[London, 17/18 September 1879]

Dear Bebel,

The reply to your letter of 20 August has been delayed, partly by Marx’s prolonged absence, then by some incidents: first the arrival of Richter’s “Jahrbuch” 182), then that of Hirsch himself,

I must conclude that Liebknecht has not shown you my last letter to him, although I expressly instructed him to do so. Otherwise you would certainly not have put forward to me the same reasons which Liebknecht advanced and to which I already replied in that letter!

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

I. The negotiations with C. Hirsch
Liebknecht asks Hirsch whether he is willing to take on the editorship of the party organ to be founded in Zurich. Hirsch wants information about the funding of the paper: what funds are available and who is providing them. The first, to know whether the paper will not have to cease after a few months. The other, to ascertain who holds the purse-strings and thus ultimate control over the stance of the paper. Liebknecht’s reply to Hirsch: “everything in order, you will hear further details from Zurich” (Liebknecht to Hirsch, 28 July) does not arrive. From Zurich, however, a letter from Bernstein to Hirsch (24 July) arrives, in which Bernstein reports that “we have been entrusted with the staging and supervision (of the paper)”. A discussion had taken place “between Viereck and us”, in which it was found “that your position would be made somewhat more difficult by the differences which, as the ‘Laterne’ man, you have had with individual comrades, but I do not consider this reservation to be very serious.” Not a word about the funding.

Hirsch replies by return of post on 26 July, asking about the financial situation of the paper. Which comrades have undertaken to cover the deficit? Up to what amount and for how long? – The question of the editor’s salary plays absolutely no part here; Hirsch merely wants to know whether “the means 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 have already been subscribed. In response to Hirsch’s remarks on the stance he intends to give the paper, about which below, disapproving remarks and instructions follow: “The supervisory commission must insist on this all the more as it is itself in turn under control, i.e. responsible. On these points, you must therefore come to an understanding with the supervisory commission.” An immediate reply, if possible by telegraph, is desired.

So, instead of any answer to his legitimate questions, Hirsch receives the news that he is to edit under a supervisory commission sitting in Zurich, whose views differ very substantially from his own and whose members are not even named to him!

Hirsch, rightly indignant at this treatment, prefers to come to an understanding with the Leipzig comrades. His letter of 2 August to Liebknecht must be known to you, since Hirsch explicitly requested that it be communicated to you and Viereck. Hirsch is even willing to submit to a Zurich supervisory commission to the extent that it may make written comments to the editorial board and appeal to the decision of the Leipzig control commission.

Liebknecht, meanwhile, writes to Hirsch on 28 July: “Of course the undertaking is funded, since the whole party + (including) Höchberg is behind it. But I’m not bothering about the details.”

Liebknecht’s next letter, too, again says nothing about the funding, but contains the assurance that the Zurich commission is not an editorial commission, but is entrusted only with administration and finances. Even on 14 August Liebknecht writes the same to me and demands that we urge Hirsch to accept. You yourself, as late as 20 August, were so little informed of the true state of affairs that you wrote to me: “He (Höchberg) has no more voice in the editorial board of the paper than any other well-known party comrade.”

Finally, Hirsch receives a letter from Viereck, 11 August, in which it is admitted that “the 3 domiciled in Zurich, as an editorial commission, should tackle the founding of the paper and, with the agreement of the 3 Leipzig comrades, should select an editor … as far as I remember, it was also stated in the resolutions communicated that the founding committee mentioned under point 2 (the Zurich one) should assume both the political and the financial responsibility towards the party… From this state of affairs it now seems to me to follow that … without the cooperation of the 3 domiciled in Zurich and charged by the party with the founding, there can be no question of taking over the editorship.”

Here Hirsch finally had at least something definite, even if only about the editor’s position vis-à-vis the Zurich comrades. They are an editorial commission; they also bear political responsibility; without their cooperation no editorial board can be taken over. In short, Hirsch is simply referred to come to an understanding with the 3 people in Zurich, whose names are still not given to him.

But to make the confusion complete, Liebknecht writes a postscript under Viereck’s letter: “Singer from Berlin has just been here and reported: The supervisory commission in Zurich is not, as Viereck thinks, an editorial commission, but essentially an administrative commission, which is financially responsible for the paper to the party, i.e. to us; of course the members also have the right and the duty to discuss the editorial side with you (a right and a duty which, by the way, every party comrade has); they are not authorised to place you under tutelage.”

