Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, January 12, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 12 January 1889


First published, abridged, in Briefe und Auszüge ans Briefen von Job. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. and F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and, in full, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE[1]

IN HOBOKEN

London, 12 January 1889

Dear Sorge,

A very Happy New Year and my most cordial greetings to you and your wife.[2]

Have got your letter of 29 December. I am sorry to hear that you as well as your wife are beginning to find the work a strain. But I hope this is only a passing phase and that you will gradually get used to it. I am well, but during the ghastly December fogs my eyes got rather worse again. I have pretty well sorted that out by taking more exercise and spending more time out of doors.

The chief characteristic of European socialism just now is contentiousness. In France the Possibilists have sold themselves to the government and are using the secret funds to keep their unsaleable newspapers afloat; at the elections on the 27th they will vote for the bourgeois Jacques, while our people and the Blanquists have put up Boulé,[3] of whom Lafargue believes that he will get no more than 16 to 20 thousand votes, and this they regard as a defeat. In the provinces, on the other hand, things are healthier. The Possibilists had convoked their congress at Troyes, but cancelled it when the local organisers issued an invitation to all Socialists.[4] So only our lot went, proving there that, if Paris was dominated by the Possibilists, the provinces were theirs. Now there are going to be 2 congresses (international ones) in Paris this year—ours and the Possibilists'. The Germans probably won't go to either.

Here in London the farce[5] of an army of officers sans soldiers still goes on. It's like Robert Blum's column of 1849[6] —one colonel, 11 officers, 1 trumpeter and 1 private. Outwardly and before the public they appear to hit it off all right but the cliquishness behind the scenes is all the greater. Every now and again the bickering comes out into the open. Thus Champion, having been thrown out of the Social Democratic Federation,[7] has founded a paper[8] (of which one No. goes off to you this week) and is now attacking Hyndman, but more especially his ally, Adolphe Smith Headingley, who is half French, swears by the Possibilists and is chief mediator in the Hyndman-Possibilist alliance. In the days after the Commune, the fellow was co-loafer[9] of the London Branche française by whom we were abused and misrepresented, then ditto of the pseudo-General Council consisting of Jung, Hales & Co. I have evidence that he is still telling lies about us. This lout-interpreter at the international Trades Congress over here had the effrontery to come to my house one Sunday under the aegis of Anseele and Van Beveren[10] ; when Schlüter arrives, he will tell you how I sent the fellow packing.

As soon as the working class, as yet only just stirring, really gets under way here, every one of these gentry will be relegated to his level and station—some inside, some outside the movement. It's now at the tooth-cutting stage.

Contentiousness also prevails in the office of the Sozialdemokrat. Schlüter will be able to tell you about it. By the way, he is also to some extent party to it and capable of concealing what doesn't suit his book. When I see how badly mismanaged the paper is here at headquarters, I can only admire our workingmen the more for the way in which they counterbalance and neutralise it all.

Mother Wischnewetzky is much offended because, instead of paying her a visit at Long Branch, I stayed with you so as to recuperate from my indisposition and get back into shape for the voyage. She seems to have been pained by the breach of etiquette and the want of gallantry towards ladies. However, I refuse to allow these little madams, who clamour for women's rights, to demand gallantry into the bargain—if they want the same rights as men they should submit to being treated as such. She will probably simmer down however.

We spent New Year's Eve with Pumps and, because of the fog, had to stay the whole night tippling there. Tussy only left at 5 a.m. by the first train. She is now staying in Cornwall for a week or two.

Bismarck has been nicely cuffed over the ears by Geffcken and Morier.[11] If the Supreme Court has not yet gone so far as to accept his undergraduate-bully boy's version of the penal code, this is thanks to the singular contempt with which young William[12] lately favoured those gentlemen at Leipzig.

Diplomatic intrigue is at its height. The Russians have received 20 million pounds,[13] in April the Prussians will get their new 8 mm magazine rifle (the 11 mm one—a new version of the Mauser—was utterly unsuitable for war), the Austrians are boasting like mad, claiming to be prêts et archiprêts,[14] which proves that they're ready for another drubbing, and in France Boulanger might come to the helm. Bismarck's machinations with Salisbury in East Africa[15] have only one purpose, namely to involve Britain so deeply in a joint operation with Germany that, even under Gladstone, it wouldn't be able to draw back. Thus it was definitely against his will that William staged the Morier affair, but it's he who has to carry the can. In short, the situation is becoming critical and could lead to war in the spring.

