Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, July 20, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 20 July 1889


First published, slightly abridged, in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Job. 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. 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 MOUNT DESERT

London, 20 July 1889

Dear Sorge,

In my last letter I forgot to ask you if possible to question Hartmann about the article in the Evening News and Post. If you could get him to write a brief note in his own hand to the effect that the story is false and that he has not been to Europe, it would be important for us over here.[2] Because,

1. Bismarck is trying to make the Tsar[3] beholden to him by revealing alleged plots against his (the Tsar's) life.

2. Hitherto these have been going on in Switzerland, but now that the Swiss have expelled all potential plotters, operations must be transferred to London.

3. This end is being served by the mouchard[4] Carl Theodor Reuss, who had already, on a previous occasion, used the Evening News as a repository for his lying allegations with regard to dynamite.

4. This latest Reussiad was telegraphed from Berlin to all German newspapers.

If we can expose this business outright, there'll be a nice rumpus over here.

Yours of the 7th inst. received yesterday evening.[5] I don't demand any particular satisfaction of Wischnewetzky for his failure to visit me.— It didn't grieve me. So if he eats humble pie vis-à-vis yourself, that will suit me. I did not call on his wife,[6] whereat she took umbrage, which was why he failed to visit me, so that makes us quits. If these people view the matter in a similar light, I shall be content. Obviously if they demand more, I shan't be able to oblige them. But as I have business matters to settle with his wife, it's always best to be at least on speaking terms; I'll be in no hurry to let them revert to anything more intimate, now that I know as much about them as you do. They're a couple of conceited fools.

Pop! The bubble of reconciliation has burst in Paris. How fortunate that the Possibilists and the Social Democratic Federation, having rightly understood their position, should have preferred to deal our people a kick, thereby bringing the silly business to an end. That the thing had been prepared de longue main[7] is evident from the whole series of now comprehensible manoeuvres and utterances on the part of these gentry over the past 2 months. It is the old Bakuninist libel against the Hague Congress,[8] etc., to the effect that we had always operated with false credentials.[9] This libel, which Brousse has been raking up off and on ever since 1883, was bound to come to the fore again on the present occasion, once they saw that they had been abandoned by all the socialists and that they could only save themselves with the help of the Trades Unions. The nature of their credentials will doubtless be revealed in the course of the furious polemic that is now flaring up. Unfortunately this old rubbish cuts no more ice today than it did back in 1873[10] ; but something had to be found to cover up the fact that they have been utterly disgraced. However it's just as well that our sentimental brethren, the advocates of reconciliation, received a savage kick on the backside in return for all their assurances of friendship. That will doubtless cure them for some time to come.

I shan't be able to send you any more papers until the next post (weeklies which Aveling writes for but which won't come out until this evening and tomorrow); I have not had a single letter from Paris since Tuesday.

As regards Lingenau,[11] congratulations on the sum extracted. Liebknecht alone was at fault here; Bebel is methodical and precise in such matters. No doubt Mount Desert will do you good; I too shall make for the water before long.

Warm regards to your wife and the Schlüters.

Your

F. E.

Schorlemmer has been here since the day before yesterday and sends you both his best wishes.

  1. ↑ This letter was first published, abridged in English by the journal Labour Monthly, London, 1934, No. 3.
  2. ↑ At that time many German newspapers carried reports about a conversation allegedly held by a correspondent of the London newspaper Evening News and Post with Lev Hartman, who said he had been staying for six months in Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland under an assumed name with the aim of organising there an 'overthrow party' and that this party was getting ready for big events. At Engels' request, Sorge turned to Hartman for explanations; the latter refuted such inventions - he said he had not left the United States at the time. Sorge informed Engels about this in his letter of 7 August.
  3. ↑ Alexander III
  4. ↑ police spy
  5. ↑ In this letter Sorge notified Engels about the sending of the newspaper Nationalist, as well as about attempts of Mr and Mrs Wischnewetzky to establish contacts with him.
  6. ↑ See this volume, p.223
  7. ↑ well in advance
  8. ↑ The Hague Congress (2-7 September 1872) of the International was the most representative forum of the International Working Men's Association; taking part were 65 delegates from 15 countries. The Congress reviewed the results of the struggle against the Bakunin anarchists within the International and outlined a programme of action under new conditions obtaining after the Paris Commune. The main decision of the Congress was the endorsement of Resolution IX of the London Conference of 1871 on the political action of the working class, summed up as Article 7a of the General Rules of the International. The Congress also adopted a number of resolutions designed to strengthen the organisational structure of the Workingmen's Association. The anarchist leaders, Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume, were expelled from the International Working Men's Association. After the Congress, Bakunin and his supporters openly opposed its resolutions, a move that resulted in an actual split of the International.
  9. ↑ A reference to a campaign by the Possibilists in France, and their supporters from the Social Democratic Federation (see note 62), to discredit the International Working Men's Congress held by the Socialists (see note 473). Only a few foreign delegates attended the Possibilists Congress held in Paris at the same time as the International Working Men's Congress; the representation of most of its delegates was of a purely fictitious nature.
  10. ↑ Engels alludes to the split within the International Working Men's Association following the Hague Congress of the First International (see note 453). In 1873 the anarchists convened their congress in Geneva which set the stage for an international association of anarchists - an organisation which they would describe as a genuine International Working Men's Association.
  11. ↑ On 18 March 1876, Ferdinand Lingenau, a German socialist who had emigrated to the United States, bequeathed about $7,000 to the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, naming August Bebel, Johann Philipp Becker, Wilhelm Bracke, August Geib, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Karl Marx as executors. Upon Lingenau's death in the United States on 4 August 1877, his executors tried to act on his will and have the above sum placed at the party's disposal. Bismarck succeeded in preventing this.