MARX TO JOHANN BAPTIST VON SCHWEITZER‘? 
[Draft] 
To von Schweitzer 

London, 13 October 1868 

Dear Sir, 

A misunderstanding on my part accounts for your having 
received no reply to your letter of 15 September. I interpreted the 
letter as meaning that you would submit your ‘proposals’ to me for 
examination.” So I waited for them. Then came your congress,” 
and (BEING MUCH overworked) I regarded a reply as no longer urgent. 
Before the arrival of your letter dated 8 October, I had already 
repeatedly appealed for peace, in my capacity as secretary of the 
International for Germany. I received the answer (and with it 
relevant quotations from the Social-Demokrat) that you yourself 
were provoking war. I declared that my role must necessarily be 
confined to that of ‘impartial referee’ at a duel.* 

In your letters you express great trust in me, and I believe I 
cannot respond better than to give you my opinion of the present 
state of affairs quite openly, without any diplomatic circumlocu- 
tion. In doing so, I assume that, for you, as for myself, the cause is 
all that matters. 

I recognise, without reserve, the intelligence and energy with 
which you are active in the workers’ movement. I have concealed 
this view from none of my friends. Wherever I have to express my 
views in public—in the General Council of the International 
Working Men’s Association and in the German Communist 
Association here—-I have always treated you as a man of our 
party, and never let drop a word about points of difference. 

However, such points of difference do exist. 

D’abord,* as regards the Lassallean Association,'™ it was formed 
in a period of reaction. After fifteen years of slumber, Lassalle— 
and this remains his immortal service—re-awakened the workers’ 
movement in Germany. But he made great mistakes. He allowed 
himself to be influenced too much by the immediate circumstances 

4 See this volume, p. 127. - © the German Workers’ Educational Society in London 
(see Note 67) - © First 

of the time. He made the minor starting point, his opposition to 
the dwarf-like Schulze-Delitzsch, the central point of his agita- 
tion—state aid versus self-help.” In this, he merely re-adopted 
the slogan circulated in 1843 sqq. by Buchez the leader of Catholic 
socialism, against the genuine workers’ movement in France. 
Being far too intelligent to regard this slogan as anything but a 
transitory pis-aller,* Lassalle was only able to justify its use on the 
grounds of its immediate (alleged!) practicality. To this end, he 
had to claim that it was feasible in the immediate future. The ‘state’ 
was, therefore, transformed into the Prussian state. He was thus 
forced to make concessions to the Prussian monarchy, to Prussian 
reaction (the feudal party) and even to the clericals. He linked 
Buchez’s state aid for associations with the Chartist call for 
universal suffrage.”"' He overlooked the difference between 
conditions in Germany and England. He overlooked the lessons of 
the bas-empire,” with regard to universal suffrage in France. In 
addition, like everyone who claims to have in his pocket a panacea 
for the sufferings of the masses, he gave his agitation, from the 
very start, a religious, sectarian character. In fact, every sect is 
religious. And just because he was the founder of a sect, he 
denied all natural connection with the earlier movement, both in 
Germany and abroad. He fell into Proudhon’s mistake of not 
seeking the real basis of his agitation in the actual elements of the 
class movement, but of wishing, instead, to prescribe for that 
movement a course determined by a certain doctrinaire recipe. 

Most of what I am stating here post factum I predicted to 
Lassalle when he came to London in 1862 and called upon me to 
place myself, with him, at the head of the new movement. 

You yourself know the difference between a sect movement and 
a class movement from personal experience. The sect seeks its 
raison d’étre and its point d’honneur not in what it has in common 
with the class movement, but in the particular shibboleth distinguish- 
ing it from that movement. Thus when, in Hamburg, you 
proposed convening a congress to found rrapes unions, you could 
only suppress the opposition of the sectarians by threatening to 
resign as president. You were also forced to assume a dual 
personality, to state that, in one case, you were acting as the leader 
of the sect and, in the other, as the representative of the class 
movement. 

