London, 27 August 1881 

Dear Mr Kautsky, 

In a day or two you will be getting by post 1. The Labour Standard 
containing your article,* in connection with which there have been 
sundry comic interludes, 2. a Nature of 18 August, 3. your ms. back. 

After I had somewhat revised what was an altogether bungled 
translation, I sent it to Shipton for a leading article. However, the 
worthy Shipton got it all wrong and complained to me,” but as usual 
too late. God knows what the man took the bit about ‘State interfer- 
ence’ in favour of the workers to mean — certainly not what it said, 
nor that such State interference has long existed in England in the 
shape of FACTORIES AND workshops AcTs.!77 Still worse: into the words we 
DEMAND A GENEVA Convention FOR THE WORKING classes he read a de- 
mand by you for the convening of a conference of delegates in Geneva to settle 
the matter!! What can one do with such an oaf? I made this business 
the occasion to go ahead with my decision and break with The Labour 
Standard, as that paper is getting worse rather than better. 

In Nature you will find a speech made by John Simon‘ before the 
international Medical Congress here ?°° in which the bourgeoisie is vir- 
tually put on the mat by medical science. J. Simon is MEDICAL OFFICER TO THE 
Privy Council,? virtual head of Britain’s entire public health in- 
spectorate, and the same who is so frequently and approvingly quot- 
ed by Marx in Capital, a man— perhaps the last of the old really 
professional and conscientious officials of the 1840-60 period who, in 
the performance of his duty, everywhere found that bourgeois inter- 
ests were the first obstacle he was obliged to combat. Hence, his in- 
stinctive hatred of the bourgeoisie is as violent as it is explicable. Now 
he, a doctor, finding his own special field invaded by the Church-led 
bourgeoisie and their anti-vivisection movement, has turned the 
tables on them. Instead of preaching dull and colourless sermons like 

* (K. Kautsky,] ‘International Labour Laws’, The Labour Standard, No. 15, 13 August 
1881.-° See this volume, pp. 122-23.-° J. Simon, ‘State Medicine’, Mature, No. 616, 
Vol. XXIV, 18 August 1881. 

Virchow, he goes into the attack comparing the few scientific experi- 
ments made by doctors on animals with the vast commercial experi- 
ments made by the bourgeoisie upon the popular masses, thereby 
placing the question for the first time in its true perspective. An 
extract from this would make a splendid feuilleton for the Sozzalde- 
mokrat, ?°7 

The Congress, by the way, declared unanimously that vivisection 
was essential to science. 

Your fly-sheet? shows that you have inherited something of your 
mother’s” gift for short story writing. It pleased me more than any- 
thing you have written hitherto. A little more polishing might have 
enabled you to improve one or two expressions and turns of speech, 
and I would advise you to do this in the case of a second edition. Lit- 
erary German is a very clumsy idiom for narrative prose and erudite 
words such as reaction, which mean nothing to the peasant, ought to 
be avoided. The thing is worthy of being seriously revised by you 
along these lines. It is the best fly-sheet I have ever seen. 

Your Mostian chaps in Austria will have to learn by painful expe- 
rience; there are no two ways about it. It’s a process during which 
many otherwise good elements come to grief, but if those elements are 
positively intent on conspiring for the fun of it and with no particular 
purpose in mind, there’s no helping them. Luckily the proletarian 
movement has an enormous reproductive capacity. 

Viereck and wife* had an awful lot of bad weather in Scotland, af- 
ter which they left for Copenhagen where they have now arrived. 
They will be remaining there for the time being — address poste re- 
stante, Copenhagen. 

Our French friends, it seems, are still not satisfied with the many 
stupidities perpetrated over the past 2 years out of officiousness, 
cliquism, an itch for oratory, etc. Le Citoyen has, it seems, been sold to 
the Bonapartists who have not yet unceremoniously kicked our men 
out, but have stopped their pay and otherwise treated them en canail- 
le,‘ as though trying to push them into striking and so get rid of them. 
On top of that, all our chaps have fallen out with one another, 
as so often happens when things go wrong. One of the most unhappy 
is Brousse, a thoroughly honest chap but a consummate muddle-head 
and one who positively insists that the entire movement should de- 

@ (K. Kautsky,] Der Vetter aus Amerika, eine Erzdhlung für Landleute, erbaulich zu le- 
sen.-” Minna Kautsky-° Laura Viereck -¢ like dirt 

vote itself to converting erstwhile anarchist friends. It was he, too, 
who was originally responsible for the crazy resolution concerning the 
rejection of candidature.?°* For the rest, the steady, peaceful course 
of events in France can, in the long run, only prove favourable to us. 
Not until the provinces have been drawn into the movement, as has 
been happening since 1871, and emerge, as they are increasingly do- 
ing, as a power in the land— along normal legal lines, that is,—can 
an end be put in the interests of us all to the spasmodic form hitherto 
assumed by developments in France, derived from coups in Paris and 
for years retarded by reaction in the provinces. Then, when the time 
has come for Paris to act, it will not have the provinces against it, but 
behind it. 
Kindest regards from all, 

Yours 
F. Engels