La Plebe.
No. 12, 30 March 1879
London, 21 March.

The latest socialist elections in Germany prove that socialism is not killed when its mouth is closed. The law against the socialists will, on the contrary, be an excellent success for us. It will carry out the revolutionary education of the German workers...

Through great efforts and great sacrifices they had won the degree of freedom of the press, of association and assembly that they enjoyed: it was a continual struggle, but in the end victory always remained on the side of the workers. They were able to organise, and every time general elections took place, it was a new triumph for them.

This legal agitation, however, caused some to believe that nothing more was needed to achieve the final victory of the proletariat. In a country as poor in revolutionary traditions as Germany, this could become dangerous. Fortunately, the brutal action of Bismarck and the cowardice of the German bourgeoisie that supports him have changed things. The German workers have experienced how much constitutional freedoms are worth when the proletariat permits itself to take them seriously and to make use of them to combat capitalist domination. If any illusions still existed in this regard, friend Bismarck has brusquely dispelled them. I say *friend* Bismarck, because no one has ever rendered as many services to socialism in Germany as he has. After having prepared the revolution with the most advanced and most unbearable militarism, with constantly increasing taxes, with the alliance of the state with the most shameless stock-exchange swindling, with the return to the most feudal and police-ridden traditions of old Prussia, with persecutions as numerous as they are petty, and with the public degradation and debasement inflicted on a bourgeoisie that, moreover, did not deserve better treatment—after having thus, in short, prepared the revolution, he crowns his work by forcing the German proletariat onto the revolutionary path.

Friend Bismarck can rest easy. The revolution that he has so well prepared, the German workers will make. When the signal is given by Russia, they will find themselves ready.

For several years I have been drawing the attention of European socialists to the state of Russia, where a decisive movement is being prepared. The struggle between the government and the secret societies has taken on a character so violent that it cannot last. The movement seems to be on the point of breaking out. The agents of the government commit incredible atrocities there. Against such wild beasts one must defend oneself as best one can, with powder and lead. Political assassination, in Russia, is the only means that intelligent, dignified and resolute men have to defend themselves against the agents of an unheard-of despotism.

A powerful conspiracy in the army and even in the imperial court, national opinion humiliated by the diplomatic defeats that followed the war, the treasury empty, credit ruined, bankers refusing to make loans unless they are guaranteed by a national assembly, finally misery. That is the balance sheet of Russia.

F. ENGELS.

Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels
Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke and Other
Leaders of the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany

|I| Dear Bebel,

The reply to your letter of 20 August has been delayed partly by Marx’s prolonged absence, then by a few intervening events: first the arrival of the *Richter*’sches Jahrbuch, then that of H[öchberg] himself.

I must conclude that Liebk[necht] has not shown you my last letter to him, although I expressly instructed him to do so. Otherwise you would certainly not have presented to me the same reasons that Liebknecht advanced and to which I had already replied in that letter.

Let us now go through the individual points that matter here.

I. The negotiations with C[arl] Hirsch.

Liebknecht asks Hirsch whether he wishes to take on the editorship of the party organ to be newly founded in Zurich. Hirsch wishes to be informed about the financing of the paper: what funds are available and who is providing them. The first, so as to know whether the paper will not have to cease publication after just a few months. The other, so as to ascertain who holds the purse-strings and thus retains the ultimate control over the line taken by the paper. Liebknecht’s reply to Hirsch: “everything in order, you will hear more from Zurich” (Liebknecht to H. 28 July) does not arrive. However, a letter does come from Zurich, from Bernstein to Hirsch (24 July), in which B. informs him that “we have been entrusted with the launching and supervision (of the paper).” A discussion had taken place “between Vier[eck], S[inger] and ourselves” in which it was found “that your position would be somewhat complicated by the differences which you, as the ‘Laternenmann’, have had with individual comrades, though I do not regard this concern as very weighty.” Not a word about the financing.

