Letter to August Bebel, October 15, 1875

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To August Bebel in Leipzig

October 15, 1875

...but all I can see is that the legal status of the company must have changed considerably. I’d like some elucidation on this point, and also as to what guarantees there are to prevent the Lassallean majority on the administrative board from taking over the whole printing office in the event of the split.

From the fact of the [press’s] removal, I gather indirectly that the plan to purchase a house for the purpose has been abandoned or become unnecessary. That is undoubtedly a very good thing, for only in a case of the utmost necessity would a poor party like ours be justified in tying up money in property. First because it could be better used as working capital, and second because, in view of the total unpredictability of the law in Germany where political matters are concerned, one can never tell what might become of the property if, at any time, acute reaction should set in.

We again have a paper in Portugal, O Protesto—Protest. The movement there is forging ahead, despite much obstruction on the part of the government and the bourgeoisie.

Marx seriously complained about the incomprehensible note in No. 104 to the passage in his Anti-Proudhon (“the Socialists as well as the economists condemned combinations”), saying that those were “Socialists of the Proudhon breed.” In the first place there was not a single Socialist of the Proudhon breed in existence at that time except Proudhon himself. In the second place Marx’s assertion is true of all Socialists who made their appearance up to that time (with the exception of us two, who were unknown in France) in so far as they had occasion to deal with combinations — with Robert Owen leading the procession. The same applies to the Owenists and among the French to Cabet. As there was no right of combination in France this question was little touched upon there. But since before Marx there existed only feudal, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and utopian socialism, and socialism blended from various of these elements. It was clear that all these Socialists, each of whom claimed to possess a definite panacea and stood outside the real working-class movement, portrayed every form of the real movement, hence also combinations and strikes, as a false path which diverted the masses from the only way that leads to salvation, the way of the true faith. You see that the note was not only wrong but wholly absurd. ...

But it seems to be impossible for our people, at least a number of them, to confine themselves in their articles to what they have really grasped. In proof take the endless columns theoretically-socialist in content which have been penned by Kz, Symmachos and all the rest of that crowd, whose economic blunders, erroneous views and ignorance of socialist literature furnish the best means of thoroughly destroying the theoretical superiority of the German movement up to now. Marx was on the point of issuing an explanation on account of this note.

But enough of complaints. I hope the aspirations and expectations cherished in connection with the imprudently precipitated unification will materialise, that it will be possible to bring the mass of the Lassalleans from their cult of Lassalle to a sensible conception of their real class position, and that the split, which will come as surely as 2 × 2 = 4, will take place under circumstances favourable to us. That I should also believe all this, would be asking too much.

Apart from Germany and Austria the country on which we should focus our attention remains Russia. The government there, just as in this country, is the chief ally of the movement. But a much better one than our Bismarck, Stieber and Tessendorf. The Russian court party, which is now fairly firmly in the saddle, tries to take back all the concessions made during the years of the ‘new era’ that was ushered in in 1861, and with genuinely Russian methods at that. So now again only ‘sons of the upper classes’ are to be allowed to study, and in order to carry out this policy all others are made to fail in the graduation examinations. In 1873 alone this was the fate that awaited 24,000 young people whose entire careers were blocked, as they were expressly forbidden to become even elementary schoolteachers. And yet people are surprised at the spread of ‘nihilism’ in Russia. If Walster, who knows Russian, were to go through some of the pamphlets written by the liberal opposition and published by B Behr in Berlin or if someone could be found with an adequate knowledge of Polish to read the Lemberg newspapers (for example, Dziennik Polski or the Gazeta Narodowa) and make excerpts of these things, the Volksstaat could become the best paper in Europe on Russian affairs. It almost looks as if the next dance is going to start in Russia. And if this happens while the inevitable war between the German-Prussian empire and Russia is in progress – which is very likely – repercussions in Germany are also inevitable.

Marx sends his best regards to you.

Sincerely yours
F Engels

Best regards to Liebknecht.