London, 25 January 1882 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

Not until today have I been able to get round to answering your 
letter of the 12th. Marx is home from the Isle of Wight with his 
youngest daughter,* both considerably better, and Marx strong 
enough to go walking with me yesterday for 2 hours without a break. 
Since he isn’t working yet and the Lafargues as often as not also drop 
in before dinner (i.e. 5 o’clock) when a bottle of good Pilsener is 
served up, my hours of daylight are usually frittered away and I have 
never liked writing by lamplight after the warning (chronic conjucti- 
vitis) that was given to my left eye 3 years ago. 

Just now I happen to be at Marx’s, so would you be so good as to 
thank Hochberg very much on Marx’s behalf for his kind offer which, 
however, he is unlikely to be able to make use of; all that he knows for 
certain about his journey south is that he is not going to the Riviera or 
to any part of Italy, if only on account of the police. The first proviso 
where convalescents are concerned is that there should be no harass- 

* Eleanor 

1t1. Engels to Bernstein. 25 and 31 January 1882 187 

ment by the police, in which respect Italy can hold out fewer guaran- 
tees than anywhere else— save, of course, Bismarck’s empire. 

We were greatly interested by what you told us of the goings-on 
among the ‘leaders’ in Germany. I have never made a secret of my 
opinion that the masses in Germany have been far better than their 
leaders, particularly since the press and agitation combined to turn 
the party into the latter’s milch cow and butter purveyor, only to see 
the said cow abruptly slaughtered by Bismarck and the bourgeoi- 
sie. 76! For the thousands instantly ruined thereby, it is a personal 
disaster not to have been placed in an immediately revolutionary si- 
tuation, 1. e. exile. Otherwise not a few who are now bemoaning their 
fate would have gone over to Most’s camp or at any rate found the 
Sozialdemokrat far too moderate. The majority of our people re- 
mained in Germany, as they needs must, for the most part going to fairly 
reactionary places, where they remained social outcasts dependent 
for their living on philistines and became, to a great extent, them- 
selves tainted with philistinism. For them, everything soon began to 
turn on the hope that the Anti-Socialist Law would be repealed. 
Small wonder that, under pressure from the philistine establishment, 
some of them became obsessed with the idea—in reality an absurd 
one—that this could be attained by the exercise of moderation. Ger- 
many is a truly infamous country for people without much will- 
power. The narrowness and pettiness of prevailing conditions, both 
civil and political, the provincial character of even the cities, the 
petty but cumulative harassment in the running battle with police 
and bureaucracy —all this enervates instead of stimulating resist- 
ance, and in this way many of those in the ‘great nursery’ * grow child- 
ish themselves. Petty conditions engender a petty outlook, so that 
a great deal of intelligence and vigour is called for if anyone living in 
Germany is to look beyond the immediate future, to keep his eyes 
fixed on the wider context of world events and not succumb to that 
complacent ‘objectivity’ that cannot see beyond its own nose and is 
therefore the most blinkered subjectivity, even though it be shared by 
a thousand other such fellow-subjects. 

True, the emergence of such a tendency, cloaking its lack of insight 
and resolution under the mantle of ‘objective’ wisdom, is natural 
enough; nevertheless it must be ruthlessly combated. And for this the 
working masses themselves provide the best purchase. They alone in 

* A paraphrase from Heine’s ‘Zur Beruhigung’. 

Germany live in anything approaching modern conditions, all their 
misfortunes, great and small, are attributable to the pressure exerted 
by capital and, whereas all other struggles in Germany, both social 
and political, are petty and paltry and revolve round paltry issues 
which have long been surmounted elsewhere, the workers’ struggle 
alone is noble, it alone is abreast of the times, it alone does not ener- 
vate the participants but is for them a constant source of fresh energy. 
So the more you are able to draw your correspondents from amongst 
the genuine workers, not those who have become ‘leaders’ — the 
better will be your chance of counterbalancing the whines of the lead- 
ership. 

This time it was inevitable that all manner of peculiar people 
should get into the Reichstag. All the more unfortunate, then, that 
Bebel should not have been elected. ??? He alone is lucid, politically 
far-sighted and energetic enough to prevent blunders being commit- 
ted. 

Could you not, after you have done with them, let us have for a week or 
two the ‘stenographic reports’ of debates* in which our deputies 
have played a serious part? I will vouch for their return. Newspaper 
reports, as we have often seen, simply cannot be relied on and none 
of the deputies, not even Liebknecht, could be induced to send 
us speeches that do them no honour. 

