London, March 18-28, 1875

Dear Bebel,

I have received your letter of February 23
and am glad to hear that you are in such good bodily health.

You ask me what we think of the unification affair. We are, unfortunately,
in exactly the same boat as yourself. Neither Liebknecht nor anyone else
has let us have any kind of information, and hence we too know only what
is in the papers  —  not that there was anything in them until a week or
so ago, when the draft programme appeared. That astonished us not a little,
I must say.

Our party had so often held out a conciliatory hand to the Lassalleans,
or at least proffered co-operation, only to be rebuffed so often and so
contemptuously by the Hasenclevers, Hasselmanns and Tolckes as to lead
any child to the conclusion that, should these gentlemen now come and themselves
proffer conciliation, they must be in a hell of a dilemma. Knowing full
well what these people are like, however, it behoves us to make the most
of that dilemma and insist on every conceivable guarantee that might prevent
these people from restoring, at our party’s expense, their shattered reputation
in general working-class opinion. They should be given an exceedingly cool
and cautious reception, and union be made dependent on the degree of their
readiness to abandon their sectarian slogans and their state aid, [2]
and to accept in its essentials the Eisenach Programme of 1869 [3]
or an improved edition of it adapted to the present day. Our party has
absolutely nothing to learn from the Lassalleans in the theoretical
sphere, i.e. the crux of the matter where the programme is concerned, but
the Lassalleans doubtless have something to learn from the party; the first
prerequisite for union was that they cease to be sectarians, Lassalleans,
i.e. that, first and foremost, they should, if not wholly relinquish the
universal panacea of state aid, at least admit it to be a secondary provisional
measure alongside and amongst many others recognised as possible. The draft
programme shows that our people, while infinitely superior to the Lassallean
leaders in matters of theory, are far from being a match for them where
political guile is concerned; once again the “honest men” [4]
have been cruelly done in the eye by the dishonest.

To begin with, they adopt the high-sounding but historically false
Lassallean dictum: in relation to the working class all other classes are
only one reactionary mass. This proposition is true only in certain exceptional
instances, for example in the case of a revolution by the proletariat,
e.g. the Commune, or in a country in which not only has the bourgeoisie
constructed state and society after its own image but the democratic petty
bourgeoisie, in its wake, has already carried that reconstruction to its
logical conclusion. If, for instance, in Germany, the democratic petty
bourgeoisie were part of this reactionary mass, then how could the Social-Democratic
Workers’ Party have gone hand in hand with it, with the People’s Party,
[5] for years on end? How could the Volksstaat
derive virtually all its political content from the petty-bourgeois democratic
Frankfurter Zeitung? And how can one explain the adoption in this
same programme of no less than seven demands that coincide exactly and
word for word with the programme of the People’s Party and of petty-bourgeois
democracy? I mean the seven political demands, 1 to 5 and 1 to 2, of which
there is not one that is not bourgeois-democratic. [6]

Secondly, the principle that the workers’ movement is an international
one is, to all intents and purposes, utterly denied in respect of the present,
and this by men who, for the space of five years and under the most difficult
conditions, upheld that principle in the most laudable manner. The German
workers’ position in the van of the European movement rests essentially
on their genuinely international attitude during the war [7];
no other proletariat would have behaved so well. And now this principle
is to be denied by them at a moment when, everywhere abroad, workers are
stressing it all the more by reason of the efforts made by governments
to suppress every attempt at its practical application in an organisation!
And what is left of the internationalism of the workers’ movement? The
dim prospect  —  not even of subsequent co-operation among European workers
with a view to their liberation  —  nay, but of a future “international
brotherhood of peoples”  —  of your Peace League bourgeois “United States
of Europe"! [8]

There was, of course, no need whatever to mention the International
as such. But at the very least there should have been no going back on
the programme of 1869, and some sort of statement to the effect that, though
first of all the German workers’ party is acting within the limits
set by its political frontiers (it has no right to speak in the name of
the European proletariat, especially when what it says is wrong), it is
nevertheless conscious of its solidarity with the workers of all other
countries and will, as before, always be ready to meet the obligations
that solidarity entails. Such obligations, even if one does not definitely
proclaim or regard oneself as part of the “International,”  consist for
example in aid, abstention from blacklegging during strikes, making sure
that the party organs keep German workers informed of the movement abroad,
agitation against impending or incipient dynastic wars and, during such
wars, an attitude such as was exemplarily maintained in 1870 and 1871,
etc.

