in Hubertusburg

London, 20 June 1873

Dear Bebel,

I am answering your letter first, because Liebknecht’s is still with Marx, who cannot find it at the moment.

It was not Hepner but Yorck’s letter to him, signed by the Committee, which led us here to fear that the fact of your imprisonment would be used by the party authorities—unfortunately entirely Lassallean—to transform the *Volksstaat* into an “honest” “Neuen Social-Demokrat”. Yorck openly admitted the intention, and since the Committee presented itself as the appointer and dismisser of editors, the danger was certainly great enough. Hepner’s impending expulsion gave these plans a further handle. Under these circumstances we had to know absolutely where we stood, and hence this correspondence.

You must not forget that Hepner, and even less so Seiffert, Blos, etc., does not by any means have the same standing vis-à-vis Yorck as you and Liebknecht, the founders of the party, and that, if you simply ignore such impertinences, the same can hardly be expected of them. The party authorities do after all have a certain formal right of control over the party organ, the exercise of which was indeed omitted in your case, but this time it was undoubtedly attempted and in a direction harmful to the party. It therefore seemed to us our duty to do our bit and likewise to counteract it.

Hepner may have made tactical mistakes in details, most of them only after receipt of the Committee’s letter, but on the substance we must decidedly agree with him. I cannot accuse him of weakness either, for when the Committee plainly gave him to understand that he was to step down from the editorial board, and added that otherwise he would have to work under Blos, I do not see what resistance he could still have offered. He could not, after all, barricade himself in the editorial office against the Committee. After such a categorical letter from his superior authority, I find even the remarks by Hepner in the *Volksstaat*, which you listed and which had already struck me unpleasantly before, excusable.

This much is certain, the *Volksstaat* has become far worse since Hepner’s arrest and absence from Leipzig, and the Committee, instead of quarrelling with him, would have done better to send him every possible support. The Committee demanded outright that the *Volksst.* be edited differently, that the more scientific articles be dropped and replaced by editorials à la “Neue”, and held out the prospect of direct coercive measures. I do not know Blos at all, but if the same Committee appoints him at the same time, one must presuppose that this Committee has chosen a man after its own heart.

As for the party’s position towards Lassalleanism, you can of course judge the tactics to be followed better than we can, especially in individual cases. But one must also bear this in mind. If one finds oneself, as you do, in a kind of competitive position with the General Association of German Workers, one easily takes too much account of the competitor and becomes accustomed to thinking of him first in everything. However, both the General Association of German Workers and the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, taken together, are still a very small minority of the German working class. In our view, which we have found confirmed by long practice, the correct tactic in propaganda is not to entice away a few individuals and memberships here and there from the opponent, but to work upon the great mass which is still indifferent. A single fresh force that one has trained oneself out of the raw material is worth more than ten Lassallean deserters, who always bring the seed of their false tendency into the party with them. And if one could only get the masses without the local leaders, that would still be acceptable. But as it is, one must always take into the bargain a whole heap of such leaders, who are bound by their previous public utterances, if not still by their previous views, and who now must above all prove that they have not become renegades to their principles, that on the contrary the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party preaches the true Lassalleanism. That was the misfortune at Eisenach, perhaps unavoidable at that time; but these elements have definitely damaged the party, and I do not know whether without that influx it would not be at least as strong today. In any case, I would consider it a misfortune if these elements were to be reinforced.

One must not let oneself be fooled by the clamour for “unification”. Those who have this word most often on their lips are the biggest fomenters of discord, just as now the Swiss Jura Bakunists, the instigators of all splits, shout for nothing more than unification. These unification fanatics are either limited minds who want to stir everything together into an indeterminate mush, which has only to settle for the differences to re-emerge in far sharper opposition, because they are then in one pot (in Germany you have a fine example of this in the people who preach the reconciliation of workers and petty bourgeoisie), or else people who want, unconsciously (as, e.g., Mülberger) or consciously, to falsify the movement. That is why the greatest sectarians and the greatest brawlers and scoundrels are at certain moments the loudest unification-shouters. We have had more trouble and vexation in our lives with no one than with the unification-shouters.

Naturally every party leadership wants to see successes, and that is also quite good. But there are circumstances in which one must have the courage to sacrifice immediate success for more important things. Especially with a party like ours, whose ultimate success is so absolutely certain and which has developed so colossally in our lifetime and before our eyes, one does not at all need always and unconditionally to have immediate success. Take the International, for example. After the Commune it had the most colossal success. The thunderstruck bourgeois ascribed omnipotence to it. The great mass of the members believed this would remain so for ever. We knew very well that the bubble must burst. All sorts of riff-raff attached themselves to it. The sectarians within it became rampant, misused the International in the hope that they would be allowed the greatest stupidities and infamies. We did not tolerate that. Knowing well that the bubble must one day burst, what mattered for us was not to postpone the catastrophe but to take care that the International emerged from it pure and unadulterated. At the Hague the bubble burst, and you know that the majority of the congress members went home in the hangover of disappointment. And yet almost all those disappointed ones, who thought they would find in the International the ideal of universal brotherhood and reconciliation, had at home much more bitter brawls than the one that broke out at the Hague! Now the sectarian brawlers preach reconciliation and decry us as the intransigents and dictators! And if we had acted conciliatorily at the Hague, if we had covered up the outbreak of the split—what would have been the consequence? The sectarians, especially the Bakunists, would have had a year’s time to commit still greater stupidities and infamies in the name of the International; the workers of the most developed countries would have turned away in disgust; the bubble would not have burst, it would have slowly collapsed, punctured by pinpricks; and the next congress, which would have had to bring the crisis anyway, would have become a scandal of the basest personalities, because at the Hague the principle had already been sacrificed! Then the International would indeed be kaput—kaput through “unification”! Instead, we have now got rid of the rotten elements with honour—the Commune members present at the last decisive sitting say that no Commune sitting had left upon them such a terrible effect as this tribunal session over the traitors to the European proletariat—we have let them exert all their powers for ten months in lying, slandering, intriguing—and where are they? They, the alleged representatives of the great majority of the International, now declare themselves that they dare not come to the next congress. (More on this in an article which is hereby being sent off to the *Volksstaat*.) And if we had it to do over again, we would on the whole not act differently—tactical errors are, of course, always made.

In any case, I believe that the capable elements among the Lassalleans will in time fall to you of their own accord, and that it would therefore be unwise to pluck the fruit before it is ripe, as the unification people want.

Besides, old Hegel already said: A party proves itself to be the victorious one by splitting and being able to bear the split. The movement of the proletariat necessarily passes through various stages of development; at each stage a part of the people gets stuck and does not go on further; from this alone it is explained why the “solidarity of the proletariat” everywhere in reality realises itself in different party groupings which feud with one another to the death like the Christian sects in the Roman Empire under the worst persecutions.

You must also not forget, when, for example, the “Neue” has more subscribers than the *Volksstaat*, that every sect is necessarily fanatical and through this fanaticism, especially in areas where it is new (like the General Association of German Workers in Schleswig-Holstein, for example), achieves far greater immediate successes than the party which, without sectarian peculiarities, simply represents the real movement. But the fanaticism does not last long.

I must close, the post is going. In haste only: Marx cannot go to the Lassalle until the French translation is finished (around the end of July), and then he positively needs a rest, as he is very overworked.

That you bear your imprisonment stoically and are studying is very good. We all look forward to seeing you here next year.

Cordial greetings to Liebknecht.

Most sincerely yours,
F. Engels