London, 8 February 1890 

Dear Sorge, 
Have got your letter of the 14th and 2 postcards re H. Schliiter. 
What we shall lose as a result of the official socialists in America going 

2 Basically 

over to the Nationalists° is, to my mind, scarcely worth considering. If 

it meant the disintegration of the entire German Socialist Labor Party,? 
it would be a gain, but we’re unlikely to be so fortunate. For, after all, 
the really useful elements will eventually come together again, doing so 
all the sooner for the rapid self-separation of the dross, and will be suffi- 
cient, by reason of their superior theoretical insight and experience, to 
assume the leading role the moment events themselves set the American 
proletariat in motion. And then you will find that all your years of toil 
have not been in vain. 

The movement over there, just like the one in this country and now, 
too, in the mining districts of Germany, cannot be produced by exhor- 
tation alone. It’s the facts themselves that will have to bring all this home 
to the chaps, after which, however, things will move fast—fastest, of 
course, where an organised and theoretically educated section of the 
proletariat already exists, as in Germany. Today the coal miners belong 
to us, potentially and of necessity; in the Ruhr, the process is well under 
way, the Aachen and Saar Basins will follow, then Saxony, then Lower 
Silesia and, finally, the Wasserpolaken of Upper Silesia.6° Considering 
our party’s position in Germany, all that was needed to call forth an irre- 
sistible movement was the impulse arising out of the miners’ own living 
conditions. 

Over here the same thing is happening. The movement, which I now 
regard as irrepressible, arose out of the dock strike,? out of the sheer 
necessity of their standing up for themselves. But here again the ground 
had been so well prepared by the various propaganda campaigns of the 
past eight years that the men, though not themselves socialists, refused 
to have any but socialists for their leaders. Now, without themselves 
being aware of it, they are adopting a theoretically correct course, they 
drift into it, and the movement is so vigorous that I believe it will 
survive, without undue damage, the inevitable blunders and the friction 
between the various trades unions and the leaders resulting therefrom. 
More about this below. 

And that, I think, is what will also happen in America. For now we 
know that it’s not lectures that will convert the Schlewswig-Holsteiners 
and their successors in England and America;% that stubborn and 
presumptuous breed have got to learn by bitter experience. They are 
doing so increasingly from year to year; but they are ultra-conservative 
precisely because America is so utterly bourgeois, has absolutely no 
feudal past and is therefore proud of its purely bourgeois system—and 
that is why only practice can ride them of their old, traditional, ragbag 

of ideas. So if it’s to be a mass movement it will have to begin with trades 
unions, etc., and each successive step will have to be forced on them by 
defeat. But once the first step beyond the bourgeois outlook has been 
made, then things will go ahead rapidly like everything else in America, 
where the natural momentum of the movement, as it gathers speed, will 
startle the Schleswig-Holstein Anglo-Saxons, normally so sluggish, into 
a semblance of life whereupon, by reason of its greater mobility, the 
foreign element in the nation will also prove its worth. The decay of the 
specifically German party, with its absurdly muddled theoretical 
notions, its corresponding arrogance and its Lassalleanism is, to my 
mind, a real blessing. Only when these separatist conspirators have been 
got out of the way can the fruits of your labours again become manifest. 
The Anti-Socialist Law>* was a misfortune, not for Germany, but for 
America, whither it sent the last of the louts. While in that country, I was 
often surprised at encountering so many genuine examples of your lout, 
who flourishes out there but is extinct in Germany. 

Here we are having yet another storm in a tea cup. You will have seen 
the outcry in the Labour Elector on the subject of Parke,°” the assistant 
editor of the Star, who, in a local paper, and 4 propos the buggery scan- 
dals among the aristocracy here, actually accused Lord Euston of paed- 
erasty. It was a scurrilous article, but only in a personal sense, the matter 
being hardly a political one. But it caused a great scandal, the Star took 
it up and challenged Burns outright and Burns, instead of consulting the 
committee, disavowed Champion outright in the Star. There was a great 
rumpus on the committee of the Labour Elector, all of whose members 
were opposed to Champion but each of whom wishes to get into parlia- 
ment and must look to his own particular interests; nothing, therefore, 
was decided, which may also have been because they had no power (last 
autumn Champion told Tussy that the paper belonged to the committee, 
he being merely a temporary editor, but I doubt whether that was really 
the entire truth)—in short, Burns and Bateman resigned from the 
committee on account of this affair (Burns also on account of the chau- 
vinistic article on the Portuguese rumpus), and this week the entire 
committee absented itself from the paper. Tussy, too, has now written off 
Champion, whom she used to provide with international items on 
France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Scandinavia—(the crazy stuff 
about Spain, Portugal, Mexico, etc., is by Cunninghame-Graham, a very 
honest, very brave but very muddle-headed ex-ranchman). 

All that the case has proved, so far as I’m concerned, is that 
Champion did in fact accept Tory money and then, with the opening of 

Parliament, found himself under an obligation to do something for the 
value received. The actual author of the articles is alleged to be our some- 
time friend of The Hague, Maltman Barry, who is regarded over here as 
a Tory agent and of whom Jung, Hyndman, etc., tell marvellous if untrue 
stories of a cock-and-bull nature. But all these gentlemen are behaving 
stupidly, for Champion has utterly ruined himself in the process and, at 
a meeting of his own Labour Electoral Association,4* was shouted 
down and had to leave the platform under the protection of 2 policemen. 
Wonderful grist to Hyndman’s mill, of course, but I believe both these 
gentlemen are finished for good. What happens next remains to be seen. 
But it will no more wreck the movement than did the defeat of the gas 
stokers in South London.>” The chaps were too cocky, everything had 
been made too easy for them, and at this juncture a few checks will do 
no harm. 

In Paris our people are still trying to bring a daily into being. The 
Possibilist Parti Ouvrier, a daily financed by the government, has 
perished; on n’a plus besoin de ces messieurs.* 

Bax’s Time is quite an ordinary, middle-class affair and he’s terrified 
of making it socialist. Well, it can’t carry on just as it is, but there is still 
no room here for a purely socialist monthly, especially at 1/- a copy. As 
soon as there’s anything interesting in it, I shall send it to you. 

Here too we have our Nationalists, the Fabians,!”° a well-meaning 
gang of eddicated middle-class folk who have refuted Marx with Jevons’ 
worthless vulgar economics?!>—so vulgar that you can make anything of 
it, including socialism. As in America, its chief object is to convert your 
bourgeois to socialism and so introduce the thing peacefully and consti- 
tutionally. They have brought out a bulky tome on the subject, written 
by 7 authors.> 

I trust you are keeping well and the work is becoming easier as you 
grow accustomed to it. 

I am having the same trouble with Percy Rosher as you are with your 
Adolph, only more so. The laddie has got into such a hole with his 
mania for speculation that his family and I have had to compromise with 
his creditors, and now all he can do is try and find some position or 
other for himself. But it would be better not to mention this to the 
Schliiters, lest word of it gets back here. 

@ They no longer have any need of those gentry — > Fabian Essays in Socialism, 
London, 1889 ~* Adolph Sorge Junior 

My eyes seem to be improving and I have put on 10 pounds; on the 
other hand, I have virtually had to give up smoking on account of 
insomnia, and now find that alcohol sometimes has a similarly disagree- 
able effect. What bitter irony it would be if I had to become a teetotaller 
in my old age! 

Cordial regards to your wife.? 

Your 
EE. 

Schorlemmer isn’t allowed to drink either.