London, 1 May 1891 

Dear Bebel, 

Today I shall reply to your two letters of 30 March and 25 Ap- 
ril.23? I was delighted to hear that your silver wedding went off so 
well and has whetted your appetite for the next, your golden one. 
I sincerely hope that you will both live to see it. We shall need you 

* Helena Blavatsky 

long after the devil has come for me — as the old man of Dessau * used 
to say. 

I must — I hope for the last time — revert to Marx’s critique of the 
programme.” That ‘no one would have raised any objection to its pub- 
lication’ I feel bound to contest. Liebknecht would never have wil- 
lingly consented and would have done everything in his power to pre- 
vent it. So greatly has the critique rankled since 1875 that he recalls it 
the moment the word ‘programme’ is mentioned. The whole of his 
Halle speech turns upon it.'?! His pompous Vorwdrts article? is, . 
throughout, nothing but an expression of his bad conscience in regard 
to this self-same critique. And it was, in fact, primarily aimed at him. 
We regarded, and I still regard him, as the progenitor of the unifica- 
tion programme °° or the shoddier aspects thereof. And it was this 
point that led me to act off my own bat. Had I been able to discuss 
the thing with you alone and then send it straight on to K. Kautsky 
for publication, a couple of hours would have sufficed for us to agree. 
But as it was, I considered you were under an obligation — both from 
the personal and the party viewpoint—to consult Liebknecht as 
well. And I knew what the result would be if I went ahead regardless. 
Either suppression or an open row — a temporary one at any rate — 
even with yourself. That I wasn’t wrong is evident from what follows: 
Now, since you came out of quod on | April [1875], and the docu- 
ment is dated 5 May, it is obvious — until some other explanation is 
forthcoming —that the thing was deliberately withheld from you 
and that this could, in fact, only have been done by Liebknecht. But 
just for the sake of peace and quiet you have allowed him to dissemi- 
nate the lie that, because you were under lock and key, you had not 
been able to see the thing.?%* Hence I take it that, even before publi- 
cation, you could have spared his feelings in order to avoid a rumpus 
in the Executive. Indeed I find this explicable, as I trust you will like- 
wise find my having allowed for the fact that this, in all probability, 
was how you acted. 

I have just taken another look at the thing. It’s possible that some 
of it could have been left out without impairing the whole. But cer- 
tainly not very much. What was the position? We knew as well as you 
did and, for instance, the Frankfurter Zeitung of 9 March 1875,° which 

* Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau - > K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. - 
* ‘Frankfurt, 8. Marz’, Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt, No. 68, morning edition, 
9 March 1875. 

Frederick Engels. 1891. 

Emir Sela’ O71 

likin, ALL | 
Lectin ie irae oot 65 ata 

? 

Ep Eger 

pats taf ao CHE Siena 
MS APE Aas : At 
Menge. pew ee ft, ee care 
Bye, Gl ha, Mb ew ffl or fog wh BB. 

First page of Engels’ letter to August Bebel of 1-2 May 1891 

Engels to Bebel. 1-2 May 189] 179 

I found, that the matter was decided when your accredited representa- 
tives accepted the draft. Hence Marx wrote the thing merely to salve 
his conscience, as is testified by the words he appended — dixi et sal- 
vavt animam meam*—and not with any hope of success. Hence Lieb- 
knecht’s big talk about the ‘categorical no’ ?3* is mere braggadocio 
and he knows it. Well, if you blundered in choosing your representa- 
tives and were then forced to swallow the programme lest the whole 
business of unification came to naught, you surely cannot object to 
the publication, fifteen years later, of the warning that was sent you 
before you finally made up your minds. It does not brand you either 
fools or traitors unless, of course, you lay claim to infallibility so far as 
your official actions are concerned. 

You, however, did not see that warning. Indeed this fact has been 
made public and you are thus in an exceptionally favourable position 
as compared with the others who, though they had seen it, neverthe- 
less fell in with the draft. 

