Letter to August Bebel, December 22, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 December 1892


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50, p.66

TO AUGUST BEBEL IN BERLIN


London, 22 December 1892

Dear August,

We recently had the pleasure of seeing Cato Censorius Bonnier here while in transit from Oxford to Paris. I think I made some impression on him by pointing out that 1. his manner of giving ultimatums[1] is hardly calculated to promote mutual understanding and 2. that it really might be better if the German party were to preserve its funds and its credit for the eventuality of a dissolution and future elections rather than dissipate both on a stoppage of work on May Day. It's unfortunate for both French and Germans that this chap should be an indispensable middleman between the two, since Guesde seems reluctant to make use of any one else. But thwarted as it is by the isolation and inactivity of Oxford, his enthusiasm plus his intense urge to be up and doing serves to evoke discord rather than collaboration. And in the present state of Europe what is called for above all else is precisely the harmonious collaboration of Germans and French.

Many thanks for the Reichstag stenographic reports. I shall not be able to read your big speech about the Army until tonight, but I was delighted by what you said about Heinze's law. [2] So long as prostitution cannot be wholly eradicated, our first bid ought, I think, to be the girls' total exemption from any kind of extraordinary legislation. Here in England this is more or less the case; there are no 'morality police', and no controls or medical examinations, but the police still have tremendous power because it is a punishable offence to keep a disorderly house, and every house in which a girl lives and receives visitors can be treated as such. But although this law is enforced only on rare occasions, the girls are none the less exposed to frightful extortion on the part of policemen. This relative freedom from degrading police restrictions enables the girls to preserve an independent and selfrespecting character in a way that would hardly be possible on the Continent. They look upon their situation as an unavoidable evil to which, since it has befallen them, they must resign themselves, but which otherwise need in no way affect their character or selfesteem and, given the chance to get out of their profession, they seize upon it, as a rule, successfully. In Manchester there were whole colonies of young men—bourgeois or clerks—who lived with girls of this kind, being in many cases legally married to them and treating them at least as well as a bourgeois would a woman of his own class. The fact that now and then one of these girls might take to the bottle in no way distinguished them from their middleclass counterparts over here, themselves no strangers to the habit. Indeed, some of these married girls, having moved to another town where there was no fear of their running into 'old acquaintances', have been introduced into respectable middle-class society and even into the squirarchy—squires being the English equivalent of country Junkers—without anyone's noticing anything in the least objectionable about them.

It is my belief that, in dealing with this matter, we should above all consider the interests of the girls themselves as victims of the present social order, and protect them as far as possible against ending up in the gutter—or at least not actually force them into the gutter by means of legislation and police skulduggery as happens throughout the Continent. In this country the same thing was attempted in a number of garrison towns where controls and medical examinations were introduced, but it didn't last long; the only good thing the social purity people have done has been to agitate against this.

Medical examinations are absolutely worthless. Wherever they were introduced here, syphilis and gonorrhoea increased. I am convinced that a police surgeon's instruments are exceedingly effective in transmitting venereal disease, since he would be unlikely to spend time or trouble on disinfecting them. Free courses on venereal disease should be made available to the girls, then most of them would probably take precautions themselves. Blaschko has sent us an article on medical controls[3] in which he is forced to admit that these are absolutely useless; if he were to draw the logical conclusion from his own assumptions, he would be bound to conclude that prostitution must be freed from all restrictions and the girls be protected against exploitation, but in Germany that would seem utterly Utopian.

I hope that Kneipp treatment is doing Dietz good; at all events Naso[4] maintains that the crack-brained parson made him astoundingly healthy. By completely changing the habits of people the routine of whose urban professional lives has made them a bit rigid and set in their ways, and by forcing them to take exercise in the open air, the said cure may, from what I have heard, do them a certain amount of good or, indeed, harm—according to the nature of the case—just as does the 'water cure' when it is not as a rule the mineral water that does the trick, but rather the change of routine and the strict diet. But otherwise you are right; amongst our people there is many a one who deems it his duty fervently to embrace any and every new 'ism' and, likewise, any disgruntled bourgeois or bureaucratic malcontent, any obscure literary or artistic genius. He may equally well set himself up as the protector of all victims of persecution and injustice, and discover in every ism a theory of world redemption hitherto suppressed by the wicked capitalist world order. It is an excellent way of turning to account and putting on display the very things one has not learnt. One has only to look at what the late-lamented Volksstaat achieved in that sphere!