Thirdly, our people have allowed themselves to be saddled with
the Lassallean “iron law of wages” which is based on a completely outmoded
economic view, namely that on average the workers receive only the minimum
wage because, according to the Malthusian theory of population, there are
always too many workers (such was Lassalle’s reasoning). Now in Capital
Marx has amply demonstrated that the laws governing wages are very complex,
that, according to circumstances, now this law, now that, holds sway, that
they are therefore by no means iron but are, on the contrary, exceedingly
elastic, and that the subject really cannot be dismissed in a few words,
as Lassalle imagined. Malthus’ argument, upon which the law Lassalle derived
from him and Ricardo (whom he misinterpreted) is based, as that argument
appears, for instance, on p. 5 of the Arbeiterlesebuch, where it
is quoted from another pamphlet of Lassalle’s, [9] is
exhaustively refuted by Marx in the section on “Accumulation of Capital.”
Thus, by adopting the Lassallean “iron law” one commits oneself to a false
proposition and false reasoning in support of the same.

Fourthly, as its one and only social demand, the programme
puts forward  —  Lassallean state aid in its starkest form, as stolen by
Lassalle from Buchez. [10] And this, after Bracke has
so ably demonstrated the sheer futility of that demand; after almost all
if not all, of our party speakers have, in their struggle against the Lassalleans,
been compelled to make a stand against this “state aid"! Our party could
hardly demean itself further. Internationalism sunk to the level of Amand
Goegg, socialism to that of the bourgeois republican Buchez, who confronted
the socialists with this demand in order to supplant them!

But “state aid” in the Lassallean sense of the word is, after
all, at most only one measure among many others for the attainment
of an end here lamely described as “paving the way for the solution of
the social question,”  as though in our case there were still a social question
that remained unsolved in theory! Thus, if you were to say: The
German workers’ party strives to abolish wage labour and hence class distinctions
by introducing co-operative production into industry and agriculture, and
on a national scale; it is in favour of any measure calculated to attain
that end!  —  then no Lassallean could possibly object.

Fifthly, there is absolutely no mention of the organisation of
the working class as a class through the medium of trade unions. And that
is a point of the utmost importance, this being the proletariat’s true
class organisation in which it fights its daily battles with capital, in
which it trains itself and which nowadays can no longer simply be smashed,
even with reaction at its worst (as presently in Paris). Considering the
importance this organisation is likewise assuming in Germany, it would
in our view be indispensable to accord it some mention in the programme
and, possibly, to leave some room for it in the organisation of the party.

All these things have been done by our people to oblige the Lassalleans.
And what have the others conceded? That a host of somewhat muddled and
purely democratic demands should figure in the programme, some of
them being of a purely fashionable nature  —  for instance “legislation
by the people” such as exists in Switzerland and does more harm than good,
if it can be said to do anything at all. Administration by the people
 —  that would at least be something. Similarly omitted is the first prerequisite
of all liberty  —  that all officials be responsible for all their official
actions to every citizen before the ordinary courts and in accordance with
common law. That demands such as freedom of science and freedom of conscience
figure in every liberal bourgeois programme and seem a trifle out of place
here is something I shall not enlarge upon.

The free people’s state is transformed into the free state. Grammatically
speaking, a free state is one in which the state is free vis-à-vis its
citizens, a state, that is, with a despotic government. All the palaver
about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which
had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people’s
state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists,
although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto
declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of
society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the
state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the
struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is
utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat
still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose
of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be
any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore
suggest that Gemeinwesen ["commonalty"] be universally substituted
for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service
for the French “Commune.”

