Letter to August Bebel, October 25, 1888

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 25 October 1888


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL

IN BERLIN

London, 25 October 1888

Dear Bebel,

I have sent you through Schlüter Der Hülferuf der deutschen Jugend together with its sequel, Die Junge Generation, Weitling's periodical of the forties. Schlüter had got the other stuff and has sent it to you; the Garantien, Das Evangelium des armen Sünders, etc.[1]

In my view, it would be better to distinguish between the 3 trends in the German movement during the forties. There is very little connection between them, Weitlingian communism[2] in particular having remained aloof until it fizzled out or its members came over to us—a phase which does not figure in the literature on the subject. As regards the history of 'true socialism'[3] (Hess up to a point, Grün and a number of other belletrists), the material in the archives[4] is far from complete, and use would have to be made besides of Marx's and my old mss.[5] Which, however, I can in no circumstances allow out of my possession. Again, a great deal of what went on behind the scenes—notably the estrangement between Hess and ourselves—and what cannot be dismissed in a couple of lines, would be indispensable here, and this would mean that I myself would have to go through all the old stuff again. Finally, as regards the third trend—our own—the course of its development can be studied nowhere save in the old mss., while its outward history was recorded by me in the introduction to the Communist Trial.[6] Weitlingian communism, on the other hand, is a subject all on its own and accounts of it are available in print.

Here it occurs to me that you ought also, perhaps, to have Kuhlmann's book—the prophetic religion that succeeded Weitling in Switzerland and to which many of his followers were converted.[7] I completely forgot to give it to Schlüter.

I enclose a letter from Weitling to Hess (from the archives). It was at a meeting of a small band of close associates that the breach between Weitling and ourselves took place. (An account of the said meeting, written by Annenkov, a Russian who was present, also appeared in the Neue Zeit a few years ago.)[8] What happened was as follows: Hess had been to Westphalia (Bielefeld, etc.); the chaps there—Lüning, Rempel et al—wished, he said, to put up the money for the publication of our writings.[9] Then Weitling came up with the proposal that his disquisitions re his Utopian system be placed with them forthwith, as also his other great works (including a new grammar in which the dative was abolished as the invention of aristocrats)[10] —things we would have had to criticise and combat the moment the plan came off. The letter shows the distorted form in which our arguments were reflected in Weitling's mind. Everywhere he saw nothing but professional jealousy, nothing but an attempt to suppress his genius, to 'come between him and the sources of money'. But in points 5 and 6 of his resume the fundamental difference between him and ourselves emerges plainly enough, and that's the main thing.[11]

P. 3, lines 10-12: This refers to our intention of bringing out the great Utopians in German translation with critical introductions and notes—as opposed to the piffling accounts by Lorenz Stein, Grün[12] et al. In this poor Weitling sees only unfair competition with his system.

P. 3, bottom: E. is Ewerbeck in Paris. N.B. It finally transpired that Moses[13] had omitted to tell us the essentials, namely that all the Westphalians had offered was to guarantee other publishers against the losses they might make on our stuff. Moses had led us to believe that they, the Westphalians, would themselves undertake publication. As soon as we learnt what the position was, we naturally washed our hands of the whole business; to be writers guaranteed by the Westphalians was something that would never have occurred to us.

The affair of the Kautskys has astonished us all. Louise has conducted herself throughout with exceptional heroism. Kautsky was in a state of complete euphoria but was sadly sobered down when jilted within 5 days by his new beloved, who thereupon got engaged to his brother Hans. Now they both intend to wait and see how things go; the strangest part of it is that Louise is now complaining how unfair we are all being to Karl! I have written and told Kautsky that it's the silliest thing he has ever done and, if Louise thinks this too unkind, I suppose I shall have to return my sword to its scabbard.

I am now working on Volume III of Capital. I am still supposed to take great care of my eyes and not write for more than 2 hours daily and that only by daylight. So my correspondence will have to be severely curtailed.

Regards to Singer.

