Reply to the Editors of the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung

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🔍 See also : Draft of a Reply to the Editors of the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung.

See Note 101.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE SOZIALDEMOKRAT

The signatory requests the publication of the following letter, which was dispatched yesterday to the present editors of the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung in Dresden.

* * *

In their farewell message (No. 105 of August 31, 1890) the retiring editors of the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung state that petty-bourgeois parliamentary socialism had a majority in Germany. But majorities often very quickly became minorities,

"...and so the retiring editors of the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung join Friedrich Engels in hoping that, as the naive state socialism of Lassalle was overcome in the past, the success-hungry parliamentary tendency among the present-day Social Democrats will also soon be overcome by the common sense of the German working class".

The retiring editors greatly surprise me in the above And perhaps themselves too.... To date I know nothing of a majority for petty-bourgeois parliamentary socialism in the German party. So they may "hope" whatever they like and as long as they will, but I do not "join" them in hoping.

Had I been able to entertain any doubt about the nature of the latest revolt by men of letters and students in our German party, then it would vanish faced with the height of impertinence of this attempt to announce my solidarity with the somersaults of these gentlemen.My only connection with the retiring editors was that for the past few weeks they had been sending me, unsolicited, their paper; I did not find it necessary, however, to tell them what I thought of it. Now I really have to tell them, and in public at that.

Theoretically I found in it—and this is true by and large for the rest of the "opposition" press—a frenziedly distorted "Marxism", marked on the one hand by a considerable misunderstanding of the viewpoint which it claimed to represent, and on the other by a gross ignorance of the decisive historical facts on every occasion, and thirdly by that knowledge of their own immeasurable superiority which so advantageously distinguishes German scribblers. Marx foresaw such disciples when he had this to say at the end of the seventies about the "Marxism" raging among certain Frenchmen: "tout ce que je sais, c'est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste"—"I know only this, that I am not a 'Marxist'."

Practically, I found in the paper a ruthless disregard of all the actual conditions of party struggle, a death-defying "surmounting of obstacles" in the imagination, which may do all honour to the untamed youthful courage of the writers, but which, if transferred from the imagination to reality, would be sufficient to bury the strongest party of millions under the well-earned laughter of the whole hostile world. That even a small sect cannot allow itself, unpunished, such a schoolboy policy—in this respect the gentlemen have had curious experiences since then.

All the complaints against the parliamentary group or the party executive, which they have been storing up for months, boil down at most to simple trifles. But if the gentlemen like to strain at a gnat, this can be no reason for the German worker to swallow camels in appreciation.

So they have harvested what they had sown. Quite apart from all the questions of context, the whole campaign was started with such childishness, such naive self-deception about their own importance, about the state of affairs and views within the party, that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. May the gentlemen take the lesson to heart. Some of them have written things which justified all manner of hope. Most of them could accomplish something, were they less convinced of the perfection of the stage of development they have reached at this moment. May they come to realise that their "academic education"—in any case requiring a thorough, critical self-assessment—does not provide them with an officer's commission and a claim to a corresponding post in the party; that in our party everybody must work his way up; that positions of trust in the party are not won simply through literary talent and theoretical knowledge, even if both are undoubtedly present, but that this also demands familiarity with the conditions of party struggle and adjustment to its forms, proven personal reliability and constancy of character and, finally, a willingness to join the ranks of the fighters—in short, that they, the "academically educated" all in all have much more to learn from the workers than the workers from them.

London, September 7, 1890

Frederick Engels