ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY 

London, 28 December 1886 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N.W. 

Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, 

Your letter of November 13th never reached me, of which I am 
very sorry; it would have suited me much better to write a preface 
then, and moreover would have left me more time.?! 

But let me first congratulate you on the happy family event in 
which you have been the principal actor and add my best wishes for 
your own health and that of the little one newly arrived. 

Of course the appendix * is now a little out-of-date, and as I antici- 
pated something of the kind, proposed that it should be written when 
the book was ready through the press. Now a preface will be much 
wanted, and I will write you one; but before, I must await the return 
of the Avelings? to have a full report of the state of things in Ame- 
rica; and it seems to me that my preface will not be exactly what you 
desire. 

First you seem to me to treat New York a little as the Paris of Ame- 
rica, and to overrate the importance, for the country at large, of the 
local New York movement with its local features. No doubt it has 
a great importance, but then the North-West with its background of 
a numerous farming population and its independent movement will 
hardly accept blindly the George theory. 

Secondly the preface of thzs book is hardly the place for a thorough- 
going criticism of that theory, and offers even not the necessary space 
for it. 

Thirdly I should have to study thoroughly Henry George’s various 
writings and speeches? (most of which I have not got) so as to 
render impossible all replies based on subterfuges and side-issues. 

My preface will of course turn entirely on the immense stride made 
by the American working-men in the last ten months, and naturally 

* F. Engels, ‘Appendix to the American Edition of The Condition of the Working Class in 
England . 

also touch Henry George and his land scheme. But it cannot pretend 
to deal extensively with it. Nor do I think the time for that has come. 
It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed 
harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole 
American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed, from the 
beginning, on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better 
road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than to learn by one’s 
own mistakes, ‘durch Schaden klug werden’. And for a whole large class, 
there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical 
and so contemptuous of theory as the Americans. The great thing is 
to get the working-class to move as a class; that once obtained, they 
will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, Henry George or 
Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own. 
Therefore I think also the Knights of Labor °°° a most important fac- 
tor in the movement which ought not to be pooh-poohed from with- 
out but to be revolutionised from within, and I consider that many of 
the Germans there have made a grievous mistake when they tried, in 
the face of a mighty and glorious movement not of their creation, to 
make of their imported and not always understood theory a kind of 
alleinseligmachendes Dogma,* and to keep aloof from any movement 
which did not accept that dogma. Our theory is not a dogma but the 
exposition of a process of evolution, and that process involves succes- 
sive phases. To expect that the Americans will start with the full con- 
sciousness of the theory worked out in older industrial countries is to 
expect the impossible. What the Germans ought to do is to act up to 
their own theory —if they understand it, as we did in 1845 and 
1848,— to go in for any real general working-class movement, accept 
its faktische” starting point as such, and work it gradually up to the 
theoretical level by pointing out how every mistake made, every re- 
verse suffered, was a necessary consequence of mistaken theoretical 
views in the original programme: they ought, in the words of the Kom- 
munistischen Manifest: ‘in der Gegenwart der Bewegung die Kukunft der Bewe- 
gung zu reprisentieren’.“°75 But above all give the movement time to 
consolidate, do not make the inevitable confusion of the first start, 
worse confounded by forcing down people’s throats things which, at 
present, they cannot properly understand, but which they will soon 
learn. A million or two of working-men’s votes next November for 

b 

@ the only saving dogma-° actual-‘° ‘in the movement of the present to represent 

the future of the movement’. 

a bona fide working-men’s party is worth infinitely more at present 
than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform. 
The very first attempt—soon to be made if the movement progres- 
ses—~—to consolidate the moving masses on a national basis— will 
bring them all face to face, Georgites, Knights of Labor, Trade- 
Unionists and all; and if our German friends by that time have learnt 
enough of the language of the country to go in for a discussion, then 
will be the time for them to criticise the views of the others and thus, 
by showing up the inconsistencies of the various standpoints, to bring 
them gradually to understand their own actual position, the position 
made for them by the correlation of capital and wage labour. But 
anything that might delay or prevent that national consolidation of 
the working-men’s party——on no matter what platform—I should 
consider a great mistake, and therefore I do not think the time has ar- 
rived to speak out fully and exhaustively either with regard to Henry 
George or the Knights of Labor. 

I did not wire ‘yes’ because I could not exactly make out what you 
might make out that ‘yes’ to mean. 

As to the title: J cannot omit the 1844, because the omission would 
give an entirely false idea of what the reader has to expect. And as I, 
by the preface and appendix, take a certain responsibility, I cannot 
consent to its being left out. You may add: ‘With preface and appen- 
dix by the Author’, if you think proper. 

The proofs I return corrected by same mail. 

Yours very faithfully, 
F. Engels