I consider the accompanying letter to be most important. For it 
propounds what would have been the only correct policy. Parallel ac- 
tion for a trial period — that was the one thing that could have saved 
you from trafficking in principles. But, come what may, Liebknecht 
was determined not to forego the glory of having effected unification 
and, in the circumstances, it is a miracle that he didn’t make 
even more concessions than he did. From bourgeois democracy he 
brought with him and has retained ever since a positive mania for 
unification. 

The fact that the Lassalleans came over because they had to, be- 
cause their entire party was disintegrating and because their leaders 
were scoundrels or jackasses whom the masses would no longer fol- 
low, is something that can be said today in tastefully moderate form. 
Their ‘tightly knit organisation’ naturally ended in total dissolution. 
Hence it is absurd when Liebknecht excuses the wholesale acceptance 
of the Lassallean articles of faith on the grounds that the Lassalleans 
had sacrificed their tightly knit organisation — there was nothing left 
of it to sacrifice! 

You wonder about the provenance of the muddle-headed and con- 
voluted clichés in the programme. But all these are surely quintessen- 
tial Liebknecht; they have been a bone of contention between us for’ 
years and the chap’s besotted with them. Theoretically he has always 
been muddle-headed and our clear-cut style is still an abomination to 

* IT have spoken and saved my soul. 

him today. As a sometime member of the People’s Party '°* he, on 
the other hand, still loves resounding phrases which leave one free to 
think what one will or, for that matter, not think at all. The mere fact 
that, long ago and out of ignorance, some muddle-headed French- 
man, Englishman or American spoke of the ‘emancipation of labour’ 
rather than of the working class, and that, even in the documents of 
the International one sometimes had to use the language of the peo- 
ple one was addressing, was, to Liebknecht, reason enough for forci- 
bly making the phraseology of the German party conform to this 
same outmoded point of view. Nor can he possibly be said to have 
done this ‘despite his knowing better’ for he really didn’t know better 
and I am not sure whether this is not still the case today. At all events, 
he is still as susceptible as he ever was to the old, woolly phraseology 
which, rhetorically, is certainly easier to use. And since he undoubt- 
edly attached at least as much importance to basic democratic de- 
mands, which he thought he understood, as to economic principles, of 
which he had no clear understanding, he was undoubtedly sincere in 
believing he had pulled off a splendid deal in bartering democratic 
staples for Lassallean dogmas. 

So far as the attacks on Lassalle are concerned, these seemed to me, 
as I have already said, more important than anything else. By accept- 
ing all the essential Lassallean economic catchwords and demands, 
the Eisenachers had in fact turned into Lassalleans—-at least if the 
programme is anything to go by.°* The Lassalleans had sacrificed 
nothing, nothing whatever that was capable of preservation. And so 
as to make the latter’s victory more complete you people adopted for 
your party anthem the rhymed, moralising prose in which Mr Audorf 
celebrates Lassalle.*?9° During the 13 years in which the Anti- 
Socialist Law was in force !! there was, of course, no possibility of 
combatting the Lassalle cult within the party. This had got to be 
quashed and I set about doing so. I shall no longer permit Lassalle’s 
bogus reputation to be maintained and revived at Marx’s expense. 
Those who knew and revered Lassalle personally are thin on the 
ground; in the case of all the rest, the Lassallean cult is purely facti- 
tious, the result of our having tacitly tolerated it against our better 
judgment; hence it has not even the justification of personal attach- 
ment. We showed ample consideration for the feelings of inexperi- 
enced and new recruits by publishing the thing in the Neue Zeit. But 

“J. Audorf, Lied der deutschen Arbeiter. 