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ August Bebel intended to write a large work on Wilhelm Weitling in which he also wanted to take up the subject of 'the social movement of the 1840s'. He applied to Engels with the request to help in the collection of material.
  2. ↑ Weitlingian communists held to a doctrine of egalitarian utopian communism that gained wide currency among German artisans, especially among tailors in Paris. Being a progressive movement in the early 1840s, before the development of modern Socialist ideas, the Weitling doctrine (with its negation of the need for an active political struggle of the proletariat and its emphasis on sectarian, conspiratorial methods of struggle) became to some extent a hindrance to the growing class consciousness of the German workers The reactionary characteristics of the Weitling doctrine, gradually taking on a religious-Christian colouring, became increasingly manifest. Weitling's supporters, always suspicious of 'scholars' (i.e. revolutionary intellectuals), would in their practical activities confine themselves to projects involving communes, partially borrowed from Fourier and his followers, and to small-scale experiments like establishing collective canteens, etc. In May 1846 Marx and Engels, with their adherents, broke from Weitling. Engels, living in Paris in 1846-47, had regular and stubborn discussions with workers to explain the backward nature of Weitling's views.
  3. ↑ The reference is to German, or 'true socialism' which became widespread in Germany in the 1840s, mostly among intellectuals. The 'true socialists' -Karl Griin, Moses Hess and Hermann Kriege - substituted the sentimental preaching of love and brotherhood for the ideas of socialism and denied the need for a bourgeois-democratic revolution in Germany. Marx and Engels criticised this trend in the following works: The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5), Circular Against Kriege, German Socialism in Verse and Prose and Manifesto of the Communist Party (Vol. 6).
  4. ↑ The German Social Democratic archives were set up at the Zurich Conference of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany held on 19-21 August 1882. Their purpose was to preserve the manuscripts of prominent figures in the German labour movement (including the works of Marx and Engels), and documents pertaining to the history of Germany and the international working-class movement, and the labour press. The initial site of the archives was Zurich. The first materials were collected by Eduard Bernstein. From April 1883 the archives were in the custody of Hermann Schluter. In June 1888, following the expulsion of some members of the Sozialdemokrat editorial staff and co-workers from Switzerland (see note 81), the archives were moved to London and, after the abrogation of the Anti-Socialist law (see note 52), to Berlin.
  5. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology
  6. ↑ Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne
  7. ↑ A reference to Georg Kuhlmann's book Die Neue Welt oder das Reich des Geistes auf Erden Verkiindigung, Geft, 1845. For a critique of this book, see present edition, Vol. 5.
  8. ↑ This refers to Weitling's letter to Moses Hess on 31 March 1846, in which he describes the sitting of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee held on 30 March 1846, culminating in its breaking of relations with Marx and Engels. The controversy flared up over the best way of carrying on propaganda in Germany. Marx wanted to prove that calling on the workers to rise up without a proper programme was to deceive them and could result in dire consequences for the entire movement. Pavel Annenkov's reminiscences of this meeting were originally published in Russian. An excerpt from these reminiscences (one about Annenkov's meetings with Marx) was reproduced by the journal Neue Zeit, No. 5, 1883, under the heading 'Eine russische Stimme liber Karl Marx'.
  9. ↑ A reference to the two volumes of a quarterly journal the publication of which was negotiated in 1845 and 1846 by a number of Westphalian socialists, the publishers Julius Meyer and Rudolph Rempel among others. Marx and Engels intended to publish in it their criticism of the German ideology which they started to write in the autumn of 1845. It was also planned to publish a number of polemical works to their colleagues, in the first place those containing criticism of German philosophical literature and the works of the 'true socialists'. In November 1845 Moses Hess reached agreement with Meyer and Rempel on financing the publication of two volumes of the quarterly. Further negotiations were conducted by Weydemeyer, who visited the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee. In a letter to the Committee of 30 April 1846 from Schildesche (Westphalia) he wrote that no headway was being made and proposed that Meyer should form a joint-stock company in Limburg (Holland), as manuscripts of less than 20 printed sheets were subject to preliminary censorship in Germany. He also recommended that Marx should sign a contract with the Brussels publisher and bookseller C.G. Vogler for the distribution of the quarterly and other publications. The contract was not drawn because Vogler could not assume even part of the expenses. Weydemeyer continued his efforts, but succeeded in getting from Meyer only a guarantee for the publication of one volume. However as early as July 1846 Meyer and Rempel refused their promised assistance on the pretext of financial difficulties, the actual reason being differences in principle between Marx and Engels, on the one hand and the champions of 'true socialism', on the other, whose views both publishers shared. Marx and Engels did not abandon their hopes of publishing the works, if only by instalments, but their attempts failed. The only chapter of The German Ideology known to be published during their lifetime was Chapter IV of Volume II, which appeared in the journal Das Westphalische Dampfboot in August and September 1847 (publisher of this journal was O.Luning). The rest of the existing German Ideology was first published in the Soviet Union in 1932.
  10. ↑ Engels means Weitling's non-extant work Allgemeine Denk-und Sprachlehre nebst Grundziigen einer Universalsprache der Menschheit which was written in the first half of the 1840s.
  11. ↑ The fifth and sixth points at the resume in Weitling's letter were as follows: '5. It is necessary to combat "artisan communism" and "philosophical communism" and to criticise the idea that everything is a fantasy. There should be no propaganda by word, no secret propaganda. The very word propaganda should no longer be used. The realisation of communism is now out of the question. First the bourgeoisie must take the helm'.
  12. ↑ A reference to L. Stein, Der Socialismus and Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs, Leipzig, 1842; K. Griin, Die soziale Bewegung in Frankreich and Belgien, Darmstadt, 1845. Marx and Engels made a critique of like publications in The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5, pp484-530). At the beginning of 1845 Engels and Marx had formed the plan to publish in Germany a 'Library of the Best Foreign Socialist Writers' with a general introduction and commentaries to each issue (see Engels' letters to Marx of 22-26 February, 7 and 17 March 1845). The draft plan of this publication, drawn up by Marx (see present edition, Vol. 4, p667), shows that it was conceived as a representative series of works of French and English authors. The plan was not carried out because of publishing difficulties, apart from the translation of a few chapters of Fourier's Des trois unites externes (see present edition Vol. 4, pp613-44).
  13. ↑ Moses Hess