Dear Leßner,

I was very pleased to hear something from you & enclose the photograph you asked for. I have had the Becker, together with some other things, expressly laid ready for the last 8 days to send it to Mohr, but every morning the womenfolk had put the stuff away somewhere else, & so I forgot it day after day. Tomorrow, however, I am taking the parcel into town & shall send the Becker directly to you. The compliments which you have so undeservedly paid me have shamed me all the more, as for the last 18 years I have unfortunately been able to do practically nothing directly for our cause & have had to devote all my time to bourgeois activity. That, I hope, will soon change; I think in a few months I shall again be master of my time & then I shall certainly do my bit to deserve your compliments; it will always be a joy to me to lay into the same enemy on the same field of battle with an old comrade like you. You are right, the cause is going better than ever before, & we, Mohr and I, were right when, years ago, while all that stupid democratic rabble complained about reaction & the people’s indifference towards them, we foresaw in this reaction the enormous industrial development of the last 18 years & explained that an intensification of the antagonism between labour & capital, a more violent class struggle, would be the result. At the same time, it is enough to make one die of laughter to see how these stupid democrats are now well and truly taken in & how nowhere in the world can even a decent little corner be found for them. Progress Party in Germany, Republicans in France, Radicals in England, they are all equally shitty. There is nothing funnier than the sweet-and-sour compliments they are forced to pay to the social movement, while they know perfectly well that this social movement will one fine morning put its foot on their necks.
With old friendship,
Your
F. Engels