The Panama business[5] gets nicer every day. As so often in France the affair is taking a quite dramatically exaggerated course. At any moment, or so it seems, the efforts to thrust it out of sight are going to succeed, and then up it springs again where least expected and more vigorously than ever before. Now the situation is such that no hushing up will avail. First the affair was to be hushed up in the courts, whereupon fresh revelations necessitated the setting up of a committee of inquiry; then it was the latter that was to be hamstrung, an attempt that was only partially successful and only to the extent that further legal proceedings of a more serious nature were instituted. And now there's a spate of fresh revelations and prosecutions of deputies and senators. The ball has been set rolling and is very far from coming to a stop. Standing in the wings are 1. Constans, who knows that he is played out and is anxious to avenge himself, 2. Rochefort and the Boulangists[6] , who also know a great deal, 3. the Orléans family, who would like to make use of all this farcical business to attempt a restoration. All these people know a great deal and can to a large extent prove it. And if the worst comes to the worst, Ch. de Lesseps and Rouvier will avenge themselves by compromising as many people as possible and involving them in their fall. Rothschild summed up the situation in the words:

'I need the monarchy and shall buy it once and for all; the Republic costs me too much, since every few years I have to buy yet another ravenous crew.'

What wouldn't that jackass Boulanger give for that now if he hadn't shot himself! He'd be in clover; indeed, I shouldn't be surprised if an attempt were made to find another Boulanger. Fortunately this would not be at all easy. The monarchy, too, is down on its luck—the Right voted as one man for the Panama lottery[7] and, what is worse, made propaganda for it in the rural areas, thus landing philistines and peasants in the cart. The 1,700 million francs that were swallowed up consisted to a very large extent of the savings of little men (over 800,000 are said to be involved!), hence the wave of indignation, while the Right (Clerical Monarchists) who at first rejoiced over the Panama scandal, are now turning coy.

How it will all end is obvious—ultimately in our favour. But in a country as incalculable as France it is difficult to predict what intermediate stages there will be. Several, at any rate, before our people really take possession of the stage. Only if there were to be revolution in Paris would the Socialists come to power; for in Paris—cf. the Commune—every revolution is automatically socialist. But Paris is less turbulent than the provinces and that is a good thing, Paris is blasé, not least because the workers, disunited, confused and patriotic (in so far as they sense that Paris is—wrongly, or so they feel—no longer the political hub of the world), can see no way out. Should the scandals continue, there might be a presidential crisis—Carnot has at least connived at a lot of dirty work—and whatever happens there will be parliamentary elections next year. Also a good many municipal elections in Paris. All this will provide more than enough legal loopholes. On the other hand, uncertainty as to the reliability of the army (which is new to general military service and not so hardened to it as Prussia) is a safeguard against coups d' état, as is the unarmed state of the masses (who this time could not, as always before, turn to the National Guard for guns and ammunition) against attempted uprisings. It therefore seems very probable that the crisis will take a peaceful course. It's just what we need, however, if we are to have time to reap the benefits of Panama—no violent upheavals and time for the ferment to take effect throughout the country. In the provinces the Marxists have virtually no rivals; in Paris it is, for the time being, quite a good thing if Blanquists[8] , Allemanists[9] and Broussists[10] should wear each other out.

At all events, internal developments in France have again become of paramount importance and we shall soon see to what extent the chaps are equal to the tasks by which they are confronted. I must say that, where major crises such as this one are concerned, I have considerable confidence in them. Not in their ability to win instant and striking victories—there may yet be short-lived episodes of a horribly reactionary nature—but in their ability eventually to emerge with honour. Nor, from our point of view, should things happen too quickly. We too require time for growth.

Quite between ourselves, I am over the worst so far as Volume II P is concerned. The difficulties in the most difficult section have been surmounted.[11] But until I have been through the last two sections I can say nothing definite about the date of completion. There may still turn out to be individual difficulties that will take some time. But I have sighted land and the worse and most time-consuming part is behind me; this time I shall finish. When you come over here I shall show it to you.

You would in any case do better to come via Calais; it's hardly any further from Stuttgart and maybe even somewhat nearer than via Ostend.—Cordial regards to you, your wife b and your children and a Happy Christmas to you.

Auf Wiedersehen,

Your F.E.