I] am in no way prepared to concede that in such circumstances his- 
torical truth — after 15 years of meek forbearance — should give way 
to expediency and the fear of causing offence within the party. That 
deserving people should have their feelings hurt on such occasions is 
unavoidable and their grumbling after the event no less so. And if 
they then proceed to say that Marx was envious of Lassalle, and the 
German press, including even (!!) the Chicago Vorbote (which writes 
for more self-confessed Lassalleans— in Chicago — than exist in the 
whole of Germany) chimes in, it affects me no more than a flea-bite. 
We have had far worse things cast in our teeth and none the less car- 
ried on with the business in hand. The example has been set; Marx 
has laid rough hands on the sacrosanct Ferdinand Lassalle and that 
for the time being is enough. 

And now just one more thing. In view of the attempt made by you 
people forcibly to prevent publication of the article, and your warn- 
ings to the Neue ert that, in the event of a recurrence, it, too, might 
be taken over and subjected to censorship by the party, the latter’s 
appropriation of your entire press cannot but appear to me in a sin- 
gular light. In what respect do you differ from Puttkamer if you intro- 
duce an Anti-Socialist Law into your own ranks? So far as I myself 
am concerned, it doesn’t signify; no party in any country can impose 
silence upon me once I have made up my mind to speak. But all the 
same I would suggest you consider whether you would not do well to 
show yourselves slightly less touchy and, in your actions, slightly less 
— Prussian. You—the party——need socialist science and this can- 
not exist without freedom to develop. Hence one has to put up with 
the unpleasantnesses and to do so for preference with good grace and 
without flinching. Tension, however slight, let alone a rift, between 
the German party and German socialist science would be an unpre- 
cedented misfortune and disgrace. That the Executive and/or you 
yourself still have and must retain considerable moral sway over the 
Neue Keit and everything else that is published, goes without saying. 
But with that you must and can rest content. Inalienable freedom of 
discussion is constantly being vaunted in the Vorwdrts but is not 
greatly in evidence. You have absolutely no idea how odd an impres- 
sion this proclivity for forcible measures makes upon one who lives 
abroad and is accustomed to see the most venerable party leaders be- 
ing well and truly taken to task within their own party (e.g. the Tory 
government by Lord Randolph Churchill). And again, you should 
not forget that discipline in a big party cannot be anything like as 

strict as it is in a small sect, and that the Anti-Socialist Law, which 
forged the Eisenachers and Lassalleans into a single whole (though 
Liebknecht avers this was the work of his magnificent programme) 
and necessitated such close cohesion, no longer exists. 

Ouf! So much for that old affair, and now for something else. There 
would seem to be some high jinks going on in the upper regions over 
there.?% But it’s all to the good. That the state machine should be 
thrown out of gear in this way suits us very well. Always providing 
peace is maintained by the universal fear of what the outcome of 
a war might be! For Moltke’s death has removed the last obstacle to 
the disorganisation of the army by the arbitrary appointment of new 
commanders, and every year must contribute towards making vic- 
tory more uncertain and defeat more probable. And little though 
I would wish for another Sedan, I am no more anxious to see the 
Russians and their allies victorious, even if they are republicans 
and otherwise have cause for complaint about the Peace of 
Frankfurt.?*’ 

The trouble you expended on the revision of trade regulations has 
not been in vain. Better propaganda would be difficult to imagine. 
We over here followed the business with considerable interest and 
were delighted by the pertinence of the speeches.?** In this connec- 
tion I recalled the words of old Fritz: ‘For the rest, our soldiers’ genius 
lies in the attack, as is, indeed, right and proper.’ * And what party, 
given the same number of deputies, could boast so many confident 
and forceful speakers? Bravo me lads! 

No doubt you deplore the pit strike in the Ruhr,?? but what can 
you do? After all, it is usually via the unpremeditated wild-cat strike 
that we acquire large new categories of workers. In my view, insufhi- 
cient account was taken of this fact in discussing the matter in the Vor- 
warts.??7 Liebknecht ignores all nuances; to him everything is either 
black or white and if he feels it incumbent on him to prove to the 
world that our party did not stir up this strike but actually poured oil 
on troubled waters, then God help the poor strikers; they’re getting 

* Friedrich II, ‘Instruktion für die General-Majors von der Cavallerie (14. August 
1748)’. In: Friedrich der Große, Mulitdrische Schriften erldutert und mit Anmerkungen ver- 
sehen durch v. Taysen, Oberstlieutenant und Abtheilungschef im Neben-Etat des Grofen Gene- 
ralstabes. 

less consideration than they ought if they are to come over to us in the 
near future. But come they will in any case. By the way, what’s wrong 
with the Vorwdrts? Not a cheep out of my Liebknecht for 2 days; no 
doubt he’s on his travels. Today, 2 May, he is back again, live and 
kicking. 