Hirsch replies immediately on 26 July, asking about the material situation of the paper. Which comrades have committed themselves to covering the deficit? Up to what amount and for how long? — The question of the editor’s salary plays absolutely no role here; Hirsch merely wants to know whether “the funds are assured to keep the paper going for at least a year.”

Bernstein replies on 31 July: any deficit will be covered by voluntary contributions, some (!) of which are already pledged. To Hirsch’s remarks on the line he was thinking of giving the paper, about which more below, there follow disapproving comments and instructions: “the supervisory commission must insist on this all the more as it, in turn, is itself under control, i.e. is answerable. On these points you would thus have to come to an understanding with the supervisory commission.” A reply by return, if possible by telegraph, is requested.

Thus, instead of any answer to his justified questions, Hirsch receives the news that he is to edit the paper under a *supervisory commission* located in Zurich, whose views diverge very substantially from his own and whose members are not even named to him!

Hirsch, quite rightly indignant at this treatment, prefers to come to an understanding with the Leipzig comrades. His letter of 2 August to Liebk[necht] must be known to you, since H. expressly requested that it be communicated to you and to Viereck. Hirsch is even willing to submit to a Zurich supervisory commission to the extent that it may make its written observations to the editorship and may appeal to the decision of the Leipzig control commission.

Meanwhile, Liebkn. writes to Hirsch on 28 July: “The enterprise is of course funded, since the whole party + (inclusive) Höchberg stands behind it. I am not concerning myself with the details, however.”

The next letter from L[iebknecht] again contains nothing about the financing, but instead the assurance that the Zurich commission is not an editorial commission, but is charged only with the administration and the finances. As late as 14 August L. writes the same to me and asks us to urge H[irsch] to accept. You yourself, even on 20 August, are so little informed of the true state of affairs that you write to me: “He (Höchberg) has no more say in editing the paper than any other well-known party comrade.”

Finally Hirsch receives a letter from V[iereck], 11 August, in which it is admitted that “the 3 domiciled in Zurich, as editorial commission, were to undertake the founding of the paper and, with the agreement of the 3 Leipzig members, to select an editor... as far as I recall, it was also stated in the communicated resolutions that the founding committee mentioned in 2 (the Zurich one) was to assume *both* the political *and* the financial responsibility vis-à-vis the party. ... From this state of affairs it now seems to me to follow that ... without the co-operation of the 3 domiciled in Zurich and entrusted by the party with the founding, no undertaking of the editorship can be contemplated.”

Here at last Hirsch had at least something definite, even if only about the editor’s relation to the Zurich members. They are an *editorial commission*; they also bear the political responsibility; without their co-operation no editorship can be taken on. In short, Hirsch is simply instructed to come to an understanding with the 3 people in Zurich whose names are still not given to him.

To make the confusion complete, however, Liebkn. writes a postscript under Viereck’s letter: “S[inger] has just been here from Berlin and reported. The supervisory commission in Zurich is not, as V[iereck] thinks, an *editorial commission*, but essentially an *administrative commission*, which is financially responsible for the paper to the party, i.e. to us; naturally, the members also have the right and the duty to discuss the editorship with you (a right and a duty which, incidentally, every party comrade has); they are not empowered to place you under tutelage.”

The three Zurich members and one Leipzig committee member—the only one who had been present at the negotiations—insist that H[irsch] should be under the official direction of the Zurich members; a second Leipzig member flatly denies this. And Hirsch is supposed to decide before the gentlemen are agreed among themselves? That Hirsch was entitled to take cognisance of the resolutions adopted, which contained the conditions he was expected to submit to, was the less considered as the Leipzig comrades themselves did not even seem to think of likewise taking authentic cognisance of those resolutions. How else was the above contradiction possible?

If the Leipzig comrades cannot agree on the powers transferred to the Zurich members, the Zurich members are in complete clarity about them.