  1. ↑ See Engels to Charles Bonnier 3 December 1892
  2. ↑ On 13 December 1892 A. Bebel made a long speech in the Reichstag criticising the draft military law tabled by the government (see Note 76). The Heinze Law—a package of laws against prostitution, drafted in the wake of the 1891-92 trial of a Heinze, a pimp, accused of murder and burglary. The Heinze Law, tabled in the Reichstag in 1891 and envisaging heavier penalties for pandering, pimping and propagation of pornographic literature, was adopted after long debates only in 1900. Speaking during the Heinze Law debates in the Reichstag on 15 December 1892, A. Bebel attacked the bigotry and hypocrisy of the then acting German laws on prostitution. The Bebel speech was published in a supplement to Vorwärts (No. 295) on 16 December 1892
  3. ↑ A. Blaschko, 'Die moderne Prostitution', Die Neue Zeit, Stuttgart, 1891-1892, Vol. II , Nos. 27, 32.
  4. ↑ Leonhard Tauscher
  5. ↑ The Panama affair—a shady transaction connected with the bribery of French statesmen, government officials and the press by the Panama Canal joint-stock company set up in France in 1880 at the at the initiative of Ferdinand de Lesseps for building a canal across of the isthmus of Panama. In December 1888 the company declared its insolvency which caused the ruin of small-time shareholders and numerous bankruptcies. This scandal compelled the French authorities to start an investigation. On 19 November 1892 the Monarchists tabled three questions on the Panama crash in the Chamber of Deputies which on 21 November elected a Commission of Inquiry of 33 with M. Henri Brisson, a Radical, as chairman. The Commission obtained irrefutable evidence implicating a number of highranking officials, e.g., the former French premier CL. de Freycinet and others who had been bribed by the Lesseps company which wanted to conceal its true financial situation and embezzlements. French justice hushed up the affair by going no further than condemning F. Lesseps and a number of his cat's-paws (see Note 157). 'Panama' became a byword for major dealings in which government officials were implicated.
  6. ↑ Boulangism—a movement that emerged in France in the mid-1880s; named so after its leader, General Georges Boulanger, the War Minister in 1886-87. This movement expressed the views of reactionary chauvinism. Appealing to the injured national pride of the French in connection with the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Boulangists succeeded for some time in enlisting significant popular support in their cause and in influencing the army rank and file. Capitalising on popular discontent with the domestic policies of the bourgeois Republicans, the Boulangists were preparing a coup d'etat to restore the monarchy in France. Yet the Boulangist movement suffered a fiasco due to steps taken by the Republican government with the backing of progressive forces, and its leaders fled from France.
  7. ↑ In 1888 the Panama Canal Company (see Note 60), assisted by the bribed Chamber deputies and acting in circumvention of the French laws forbidding lotteries, gained permission to issue lottery-loan bonds
  8. ↑ Blanquists (les blanquistes)—supporters of Louis A. Blanqui who, after leaving the Workers' Party (Le Parti français ouvrier, see Note 11), set up an organisation of their own, the Central Revolutionary Committee (Comité Révolutionnaire Central) in 1880. After Blanqui's death in 1881, E. Vaillant, E. Eudes and E. Granger came into the Committee's leadership. The Blanquists upheld the slogan of a general strike and advocated the independence of labour unions from the party. They opted for political struggle at the expense of economic struggle. During Boulangism (see Note 6) the Blanquists broke into two factions; one with Edouard Vaillant at the head came out against General Boulanger and thus made common cause with the Workers' Party, while the other (E. Granger, E. Roche), having cooperated with the Boulangists, walked out of the Central Revolutionary Committee and fell apart soon after.
  9. ↑ Allemanists (les allemanistes)—supporters of the French socialist Jean Allemane. After a split in the Possibilist Party (see Note 30), the Allemanists formed a Revolutionary-Socialist Workers' Party (Le Parti ouvrier socialiste-révolutionnaire) in October 1890; this party existed up to 1905. Considering economic struggle above the political one and opposing excessive parliamentarism, the Allemanists concentrated their efforts on propaganda work in labour unions (les syndicats) and assigned the political party of the proletariat but a secondary role. A significant part of their activity was devoted to campaigns to win seats at municipal councils.
  10. ↑ Possibilists, or Broussists—a reformist trend in the French Socialist movement which, in the 1880s through the early 20th century, was headed by P. Brousse and B. Malon who caused a split in the French Workers' Party (1882) and formed an independent party, The Workers' Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (Le Parti ouvrier socialiste-révolutionnaire). It abided by the theory of municipal socialism as the mainstream idea. The Possibilists proclaimed a 'policy of possibilities' (la politique des possibilitées) as their principle. At the turn of the 20th century they joined the French Socialist Party.
  11. ↑ In his preface to Volume II I of Das Kapital (written in October 1894), Engels noted that Part V presented 'the chief obstacle in preparing it for the press' (Division of profit into interest and entrepreneural income. Capital yielding interest). Engels completed the bulk of this work in the spring of 1893 (see present edition, Vol. 37. pp. 8-9).