2 May. Come to that, the pit strike will doubtless soon fizzle out; it 
would seem to be only a very partial one and in no way to accord 
with the assertions and assurances at the delegates’ meeting. It’s all to 
the good. Not for one moment do I doubt that there’s a powerful urge 
to resort to the sword and the musket. 

The first [of May] went off very well. Vienna again takes pride of 
place. In Paris it fell more or less flat thanks to the bickering which is 
as yet by no means a thing of the past. Mistakes have been made 
there gn every side. Our people in Lille and Calais had committed 
themselves to a specific type of demonstration — the sending of dele- 
gates to the Chamber.?*° The Blanquists were not asked. The Alle- 
manists °3 did not join the demonstration comité until later. This suit- 
ed neither the Blanquists nor the Allemanists; in the Chamber, the 
Blanquists had apostates who had been elected under Boulanger’s 
aegis, the Allemanists had a Broussist opponent? there, and neither 
party wanted to appear as petitioners before these men. The same ap- 
plied to the deputations which our chaps suggested sending to the 20 
Paris mairies* to which it was also proposed to summon the municipal 
councillors so that they might there hear ‘the will of the people’. Thus 
a split ensued, our chaps withdrew and the demonstration split up 
into 3 or 4 partial demonstrations. Lafargue sent me word yesterday 
afternoon; under the circumstances he is fairly satisfied with what 
happened, but maintains that Paris will come off badly by compari- 
son with the provinces. Of one thing we may be certain; the countries 
which chose the 3rd [of May] —- Germany and England — will mus- 
ter the most impressive crowds, providing the weather’s not too bad. 
It’s wretched here today, heavy, drenching showers, a strong wind 
and only an occasional ray of sunshine. 

Fischer will have received what he wanted for Wage Labour and Capi- 
tal.” Entwicklung will follow in a few days’ time. But then there 

* town halls-° F. Engels, ‘Introduction to Karl Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital (1891 
Edition)’. -* F. Engels, ‘Preface to the Fourth Edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scienti- 

Sic’. 

must be no more requests. I have been promising a new edition of the 
Origin* for a year now, and that has got to go off, after which I shall 
undertake nothing further whatsoever until the 3rd volume of Capital is 
ready in ms. That has got to be completed. So if over there you hear 
rumours of fresh demands to be made on my time, I would beg you to 
back me up. I shall also reduce my correspondence to a minimum, 
with only one exception, namely yourself. It is through you that I can 
most easily remain in touch with the German party and again, to be 
honest, I enjoy this correspondence far more than any other. Once 
Volume II] is in print I can get cracking again, starting with the revi- 
sion of the Peasant War.” And if I have nothing else to do, I shall prob- 
ably complete Volume III this year. 

Well, kindest regards to your wife, Paul,’ Fischer, Liebknecht and 
tutti quanti’ from 

Your 

F.E. 

[From Louise Kautsky] 

Dear August, 

Many thanks for your kind letter; I shall answer it as soon as possible and let you 
have the information you ask for. Did you know that we, i.c. the United International 
Social-Democrats, namely: Tussy (representing France, England), Ede! (Ireland), 
Ede (Berlin), Gine’ (Posen') and I, Austria and Italy, proposed to move a vote of no 
confidence when The Daily News praised you so exceedingly? Fie upon you, August! 
You are the last person I should have expected this from. Warm regards to you and 
your wife. 

Your 
Mummy 

More anon.