Schramm to Hirsch, 14 August: “If you had not written at the time that in the same case (as the Kayser case) you would again proceed in exactly the same way, and thereby held out the prospect of a similar style of writing, then we would not lose a word about it. But as it is, faced with this declaration of yours, we must reserve the right to give a decisive vote on the acceptance of articles for the new paper.”

The letter to Bernstein in which Hirsch is supposed to have said this is dated 26 July, long after the Zurich conference at which the powers of the 3 Zurich members were established. But in Zurich they are already wallowing so much in the sense of their bureaucratic plenitude of power that they now claim, on the basis of this later letter from Hirsch, the new authority to decide on the acceptance of articles. The editorial commission is already a censorship commission.

Only when Höchberg came to Paris did Hirsch learn from him the names of the members of the two commissions.

If, therefore, the negotiations with Hirsch broke down, whose fault was it?

1) by the stubborn refusal of both the Leipzig and Zurich people to give him any factual information about the financial foundations and thus about the possibility of keeping the paper alive, even if only for a year. The subscribed sum he only learned from me here (according to your communication to me). It was therefore hardly possible to draw any other conclusion from the communications made earlier (the Party + H[öchberg]) than that the paper was either already mainly financed by Höchberg or would soon come to depend entirely on his subsidies. And this latter possibility is by no means excluded even now. The sum of—if I read correctly—800 marks is exactly the same (40 pound sterling) that the local Verein der Freiheit had to make up in the first half-year.

2) the repeated assurance of Liebk[necht]’s, since proved totally incorrect, that the Zurich people would have no official control over the editorial board, and the comedy of errors arising from this;

3) the certainty finally attained that the Zurich people were not only to control but actually to censor the editorial board and that Hirsch, in this, would have only the role of a straw man.

That he then declined, we can only agree with him. The Leipzig Commission, as we hear from H[öch]b[er]g, has been reinforced by 2 members not resident locally, and can therefore only intervene swiftly when the 3 Leipzig members are united. Thus the real centre of gravity is shifted completely to Zurich, and with the people there Hirsch—no more than any other truly revolutionary and proletarian-minded editor—could have worked in the long run.

More on this later.

II. The intended attitude of the paper. |

As early as July 24, Bernstein informs Hirsch that the differences he had had as Lantern man with individual comrades would make his position more difficult.

Hirsch replies that the attitude of the paper would, in his opinion, have to be generally the same as that of the Lantern, i.e. one which avoids court cases in Switzerland and does not unnecessarily alarm people in Germany. He asks who those comrades are and continues: “I know only one, and I promise you that I shall treat him in exactly the same way if he behaves in a manner contrary to discipline.”

Thereupon Bernstein replies, with a sense of his new official censorial dignity: “As for the attitude of the paper, the opinion of the Supervisory Commission is indeed that the Lantern should not serve as a model; in our view, the paper should be less absorbed in political radicalism and more held on socialist principles. Cases such as the attack on Kayser, which was disapproved of by all comrades without exception (!), must be avoided under all circumstances.”

And so on, and so on. Liebknecht calls the attack on Kayser “a blunder”, and Schramm considers it so dangerous that on account of it he imposes censorship on Hirsch.

Hirsch writes again to Höchberg that a case like the Kayser one “cannot occur if an official party organ exists whose clear expositions and well-meant hints a deputy cannot so impudently disregard”.

Viereck also writes that the new paper is “enjoined to adopt a dispassionate attitude and to ignore as far as possible all differences that have occurred ...”, that it should not be “an enlarged Lantern”, and that Bernstein “could at most be reproached with being too moderate, if that is a reproach at a time when we cannot sail under full colours.”

What is this Kayser affair, this unforgivable crime that Hirsch is supposed to have | committed? Kayser spoke and voted in the Reichstag, the only one among the Social-Democratic deputies, in favour of protective tariffs. Hirsch accuses him of having violated party discipline by the fact that K.