The three Zurich comrades and one Leipzig committee member – the only one who had been present at the negotiations – insist that Hirsch is to be under the official direction of the Zurich comrades; a second Leipzig member flatly denies this. And Hirsch is supposed to make up his mind before these gentlemen are agreed among themselves? That Hirsch was entitled to learn the resolutions that contained the conditions to which he was expected to submit – there was so little thought of this that it did not even seem to occur to the Leipzig comrades to obtain authentic knowledge of those resolutions themselves. How else could the above contradiction have been possible?

If the Leipzig comrades cannot agree on the powers transferred to the Zurich comrades, the latter are perfectly clear 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 the same way and thereby held out the prospect of a similar style of writing, we would not waste a word about it. But as it is, in the face of this declaration of yours, we must reserve the right to cast the deciding vote on the acceptance of articles into the new paper.”

The letter to Bernstein in which Hirsch is supposed to have said this is of 26 July, long after the conference in Zurich at which the powers of the 3 Zurich comrades had been laid down. But in Zurich they are already revelling so much in the feeling of their bureaucratic plenitude of power that they already 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.

So if the negotiations with Hirsch fell through, what was the cause?

1. The stubborn refusal of both the Leipzig and the Zurich comrades to communicate to him anything factual about the financial basis and thus about the possibility of keeping the paper alive, even for only a year. He only learned the subscribed sum from me here (following your communication to me). It was therefore hardly possible to draw any other conclusion from the earlier communications (the party + Höchberg) than that the paper was either already now funded predominantly by Höchberg, or would soon become entirely dependent on his subsidies. And this latter possibility is still far from excluded. The sum of – if I read correctly – 800 marks is exactly the same (£40) that the association here had to add to the “Freiheit” in the first half-year.

2. Liebknecht’s repeated assurance, since proved to be totally incorrect, that the Zurich comrades had no official control over the editorial board at all, and the resulting comedy of errors;

3. the certainty finally obtained that the Zurich comrades were not only to control the editorial board but actually to censor it, and that to him, Hirsch, only the role of a straw man would fall.

That he thereupon declined we can only agree with. The Leipzig commission, as we hear from Höchberg, has been reinforced by 2 members not resident in the locality, and can therefore only intervene quickly if the 3 Leipzig comrades are agreed. As a result, the real centre of gravity is shifted completely to Zurich, and with the comrades there Hirsch would have been able to work in the long run just as little as any other genuinely revolutionary and proletarian-minded editor. More about this later.

II. The intended stance of the paper
On 24 July, Bernstein informs Hirsch that the differences he had had with individual comrades as the “Laterne” man would make his position more difficult.

Hirsch replies that, in his opinion, the stance of the paper will in general have to be the same as that of the “Laterne”, i.e. one which avoids court cases in Switzerland and does not frighten people unnecessarily in Germany. He asks who those comrades are and continues: “I know only one, and I promise you that in the same case of undisciplined behaviour I shall treat him exactly the same way again.”

Thereupon Bernstein replies, in the consciousness of his new official censorial dignity: “As regards the stance of the paper, the view of the supervisory commission is indeed that the ‘Laterne’ should not serve as a model; in our view, the paper should not be absorbed in political radicalism, but should be kept on a principled socialist basis. Cases such as the attack on Kayser, which was disapproved of by all comrades without exception (!), must be avoided at all costs.”

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

Hirsch writes again to Höchberg, a case like the Kayser affair “cannot occur if an official party organ exists, whose clear expositions and well-meaning hints a deputy cannot so boldly cast to the winds”.

Viereck, too, writes that the new paper is “prescribed a dispassionate stance and the greatest possible ignoring of all differences that have occurred …”, it should not be “an enlarged ‘Laterne’”, and Bernstein “could at most be reproached for being too moderate in orientation, if that is a reproach at a time when we cannot yet sail under full colours”.

What, then, is this Kayser case!120, this unpardonable crime that Hirsch is supposed to have committed? Kayser speaks and votes in the Reichstag, the only one among the Social-Democratic deputies, for protective tariffs. Hirsch accuses him of having violated party discipline, in that Kayser 1. votes for indirect taxes, whose abolition the party programme expressly demands;

2. granted Bismarck money and thereby violated the first basic rule of all
our party tactics: Not a farthing to this government.

