Letter to August Momberger, March 9, 1894

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 9 March 1894


First published, in Russian, 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


ENGELS TO AUGUST MOMBERGER

IN WIESBADEN

London, 9 March 1894
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Sir,

My reply to your esteemed letter of 26.2 has been somewhat delayed[1] by my absence from London.[2]

Things do not look very bright so far as English socialist literature is concerned. The leading publisher of books of this nature is Sonnenschein (W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Paternoster Square). While there is a lot of inferior stuff amongst his SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES, it also contains the following:

W. Morris and E. B. Bax, Socialism, its Growth and Outcome;

E. B. Bax, The Religion of Socialism; do.,

The Ethics of Socialism; Aveling, E. AND E. M[arx-Aveling], The Working Class Movement in America;

Lafargue, The Evolution of Property; E. B. Bax, Outlooks from the New Standpoint; Hyndman, Commercial Panics of the 19th Century;

Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; do.,

Socialism, Scientific and Utopian etc. Again, the value of these things varies greatly. There is also a multitude of shorter propaganda pamphlets of very varied quality, some being really good, some deplorably bad; none are easily obtainable through book shops. Most were published by the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION[3] and the FABIAN SOCIETY.[4]

There is no journal similar to the Neue Zeit in this country. The socialist weeklies are:

Justice (organ of the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION), publisher H. Quelch, 37a, Clerkenwell Green, London, E. C.

Workman's Times, 59, Tile St., Manchester (MANCHESTER LABOUR PRESS SOCIETY).

That is about all the information I can give you. I fear, however, that the sort of Englishmen you meet in Wiesbaden will be unlikely to provide many suitable candidates for our party.

Yours very truly,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ As August Momberger wrote to Engels on 26 February 1894, he wanted to take part in disseminating socialist ideas among foreigners resident in Wiesbaden, the English in the first place. He asked Engels to recommend the significant socialist, socio-political and natural science works, as well as some English journal similar to the German Die Neue Zeit.
  2. ↑ Engels left for Eastbourne on 9 February or thereabouts because of poor health; he stayed there until 1 March 1894.
  3. ↑ Social Democratic Federation—a British socialist organisation set up in August 1884 on the basis of the bourgeois-radical Democratic Federation; it united heterogeneous socialist ele-ments, predominantly intellectuals and a section of politically active workers. The Federation stated in its programme that the entire wealth of the nation should belong to Labour, its only source. It also set as its aim a socialisation of the means of production, dis-tribution and exchange, and came out for a society of 'emancipated labour'. That was Britain's first socialist programme based mainly on Marxist ideas. The leadership of the Federation was in the hands of Henry Hyndman, prone to authoritarian methods of guidance, and his supporters who did not deem it necessary to conduct work in the trades unions, a stance that inevitably led to isolation of the organisation from the working-class masses. A group of Socialists within the Federation (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, William Morris, Tom Mann and others) opposed Hyndman and championed closer ties with the working-class movement. The differences on tactical issues and international cooperation resulted in a split and the formation of an independent organisation— The Socialist League (see Note 136).
  4. ↑ Fabians—members of the Fabian Society founded in 1884 by democratic-minded intellec-tuals. It was named after the Roman general of 3d century B.C., Quintus Fabias Maximus, surnamed Cunctator ('the delayer') because of his cautious tactics in the war against Hannibal. The Fabian Society included such prominent members as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Bernard Shaw, H. Bland, among others. Its local organisations drew support from industrial workers who were attracted by a sharp critique of the capitalist order contained in Fabian publications. However, except in 1892, when it attracted a number of otherwise 'homeless' working-class socialists, the number of actual 'practising' workers (i.e., non-official trade-union members) never exceeded 10 per cent of the identifiable membership, and perhaps even less if the total numbers were counted. Rejecting the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of bourgeois society, the Fabians thought it was possible to shift from capitalism to socialism by implementing reforms within the framework of so-called municipal socialism. In 1900 the Fabian Society joined the Labour Party.