Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, December 4, 1894

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 4 December 1894


First published abridged in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels. Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 4 December 1894

Dear Sorge,

Thank you and your wife for your good wishes. Between ourselves, my 75th year doesn't hold out quite so much promise as previous ones. True I am still nimble enough on my pins, besides having an appetite for work and a reasonable capacity for it, but nevertheless I find that stomach upsets and colds, which I could once afford to treat with supreme contempt, now demand the most respectful treatment. But that is nothing so long as it amounts to nothing more.

Yesterday I sent you three copies of the Preface to Volume III.[1] One for the luckless Stiebeling who has sent me several specimens of his stuff.b[2] One for P. Fireman, D. Phil., if you know or can discover his address. Please give the third, after you have done with it, to Schlüter who might be able to put it to good use. In about a week's time at the most I hope to be able to send you a copy of the actual book, having been notified that this is on its way. In addition today, rolled up and sent Book Post;

1. Sozialdemokrat

2. Justice, which I shall again be sending you regularly because of the wrangling with the Germans, from which they can't desist.[3] Nearly everything the paper says about the triumphs of the Social Democratic Federation[4] is a lie; compared with other organisations, especially the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation is dwindling and, if things go on like this, it will soon dwindle into nothingness. Unfortunately the Independent Labour Party no longer has a proper paper.

3. Glühlichter from Vienna and Wahrer Jakob from Stuttgart, so that you may acquaint yourself with the 'wit' the party has at its disposal.

4. Bebel's speech in Berlin and his four articles attacking Grillenberger and Vollmar.[5]

The latter is the most interesting of the lot. The Bavarians, who have become very, very opportunistic and are already almost an ordinary People's Party (i.e. most of the leaders and many of the party's more recent recruits), had voted in favour of the general estimates in the Bavarian Landtag, while Vollmar, in particular, had begun to agitate on behalf of the peasants so as to catch the big peasants of Upper Bavaria—men with 25-80 ACRES of land (10-30 hectares) and thus quite unable to manage without wage labour—but not their labourers. Having no high hopes of the Frankfurt Party Conference they organised, a week before the latter, a Bavarian Party Conference of their own in the course of which they constituted what amounted to a Sonderbund,[6] in as much as they agreed that at Frankfurt the Bavarian delegation should, on all questions relating to Bavaria, vote as a body and in accordance with the Bavarian resolutions previously settled upon. So, having arrived there, they declared that they had had to grant the general estimates in Bavaria, there having been no other alternative and that it was, furthermore a purely Bavarian question in which no one else had any business to poke his nose. In other words, if you resolve anything we Bavarians do not like, if you reject our ultimatum, then it will be your fault if there's a split!

Such was the claim, unprecedented in the annals of the party, with which they confronted the other delegates who were utterly unprepared for it. And to such extremes has the clamour for unity been taken in recent years that, having regard to the influx of as yet insufficiently trained elements during the same period, it is small wonder that this attitude, incompatible as it is with the party's continued existence, should have got by without the peremptory rebuff it deserved, and that no resolution should have been taken on the question of supplies.

Now let us suppose the Prussians, who are in the majority at the Party Conference, were also to hold a preliminary congress and were to pass resolutions there on, say, the attitude of the Bavarians—resolutions binding upon all the Prussian delegates so that the whole lot, both the majority and the minority, voted as a body for those resolutions at the General Party Conference, what would be the good of holding General Party Conferences at all? And what would the Bavarians say if the Prussians were to do exactly what they themselves have just done?

In short, the matter could not be allowed to rest at that, and it was now that Bebel stepped into the breach. He simply put the question back on the agenda and it is now being debated. Bebel is by far the most lucid and far-sighted man of the lot.

I have been corresponding with him regularly for some fifteen years and we see eye to eye about almost everything. Liebknecht, on the other hand, is very hidebound in his outlook and the old democrat of South German- federalist, particularist complexion in him is forever coming to the surface. Worse still, he cannot tolerate the fact that Bebel, who has long since out- grown him, refuses to submit to his guidance although he puts up willingly with his presence at his side. Furthermore, so badly has he managed the central organ, the Vorwärts—mainly because of the jealousy with which he guards his LEADERSHIP, wanting to direct everything and in fact directing nothing, i.e. placing obstacles everywhere—that the paper, which could be the best in Berlin, serves only to provide the party with profits amounting to 50,000 marks but no political influence whatsoever. Needless to say, Liebknecht is now intent on acting as mediator and pours scorn on Bebel, but in my view, it's the latter who will turn out to be right. In Berlin the Executive and the best of our chaps are already taking his side and I am convinced that, if he appeals to the party at large, he will get a big majority. Meanwhile we must wait and see. I would also send you the Vollmariad, etc., but have only got one copy of the same for my own use.

Louise and the baby both well. Warm regards to you and your wife. I trust your eyes will soon be better again, as also your other infirmities.

Your old friend,

F.E.

  1. ↑ of Capital
  2. ↑ G. C. Stiebeling, Das Werthgesetz und die Profit Rate, New York, [1890]
  3. ↑ Engels means the anonymous article 'The Movement in Germany' published in Justice (No. 568) on 1 December 1894. The author of that article reproached the editors of Vorwärts for their silence about the differences among the German Social-Democrats over the agrarian issue and the attacks on Justice and Hyndman. A reply to that article appeared in the next issue of Justice (No. 569) on 8 December 1894; it was E. Bernstein's statement 'The Vorwärts and Justice . To the Editor of Justice in which he rebutted the accusations.
  4. ↑ 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).
  5. ↑ A reference to A. Bebel's speech in the second constituency of Berlin on 14 November 1894 (see Note 425).
    Georg von Vollmar and Karl Grillenberger replied with a press polemic. Thus, on 17 and 21 November 1894 Grillenberger published notes in his newspaper Frankische Tagespost in which he commented on the above speech and which were reprinted by the newspaper Vorwärts (Nos. 271 and 274); on 20 and 24 November 1894 von Vollmar burst into print in the newspaper Münchener Post with a series of articles entitled Bebel's Fahnenerhebung which soon after were reprinted by the newspaper Vorwärts (Nos. 273, 274 and 276) on 23, 24 and 27 November 1894. A.Bebel responded by two statements and four articles under the general title Zur Diskussion über den Frankfurter Parteitag. Zur Entgegnung which were published by Vorwärts in November-December 1894.
  6. ↑ A reference to the second congress held by the Bavarian Social-Democratic organisation on 30 September 1894 in Munich. It was attended by 160 delegates. Two questions were on the agenda: 1) the activity of Social-Democratic Deputies in the Bavarian Landtag and 2) agitation among the peasants. Georg von Vollmar and Karl Grillenberger drew support from the majority of the congress which approved the activity of the Social-Democratic parliamentary group and adopted a decision on setting up a special organisation of the Bavarian Social-Democratics under the central guidance of the Landtag deputies—von Vollmar, Karl Grillenberger and others.
    Sonderbund—an ironic analogy with the separatist union of reactionary Catholic cantons in Switzerland in the 1840s (see Note 273); here Engels means the separatist leanings of the Bavarian Social-Democrats.