On both points Hirsch is incontestably right. And after Kayser
on the one hand had trampled underfoot the party programme, on which the deputies had been, so to speak, sworn in by congress resolution, and on the other hand the most indispensable, the very first basic rule of party tactics, and voted Bismarck money "in gratitude for the Anti-Socialist Law!", Hirsch likewise, in our view, was completely right to hit out at him as hard as he
did.

. We have never been able to understand why people in Germany got so tremendously worked up about this attack on Kayser. Now Höchberg tells me? that the "fraction" gave Kayser permission for his conduct,
and that this permission is considered to cover Kayser].

If that is the case, it is a bit much. To begin with,

Hirsch could know just as little of this secret resolution as the
rest of the world.* Furthermore, the disgrace for the party, which previously could be shifted onto Kayser] alone, is only magnified by this story, and equally magnified is the merit of Hirsch, who openly and before all the world exposed these insipid phrases and the even more insipid vote
of Kayser's, and thereby saved the party's honour. Or has
German Social Democracy in fact been infected with the parliamentary disease and believes that, with the popular election, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the elected, fraction sittings are transformed into infallible councils, and fraction resolutions into inviolable dogmas?

A blunder has certainly been committed, not by Hirsch, however, but by
the deputies who covered Kayser with their resolution. And if
those who are called upon above all to see to the upholding of party discipline themselves break that party discipline so egregiously by such a resolution, so much the worse. Worse still, however, if
people have the effrontery to believe that it was not Kayser through his speech and
vote, and the other deputies through their resolution, who

social democratic deputies (for there can hardly have been more there) allowed themselves to be misled
into permitting K[ayser] to utter his insipidities before all the world and to
grant Bismarck money; then they were obliged publicly to assume the responsibility for it and to wait and see what Hirsch would then say.

violated party discipline, but rather Hirsch, by attacking
Kayser in spite of this resolution, which, moreover, was unknown to him.

It is, by the way, certain that the party has adopted the same unclear and irresolute attitude on the question of protective tariffs as it has until now on almost all
practical economic questions that have arisen, e.g. on the imperial railways’. This comes from the fact that the party organs, the Vorwärts in particular, instead of discussing these questions thoroughly, have preferred to lay stress on the construction of the future order of society. When
the question of protective tariffs suddenly became practical after the Anti-Socialist Law,
opinions diverged in the most varied shadings, and there was not a single person on the spot who possessed the precondition for forming a clear and
correct judgement: knowledge of the conditions of
German industry and its position on the world market. Now and then protective tariff currents among the voters could
not fail to appear either, and these too one naturally wished to take into account. The only way
out of this confusion, namely to treat the question purely politically (as was done in the Laterne), was not resolutely pursued. Thus it could not fail that the party appeared hesitating, uncertain and unclear for the first time in this debate and finally, through and with Kayser, thoroughly disgraced itself.

The attack on Kayser is now taken as an occasion to preach to Hirsch
in every key that the new paper should by no means imitate the excesses of the "Laterne",
should be less absorbed in political radicalism,
but be kept principally socialist and dispassionate. And this comes from Viereck no less than from Bernstein, to whom the latter appears
as the right man precisely because
he is too moderate, because one cannot now sail under full colours.

But why go abroad at all, if not to sail
under full colours? Abroad, nothing stands in the way of that. 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 even before
the Anti-Socialist Law on account of the ordinary German laws; one is also duty-bound to do so. For here one stands not merely
before Germany, but before Europe, and has the duty, insofar as the
Swiss laws permit, to expound to Europe unvarnished the paths and goals of the
German party. Whoever wanted to bind himself in Switzerland to
German laws would prove only that he is worthy of these German

laws and in fact has nothing to say beyond what it was permitted to say in Germany
before the Exceptional Law. Nor should any consideration be given to the possibility
of temporarily cutting off the editors’ return to Germany.
Whoever is not prepared to risk that does not belong on such an exposed post of honour.

