Farewell Letter to the Readers of the Sozialdemokrat

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Engels wrote his "Farewell Letter to the Readers of the Sozialdemokrat" on the occasion of its closure. Following publication in the said newspaper, it was reprinted by the Austrian magazine Sozialdemokratische Monatsschrift, No. 9, September 30, 1890. It was also included in English translation and slightly abridged, in Edward Aveling's article "The New Era in German Socialism", which appeared in The Daily Chronicle, No. 8903, September 25, 1890, and in Italian translation in La Giustizia in October 1890. The letter was also printed (with the last phrase omitted) in the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung, No. 119, October 2, and (without the first two paragraphs) in the Berliner Volksblatt, No. 230, October 3, 1890.

Might I too be permitted to bid farewell to the reader.

The Sozialdemokrat must vanish from the scene. Not only because this has been so often announced to the other parties. Far more because the Sozialdemokrat would itself under the changed circumstances necessarily become something else, with a different mission, different contributors, a different readership. And a paper which played such a specific historical role, a paper which was peculiar for the fact that in its columns, and in its columns only, the twelve most decisive years in the life of the German workers’ party are reflected—such a paper cannot and must not change. It must remain what it was, or it must cease to exist. On this we all agree.

We also all agree that the paper cannot disappear without leaving a gap. No organ appearing in Germany, official or not, can replace it. For the party this is only a relative drawback: it is entering into different conditions of struggle and therefore needs different weapons and a different strategy and tactics. But it is an absolute loss for the contributors, and particularly for me.

Twice in my life I have had the honour and the pleasure of working for a periodical where I enjoyed to full measure the two most favourable conditions in which one can be effective in the press: firstly, unconditional press freedom, and secondly, the certainty that one was reaching exactly that public one wished to reach.

The first occasion was in 1848-1849 at the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Those were revolutionary times, and in such times it is anyway a pleasure to work for the daily press. You see the effect of every word before your eyes, you see how the articles literally hit the target, as though they were shells, and how they explode.

The second occasion was at the Sozialdemokrat. This too was a revolutionary interval, after the party found its feet again at the Wyden Congress, and from then on resumed the fight “with all methods”, legal or not. The Sozialdemokrat was the embodiment of this illegality. For it there was no binding imperial constitution, no imperial criminal code, no Prussian common law. Illegally, defying and disdaining all imperial and provincial legislation, it penetrated every week the frontiers of the Holy German Empire; detectives, spies, agents provocateurs, customs officials, doubled and trebled frontier forces were powerless: almost with the certainty of a bill of exchange it was presented to the subscriber on the date of maturity; no Stephan could prevent the German Reichspost from having to dispatch and deliver it. And this with over ten thousand subscribers in Germany; the banned writings of the period before 1848 were very rarely paid for by their bourgeois purchasers, but for twelve years the workers paid with the greatest punctuality for their Sozialdemokrat. How often did my heart, the heart of an old revolutionary, rejoice to observe this excellently lubricated noiseless interplay between editors, distributors and subscribers, this BUSINESSLIKE organised revolutionary work proceeding week after week, year in, year out with the same certainty!

And the paper was worth the troubles ad dangers which its distribution cost. It was certainly the best paper the party ever possessed. And this was not simply because it, alone amongst them, enjoyed full freedom of the press. The principles of the party were expounded and recorded with unusual clarity and firmness, and the tactical line of the editors was almost always the correct one. And then there was something else. While our bourgeois press cultivated the most deathly boredom, the Sozialdemokrat generously reflected the cheerful humour with which our workers are wont to fight police harassment.

And the Sozialdemokrat was anything but a mere mouthpiece for the parliamentary group. When in 1885 the majority of the group favoured the Steamer Subsidy, the paper firmly supported the opposite opinion and held on to its right to do so, even when the majority forbade it this right in an order of the day which they themselves must today find incomprehensible. The fight lasted for just four weeks, during which the editors were warmly supported by the party comrades inside and outside Germany. On April 2 the ban was issued; on the 23rd the Sozialdemokrat published a declaration agreed between the parliamentary group and the editors, indicating that the group had rescinded it s ban.

At a later date it fell to the Sozialdemokrat to put to the test the renowned Swiss right of asylum. There it became clear, as in all similar cases since 1830, that this right of asylum always collapses precisely when it really ought to come into force. But this is nothing new. Since the little republic’s démocratisation from 1830 on, the neighbouring great powers have allowed it the democratic experiment domestically only on the condition that the right of asylum for refugees is exercised under the supervision of the interested great power. Switzerland is too weak not to submit. It cannot be blamed for this. Marx used to say, specifically with reference to Holland, Switzerland and Denmark, that today the worst situated was a small country which had had a great history. But in “free Switzerland“ they should stop bragging about their immaculate right of asylum.

The Sozialdemokrat was the banner of the German party; after twelve years of struggle the party is victorious. The Anti-Socialist Law has fallen, Bismarck has been overthrown. The powerful German Empire set in motion against us all its instruments of power; the party scoffed at them, until finally the German Empire had to lower its flag before ours. The Imperial Government will try out common law against us for the while, and so we shall, for the while, try out those legal means which we have regained for ourselves by the vigorous use of illegal means. Whether the “legal” means are once again written into our programme or not is pretty immaterial. The attempt must be made to get along with legal methods of struggle for the time being. Not only we are doing this, it is being done by all workers‘ parties in all countries where the workers have a certain measure of legal freedom of action, and this for the simple reason that it is the most productive method for them. However, the prerequisite for this is that the other side also acts legally. If the attempt is made once again actually to place our party outside the common law, be it by means of new emergency legislation, unlawful convictions and practices by the Imperial Supreme Court, by police tyranny, or by other illegal encroachments by the executive, then the German Social Democrats will once again be driven to the illegal path as the only one open to them. Even for the English, the most law-abiding nation, the first condition of legality on the part of the people is that all other agents of power remain within the bounds of the law; should this not be the case, then in the English view of law, rebellion is the first civic duty.

If this should happen, what then? Will the party build barricades, appeal to the power of the gun? It will certainly not do its opponents this favour. It will be saved from this by the knowledge of its own position of strength, given it by every general election to the Reichstag. Twenty per cent of the votes cast is a very respectable figure, but this also means that the opponents together still have eighty per cent of the vote. And with our party seeing in this connection that its vote has doubled in the past three years, and that it can expect an even greater increase by the time of the next elections, then it would be mad to attempt a putsch today with twenty against eighty and the army on top of that; the certain result would be—the loss of all the positions of power won in the past twenty-five years. The party has a much better and well-tested means at its disposal. On the day our rights under common law are disputed, the Sozialdemokrat will reappear. The old machinery, held in reserve for this case, will start up again, improve, enlarged, newly oiled. And one thing is certain: on a second run the German Empire will not hold out for twelve years.