Letter to Emile Vandervelde, October 21, 1894

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 21 October 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 EMILE VANDERVELDE

IN BRUSSELS

[Draft]

[London, after 21 October 1894]

Dear citizen Vandervelde,

Allow me to express my congratulations to you personally on your election, and also to our Belgian comrades in general on their splendid successes these last two Sundays.[1] This second victory of the Belgian proletariat is of great importance for us all. Small countries such as Belgium and Switzerland are our modern political laboratories, the testing ground where experiments are carried out which can be later applied to the large states. It is often from these small countries that there comes the first impulse of a movement destined to overturn Europe. Thus, before the February revolution,[2] there was the Swiss war of the Sonderbund.

At the moment we are, it seems to me, in a period of high tide, a period which dates from the suffrage victory of the Belgian workers. After Belgium, Austria joined the suffrage movement; following Austria, proletarian Germany has just requested that universal suffrage be extended from the Reichstag to the parliaments of the federal states. The repressive laws launched against the worker parties in France and Italy, similar laws being prepared in Germany, will have no more success than the violent measures of the Austrian government. Today the socialist movement everywhere is more powerful than the so-called public force.[3]

As for the Belgian workers, 14th October assures them an even stronger position. For the first time they have learned to know precisely their own forces and those of the enemy; thus henceforth they will be able to base their tactical decisions on knowledge of the situation; and you and the other socialist representatives will be able to raise your heads still higher, and will be listened to with considerably more attention following official recognition of the fact that you are the mouthpiece of 350,000 Belgian citizens. It is with you that the Belgian proletariat is making its 'joyous entry' into parliament, an entry that is joyous not only for you, but for the proletarians of the whole of Europe!

  1. ↑ The following phrase is crossed out by Engels: "If a small country like yours is not destined to resolve the great problems of our epoch on its own..."
  2. ↑ of 1848 in France
  3. ↑ the following words are crossed out by Engels "This splendid victory of the Belgian socialists marks a new stage..."