Even more. The German party has been placed under the ban and ostracism by the Exceptional Law, precisely because it was the only serious opposition party in Germany. If, in a foreign organ, it pays its thanks to Bismarck
by abandoning this role of the only serious
opposition party, if it behaves nicely and tamely, accepts the kick
with a dispassionate attitude, then it proves only that it deserved the kick. Of all the German émigré papers that have appeared abroad since 1830, the "Laterne" is certainly one of the most moderate. But if
the "Laterne" was already too impudent – then the new organ can only compromise the
party before the fellow-minded in non-German countries.

III. The Manifesto of the Three Zürich 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 told me, is written precisely by
the three members of the Zürich Commission. Here we have their authentic critique of the movement so far and with it their authentic programme for the attitude of the new organ, insofar as this depends on them.

Right at the outset, it states:

"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 philanthropy were to march, was flattened down under
the presidency of J.B. v. Schweitzer into a one-sided struggle for the interests
of the industrial workers."

I shall not inquire whether and to what extent this corresponds historically.
The specific reproach made here against Schweitzer is that
Schweitzer flattened Lassalleanism, which is here conceived as a bourgeois democratic-philanthropic movement, into a one-sided struggle for the interests of
the industrial workers, flattened it, in that he* deepened its

* the last five lines stand in place of the following passage, struck out in the manuscript:
Schweitzer was a great scoundrel, but a highly talented mind. (His merit

character as a class struggle of the industrial workers against the bourgeoisie.
Furthermore, he is reproached for his "rejection of the bourgeois democracy". What
business then has bourgeois democracy in the Social-Democratic Party? If it consists of "honest men", it cannot at all want to enter, and if it nevertheless wants to enter,
only to make mischief.

The Lassallean party "preferred to comport itself in the most one-sided fashion as a workers’ party". The gentlemen who write this are themselves members
of a party that comports itself in the most one-sided fashion as a workers’ party, they now hold office and honours in it. Here we have an absolute incompatibility. If they mean what they write, they must leave the party, at least lay down office and honours. If they do not, then 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 honours.

In the opinion of these gentlemen, then, the Social-Democratic Party should not be
a one-sided workers’ party, but rather an all-sided party "of all men filled with true philanthropy". Above all, it should prove this
by shedding its coarse proletarian passions and placing itself "under the guidance of educated philanthropic bourgeois" for "the cultivation of good taste" and "the learning of good form" (p.85). Then
even the "loutish behaviour" of many leaders will give way to a thoroughly respectable
"bourgeois behaviour". (As if the outwardly loutish behaviour of those here meant were not the least thing that can be thrown at them!) Then, too, "numerous adherents from the
circles of the educated and propertied classes will appear. These, however, must

consisted precisely in his breaking through the original narrow Lassalleanism with its limited state-aid panacea.> Whatever he may have been guilty of from corrupt motives
and however much he may have clung to Lassalle’s panacea of
state aid in order to preserve his rule, he nevertheless has the merit of having broken through the original narrow Lassalleanism,
broadened the economic horizon of the party and thereby prepared its later
absorption into the united German party. The class struggle between
proletariat and bourgeoisie, this pivot of all revolutionary socialism, was already
preached by Lassalle. When Schweitzer stressed this point still more sharply, that
was in the matter itself in any case an advance, however much he may have forged from it a pretext
to cast suspicion on persons dangerous to his dictatorship. It is entirely correct
that he made Lassalleanism into a one-sided struggle for the interests of the industrial workers.
But only one-sided, because for reasons of political corruption he wanted to know nothing of
the struggle for the interests of the agricultural workers against large landed property. Not
this is what is reproached against him here; the "flattening down" consists in that he

first be won if the ... agitation carried on is to achieve tangible successes." German socialism has "laid too much value on winning the masses and, in doing so, failed to carry on energetic (!) propaganda in the so-called upper strata of society". For "the party still
lacks men capable of representing it in the Reichstag". It is, however, "desirable and necessary to entrust the mandates
to men who have had enough opportunity and time to
make themselves thoroughly conversant with the relevant subjects. The
simple worker and small master ... has only in rare exceptional cases the necessary leisure for that." Elect bourgeois, therefore!

In short: the working class of itself is incapable of liberating itself.
For that it must place itself under the guidance of "educated and propertied" bourgeois,
who alone have "opportunity and time" to make themselves conversant with what is in the workers’ interest. And secondly, the bourgeoisie is by no means to be fought, but rather – won over by energetic propaganda.