Your

F.E.

Section I of Vol. III[16] is finished, II and III in hand. Seven sections in all.

  1. ↑ This letter was first published, abridged in English by the journal Labour Monthly, London, 1934, No. 3.
  2. ↑ Katharina Sorge
  3. ↑ In the by-election scheduled for 27 January 1889 in Paris (see notes 328, 329), the following candidacies were nominated: Georges Boulanger - from the Right-wing groups, Edouard Jacques - from the Republican Party (this candidature received support from the Possibilists as well), and the labourer Boule - from the Workers Party (see note 33) and the Blanquists. In a bitter electoral struggle, General Boulanger received about 250,000 votes, Boule 7,000 votes.
  4. ↑ Troyes was the proposed venue of a convention of the Workers' Party of French Socialist-Revolutionaries (the Possibilists) (see note 19). The organisers of the congress - local party functionaries - invited representatives of the Guesdists to attend as well. However the Paris Possibilists, fearing that the Guesdists might be in a majority, refused to take part (see also note 329).
  5. ↑ here meaning 'farce'
  6. ↑ This refers to the Baden-Palatinate uprising of 1849 in Germany. For greater detail, see Engels' The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution, present edition, Vol. 10, pp147-239.
  7. ↑ The Social Democratic Federation was a British socialist organisation, the successor of the Democratic Federation, reformed in August 1884. It consisted of heterogeneous socialist elements, mostly intellectuals, but also politically active workers. The programme of the Federation provided for the collectivisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Its leader, Henry Hyndman, was dictatorial and arbitrary, and his supporters among the Federation's leaders denied the need to work among the trade unions. In contrast to Hyndman, the Federation members grouped round Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, William Morris and Tom Mann sought close ties with the mass working-class movement. In December 1884, differences on questions of tactics and international co-operation led to a split in the Federation and the establishment of the independent socialist league (see note 21). In 1885-86 the Federation's branches were active in the movement of the unemployed, in strike struggles and in the campaign for the eight-hour day.
  8. ↑ The Labour Elector
  9. ↑ In the German text Mitloafer, a play on the word Mitläufer - a political hanger-on
  10. ↑ See this volume, p.239
  11. ↑ In September 1888 the German Professor Friedrich Heinrich Geffcken had the journal Deutsche Rundschau publish excerpts from the diary of the German Emperor Frederick III, a close friend of his. These excerpts, dating back to the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, showed Bismarck's role in the building or the German Empire in an unfavourable light. Bismarck had criminal proceedings initiated against the professor who was charged with high treason. The Reichsgericht acquitted Professor Geffcken on 4 January 1889; on the following day he was released from custody. At about the same time Herbert von Bismarck, the Reichskanzler's older son, accused the British diplomat Morier of mediation between Frederick, then the crown prince, and France. Morier countered by publishing his correspondence with Marshal Bazaine of France, through whom he had ostensibly been passing information on the German army. These materials showed up the slanderous nature of the charges. The progressive press viewed the acquittals of Geffcken and Morier as major defeats for Bismarck.
  12. ↑ William II
  13. ↑ In December 1888 a Russian loan with a 4 per cent interest rate was issued in Paris to a sum of 125 million roubles, or about 20 million pound sterling.
  14. ↑ ready and more than ready
  15. ↑ In connection with an apparent rapprochement between France and Russia, Bismarck initiated negotiations on a defensive alliance with Great Britain in January 1889; these negotiations involved colonial issues as well. Britain and Germany were supporting each other in East Africa in putting down popular uprisings in Uganda and Zanzibar. The British and German navies, acting together, imposed a blockade on the eastern coast of Africa. At a later date, on 1 July 1890, Britain and Germany concluded a treaty which defined a boundary between their possessions in East Africa. In addition, Britain agreed to cede to Germany the strategic island of Heligoland in the North Sea. However this rapprochement did not result in a solid alliance and imperialist rivalry subsequently led to a sharp deterioration in Anglo-German relations.
  16. ↑ of Capital