1) voted for indirect taxes, whose abolition the party programme expressly demands;

2) voted money to Bismarck and thereby violated the first basic rule of all our party tactics: not a farthing for this government.

On both points Hirsch is undeniably right. And after Kayser had, on the one hand, trampled underfoot the party programme, to which the deputies were, so to speak, sworn by congress decision, and, on the other hand, the most imperative, very first basic rule of party tactics—by voting money to Bismarck as thanks for the Anti-Socialist Law—Hirsch was also, in our opinion, perfectly right to hit out at him as hard as he did.

We have never been able to understand why people in Germany became so furious about this attack on Kayser. Höchberg now tells me that the “fraction” gave Kayser permission for his action, and that by this permission K. is considered to be covered.

If this is the case, that is really going rather far. In the first place, Hirsch could know as little of this secret decision as the rest of the world. Secondly, the disgrace for the party, which previously could have been loaded solely onto K., only becomes greater through this story, and likewise Hirsch’s merit in having openly and before the whole world exposed these absurd phrases and the still more absurd vote of Kayser, and thereby having saved the party’s honour. Or is German Social-Democracy indeed infected with the parliamentary disease, and does it believe that, with popular election, the holy spirit is poured out upon the elected, transforming fraction sessions into infallible councils and fraction resolutions into inviolable dogmas?

A blunder has indeed been committed, but not by Hirsch, but by the deputies who covered Kayser with their resolution. And if those who are called upon above all to watch over the maintenance of party discipline themselves break that party discipline so flagrantly by such a resolution, that is all the worse. Worse still if they venture so far as to believe that it was not Kayser by his speech and vote, and the other deputies by their resolution, who violated party discipline, but Hirsch, who attacked Kayser in spite of this resolution, which was moreover unknown to him.

It is certain, moreover, that in the protective tariff question the party adopted the same unclear and irresolute attitude as it has done in almost all economic questions that have become practical, e.g. the Reich railways. This is due to the fact that the party organs, especially Vorwärts, instead of thoroughly discussing these questions, have preferred to devote themselves to the construction of the future social order. When the protective tariff question suddenly became practical after the Anti-Socialist Law, opinions diverged in the most varied shades, and there was not a single person there who possessed the prerequisite for forming a clearer and more correct judgement: knowledge of the conditions of German industry and its position on the world market. With the voters, protectionist currents could not fail to appear here and there, and these, after all, one wanted to take into account. The only way to emerge from this confusion, by treating the question from a purely political standpoint (as was done in the Lantern), was not resolutely pursued. Thus it could not fail that the party appeared for the first time in this debate hesitant, uncertain and unclear, and finally disgraced itself thoroughly through and with Kayser.

The attack on Kayser is now taken as an occasion to preach to Hirsch in all keys that the new paper should by no means imitate the excesses of the Lantern, that it should be less absorbed in political radicalism and more held on socialist principles and in a dispassionate manner. And this by Viereck no less than by Bernstein, who appears to the former as the right man precisely because he is too moderate, since, after all, one cannot sail under full colours now.

But why does one go abroad at all, if not to sail under full colours? Abroad, nothing stands in the way. In Switzerland, the German press, association and penal laws do not exist. There one can therefore not only say those things that one could not say at home already before the Anti-Socialist Law, on account of the ordinary German laws; one is also obliged to do so. For here one stands not only before Germany but before Europe and has the duty, so far as the Swiss laws permit, to expound frankly to Europe the paths and aims of the German party. Anyone who would wish to bind himself in Switzerland to German laws only proves that he is worthy of these German laws and has in fact nothing to say but what it was permitted to say in Germany before the Exceptional Law. Nor may any consideration be given to the possibility of temporarily cutting off the editorial board’s return to Germany. Anyone who is not prepared to risk that does not belong on such an exposed post of honour.