But if one wants to win the upper strata of society or even only
their well-meaning elements, one must by no means
frighten them. And here the three Zürich men believe to have made a reassuring discovery:

"The Party shows just now, under the pressure of the Anti-Socialist Law, that it is not willing to take the path of violent, bloody revolution, but is resolved ... to tread the path of legality, i.e., of reform." So if the 5-600,000 Social-Democratic voters, three-tenths to one-quarter of the entire electorate, scattered moreover over the whole wide country, are so sensible as not to run their heads against a wall and attempt a "bloody revolution" one against ten, this proves that they forbid themselves for all future time to take advantage of a great foreign event, a sudden revolutionary upsurge occasioned by it, or even a victory of the people won in a collision arising from it! If Berlin should once again be so uneducated as to stage an 18th of March!, the Social-Democrats, instead of taking part in the struggle as "barricade-addicted rogues" (p. 88), must rather "tread the path of legality", smooth things over, clear away the barricades and, if need be, march with the glorious army against the one-sided, crude, uneducated masses. Or if the gentlemen maintain that that is not what they meant, what then did they mean?

It gets better still.

"The more calmly, objectively, and deliberately she" (the Party) "proceeds in her criticism of existing conditions and in her proposals for altering them, the less can the chess move that has now succeeded" (when the Anti-Socialist Law was introduced) "be repeated, with which the conscious reaction drove the bourgeoisie into a panic through fear of the red spectre." (p. 88.)

In order to dispel the last trace of fear from the bourgeoisie, it must be proved to it clearly and conclusively that the red spectre is really only a spectre and does not exist. But what is the secret of the red spectre if not the fear felt by the bourgeoisie of the inevitable life-and-death struggle between itself and the proletariat? The fear of the unavoidable decision of the modern class struggle? Do away with the class struggle, and the bourgeoisie and "all ‘independent’ people" will "not be afraid to go hand in hand with the proletarians"! And it would be the proletarians who are then cheated.

May the Party, therefore, prove by humble and woeful demeanour that it has once and for all laid aside the "improprieties and excesses" which gave occasion for the Anti-Socialist Law. If it voluntarily promises to move only within the bounds of the Anti-Socialist Law, Bismarck and the bourgeoisie will surely be kind enough to repeal this now superfluous law!

"Let us be properly understood", we do not want "an abandonment of our party and our programme, but we think that we have enough to do for years to come if we direct all our strength, all our energy, towards achieving ‘certain immediate goals’ which must have been attained under all circumstances before any thought can be given to the realization of more far-reaching aspirations." Then bourgeois, petty bourgeois, and workers will join us in large numbers who are "now deterred by the far-reaching demands ...".

The programme is not to be abandoned, but merely postponed — to an indefinite future. It is adopted, but not really for oneself and one’s lifetime, but posthumously, as a legacy for children and children’s children. Meanwhile, one devotes one’s "whole strength and energy" to all sorts of trivia and patching up of the capitalist social order, to make it look as if something were happening while at the same time the bourgeoisie is not frightened. Give me the communist Miquel, who proves his unshakeable conviction of the inevitable collapse of capitalist society in a few hundred years by swindling away stoutly, making his honest contribution to the crash of 1873, and thereby really doing something for the collapse of the existing order.

Another offence against good manners were the "exaggerated attacks on the promoters", who were, after all, "only children of the time"; "the abuse of Strousberg and suchlike people ... should therefore better have been omitted". Unfortunately, all men are "only children of the time", and if that is a sufficient excuse, then no one may be attacked any longer, all polemics, all struggle on our part ceases; we calmly take all the kicks our opponents give us, because we, the wise, know that they are "only children of the time" and cannot act otherwise than they do. Instead of returning their kicks with interest, we should rather pity the poor things.

