[London, after 27 April 1880] '? 

[...]* so as to make the whole thing impossible without actually 
prohibiting it. 

Mr Hasselmann will soon become harmless if you people bring to 
light really compromising facts about him and take the wind out of his 
sails in the Reichstag, i.e. proceed in a frankly revolutionary way, 
which can be done by using quite temperate language, as you your- 
self did in exemplary fashion in your speech on the persecutions. '* If, 
however, a person is constantly afraid of being thought by the philis- 
tine, as often happens, to be a bit more extreme than he really is, and 
ifin fact the enclosed cutting from the Kélnische Zeitung is correct in re- 
porting that the Social-Democrats have brought a motion intended 
to restore the guild privilege of trading in home-made goods, then 
the Hasselmanns and Mosts will have an easy task. 

None of this, however, is really of much consequence. What is now 
keeping the party alive is unobtrusive, spontaneous activity on the 
part of individuals; like its organisation, it is kept going by their irre- 
pressible journeyings. In Germany we have fortunately reached the 
stage when every action of our adversaries is advantageous to us; 
when ail historical forces are playing into our hands, when nothing, 

* The beginning of the letter is missing. 

7. Engels to Bebel. After 27 April 1880 1] 

absolutely nothing, can happen without our deriving advantage from 
it. For that reason we can quietly allow our adversaries to work for us. 
Bismarck is working for us like a real Trojan. He has now won Ham- 
burg for us }* and will shortly also make us a present, first of Altona, 
and then of Bremen. The Nationa] Liberals '*> are working for us, 
even though all they do is submit to kicks and vote taxes. The Catho- 
lics are working for us, even though they voted first against, and then 
for, the Anti-Socialist Law, in return for which they, too, have sim- 
ply been delivered by Bismarck over to the tender mercies of the gov- 
ernment, i.e. also placed outside the law. Anything we can do is 
a mere drop in the ocean compared with what events are doing for us 
at this moment. Bismarck’s feverish activity, which is throwing every- 
thing into disorder and putting everything out of joint without achiev- 
ing anything of a remotely positive nature; which is stretching the 
philistine’s tax-paying potential to the utmost limit, and this for noth- 
ing and worse than nothing; which wants one thing one day and the 
opposite the next and is forcibly driving into the arms of the revolu- 
tion the philistine who would so gladly grovel at his feet — this is our 
strongest ally, and I’m delighted at your being able to confirm from 
actual observation that there has in fact been a shift to the left, as 
was inevitable in the circumstances. 

In France, too, things are progressing well. Our communist view- 
point is breaking new ground everywhere and the best of those advo- 
cating it are all of them former anarchists who have come over to us 
without our raising a finger.* Unanimity has thus been established 
among European socialists; any who are still shilly-shallying aren’t 
worth mentioning now that the last remaining sect, the anarchists, 
has melted away. There, too, we find increasingly a genera! shift to 
the left among the bourgeois and peasants, as you have already re- 
marked; but there’s one snag here: this shift to the left is primarily 
tending towards a war of retribution and that must be avoided. 

The victory of the Liberals here has at least one good aspect in that 
it puts a spoke in the wheel of Bismarck’s foreign policy.'’ Since he 
might just as well dismiss the Russian war from his mind now, he will, 
as usual, doubtless sell his ally— Austria— to the first comer. After 
all, the bitter experiences of 1864-66 have already shown the Aus- 
trians that Bismarck seeks allies only to betray them — but they’re 
too stupid and will again fall into the trap. 

* Engels probably means, above all, Paul Brousse and Benoit Malon.