31 January 

More interruptions. Amongst others, little Hepner has been here, 
on his way to seek refuge in America, his purse and heart alike empty 
of content. A poor little chap in every respect, author of a well- 
intentioned pamphlet on distraint, the law governing bills of ex- 
change, the Jewish question and postal reform, dull as dull can be, all 
the old Jewish stuff he turned out 10 years ago, 7°? completely gone to 
rack and ruin; I almost felt like advising him to get baptised. Yet he 
provided me with the opportunity of finding out about the new im- 
perial judicial code. ? It really is unutterably infamous! All the 
dirty tricks of Prussian law combined with all the infamies of the 
Code Napoléon, ?°* and without any of the latter’s better side. The 

* Stenographische Berichte tiber die Verhandlungen des Reichstages. V. Legislaturperiode. 
I, Session 1881/82 [Bd. I], Berlin, 1882. 

judge has freedom of decision in all spheres, being bound by nothing 
save — the Disciplinary Law which, in political cases, will undoubt- 
edly, and indeed does, grant him power of ‘discretion’. ‘Thus— 
within the general German context— the judge inevitably becomes 
the executive official and tool of the police. Incidentally, here is a joke 
(originating no doubt from Windthorst) about Leonhardt, who is al- 
leged to have said on his death-bed: ‘Now I have avenged myself on 
Prussia; I’ve given it a legal system that’s bound to bring it to its 
knees.’ 

Birkli’s interest-bearing mortgage certificates, also supposed to re- 
present money, go back much further than that thoroughly addle- 
pated, old Hegelian Pole, Cieszkowski. * Similar schemes for the gene- 
ral good of mankind had already been adumbrated as far back as the 
founding of the Bank of England. Since there is no mention whatever 
of credit in the first volume of Capital (apart from the conditions gov- 
erning simple debt), credit money admits of consideration here only, 
if at all, in its very simplest form (token of value, etc.) and in relation 
to its lowlhiest monetary functions, while interest-bearing credit money 
does not admit of consideration at all. Hence Birkli is right in telling 
Schramm that none of these passages in Capital apply to my particular 
monetary paper; and Schramm is right when he proves to Birkli 
from Capital that he, Birkli, hasn’t the faintest idea of the nature and 
function of money.” This is not to say, however, that Birkli’s own 
particular monetary proposal is actually reduced to its own absur- 
dity; that would require, besides general proof that this ‘money’ is in- 
capable of fulfilling the most essential monetary functions, particular 
proof as to the functions which such paper might really be able to 
fulfil. Moreover, when Biirkli says, “What concern have I with 
Marx? I stick to Cieszkowski’— the whole argument adduced by 
Schramm against Birkli falls to the ground.— How fortunate that 
the Sozialdemokrat shouldn’t have got mixed up in all this business! 
No doubt the whole hullabaloo will eventually die down of its own 
accord. 

That crises are one of the most powerful levers of political upheaval 
has already been pointed out in the Communist Manifesto and was ex- 
pounded in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Review up to and including 
1848, not without the rider, however, that a recurrence of prosperity 
will in turn hamstring the revolutions and pave the way for the 

@ See this volume, pp. 177-78.-° Ibid. 

victory of reaction.* Any detailed argument in support of this should 
take into consideration intermediate crises, some being of a more 
localised and some of a more specialised character; we are currently 
experiencing one such intermediate crisis which may be attributed 
entirely to swindle on the stock exchange; up till 1847 they were 
recurring middle terms, which is why, in my Condition of the Working 
Class,” the cycle is still shown as a five-year one. 

In France, there have been gross blunders on both sides. However, 
in the end Malon and Brousse, in their impatience to bring matters to 
a head and engineer the suspension of the Egalité (which is quite 
outside the competence of the Union Fédérative ?°°), have put them- 
selves so clearly in the wrong that they are likely to suffer for it. Such 
bungling would be incomprehensible in cabalists as wily as Malon 
and Brousse, unless they felt that time was against them. For the Pro- 
létaire is said to be on its last legs and, if it expires, they will have no 
paper at all while the others will have two.‘ Hence the issue had to be 
decided while they still had a paper in which the resolutions -were . 
published. The scurrilities and pure fabrications they are now dissem- 
inating against Guesde, Lafargue, etc., and in particular Joffrin’s 
concoction 4— not concocted by him, however, but by Brousse and 
Malon—- are altogether in the style of the old Bakuninist Alhance, °’ 
and have awakened old memories in us. The Sozialdemokrat is abso- 
lutely right not to get involved until things have cleared up a bit, 
which they will, I think, before very long. 

I had also meant to write to Kautsky about the Poles, ??* but will 
have to drop that for today. Kindest regards, 

Yours, 
F.E,