ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE!” 

London, 16 January 1895 
41 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Sorge, 

Have received card of 6" and letters of 19" and 31“ Dec. Many thanks. 
And may I again heartily reciprocate your and your wife’s good wishes for 
the New Year. 

By way of a New Year’s greeting Stiebeling sent me his grotesque riposte 
*? together with the suggestion that I should get the Neue Zeit to print it!! I 
replied *° to the effect that its columns were not at my disposal 

* These last three paragraphs are written in the margin of this letter. 

but that I had told K. Kautsky (which is true) he would be doing me a special 
favour were he to ensure that the thing was disseminated as widely as 
possible.* The man is a blockhead. 

I cannot understand how it was that you should have failed to receive 
Volume II I° until five days after Schliiter had got his. I posted both at the 
same time on 12 Dec. and the receipts for both are still joined together. 1 
enclose them herewith in case you should wish to lodge a complaint, 

I have for some time been aware of the temporary decline of the move- 
ment in America and it is not the German socialists who will stem it. Though 
America is the youngest it is also the oldest country in the world. In the same 
way as you have, over there, the most antiquated furniture designs alongside 
your own vernacular ones or, in Boston, cabs such as I last saw in London in 
1838 and, in the mountains, seventeenth century STAGE COACHES, alongside 
PULLMAN CARS, so too you continue to sport all the old mental trappings 
which Europe has already discarded. Everything that is outmoded here may 
persist in America for another generation or two. Karl Heinzen, for instance, 
not to mention religious and spiritualist superstition. Thus you still have old 
Lassalleans amongst you, while a man like Sanial, who would now seem 
passé in France, is still able to play a role over there. This may be attributed 
on the one hand to the fact that, over and above its concern for material 
production and the accumulation of wealth, America is only now beginning 
to find time for untramelled intellectual work and the preliminary training 
this demands; on the other hand, it may also be attributed to the dual nature 
of America’s development, still engaged as it is on the one hand in the 
primary task of reclaiming the vast area of untamed country, while being 
already compelled on the other to compete for first place in industrial 
production. Hence the UPS AND DOWNS of the movement, according to which 
point of view takes precedence in the average person’s mind—that of the 
urban working man or that of the peasant engaged in reclamation. In a couple 
of years’ time all this will change and then we shall witness a great step 
forward. The evolution of the Anglo-Saxon RACE with its ancient Teutonic 
freedom happens to be quite exceptionally slow, pursuing as it does a zig-zag 
course (small zig-zags here in England, colossal ones on your side of the 
Atlantic) and tacking against the wind, but making headway none the less. 

* See this volume, p. 415 -° Capital 

Here in Europe the New Year will bring with it a very complex state of 
affairs. In Germany the peasant question has been pushed into the 
background by the Subversion Bill *** and the latter—by young William (his 
*° the lord of the waves, owes its inspiration solely to the 
seasickness from which he invariably suffers, which is why he and his Fleet 
always make for the calm waters of the Norwegian fjords). The young man 
has thrown Germany into complete disorder, no one knows where he stands 
or what the morrow will bring, the confusion in governmental circles, as in 
the ruling classes generally, grows worse from day to day and, during the 
debate on the Subversion Bill, the only people with cheerful expressions 
were our chaps. But it really is too marvellous! At the head of the anti- 
subversionists stands a man who is unable to desist from subversion for five 
minutes on end. And the aforementioned young William has now fallen into 
the clutches of the Junkers who, in order to keep him in a frame of mind in 
which he is prepared to give them extra help with their bankrupt estates, are 
presently dangling before him the carrot of more taxation and more troops 
and warships by their ostentatious advocacy of regis voluntas suprema lex,“ 
and are egging him on to dissolve the Reichstag and stage a coup d’état. At 
the same time, however, these gentlemen, Kéller & Co., despite their 
ostentatious catchwords, are so poorly endowed with courage that they are 
already prey to all manner of forebodings, and it may well be asked whether 
they will not take fright when the moment for action comes. 

And as for France! There, as in Italy, the bourgeoisie precipitated itself 
head first into corruption in a manner that would put America to shame. For 
the past three years all efforts in both countries have been directed towards 
finding a bourgeois government—admittedly not free from corruption—but 
whose immediate involvement in public scandal is nevertheless so slight that 
a parliament could support it without unduly violating the commonest 
decencies. In Italy Crispi will hang on for a little while longer only because 
the King” and the Crown Prince are as deeply implicated in the banking 
scandals as he is himself.’ In France, our forty-five or fifty socialist deputies 
have just toppled their third Ministry on the count of actual corruption, and 
Casimir-Périer has gone tumbling after. “** Presumably his intention is to 
pose as the one and only saviour of 

Song to Aegir, 

“the King’s will is supreme law. - ? Umberto I —° Victor Emmanuel — ‘ See this volume, p. 390 

society, get himself re-elected with an immense majority, and thus con- 
solidate his position, But it’s a risky game. At all events there is nothing 
stable about France either, and this year may see new elections, not only in 
England, but also in Germany and France, which will be of crucial im- 
portance this time. On top of that a crisis of the first water in Italy and, in 
Austria, the certainty of electoral reform *”’—in short, things are growing 
critical throughout the whole of Europe. 

I was very pleased to hear that you and your wife are feeling better. Let us 
hope the improvement continues. 

Many regards to you and your wife from the Freybergers and 

Yours 
F. Engels