London, 30 April 1878 

Dear Bracke, 

Herewith Lissagaray’s receipt for the 300 marks which he has 
changed into £15 at a loss of approx. 6 marks against gold at par, 
doubtless so that he should not have to acknowledge Bismarck’s 
currency reform. 

I think that in taking the view you do of the Imperial railways 
and the tobacco monopoly you may be looking a bit too far 
ahead. Aside from the enormous increase of power that would 
accrue to Prussian dominion, on the one hand through total 
financial independence of any control, on the other through direct 
command of two new armies, that of railway officials and that of 
tobacco sellers, and the consequent power to confer appointments 
and engage in corruption—aside from all that, it must not be 
forgotten that nowadays any transfer of industrial and commercial 
functions to the state may, depending on the circumstances, have a 
twofold purport and a twofold effect: one reactionary, a step back 
into the Middle Ages, one progressive, a step forward towards 
communism. We in Germany, however, have only just crept out 
of the Middle Ages and are only this moment engaged in entering 
modern bourgeois society through the medium of large-scale 
industry and the crash. In our case, what needs to be developed 
to the highest possible degree is precisely that bourgeois economic 
régime which concentrates capitals and accentuates contradictions, 

notably in the north-east. To my mind the economic dissolution of 
feudal conditions east of the Elbe is, for us, the most essential step 
forward, along with the dissolution throughout Germany of small 
businesses in industry and the crafts and their replacement with 
large-scale industry. And, after all, the only good thing about a 
tobacco monopoly is that, at one stroke, it would change one of 
the most infamous cottage industries into large-scale industry. On 
the other hand, the state tobacco workers would also at once 
become subject to exceptional laws and, still worse, deprived of the 
liberty to associate or strike. In our case the Imperial railways and 
the tobacco monopoly are not of necessity state industries—the 
railways not yet, at any rate, whereas in England they are only just 
coming to be so; posts and telegraphs, on the other hand, are. And 
by way of compensation for all the disadvantages those two new 
state monopolies would bring us, we’d simply get a handy new 
expression to use in agitation. For a state monopoly that is set up 
simply for reasons of money and power, not out of compelling 
and intrinsic necessity, wouldn’t even provide us with a proper 
argument. And the process of setting up a tobacco monopoly and 
abolishing the cottage tobacco industry would, what’s more, take at 
least as long as Bismarckism can possibly hope to survive. Again, 
you may be sure that the Prussian state would both debase the 
quality of tobacco and raise the price to such an extent that the 
adherents of free competition would gleefully point to this 
discrediting of state communism, and the people would be forced 
to agree with them. The whole thing is an ignorant fancy of 
Bismarck’s altogether worthy of his plan of 1863 to annex Poland 
and Germanise her within three years. 

Had I known that the Party of Progress had for years been 
proposing [the abolition of] tax exemption for the military, I 
should have advised you against bringing the motion in question. 
To my mind, our function is to support bourgeois demands only 
when the bourgeois parties fail to do what they damned well 
ought to; but judging by your own speech, this does not appear to 
have been quite the case. I merely mention this on account of 
Richter’s reply. Naturally I don’t dispute for one moment that 
our airing of the question may have great advantages as regards 
propaganda, though I can’t, needless to say, give an unqualified 
verdict from here. 

I’ve now finished Mr Dühring, fortunately, apart from the 
revision of the final articles, and trust I shall have no more of his 
esteemed company while on this earth. What a conceited 
ignoramus! If the rest isn’t printed quickly, it won’t be my fault. 
Kind regards. 

Yours, 
F. Engels