"The elimination of all social and political inequality,”  rather
than “the abolition of all class distinctions,”  is similarly a most dubious
expression. As between one country, one province and even one place and
another, living conditions will always evince a certain inequality
which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated. The living
conditions of Alpine dwellers will always be different from those of the
plainsmen. The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality
is a one-sided French concept deriving from the old “liberty, equality,
fraternity,”  a concept which was justified in that, in its own time and
place, it signified a phase of development, but which, like all
the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded,
since they produce nothing but mental confusion, and more accurate ways
of presenting the matter have been discovered.

I shall desist, although almost every word in this programme,
a programme which is, moreover, insipidly written, lays itself open to
criticism. It is such that, should it be adopted, Marx and I could never
recognise a new party set up on that basis and shall have to consider
most seriously what attitude  —  public as well as private  —  we should
adopt towards it. [11] Remember that abroad we
are held responsible for any and every statement and action of the German
Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. E.g. by Bakunin in his work Statehood
and Anarchy, in which we are made to answer for every injudicious word
spoken or written by Liebknecht since the inception of the Demokratisches
Wochenblatt. People imagine that we run the whole show from here, whereas
you know as well as I do that we have hardly ever interfered in the least
with internal party affairs, and then only in an attempt to make good,
as far as possible, what we considered to have been blunders  —  and only
theoretical blunders at that. But, as you yourself will realise, this
programme marks a turning-point which may very well force us to renounce
any kind of responsibility in regard to the party that adopts it.

Generally speaking, less importance attaches to the official programme
of a party than to what it does. But a new programme is after all
a banner planted in public, and the outside world judges the party by it.
Hence, whatever happens there should be no going-back, as there is here,
on the Eisenach programme. It should further be considered what the workers
of other countries will think of this programme; what impression will be
created by this genuflection on the part of the entire German socialist
proletariat before Lassalleanism.

I am, moreover, convinced that a union on this basis would
not last a year. Are the best minds of our party to descend to repeating,
parrot-fashion, Lassallean maxims concerning the iron law of wages and
state aid? I’d like to see you, for one, thus employed! And were they to
do so, their audiences would hiss them off the stage. And I feel sure that
it is precisely on these bits of the programme that the Lassalleans
are insisting, like Shylock the Jew on his pound of flesh. The split will
come; but we shall have “made honest men” again of Hasselmann, Hasenclever
and Tolcke and Co.; we shall emerge from the split weaker and the Lassalleans
stronger; our party will have lost its political virginity and will never
again be able to come out whole-heartedly against the Lassallean maxims
which for a time it inscribed on its own banner; and then, should the Lassalleans
again declare themselves to be the sole and most genuine workers’ party
and our people to be bourgeois, the programme would be there to prove it.
All the socialist measures in it are theirs, and our party
has introduced nothing save the demands of that petty-bourgeois democracy
which it has itself described in that same programme as part of
the “reactionary mass"!

I had held this letter back in view of the fact that you would
only be released on April 1, in honour of Bismarck’s birthday, [12]
not wanting to expose it to the risk of interception in the course of an
attempt to smuggle it in. Well, I have just had a letter from Bracke, who
has also felt grave doubts about the programme and asks for our opinion.
I shall therefore send this letter to him for forwarding, so that he can
read it without my having to write the whole thing over again. I have,
by the way, also spoken my mind to Ramm; to Liebknecht I wrote but briefly.
I cannot forgive his not having told us a single word about the
whole business (whereas Ramm and others believed he had given us exact
information) until it was, in a manner of speaking, too late. True, this
has always been his wont  —  hence the large amount of disagreeable correspondence
which we, both Marx and myself, have had with him, but this time it really
is too bad, and we definitely shan’t act in concert with him.

Do see that you manage to come here in the summer; you would,
of course, stay with me and, if the weather is fine, we might spend a day
or two taking sea baths, which would really do you good after your long
spell in jail.

Ever your friend,

F. E.

Marx has just moved house. He is living at 41 Maitland Park Crescent,
NW London.

(the organ of the Lassalleans) on March 7, 1875. The draft programme was
in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt on August 14, 1869. The congress
letter to Engels of September 4, 1867).
11. On October 12, 1875 Engels wrote
Liebknecht was released on April 15, 1874, while Bebel was freed on April