What is more. The German party has been outlawed and proscribed by the Exceptional Law | precisely because it was the only serious opposition party in Germany. If, in a foreign organ, it repays Bismarck by abandoning this role of the only serious opposition party, by appearing nicely tame and accepting the kick with a dispassionate attitude, it only proves that it was worthy of the kick. Of all German emigré papers that have appeared abroad since 1830, the Lantern is certainly one of the most moderate. But if the Lantern was already too impertinent—then the new organ can only compromise the party before the like-minded in non-German countries.

III. The Manifesto of the Three Zurich Men.

In the meantime, Höchberg’s Jahrbuch has reached us and contains an article: “Retrospects on the Socialist Movement in Germany”, which, as Höchberg himself has told me, was written precisely by the three members of the Zurich Commission. Here we have their authentic criticism of the movement so far, and thus their authentic programme for the attitude of the new organ, insofar as this depends on them.

At the very outset it says:

“The movement which Lassalle regarded as an eminently political one, to which he summoned not only the workers but all honest democrats, at the head of which the independent representatives of science and all men filled with true love of humanity were to march, deteriorated under the presidency of J. B. v. Schweitzer into a one-sided struggle of interests of the industrial workers.”

I do not examine whether and to what extent this is historically accurate. The specific reproach made here against Schweitzer consists in the claim that Schweitzer reduced Lassalleanism, which is here conceived as a bourgeois-democratic-philanthropic movement, to a one-sided struggle of interests of the industrial workers—reduced it, while he deepened | its character as the class struggle of the industrial workers against the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, he is reproached for his “rejection of bourgeois democracy”. What business has bourgeois democracy in the Social-Democratic Party? If it consists of “honest men”, it cannot want to join at all, and if it nevertheless wants to join, then only to make mischief.

The Lassallean party “preferred to pose in the most one-sided manner as a workers’ party”. The gentlemen who write this are themselves members of a party which poses in the most one-sided manner as a workers’ party; they now hold office and dignities within it. Here there is an absolute incompatibility. If they mean what they write, then they must leave the party, or at least resign their office and dignities. If they do not do so, they thereby admit that they intend to use their official position to combat the proletarian character of the party. The party, therefore, betrays itself if it leaves them in office and dignities.

The Social-Democratic party, then, according to these gentlemen, is not to be a one-sided workers’ party, but an all-sided party “of all men filled with true love of humanity”. Above all it is to prove this by discarding the coarse proletarian passions, and placing itself under the direction of educated, philanthropic bourgeois “for the cultivation of good taste” and “for the learning of good form” (p.85). Then the “ragged behaviour” of certain leaders will also give way to a thoroughly respectable “bourgeois behaviour”. (As if the outwardly ragged behaviour of those here alluded to were not the least that can be objected to them!) Then, too, “numerous adherents from the circles of the educated and propertied classes will appear. These, however, must first be won if the … agitation carried on is to achieve tangible results…” German socialism “has placed too much value on winning the masses and thereby neglected to carry on energetic (!) propaganda in the so-called upper strata of society”. For “the party still lacks men suited to represent it in the Reichstag”. But it is “desirable and necessary to entrust the mandates to men who have had sufficient opportunity and time to make themselves thoroughly familiar with the relevant subjects. The simple worker and small master craftsman … has the necessary leisure for this only in rare exceptional cases.” Elect bourgeois, therefore!

In short: the working class is, by itself, incapable of emancipating itself. For this it must place itself under the leadership of “educated and propertied” bourgeois, who alone “have the opportunity and time” to acquaint themselves with what is beneficial to the workers. And secondly, the bourgeoisie is by no means to be fought, but won over — by energetic propaganda.

