Letter to August Bebel, October 18, 1893

ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL

IN COLOGNE

London, 18 October 1893

Dear August,

I have just received notification from the publishers of the Vorwärts, etc., that they 'plan' to re-issue the Anti-Dühring and that all they require of me is to append a few brief remarks to the new edition. What I myself might perhaps 'plan' no one bothered to ask.

Now you will recall that during our trip 189 we agreed to give the Anti-Dühring to Dietz and, in lieu thereof, the shorter, more popular stuff to the Vorwärts. I shall therefore provisionally acquaint the gentlemen in Berlin of that fact, lest they should delude themselves further. I am sending this straight to Cologne, as I understand from Louise that you will be going from there to Stuttgart and will thus be able to discuss the matter with Dietz. The following are my terms for an edition of a size he can determine himself but of which he must also notify me:

1. A fee of 15% of the retail price, i.e. 15 Pfg. per mark. That is what we get here in England for translations of my stuff. Since the book does not, after all, lend itself to bulk sales except in a limited degree, he can fix the price accordingly.

2. The fee to be paid to Dr Victor Adler of Vienna. 282

3. Dietz to undertake not to reduce the price either of the whole or of part without my written consent. This is to prevent the book from being used, as has happened before, to help shift certain slow-moving stock.

That is all. As you know, Liebknecht (on that Sunday in Grunewald) tackled me with a view to my reminding Lafargue about regular work as a correspondent. This I promised to do as soon as he let me know that the Executive had approved Lafargue's fee. A report of the Paris Marxist Congress 283 from a Paris correspondent then appeared in the Vorwärts. I inquired of Lafargue^[1] (having heard nothing from Liebknecht) whether it was by him, to which he replied in the negative. Whereupon I asked Liebknecht 25 how the matter stood and have now received the following answer:

'Before leaving for Saxony, whence I have just returned, I wrote to August asking him to settle the matter with Lafargue. I am dependent on the Executive in all questions involving extraordinary expenditure.'

So it seems that you are once again to be held responsible for the omissions of others. Now admittedly the Executive has of late been absolutely overwhelmed with work, but I would venture to point out that the engagement of a newspaper correspondent could be attended to in a matter of minutes. It almost seems to me as though Liebknecht, with his growing predilection for Vaillant, had no particular desire to fix things up with Lafargue, otherwise he would no doubt have settled the matter before the Paris Congress and in that case would also have received the authentic report of it (the French did not admit reporters or members of the public).

Over here all is bustle. The day before yesterday we had Lehmann and Mrs Adams Walther and today we have Shmuilov, who proposes to marry here. I asked Mrs. Adams Walther about her arrangements with Foulger. She knew nothing definite, but will make inquiries from the friend who saw to the matter and will let me know the result. From what she was able to say, it seems highly probable that the copyright has been tacitly assigned to Foulger, and in that case absolutely no action whatever can be taken against Reeves other than by inserting an announcement in the papers to the effect that the said text has long been out of date. 265

I intended to send you the 20 marks I borrowed on the last day but have not got round to going into town and collecting German notes. You shall have it next time. Should there be a further amount owing to you, as is quite possible, perhaps you would remind me in your next.

Tussy has got Lassalle's letters and will copy them out on her typewriter. 284 She will charge you the usual rate and I shall pay her. But what are you giving the heirs in the way of a fee? The handwriting is such that I still can't tell how much it will be.

21 Oct. Yesterday this letter was laid aside yet again, as I had to take Shmuilov to the registry office and help him deal with the preliminary formalities, he being unfamiliar with English and I being unable to find anyone else. It will be a month before the actual joining together in matrimony can take place.

In Austria the cause is doing splendidly. The general disorientation of the parties, the Emperor's^[2] vacillation and the virtual certainty of a dissolution and new elections will provide occasion for the most splendid agitation on the part of our chaps and for creating a thorough commotion in the old morass. The various aristocratic and bourgeois parties are scuttling about in all directions like ants in the ruins of an antheap. The old order, shaky as it was, has now gone for good and all we have to do is see to it that things don't calm down again. And that won't be difficult.

Obviously there will be repercussions in Germany. Just as in 1848 when Vienna kicked off on 13 March, thereby compelling Berlin to follow suit on the 18th. Brussels 276 Vienna 270—Berlin—is now the natural 'alphabetical order'. Prussian and other forms of local suffrage, the Constitution of Hamburg, etc., will doubtless each in turn have to swallow it. The period of stagnation and reaction in the legislative field that began in 1870 is over. Governments are again coming under the control of a living political movement among the people and it is we who are at the back of that movement, it is we who determine it, now negatively, now positively. We are now what the Liberals were before 1848, and our victories in the Belgian and Austrian elections have shown that the ferment we provide is strong enough to complete the process of fermentation now begun. But the process will be neither smooth nor rapid until we have also won direct or indirect victories in Germany—conquests in the libertarian sense, greater political power for the working man, the extension of his freedom of movement. And that too will come.

If you make use of the passages from Miquel's letters, don't expend all your powder at one go. Remember that hardly have the things come out than the effect is lost and cannot be repeated—unless, that is, we still have some ammunition in reserve.

There was a very real risk of a general strike in Austria and one cannot yet rule out the possibility of its being set in train for the benefit of Taaffe's ministry and his electoral reforms, 270 which would certainly be the height of historical irony. When the English miners were locked out,^[3] it was clear how bemusing such a muddle-headed notion could be. The basic idea is to force the hand of the bourgeoisie by means of a general shortage of coal. This has its points if the workers take the offensive, i.e. do so when business is good. When business is depressed, on the other hand, industrialists find themselves with excessive stocks and collieries with more coal than they can sell. It is then that the capitalists seize the initiative, the aim being to cut down production by means of lock-outs, and to depress wages at the same time—in such a case a general strike is grist to the capitalists' mill, since it is in their interest that the production of coal be curtailed. What the English ought to have done was to advise the Continental miners not to strike on any account, so that if possible coal might be brought from the Continent to England. But everywhere people's heads were turned by the catchword 'general strike', the lockout in England was followed by the Belgian and French strikes 285 and such effect as these had in England could only have been of benefit to the capitalists.

Whereas the big colliery owners are still putting up a fight, more and more of the smaller ones are knuckling under. Some 80,000 men are back at work but about 200,000 are still out. The big ones are threatening the workers with the ultimate sanction, namely eviction from colliery-owned dwellings. If there were strike breakers ready and willing to move into these houses, the collieries would unquestionably see to it that this was done and would receive military aid to that end. Such, however, is not the case, and for the sake of a purely arbitrary act, the sole purpose of which would be to deposit the workers without shelter outside houses that would remain empty, the government will be unlikely to expose itself once again to the unpopularity it would attract as a result of a fusillade, as recently at Featherstone. 286 If it happens nevertheless, much blood will be spilt. This is an ultimate sanction the workers won't submit to.

The Avelings will be coming shortly, having just announced themselves for a meal. This house is like a dovecote. So good-bye and my regards to everyone, including Dietz and K. Kautsky and wife^[4] when you get to Stuttgart.

Yours,

F.E.