Letter to Karl Kautsky, August 12, 1892

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To Kautsky in Stuttgart

Ryde, August 12, 1892

The Firs, Brading Road

Dear Baron,

Herewith the proofs, returned with thanks.

August will already have told you that my trip to Germany has fallen through. The after-effects of the old trouble, which laid me up 9 years ago when you came to visit me on my birthday, have once more asserted themselves and at just the wrong time so that I have got to lie here on the sofa instead of tippling with you. Luckily I can breathe good sea air here — the house is right out in the country, high up, with a view of the sea — and this, together with rest and abstinence from alcohol will no doubt set me on my legs again within 3 or 4 weeks. But it’s a pity it should have happened just now. Well, to postpone isn’t to put off indefinitely.

Thank you for your book — unfortunately I have so far been prevented from reading it by the upsets of the past few days.

It’s too bad that the passages about the Social-Democratic Federation and the Fabians, as well as about Naylor’s candidature, didn’t get into Tussy’s article. I read them afterwards in the manuscript. They are an almost essential supplement to the election picture. The complete collapse of the S.D.F. as soon as it came to a real test was significant after its boasting for years that it was the “only” Social-Democratic organisation, the only salvation-bringing church. I don’t know whether you saw Bax in Zurich, but Bax is a poor authority on the S.D.F. He was editor of Justice for six weeks, removed all the many improprieties but was absolutely incapable of giving the sheet any other than a sectarian character (for if he could he would certainly have done so). After all, the S.D.F. is purely a sect. It has ossified Marxism into a dogma and, by rejecting every labour movement which is not orthodox Marxism (and that a Marxism which contains much that is erroneous), that is, by pursuing the exact opposite of the policy recommended in the Manifesto, it renders itself incapable of ever becoming anything else but a sect. Bax for many reasons has renewed contact with these people, but if they do not change it will certainly not he long before he finds out that they want to exploit him politically and financially and that he cannot assume responsibility for them. But he must learn this by personal experience. In the meantime he has become so deeply involved that he has to take them partly under his protection. For the rest, Bax has no contact whatever with the workers.

The Fabians have become a real obstacle: the tail of the “great” Liberal Party, on the pretext of wanting to force its candidates on that party. In this they may be successful for a while in the case of the County Council where possibilist programmes of municipal reforms can be drawn up, but even there the pious fraud will work only until the bourgeoisie sees through it. In elections to Parliament it does not work; there the Liberals give the Fabians, like all other so-called labour candidates, only hopeless constituencies. If you want to force labour candidates on the Liberals you have to go about it the way Burns and Keir Hardie do: by keeping them at the point of the sword, and not, like the Fabians, by fawning upon them under false pretences. Fortunately the call for an independent labour party is already so loud and general that the gentle blandishments of Fabian flattery and Fabian money will surely be overcome.

Burgess, the Workman’s Times man, now proposes to found an INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY himself— yet another competitor for the other two! Burgess is a vain, ambitious johnny, hitherto most unreliable. Whether and to what extent he will make out remains to be seen. At all events his present action is a straw in the wind.

A very good bit of news: So proud were the factory workers of the North of their old TEN HOURS BILL that it was largely they who opposed the eight hour day (cf. Newcastle TRADES UNION Congress) . This is now changing; the masses are gradually being converted to 8 hours while the leaders with their 10 hours are beginning to find themselves out on a limb. This will no doubt be more or less in evidence at this year’s TRADES UNION congress.

The Avelings have gone to Norway. Just before they left, Tussy got a letter from Greulich in which the latter requested her on behalf of the Zurich International Congress Committee to oblige them with an English draft of the invitation to the English TRADES UNION Congress, and to translate all their other stuff into English. So Mr Seidel’s machinations, aimed at getting the Confounded Marxists coldshouldered on that occasion (which could only have led to the installation of Mr Adolphe Smith Headingley), would seem to have been happily nipped in the bud.

Pumps and Percy send their kindest regards.

Your

F. E.