If, however, one wishes to win over the upper strata of society or even only their well-meaning elements, one must on no account frighten them. And here the three Zurich gentlemen believe they have made a reassuring discovery:

“Precisely now, under the pressure of the Anti-Socialist Law, the party shows that it is not willing to take the path of violent, bloody revolution, but is resolved … to take the path of legality, i.e., of reform.” Thus if the 5-600,000 Social-Democratic voters, one-tenth to one-eighth of the total electorate, scattered over the entire wide country, are sensible enough not to run their heads against a wall and attempt a “bloody revolution” one against ten, that proves that they have also bound themselves for all time to come not to make use of a great external event, a sudden revolutionary upsurge thereby aroused, indeed a victory of the people won in a conflict arising out of it! If Berlin should again be so uneducated as to make an 18th of March, the Social-Democrats, instead of taking part in the struggle as “barricade-crazy ragamuffins” (p. 88), must rather “take the path of legality”, damp down the movement, clear away the barricades, and, if need be, march with the glorious army against the one-sided, coarse, uneducated masses. Or if these gentlemen claim that that was not what they meant, what did they then mean?

It gets even better.

“The calmer, more objective, more deliberate it (the party) is in its criticism of existing conditions and in its proposals for their alteration, the less can the move that has now succeeded (on the introduction of the Anti-Socialist Law) be repeated, by means of which the conscious reaction drove the bourgeoisie into a funk through fear of the red spectre.” (p. 88.)

To deprive the bourgeoisie of the last trace of fear, it is to be proved to them, clearly and concisely, that the red spectre really is only a spectre and does not exist. But what is the secret of the red spectre, if not the bourgeoisie’s fear of the inevitable life-and-death struggle between it and the proletariat? the fear of the unavoidable decision of the modern class struggle? Abolish the class struggle, and the bourgeoisie and “all independent people” will “not be afraid to go hand in hand with the proletarians”! And the ones who would then be duped would be precisely the proletarians.

Let the party then prove, by demure and rueful behaviour, that it has once and for all put aside the “improprieties and excesses” that gave occasion for the Anti-Socialist Law. If it voluntarily promises to move only within the limits of the Anti-Socialist Law, will Bismarck and the bourgeoisie then perhaps be so kind as to repeal this superfluous law?

“Let us be clearly understood”, we do not want “an abandonment of our party and our programme, but we think that for years to come we shall have enough to do if we direct our whole strength, our whole energy towards the attainment of certain immediate goals which must under all circumstances be secured before any realisation of the more far-reaching aspirations can be thought of.” Then, too, bourgeois, petty bourgeois and workers will join us in masses, who “are now deterred by the far-reaching demands…”

The programme is not to be given up, but only postponed — for an indefinite time. One accepts it, but not really for oneself and for one’s own lifetime, but posthumously, as a legacy for children and grandchildren. In the meantime, one applies “one’s whole strength and energy” to all sorts of petty trifles and tinkering with the capitalist social order, so that it at least looks as if something is being done and, at the same time, the bourgeoisie is not frightened. Give me the communist Miquel instead, who proves his unshakeable conviction of the inevitable downfall of capitalist society in a few hundred years by swindling away vigorously, contributing his fair share to the crash of 1873 and thereby actually doing something for the collapse of the existing order.

Another offence against good form were the “exaggerated attacks on the promoters”, who after all were “only children of their time”; “the abuse of Strousberg and the like … would therefore have been better left undone”. Unfortunately, all men are “only children of their time”, and if this is a sufficient excuse, then one may no longer attack anyone, all polemics, all struggle on our part ceases; we calmly accept all the kicks of our opponents, because we, the wise, know that those others are “only children of their time” and cannot act otherwise than they do. Instead of repaying them their kicks with interest, we should rather pity the poor things.

Likewise, the party’s siding with the Commune had the disadvantage “that people otherwise well-disposed towards us were repelled and generally the hatred of the bourgeoisie against us was increased”. And furthermore, the party is “not entirely without guilt for the passing of the October Law, for it has increased the hatred of the bourgeoisie in an unnecessary manner.”