The dissolution of the General Association of German Work- 

a expedient - & Lower Empire (designation of the late Roman, or Byzantine Empire, 
and also of any empire on the decline); here, the Second Empire in France. 

ers '*’ provided you with an opportunity to take a big step forward 
and to declare, to prove stl le fallait? that a new stage of 
development had been reached and the sect movement was now 
ripe to merge into the class movement and end all ‘eanisms’. With 
regard to the true content of the sect, it would, like all former 
workers’ sects, carry this as an enriching element into the general 
movement. Yet instead you, in fact, demanded that the class 
movement subordinate itself to a particular sect movement. Your 
non-friends concluded from this that you wished to conserve your 
‘own workers’ movement’ under all circumstances. 

Regarding the Berlin Congress,'™ the time was d’abord not 
pressing, since the Combination Law has not yet been voted.?” 
You ought, therefore, to have reached an agreement with the 
leaders outside the Lassallean circle, worked out the plan together 
with them, and convoked the congress. Instead of this, you left 
them only the alternative of either publicly joining you, or lining 
up against you. The congress itself appeared to be only an 
extended edition of the Hamburg Congress.'™ 

As for the draft statutes,” I regard them as unsuitable in 
principle, and I believe I have as much experience as any of my 
contemporaries in the field of Traps unions. Without going further 
into detail here, I shall merely remark that a centralist organisa- 
tion, suitable as it is for secret societies and sect movements, 
contradicts the nature of the trade unions. Were it possible—I 
declare it tout bonnement’ to be impossible—it would not be 
desirable, least of all in Germany. Here, where the worker is 
regulated bureaucratically from childhood onwards, where he 
believes in authority, in those set over him, the main thing is to 
teach him to walk by himself. 

Your plan is also impracticable in other ways. In the ‘Union’ 
there are to be three independent authorities of differing origin: 
1. The Committee, elected by the trades; 2. the President (here a 
completely superfluous personage) {In the Rules of the Interna- 
tional Working Men’s Association there also figures a President of 
the Association.’ In reality his only function was to preside at the 
sessions of the General Council. On my proposal, this office— 
which I had refused in 1866—was completely abolished in 1867, 
and was replaced by that of a Chairman, who is elected at each 

a if necessary - > ‘Satzung für den Arbeiterschaftsverband’, Der Social-Demokrat, 
No. 118, 9 October 1868 (supplement). - © in all good faith - 4 Article III of the 
Rules. See Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's 
Association, London, 1866. 

weekly session of the General Council.'“* The London Trapes’ 
Councn.'” also has simply a Chairman. Its sole permanent official is 
the Secretary, as he has a continuous business function to exercise.} 
{NB. This passage follows in the copy of the letter to Schweitzer 
after the end of this sentence}, elected by a general vote; 3. the 
Congress, elected by the local branches. ‘Thus—collisions 
everywhere, and this is supposed to promote ‘rapid action’! (At 
this point the inserted sentence.) Lassalle committed a bad mistake 
in borrowing the ‘président élu du suffrage universel” from the 
French Constitution of 1852. And now this in a TRADES UNIONS 
movement! The latter is mostly concerned with financial issues, 
and you will soon discover that all dictatorialism finds its end here. 

Yet whatever the shortcomings of the organisation, they can 
perhaps be cancelled out, to a greater or lesser degree, by rational 
application. As secretary of the International I am ready to 
act—naturally on a rational basis—as mediator between you and 
the Nuremberg majority,” which has adhered to the International 
directly." I have written in the same vein to Leipzig.‘ I understand 
the difficulties of your position, and never forget that each of us 
depends more upon circumstances than upon his own will. 

I promise you, under all circumstances, the impartiality that is 
my duty. On the other hand, I cannot promise that I shall not, 
some day, acting as a private author—as soon as I feel it to be 
absolutely dictated by the interests of the labour movement— 
publicly criticise the Lassallean superstition, in the same way as I 
dealt, in its time, with the Proudhonist superstition.“ 

With the assurance of my best wishes to you personally, 

I remain 
K. M.