Friedrich Engels

[Reply to the Editors of the “Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung”]

[“Der Sozialdemokrat” No. 37, 13 September 1890]

To the Editors of the “Sozialdemokrat”

The undersigned most respectfully requests the publication of the following letter, which was sent yesterday to the present editors of the “Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung” in Dresden.

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In their farewell address (No. 105 of 31 August 1890), the retiring editors of the “Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung” say that petty-bourgeois parliamentary socialism is in the majority in Germany, but that majorities often very quickly turn into minorities:

“… and so the retiring editors of the ‘Sächs. Arb.-Ztg.’ hope, together with Friedrich Engels, that just as Lassalle’s naive state socialism was once overcome, so too will the success-hungry parliamentary tendency in contemporary Social-Democracy soon be overcome by the sound sense of the German workers.”

The retiring editors have greatly surprised me in the above. But perhaps themselves as well … To date I have no knowledge of a majority of petty-bourgeois parliamentary socialism within the German party. And so let them “hope” whatever they like and as long as they please, but I do not hope “with” them.

If I could have still harboured any doubts about the character of the latest literary and student revolt in our German party, they would have to vanish in the face of the monumental effrontery of this attempt to make me jointly responsible for the leaps of those gentlemen.

My whole connexion with the retired editors consisted in the fact that for some weeks they have sent me their paper unsolicited, while I did not consider it necessary to tell them what I found in it. Now I probably have to tell them, and publicly so.

Theoretically, I found in it – and this holds true in the main also for the rest of the press of the “Opposition” – a convulsively distorted “Marxism”, marked on the one hand by a gross misunderstanding of the outlook they claimed to represent, on the other hand by a crude ignorance of the historically decisive facts in each case, and in the third place by that consciousness of their own immeasurable superiority which so favourably distinguishes German men of letters. Marx also foresaw this discipleship when, referring to the “Marxism” that was rampant among certain Frenchmen at the end of the seventies, he said: “tout ce que je sais, c’est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste” – “all I know is that I am no ‘Marxist’.”

In practice, I found in it a reckless disregard for all the actual conditions of the party struggle, a death-defying “taking of obstacles” in the imagination, which certainly does all credit to the unbroken youthful courage of the authors but which, when translated from the realm of imagination into reality, would be capable of burying even the strongest party, running into millions, beneath the self-earned ridicule of the entire hostile world. And that not even a small sect can allow itself such schoolboy politics with impunity is a lesson of which the gentlemen have since had some singular experiences.

All their grievances, accumulated over months, against the parliamentary group or the Party Executive amount, at best, to mere trifles. But if it pleases the gentlemen to strain at gnats, that is absolutely no reason for the German workers to swallow camels out of gratitude.

Well, they have reaped what they sowed. Regardless of all questions of content, the whole campaign was inaugurated with such childishness, with such naive self-deceptions about their own importance and about the state of affairs and of opinion within the party, that the outcome was a foregone conclusion from the very beginning. May the gentlemen take the lesson to heart. Some of them have written things that gave rise to all sorts of hopes. Most of them could achieve something if they were less convinced of the perfection of their momentarily attained stage of development. Let them realise that their “academic education” – which, anyway, requires a thorough, critical self-revision – does not issue them with an officer’s commission carrying a claim to a corresponding post in the party; that in our party everyone must serve from the ranks; that posts of trust in the party are won not by mere literary talent and theoretical knowledge, even when both are undoubtedly present, but that this also requires familiarity with the conditions of the party struggle and becoming accustomed to its forms, proven personal reliability and strength of character, and, finally, willing integration into the ranks of the fighters – in short, that they, the “academically educated”, have, all things considered, far more to learn from the workers than the latter from them.

London, 7 September 1890

Friedrich Engels