There you have the programme of the three censors of Zurich. It leaves nothing to be desired in clarity. Least of all for us, who have been only too familiar with all these phrases since 1848. They are the representatives of the petty bourgeoisie announcing themselves, full of fear that the proletariat, pressed by its revolutionary situation, may “go too far”. Instead of resolute political opposition, universal mediation; instead of struggle against the government and the bourgeoisie, an attempt to win them over and persuade them; instead of defiant resistance to ill-treatment from above, humble submission and the admission that one deserved the punishment. All historically necessary conflicts are reinterpreted as misunderstandings, and all discussion is ended with the protestation: on the main point we are all agreed. The people who came forward in 1848 as bourgeois democrats can just as well call themselves Social-Democrats now. Just as the democratic republic lay for those in an unattainable distance, so for these the overthrow of the capitalist order lies in an unattainable distance, and therefore has absolutely no significance for present-day political practice; one can mediate, compromise and philanthropize to one’s heart’s content. The same applies to the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. On paper one recognises it, because one can no longer deny it; in practice, however, it is hushed up, watered down, weakened. The Social-Democratic party is not to be a workers’ party, it is not to incur the hatred of the bourgeoisie or of anyone else; it must carry on energetic propaganda above all amongst the bourgeoisie; instead of laying weight on far-reaching goals which frighten the bourgeois and are, after all, unattainable in our generation, it should rather use its whole strength and energy on those petty-bourgeois patchwork reforms which lend new supports to the old social order and might thereby transform the final catastrophe into a gradual, piecemeal and, if possible, peaceable process of dissolution. These are the same people who, under the pretence of ceaseless activity, not only themselves do nothing but also seek to prevent anything from happening at all except — chatter, the same people whose fear of every action hampered the movement at every step in 1848 and ’49 and finally brought it to a fall; the same people who never see any reaction, and are then quite astonished to find themselves at last in a blind alley where neither resistance nor flight is possible; the same people who want to confine history within their narrow petty-bourgeois horizon and over whom history every time proceeds to the order of the day.

As for their socialist content, it has already been sufficiently criticised in the Manifesto, chapter: “German or True Socialism”. Where the class struggle is pushed aside as an unpleasant “coarse” phenomenon, nothing remains as the basis of socialism but “true love of humanity” and empty phrases about “justice”.

It is a phenomenon inherent in the course of development, and inevitable, that people from the hitherto ruling class also join the fighting proletariat and bring it elements of education. This we clearly stated in the Manifesto. But two things must be noted here:

Firstly, if these people are to be of any use to the proletarian movement, they must also bring real elements of culture into it. This, however, is not the case with the vast majority of the German bourgeois converts. Neither *Die Zukunft* nor *Die Neue Gesellschaft* have produced anything which has advanced the movement by a single step. There is an absolute lack of any real, factual or theoretical educational material. Instead, attempts to bring superficially assimilated socialist ideas into harmony with the most diverse theoretical standpoints which the gentlemen have brought with them from the university or elsewhere, and of which one is more confused than the next, thanks to the process of putrefaction in which the remnants of German philosophy find themselves today. Instead of first studying the new science thoroughly themselves, each one, on the contrary, trimmed it to fit his own imported standpoint, straightaway manufactured his own private science and immediately came forward with the pretension of wanting to teach it. Hence there are about as many standpoints among these gentlemen as there are heads; instead of bringing clarity into anything, they have merely caused grave confusion—fortunately, almost solely among themselves. Such elements of culture, whose first principle is to teach what they have not learned, the party can well do without.

Secondly. If such people from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first demand is that they bring no remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices with them, but unreservedly adopt the proletarian outlook. But those gentlemen, as has been demonstrated, are steeped through and through in bourgeois and petty-bourgeois notions. In a country as petty-bourgeois as Germany, these notions certainly have their justification. But only outside the Social-Democratic workers’ party. If the gentlemen constitute themselves as a Social-Democratic petty-bourgeois party, they are fully within their rights; one could then negotiate with them, form cartels according to circumstances, etc. But in a workers’ party they are a falsifying element. If there are reasons to tolerate them in it for the time being, the obligation is only to tolerate them, to allow them no influence over the party leadership, and to remain conscious that the break with them is only a question of time. This time, moreover, seems to have come. How the party can tolerate the authors of this article in its midst any longer appears to us incomprehensible. If, however, the party leadership falls more or less into the hands of such people, the party will simply be emasculated, and that will be the end of proletarian pluck.

