ENGELS TO WILHELM BRACKE”™ 

London, 11 October 1875 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W2* 

Dear Bracke, 

I have put off answering your last letters, the most recent dated 
28 June, firstly because Marx and I have been apart for six 
weeks—he at Karlsbad '* and I at the seaside,’” where I didn’t 
see the Volksstaat—and next, because I wanted to walt and see 
how the new coalition and the combined committee”? got on in 
practice. 

We entirely share your view that Liebknecht, in his anxiety to 
achieve unity and pay any price for it, has made a complete mess 
of everything. Even if they deemed this necessary, there was no 
need to say or indicate as much to the other contracting party. 
Thereafter the vindication of one mistake has inevitably entailed 
another. The Unity Congress,*° once established on an unsound 
basis and blazoned abroad, could on no account be allowed to fail, 
and thus they again had to give way on essential issues. You are 
perfectly right: this unification bears within it the seeds of 
dissension, and I shall be happy if, when the split does come, the 
only ones to go are the incurable fanatics, and not, with them, the 
whole of the otherwise sound rank and file who could, if given a 

@ This line is written by an unknown person. 

good training, be licked into shape. That will depend on the time 
when, and the circumstances under which, the inevitable happens. 

The programme in its final version’ consists of 3 parts: 

1. Lassallean dicta and slogans which ought in no circumstances 
to be adopted. When two factions are agreed, they should include 
in the programme what is agreed, not what is contested. By 
permitting this regardless, our people voluntarily passed under the 
Caudine yoke ree 

2. a series of vulgar democratic demands, drawn up in the spirit 
and style of the People’s Party”; 

3. a number of would-be communist propositions, for the most 
part borrowed from the Manifesto,* but so reworded that, looked 
at in the light of day, every one without exception contains 
hair-raising balderdash. If they don’t understand these things, 
they should either leave them alone or else copy them word for 
word from those who are generally admitted to know what they 
are talking about. 

Luckily the programme fared better than it deserved. Working 
men, bourgeois and petty bourgeois alike read into it what it 
ought, in fact, to contain but doesn’t contain, and it occurred to no 
one, of whatever complexion, to submit one of these wondrous 
propositions to public scrutiny in order to discover its real import. 
That’s what has made it possible for us to say nothing about this 
programme. A further consideration is that one cannot translate 
these propositions into any foreign language without being forced 
either to write down stuff that is palpably idiotic or else place a 
communist construction on them, the latter having already been 
done by friend and foe alike. I myself have had to do so when 
making a translation for our Spanish friends.‘ 

What I have seen of the committee’s activities has not so far 
been gratifying. Firstly, their proceedings against your book and 
that of B. Becker; it wasn’t the committee’s fault if they didn’t 
succeed.'** Secondly, Sonnemann, whom Marx saw when in 
transit, said that he had offered Vahlteich the post of correspon- 
dent to the Frankfurter Zeitung but that the committee had 
forbidden Vahlteich to accept t That’s worse than censorship, and 
how Vahlteich could possibly submit to anything of the kind is 
beyond my comprehension. And then, what ineptitude! Rather 
they should have ensured that, everywhere in Germany, it was our 
people who worked for the Frankfurter! Finally, the methods 

4 K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. - © See this volume, p. 85. 

adopted by the Lassallean members at the founding of the Berlin 
co-operative printing office would seem to me not altogether 
above-board; after our people had confidingly appointed the 
committee as supervisory board of the Leipzig printing office, 
those in Berlin had first to be coerced into doing so.‘ But I am 
not very well acquainted with the details in this instance. 

However, it’s a good thing that the committee is comparatively 
inactive and, as C. Hirsch says, who was over here recently, 
confines itself to the humdrum existence of a news and 
information agency. Any vigorous intervention on its part would 
only precipitate the crisis, something its members would appear to 
sense. 

And what weakness, assenting to a committee of three Lassal- 
Jeans and two of our chaps! '” 

All in all, it looks as though they'll get away with a black eye, if a 
mighty one. Let us hope that that will be all and that meanwhile 
propaganda will have its effect upon the Lassalleans. If things 
hold out until the next Reichstag elections,’”° all may be well. But 
then Stieber and Tessendorf will do their damnedest and then, 
too, the time will come when our folk will see for the first time 
what exactly they have taken on in the persons of Hasselmann and 
Hasenclever. 

Marx has returned from Karlsbad a completely different man, 
strong, invigorated, cheerful and healthy, and will soon be able to 
get down seriously to work again. He and I send our cordial 
regards. Write again every now and then and let us know how 
things are going. The Leipzigers* have all of them too deep 
interests of their own to be frank and open with us, and at this 
particular juncture the party would not dream of washing its dirty 
linen in public. 

Most sincerely yours, 
F. E.