Letter to Wilhelm Liebknecht, October 3, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 3 October 1889


First published in: Wilhelm Liebknecht. Briefwechsel mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, The Hague, 1963
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT

IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG

[Draft]

[London,] 3 October 1889

Dear Liebknecht,

On hearing for certain that Guesde was in the second ballot, i.e. a week ago yesterday, I at once sent a most urgent letter to Bebel. What was decided I don't know.[1]

As regards your letter from Paris, I stick as firmly to my opinion concerning your conduct apropos the congress[2] in March and April as you do to yours. So it's useless to bicker over what is past.

As to the Schlesingeriad, I should be very happy were you to succeed in ridding yourself of it. Meanwhile you have seen that the affair cannot really be hushed up in that way and have been forced to issue a statement, which pleases me greatly.[3] Had you issued it at once, the two of us would have been spared this unpleasant correspondence. I know as well as you do, and you as well as I, that it was by no means just Kautsky and I who considered it a scandal that your name should have served to shelter a piece such as this by so worthless a fellow.

At all events your statement relieves me of the need to criticise the concoction myself. But the thing will inevitably be singled out, precisely because your name has unfortunately found its way onto it and not, what's more, simply as publisher, but as editor.

I too regard Guesde's election as highly important. So far as the number of votes is concerned, the elections have turned out very well for us. I estimate that 60,000 votes were certainly cast in favour of ourselves (of those represented at our congress) and a further 18,000 probably so. Against this some 43,000 throughout France for the Possibilists. Baudin seems a certainty, also Boyer, Cluseret and Ferroul and besides these there are a few others whose prospects look bright. If Guesde gets in as well, he's the sort of man round whom they would all rally. In which case the Possibilists, Joffrin and Dumay, will be in the same situation as the Lassalleans were in the Reichstag in 1874 and then, but only then, can there be any question of our having dealings with them, just as we had dealings with the Lassalleans in Germany;[4] and it is a condition of our success that until that time they should be treated as enemies and belaboured as such, that they should learn to respect the might of our people.

At all events Boulangism[5] is done for and will presumably be dealt further blows at the second ballots, unless the fatuous annulment of the poll in Montmartre[6] brings it new supporters, at least in Paris. If the Russians' cash then fails to appear, le brave général will have to move from Portland Place to Soho,[7] or rent a couple of rooms from Lessner.

Regards to your wife and Theodor.[8]

Your F. E.

  1. ↑ W. Liebknecht, while in Paris in September 1889, asked Engels to write to A. Bebel and ask him about monetary aid to the French Workers' Party in connection with the forthcoming parliamentary elections. W. Liebknecht received the necessary information from P. Lafargue in his letter of 10 August 1889. On 28 September the newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat (no. 39) in its editorial on the French elections carried reports from Paris calling ohe German Socialists to display internationalist solidarity and help the French Socialists in securing Guesde's election to the Chamber of Deputies.
  2. ↑ The International (Socialist) Working Men's Congress was in session in Paris on 14-20 July 1889, on the centennial of the storming of the Bastille. In fact, it became a constituent Congress of the Second International. Taking part were 393 delegates, representing the worker and socialist parties of 20 countries of Europe and America.
    The Congress heard the reports of representatives of the socialist parties on the situation in the labour movement in their countries; it outlined the principles of international labour legislation in respective countries by supporting demands for a legislative enactment of an 8-hour working day, prohibition of child labour and steps toward the protection of the work of women and adolescents. The Congress stressed the need of political organisation of the proletariat and of a struggle for implementation of democratic demands of the working class; it spoke out for a disbandment of regular armies and their replacement by armed detachments of the people. It resolved to hold, on 1 May 1890, demonstrations and meetings in support of an 8-hour working day and labour legislation.
  3. ↑ W. Liebknecht's statement concerning the publication of M. Schlesinger's book Die soziale Frage in the Volksbibliothek series (see note 400) was prompted by the article 'Ein sozialdemokratischer Antimarxist' published by the newspaper Die Kreuz-zeitung on 18 September 1889 (no. 435). In his statement of 27 September, Liebknecht wrote that the Volksbibliothek had no connection 'with the Social Democratic Party and its Reichstag faction' and that the printing of Schlesinger's book was undertaken without his consent. Liebknecht's statement was published in the newspapers Berliner Volksblatt on 29 September and Der Sozialdemokrat on 5 October 1889. Carried simultaneously with this statement was one made by A. Bebel on 19 September 1889, refuting the assertion of Die Kreuz-Zeitung about the connections of the Volksbibliothek with the Social Democratic faction in the Reichstag and about Schlesinger's membership in the Social Democratic Party.
  4. ↑ Refers to the unification at Gotha in 1875 of the Social Democratic Workers' Party set up in 1869 (the Eisenach party) and of the Lassallean General Association of German Workers founded in 1863. The party programme, adopted by the Gotha congress, incorporated as its essential part some of the ideas of the Lassallean agitation concept, a fact that elicited sharp criticism from Marx and Engels.
  5. ↑ After his resignation from the post of War Minister, General Boulanger continued to whip up a revanchist campaign with the support of the chauvinist elements of different parties, from the radicals to the monarchists. On 8 July 1887, when Boulanger was leaving for Clermont-Ferrand to assume command of the 13th Corps, his supporters staged a chauvinist demonstration at the Lyons railway station. Boulangism was a reactionary movement in France in the mid-1880s, led by ex-War Minister General Boulanger. It urged a revanchist war against Germany to win back Alsace, annexed by Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. In alliance with the monarchists, the Boulangists sought to capitalise on the masses' discontent with the government's policy. Their large-scale demagogic propaganda was especially effective among the lower ranks of the army. France was under the threat of a monarchist coup. Measures taken by the republican government, with the support of the progressive forces led to the collapse of the Boulangist movement. Its leaders fled from France.
  6. ↑ At the general election of 22 September 1889, Georges Boulanger was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the Montmartre constituency of Paris. Yet his election, as well as that of his close associates, Victor Rochefort and Dillon, was overruled by the Minister of the Interior E. Constant on the grounds of all the men having been convicted, in absentia, by the Supreme Court and sentenced to banishment (see note 391). The Possibilist Jules Joffrin therefore became deputy in Boulanger's place -Joffrin polled the second largest number of votes, 5,500, in the Montmartre constituency (after Boulanger).
  7. ↑ then a poor district, where many émigrés lived
  8. ↑ Liebknecht's son