London, May 15, 1894

Dear Comrades,

Your kind invitation to your Party Congress reached me on the
8. inst. Unfortunately a passing indisposition prevented me from
replying immediately, and thus today I can only express my
thanks retrospectively, and wish the greatest success in your work.

I too have followed with utmost interest the recent developments in Hungary. In Hungary, as elsewhere, capital is increasingly taking over the whole of national production. Not satisfied with creating a new industrial sector, it subjugates agriculture too, transforms its traditional methods, destroys the individual peasant, divides the rural population into large estate owners and capitalist middlemen on the one hand and a host of propertyless proletarians on the other. The headway this revolution of capital has already made in Hungary we saw recently in Hódmezővásárhely. But we shall have to endure this capitalist revolution. It brings with it unspeakable misery for the great mass of the people, but it alone also creates the conditions which make possible a new social order, and the men and women who alone will have the strength and the will to bring into existence this new and better society.

With sincere greetings,

F. Engels