As far as we are concerned, in view of our entire past, there is only one course open to us. For almost 40 years we have emphasised the class struggle as the immediate driving force of history, and in particular the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social transformation; we can therefore not possibly go together with people who want to strike this class struggle out of the movement. We expressly formulated the battle-cry at the founding of the International: the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. We can therefore not go together with people who openly say that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic big and petty bourgeois. If the new party organ takes a line that corresponds to the sentiments of those gentlemen, that is bourgeois and not proletarian, then nothing remains for us, however much we would regret it, but to declare ourselves publicly against it and to dissolve the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German party vis-à-vis abroad. But it will hopefully not come to that.

This letter is intended for communication to all 5 members of the Commission in Germany, as well as to Bracke …

There is likewise nothing on our part to prevent communication to the Zurich people.

Friedrich Engels
Review of Karl Blind’s Article
“Prince Napoleon and European Democracy”

The article ought to be headed, not, “Prince N[apoleon] etc” but “I.” For every once the name of Prince Nap[oleon] occurs in it, the pronoun “I” occurs at least 20 times, not to count its inflected cases and derived forms. What it says of Prince Naploleon], has all been printed more than once, and what it says about “I”, has, alas, also been related, printed, and published more than once in England, as the proprietors and editors of sundry reviews, defunct and alive, know to their sorrow.

Deprived of its false pretence, the paper gives a new version of Mr Blind’s old tale: How Karl Blind, by various untoward circumstances, was unfortunately prevented from changing the course of history. First comes the oft repeated story which forms his chief stock-in-trade, how he was sent on a diplomatic mission by the moribund provisional governments of the South German insurrection of 1849 ostensibly to the then government of the French Republic, but in reality to the revolutionary government of Ledru-Rollin which, it was expected, would be shortly installed by a popular commotion. Alas! the government which had sent him, was unceremoniously chased into Swiss exile by the Prussians, and the demonstration of the 13 June which was to establish the government to which he was really accredited, was equally unceremoniously put down. Of his rather grotesque mission from a dead to an unborn government, he had the good fortune to be relieved by the existing French government who arrested him as a participator in the “pacific” demonstration of the unarmed Paris national guard on the 13th June, [and] finally expelled [from] the country. Had the government which sent him but remained alive, and had the government to which he was really sent, but come into existence, what would not Karl Blind have been enabled to do? By procuring himself from somebody in Baden a sham mission to somebody in Paris, he had contrived to eschew “diplomatically” even the least possibility of a dangerous encounter with the approaching Prussian army. At all events he had done something.

Again, in 1870, on the outbreak of the Franco-German war, there was a chance of Italy joining France. But Karl Blind watched. “Had King V[ictor] E[manuel] etc” (page 519). But again, it was an embassy from one non-existing government to another. Louis Napoleon refused Rome to Victor Emanuel, thus forcing the latter to take the town in the teeth of France, and rendering the Italian alliance impossible. Again, the services and offers of Karl Blind, whatever these offers may have been worth, were declined, and that eternal diplomatist in partibus, instead of changing the route of history, had to be satisfied with the “warmest thanks” of Mazzini.

Who can help being reminded of the braggart who, when involved in a fracas, shouted: “Hold me back, friends, or else I shall commit some fearful deed!” Unfortunately for the world, but perhaps fortunately for Mr Karl Blind, whenever he is about to step into the foreground of historical action, some untoward event prevents him from accomplishing that “fearful deed” which was to render him immortal.

Let us hope that this is the last lucubration, at least in English, written by Karl B. on K. B. in the interest of K. B.