Likewise, the support of the Commune had the disadvantage "that people otherwise well-disposed towards us were repelled and the hatred of the bourgeoisie against us was generally increased". And furthermore, the Party is "not entirely without blame for the coming into being 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, since we know all these phrases very well from 1848 onwards. It is the representatives of the petty bourgeoisie announcing themselves, full of fear that the proletariat, driven by its revolutionary situation, might "go too far". Instead of resolute political opposition — general mediation; instead of struggle against government and bourgeoisie — the attempt to win them over and persuade them; instead of defiant resistance to ill-treatment from above — humble submission and the admission that one has deserved the punishment. All historically necessary conflicts are reinterpreted as misunderstandings, and all discussion ends with the protestation: on the main point, we are all, after all, agreed. The people who came forward in 1848 as bourgeois democrats can now just as well call themselves Social-Democrats. Just as for the former the democratic republic, so for the latter the overthrow of the capitalist order lies in an unattainable distance, and thus has absolutely no significance for the political practice of the present; one can mediate, seek compromises, and play the philanthropist as much as one likes. The same goes for the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. On paper it is acknowledged, since it can no longer be denied, but in practice it is hushed up, watered down, weakened. The Social-Democratic Party is not to be a workers’ party, is not to incur the hatred of the bourgeoisie or of anyone at all; it is, above all, to carry on energetic propaganda among the bourgeoisie; instead of emphasising far-reaching goals that deter the bourgeois and are yet unattainable in our generation, it should rather apply all its strength and energy to those petty-bourgeois patchwork reforms that provide new props to the old social order and thereby perhaps transform the final catastrophe into a gradual, piecemeal, and as far as possible peaceable process of dissolution. They are the very same people who, under the pretence of restless activity, not only do nothing themselves but also try to prevent anything from happening except — chatter; the same people whose fear of every deed hampered the movement at every step in 1848 and 1849 and finally brought it to a fall; the same people who never see any reaction, and then are completely 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 philistine horizon and over whom history passes to the order of the day every time.

As for their socialist content, it has already been sufficiently criticised in the Manifesto, in the chapter on "German or True Socialism". Where the class struggle is pushed aside as a distasteful "crude" phenomenon, nothing remains as the basis of socialism but "true love of humanity" and empty phrases about "justice".

It is a phenomenon, grounded 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. We already clearly stated this in the Manifesto. However, two things must be noted in this connection:

First, these people, in order to be of use to the proletarian movement, must also bring real elements of education with them. This, however, is not the case with the great majority of the German bourgeois converts. Neither the Zukunft nor the Neue Gesellschaft has brought anything by which the movement would have advanced one step. There is an absolute lack of real, factual or theoretical educational material. Instead, attempts are made to bring the superficially appropriated socialist ideas into harmony with the most varied theoretical standpoints which the gentlemen have brought from the university or elsewhere, and one of which was more confused than the other, thanks to the process of putrefaction in which the remnants of German philosophy now find themselves. Instead of first studying the new science thoroughly themselves, each one rather trimmed it to fit the standpoint he had brought with him, straightway manufactured a private science of his own, and at once came forward with the pretension to teach it. Hence among these gentlemen there are about as many standpoints as heads; instead of bringing clarity into anything, they have only created dreadful confusion — fortunately almost entirely among themselves. Such elements of education, whose first principle is to teach what they have not learned, the party can well dispense with.

Secondly. If people of this kind from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first demand is that they do not bring with them remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices, but wholeheartedly adopt the proletarian outlook. But those gentlemen, as has been shown, are soaked through and through with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois notions. In so petty-bourgeois a country 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, conclude agreements according to circumstances, etc. But in a workers’ party they are a falsifying element. If there are reasons for tolerating them in it for the time being, then it is a duty to do no more than tolerate them, to allow them no influence on the party leadership, to remain conscious that the break with them is only a question of time. This time seems to have come, by the way. How the party can tolerate the authors of this article any longer in its midst is incomprehensible to us. But if such people even get the party leadership more or less into their hands, the party is simply emasculated, and the proletarian edge is gone.

As for us, our whole past leaves open to us only one course. For almost 40 years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving power of history, and in particular the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat as the great lever of the modern social upheaval; we can therefore under no circumstances go together with people who wish to eliminate this class struggle from the movement. At the founding of the International, we expressly put forward the battle-cry

Formulated: The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly declare that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above by philanthropic big and petty bourgeois. If the new party organ takes up an attitude that is suited to the sentiments of these gentlemen, that is bourgeois and not proletarian, then nothing remains for us, however much we should regret it, but to come out publicly against it and to dissolve the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German party abroad. But it is to be hoped it will not come to that.

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

Nor is there any objection on our part to its communication to the Zürich people.

August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, as well as Wilhelm Fritzsche, Bruno Geiser and Wilhelm Hasenclever