London, 7 March 1883 

Dear Bebel, 

I shall have to reply to you from memory today as I must have left 
your letter with Marx, but first of all I should like to congratulate you 
on your release the day after tomorrow. *°5 

The rapid advances in German industry you have described please 
me enormously. What we are now experiencing is the second Bona- 
partist empire in all its aspects: the stock exchange is mobilising all 
capitals that are still wholly or partially idle by attracting them and 

a J.J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht. Eine Untersuchung tiber die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt 
nach threr religrisen und rechtlichen Natur, Stuttgart, 1861. 

rapidly concentrating them in a few hands; the capitals thus made 
available to industry are ushering in an industrial boom (which is by 
no means necessarily the same thing as a high level of business activity) 
and, once the affair gets going, it will continue to accelerate. Only two 
things distinguish the era of Bismarck from the era of Bonaparte IIT: 
The latter owed its prosperity to what was relatively free trade; the 
former is making headway despite protective tariffs that are wholly 
uncalled for, particularly in Germany. And, secondly, the Bis- 
marckian era is putting far more people out of work. This is partly be- 
cause the increase in population is much greater in our case than in 
that of France where two children are the rule, partly because Bona- 
parte, thanks to his building operations in Paris, generated an artifi- 
cial demand for labour, whereas in our case the milliard era '§° came 
to an early end; but again it must partly be due to other causes about 
which I am not clear. At all events philistine Germany is at last 
becoming a modern country, and that is absolutely vital if we are 
to make rapid progress. 

When one reads the German bourgeois papers and the speeches in 
the Chamber one might imagine that one was living in the England 
of Henry VII and VIII; the same complaints about danger from vag- 
rants, the same outcry for the forcible suppression of vagrancy — the 
cachot* and the lash. Here is the best proof of how rapidly the pro- 
ducers are losing touch with their means of production, of how rap- 
idly the smaller enterprises are being supplanted by the machine and 
the perfecting of the machine. But what could be more ludicrous 
and despicable than those bourgeois who hope that moral sermons and 
penal methods sermons will enable them to do away with the inevitable 
consequences of their own actions. It is a crying shame that you are 
not in the Reichstag ??; this is a theme that would be right up your 
street. 

The precedent you set in the Saxon Landtag by calmly taking the 
oath *°% has had its imitators. The Italians have unanimously de- 
clared that the oath need not be a stumbling-block and Costa took the 
oath without demur.*?° And, after all, these are people who declare 
themselves to be ‘anarchists’, even though they vote and are elected 
by vote! 

There has been a scandalous delay over my pamphlet 37° in Zurich, 
but the printing ought to be done by now; whether the binding will 

* prison 

take as long in tin-pot Zurich, I don’t know. At all events [ am still 
awaiting copies, having as yet had none. The part on the ‘Mark’ 
will clarify much of Maurer for you; the man’s writing is atrociously 
slipshod but the content is excellent. I have read the book 5 
or 6 times and shall reread it next week after I have again been 
through the relevant material in the remainder of his collected 
works, 4% 

We were most delighted at the way the virtuously religious Puttka- 
mer was dealt with, first by Grillenberger in the Reichstag and then 
several times in the Sozialdemokrat.+9' He will be on his guard 
now! 

Little Hepner has reprinted Unsere Ziele >1° in New York, allegedly 
improved and with a little picture that is said to represent your por- 
trait but in fact represents an honest to God Yanxez. As I only have 
the Ist edition, I can’t say whether or what changes have been made 
by him for the worse/better. If you haven’t got his edition I can send 
you one; after all, you had better see what the Americans think you 
ought to look like. 

Now I must close, for I must go and see Marx whose health is 
still not really making the progress it should. If it were two months 
from now, the warmth and air would do their work but as it is 
there’s a north-east wind, a storm almost, with flurries of snow, so 
how can a man expect to cure himself of a long-standing case of 
bronchitis! 

Regards to Liebknecht. 

Your 
F.E.