London, 18 September 1883 

Dear Mr Kautsky, 

As regards the Geiser business, I do not believe the time has yet 
come for me to intervene.'°* The chaps must first compromise them- 

* See this volume, pp. 47-48. 

selves a bit more in the eyes of the public. The paltry little flysheet 
and the failure of the motion on the right to work are not enough; 
they must express themselves in yet stronger terms if we are to get 
a proper hold on them and if they are not to lie their way out by 
pleading false excuses. Meanwhile it would be most helpful if you 
would gather together material in this connection, for the moment 
will come when we shall have to have a go at these gentlemen. 
There’s no immediate hurry.* Bebel and the Sozialdemokrat, as you 
say yourself, have got the masses behind them, and there is, after all, 
an antidote to hand. That you have a great deal of this sort of thing to 
put up with in that Swabian hole, I can well believe, considering that 
Stuckert and Munich are the worst places in Germany. And then, 
I definitely have not got the time to become embroiled in a dispute 
that would demand a great deal of toil and trouble. If it has got to 
be— well and good. I return the flysheet herewith. 

Lack of time precludes my engaging in further detailed discussion 
of the articles on marriage.'°° In any case, primitive hetaerism is so 
remote in time and has been so much overlaid by later developments, 
whether progressive or otherwise, that nowadays we can nowhere ex- 
pect to find examples in their pristine form. But all subsequent forms 
lead back to those primitive origins. Of this much I am: certain,— 
until you have completely dropped the element of jealousy as a deter- 
mining social factor {in primitive times), it will not be possible to give 
a correct account of the way things have developed. 

Generally speaking, in the case of all those scientific researches 
which embrace so wide a field and such a mass of material, nothing 
can really be achieved except by dint of many years of study. Indivi- 
dual aspects that are both new and. accurate—and these are, of 
course, to be found in your articles— present themselves more read- 
ily; but to survey the whole and to order it anew is something that 
can only be done after it has been fully explored. Otherwise there 
would be many more books like Capital. So I am glad to see that you 
have turned to themes-— for immediate literary treatment — such as 
early biblical history and colonisation,’ which make it possible to 
achieve something without so exhaustive and detailed a study, and 
yet at the same time strike a topical note. J liked the colonisation arti- 
cle very much. Unfortunately almost all the material you’ve got is 
* See this volume, p. 64.-> Stuttgart-° K. Kautsky, ‘Die Entstehung der bib- 

lischen Urgeschichte’, Kosmos..., Vol. XIII, June 1883.-4 K. Kautsky, ‘Auswan- 
derung und Kolonisation’, Die Neue Zeit, Nos. 8 and 9, 1883. 

German which, as usual, is toned down and fails to present either the 
lurid hues of tropical colonisation or its most recent mode. The latter 
is colonisation, directly and wittingly carried out in the interest of 
stock-market manipulations, as now by France in Tunisia and 
Tongking. Of this there is a new and striking instance in the South 
Seas slave trade; that trade was the immediate purpose of the attempt- 
ed annexation of New Guinea, etc., by Queensland. Almost on the 
same day as the expedition set out to annex New Guinea, a Queens- 
land vessel, the Fanny, left for the same island and others further east 
in order to seize zasour, returning, however, without rasour but with 
wounded as well as other unpleasant signs of an encounter.'!°° The 
Daily News reports this and, in a leading article,* remarks that the 
British can hardly censure the French for such practices while doing 
the same thing themselves! (Beginning of September.) 

Last week, at the Tranes Unions Coneress sitting at Nottingham, 
Adam Weiler’s proposal to press for international factory legislation 
was thrown out by 26 votes to 2 on the motion of the ‘Labour’ parlia- 
mentarian Broadhurst.!°’? So much for Liebknecht’s much-vaunted 
TRADES‘ UNrons! 198 

Why doesn’t Fritz Denhardt write for the Neue Zett any more? '°° 
He had a very nice cheery style. The journal itself, of course, has to 
content with appalling difficulties: the censorship it has to impose 
upon itself is a thousand times worse than the old, official censor- 
ship used to be. You still have some pretty odd contributors and you 
yourself must often enough long for better ones. At all events, this 
business has for you the advantage of enabling you at the same time 
to pursue your scientific studies and let them come to gradual frui- 
tion. 

Incidentally, Java provides proof of the fact that nowhere and at 
no time does a population increase so rapidly as under a not unduly 
oppressive system of bondage: 1755—2 mill.; 1826—5'/, mill.; 
1850-—9 mill.; 1878—19 mill.;— an almost tenfold increase in 125 
years—— the only example of anything like Malthusian growth. Were 
they to send the Dutch blood-suckers packing the population would 
become fairly stable. 

Adler turned up just as I was off to the seaside and likewise on my 
return; he is a man of some promise. He saw much here that might be: 
of use to him.!?° 

* The Daily News, 12 September 1883. 

I yesterday received a money order from Stuttgart for £ 6 3/-for 
the photographs,* but there was no accompanying letter. Will you 
ask Dietz to be so kind as to drop me a note informing me what name 
(Christian name) and address (in Stuttgart) he gave at the post office 
on taking out the order? The post office here is very pedantic in such 
matters, and if the particulars I give differ in the slightest respect 
I shall not get the money. 

The 2nd volume of Capital will provide me with work and to 
spare. The bulk of the ms. dates back to before 1868 and is in. places no 
more than a brouillon.”!7 The second book will greatly disappoint 
the vulgar socialists, it contains virtually nothing but rigorously scien- 
tific, very minute examinations of things that take place within the 
capitalist class itself, and nothing at. all out of which to fabricate 
catch-words and orations. 

Pumps has already got two offspring. Tussy Marx has taken rooms 
near the British Museum. Lenchen is keeping house for me. 

Kindest regards. 

Yours, 
F. E.