At a time when the young Italian Socialist Party is suffering the 
blows of the most violent government reaction, it is our duty, as 
socialists from across the Alps, to try to come to its aid. We can do 
nothing against the dissolution of sections and societies. But 
perhaps our testimony will not be entirely useless in the face of 
the odious and brazen slanders of an unofficial and corrupt press. 

This press reproaches the Italian socialists with having deliber- 
ately simulated Marxist propaganda,* in order to hide a quite 
different politics behind this mask, a politics which proclaims the 
“class struggle” (something that “would take us back to the Middle 
Ages”) and whose aim is to form a political party aspiring to the 
“conquest of power in the state”; whereas the socialist parties of 
other countries, and the Germans in particular, “do not concern 
themselves with politics, do not attack the form of the government 
in power”, indeed they are simply harmless good chaps and one 
can make jokes about them! 

If anyone is being made a joke of here it is the Italian public. 
One would never dare peddle them such stupidities if one did not 
take them to be wholly ignorant of what goes on in the world 
outside. If the Italian socialists proclaim the “class struggle” as the 
dominant fact of the society we live in, if they form themselves 
into a “political party aspiring to the conquest of public power and 
the management of the nation’s affairs”, they are making Marxist 
propaganda in the most literal sense of the word; they are 
following exactly the line indicated in the Manifesto of the 
Communist Party published by Marx and myself in 1848; they are 

‘ 

a The manuscript has: “...Marxist propaganda in the manner of the German 

socialists” .— Ed. 

doing precisely what the socialist parties of France, Belgium, 
Switzerland,* Spain and above all Germany are doing. There is not 
a single one of all these parties that does not aspire to the 
conquest of public power, just as the other parties, the conserva- 
tives, liberals, republicans, etc. etc. 

As for the “class struggle’, it takes us back not just to the 
“Middle Ages” but to the internal conflicts of the ancient republics: 
Athens, Sparta, Rome. All those conflicts were class struggles. 
Since the dissolution of primitive communities, the struggle 
between the different classes of which every society was composed 
was always the great driving force of historical progress. This 
struggle will not disappear except with the disappearance of these 
classes themselves, in other words after the victory of socialism. 
Until that day, the opposing classes, the proletariat, bourgeoisie 
and landed nobility,” will continue to fight amongst themselves, 
whatever the unofficial Italian press may say. 

For the rest, Italy at this moment is undergoing the same test 
that Germany* underwent during the twelve years of the 
Anti-Socialist Law.**’ Germany defeated Bismarck; socialist? Italy 
will get the better of Crispi. 

London, October 27, 1894 
Frederick Engels 

No. 21, November 1, 1894 checked with the French manu- 
script 

Translated from the Italian