, with the support of the majority of the Reichstag, on 21 October 1878, as a means of combating the socialist and working-class movement. It imposed a ban on all Social Democratic and working-class organisations and on the socialist and workers' press; socialist literature was subject to confiscation, and Social Democrats to reprisals. However, under the Constitution, the Social Democratic Party retained its group in parliament. By combining underground activities with the use of legal possibilities, in particular by working to overcome reformist and anarchist tendencies in its own ranks, the party was able to consolidate and expand its influence among the masses. Marx and Engels gave the party leaders considerable help. Under the pressure of the mass working-class movement the Anti-Socialist Law was repealed (1 October 1890). For Engels' characterisation of the law see his article 'Bismarck and the German Workers Party' (present edition, Vol. 24, pp407-09).
- ↑ Die Volksbuchhandlung in Zürich (the People's Bookshop in Zurich)