London, 11 October 1884 

Dear Bebel, 

I really must apologise for not having got round to answering your 
two letters of 8 June and the 3rd inst. until today. But since the begin- 
ning of June I have been able to sit at my desk and write only at the 
cost of some pain and in defiance of doctor’s orders. For almost 18 
months now, my movements have been hampered by a peculiar ail- 
ment which somewhat mystifies the doctors; I have had to abandon 
completely my old way of life, which entailed much movement, and 
have, in particular, been prevented from writing. Only for the past 10 
days or so have I been enabled by mechanical appliances to move 
about with a certain amount of freedom and I believe that, once these 
appliances have been properly adjusted, I shall be more or less my old 
self again; apart from the discomfort I have suffered, the thing is of no 
great significance and will, I hope, gradually disappear altogether. 

However, if I could not write, I could at least dictate -— I dictated 
the whole of the 2nd book of Capital from the ms., and practically got 

b c 

* society - > conditions of existence - * outright- ¢ See previous letter. 

it ready for the press, as well as revised the first */, of the English 
translation* and have, besides, perused all kinds of other things, so 
that I have got through quite a fair amount of work. 

At the same time as this, you will be getting a copy of my newly 
published work; I shall make sure it goes off. 

All day my head has been full of electoral agitation.'°* Our great 
triennial trial is an event of European significance by comparison 
with which the anxious journeyings of no matter how many empe- 
rors 7°” are as nothing. I well remember how thunderstruck Europe 
was in 1875 by our people’s electoral victories ?7°* and how Bakuninist 
anarchism was banished from the scene in Italy, France, Switzerland 
and Spain. And just now another such result is urgently required. In 
Europe, at any rate, those caricatures of anarchists @ la Most, who 
have already sunk from the level of a Rinaldo Rinaldini to and below 
that of a Schinderhannes‘ if not lower, would in their turn — at least 
so far as Europe was concerned — succumb to a similar knock-out 
blow, and thus save us a deal of toil and trouble. In America, where 
sects continue to proliferate, these could then simply be allowed to die 
off gradually; after all, did not Karl Heinzen manage to remain alive 
there for 25 years after he was dead and buried in Europe?’ The 
French in the provinces, who are forging ahead most manfully, would 
be considerably encouraged and the Parisian masses be given 
a further impulse towards emancipating themselves from their posi- 
tion as appendage of the extreme Left. Here in England, where the 
Reform Bill has given new power to the workers,?°° the impulse 
would come just in time for the next elections in 1885 and might pro- 
vide the Socta, Democratic Feperation 3°°— which merely consists on 
the one hand of literati, on the other of the remnants of old sects and, 
thirdly, of a sentimental public — with the opportunity of becoming 
a real party. In America, it only requires an event of this kind to 
make the English-speaking workers at last realise what power is theirs 
if they choose to make use of it. And in Italy and Spain it would deal 
a fresh blow to the doctrinaire anarchist rhetoric which still continues 
to flourish there. In short, the victories you achieve will take effect, 
from Siberia to California, and from Sicily to Sweden. 

But how will the new ‘parliamentary group’ turn out? Many of the 
new prospective candidates are quite unknown to me and what 

* of the first volume of Capital (see Note 56)-° The Origin of the Family, Private 
Property and the State- ‘ Johann Biickler- “ Cf. this volume, p. 114. 

I know of the majority of ‘educated’ ones is not altogether to their 
credit. The Anti-Socialist Law *’ makes it all too easy for bourgeois 
and bourgeois-inspired socialists to satisfy the electorate and to in- 
dulge their own urge for self-advancement. Not that it isn’t perfectly 
in order for such men to be put up and elected in comparatively 
backward constituencies. But they are likewise invading the old con- 
stituencies, which deserve better representatives, and in this they are 
supported by people who ought to know better. I am not at all sure 
how the new parliamentary group will turn out, and still less what it 
will do. The division into proletarian and bourgeois camps is becom- 
ing ever more pronounced and, once the bourgeois elements have 
plucked up the courage to outvote the proletarian, a breach might be 
provoked. This is a possibility which should, I think, be kept in view. 
If they provoke the breach——something that will call for a bit more 
Dutch courage — it won’t be too bad. I am still of the opinion that, so 
long as the Anti-Socialist Law continues in force, the breach should 
not be provoked by us; but if it does come, then you should go to with 
a will, in which case I shall also put my shoulder to the wheel. 

I am glad to hear that the colonial racket is not proving attrac- 
tive.?°? It is the best card Bismarck has played, nicely calculated to 
appeal to the philistine and replete, not only with illusory hopes but 
also with horrendously heavy costs, which will be recovered only by 
degrees. Bismarck and his colonies remind me of the crazy (really 
idiotic) last Duke of Bernburg* who remarked in the early forties: 
I am going to have a railway, even if it costs me a thousand talers. 
What 1,000 talers are to the cost of a railway, so the colonial budget 
adumbrated by Bismarck and his fellow-philistines is to the actual 
costs involved. For in this case I consider Bismarck fool enough to be- 
lieve that Luderitz and Woermann would bear the costs. 

Apropos Bismarck. At a conference of engineers, a friend of ours 
met Bismarck’s partner in the Varziner Paper Mill (Behrens), and 
from him learned a good deal about Bismarck’s uncouth behaviour. 
A true Prussian Junker, on rare occasions and by a painful effort ca- 
pable of good manners at most in the drawing-room, but who other- 
wise allows his brutality free rein. You know all about that, however. 
Having asked a factory inspector what his salary was and learned 
that it was 1,000 talers, he remarked: ‘In that case you are dependent 
on bribes.’ But the really interesting thing was Bismarck’s telling the 
afore-mentioned Behrens that the only speaker in the Reichstag 

* Alexander Karl 

worthy of the name, and one to whom everyone always listened, was 
August Bebel. 

The more often you write and tell me about the situation in Ger- 
many, and in particular about industrial developments, the better 
pleased I am. If I do not always reply in detail it is because, in this in- 
stance, I am merely your pupil— the more gladly in that the only in- 
formation I can regard as wholly reliable is that provided by you. On 
the whole, German industry remains what it has always been: it man- 
ufactures those articles which the British consider too insignificant, 
and the French too common, but does so on a very large scale; Ger- 
man industry still depends for its subsistence on 1) the theft of pat- 
terns from abroad and 2) the free gift of ordinary surplus value to the 
purchasers, whereby it is alone enabled to compete, and the exaction 
of inordinate surplus value by forcing down wages, which alone en- 
ables it to exist. This means, however, that while the struggle between 
worker and capitalist may stagnate in some places (where abnormal 
wages have already become the norm), in most it is growing more 
acute by reason of ever-rising pressure. At all events, 1848 marked the 
beginning of an industrial revolution in Germany which will yet give 
the worthy bourgeois pause for thought. Goodbye for now. 

Your old friend 

F. E.