London, 7 March 1884 

Dear Sorge, 

After suffering continuously throughout the whole autumn and 
winter from a minor if very tiresome disorder, and spending 2 months 
resting in bed, I am at last sufficiently recovered to be able to work 
regularly and to pay off the letters I owe. I trust that you and your 
wife will also gradually get over the after-effects of your far more 
serious illness and then gradually resume your old way of life. 

Since I am not yet completely mobile and my excursions are limit- 
ed to the immediate neighbourhood, and not having anyone to send 
out on errands, I carried out your commission in rather a different 
way. Your copy of Capital, 3rd edition,” and likewise one of Deville’s 
Le Capital, were despatched to you in 2 parcels per Boox post; J shall 
send the photographs in the same manner, having now found out 
how to pack them. No doubt you will be able to obtain the other 
2 copies of Capital easily enough over there. 

* Soctalism: Utopian and Scientific-” the third German edition of Volume I of Capital 

I have taken out a year’s subscription to Jo-Day for you and you 
will, no doubt, be getting it regularly. The chaps are very well- 
intentioned but damnably ignorant; which may be all right for To- 
Day, but now the Democratic Frperation °° is bringing out a weekly 
journal, Justice, which is conspicuous for the exceeding boredom of its 
invariably repetitive contents and for its total inability to get hold of 
the right end of the stick even when dealing with a question of the 
day. I shall send you a couple of issues; it’s not worth taking. All in 
all, the Democratic FEDERATION cannot simply be taken on trust; it har- 
bours all manner of dubious elements. Hyndman, who sets himself up 
as a party leader in partibus infidelium,* is a pretty unscrupulous career- 
ist, and only a few years ago stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative 
candidate for Parliament '!92; moreover, he treated Marx very shab- 
bily.1°° I will have nothing whatever to do with the Democratic Fene- 
RATION, a handy excuse being want of time, and am on closer terms 
only with To-Day, more notably Bax. The latter is a very good chap, 
save only that he is most unseasonably swotting up on Kant. If you have 
no objection, I shall publish in To-Day an English version of the letter 
Marx wrote to you about Henry George.*! Then you will be able to 
make further use of it over there. 

I shall hardly have time to enter into a debate with Stiebeling.!°° 
Such little tin gods can safely be left to their own devices. In any case, 
it will be years before anything can be done to inhibit sectarianism in 
America. Thus the great Most will, no doubt, eventually end up as 
Karl Heinzen II. I get the Wochen-Volkszeitung,” but there’s not 
much in it. 

What the position is as regards Bebel’s, Liebknecht’s or anyone 
else’s going to America, I don’t know.? When they asked me, I told 
the chaps that it probably wouldn’t do to go tapping America for 
election funds every third year. In Germany, by the way, the position 
is very good. Our lads are conducting themselves really splendidly. 
Everywhere the Anti-Socialist Law %’ is involving them in local 
struggles with the police, to the accompaniment of all manner of jokes 
and dirty tricks, struggles which usually turn out in our favour and 
are a source of the best propaganda in the world. Every now and 
again one or other of the bourgeois papers vents a sigh about the 
enormous progress made by our people, and they all of them dread 
the coming elections.'°* A fortnight ago one of my nephews from 

* Jt means literally: in parts inhabited by unbelievers; here: nominally.-° Wochen- 
blatt der N.Y. Volkszeitung 

Barmen was over here —a liberal conservative. ‘In Germany,’ I told 
him, ‘we have got to the stage when we can sit with our hands in our 
laps and let our opponents do the work for us. No matter whether you 
repeal, renew, tighten up or moderate the Anti-Socialist Law, what- 
ever you do plays into our hands.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘it is remarkable how 
circumstances are working for you.’ “To be sure they are,’ I said, ‘but 
they wouldn’t be if we hadn’t diagnosed them aright forty years ago, 
and acted accordingly.’ No reply. 

In France, too, things have been going better since Lafargue, 
Guesde and Dormoy were released from prison.° They are very ac- 
tive, spend much time in the provinces where, luckily, their chief 
strength lies, possess little news-sheets in Rheims and St Pierre- 
les-Calais,* and will be holding a congress at Roubaix in a month’s 
time.'°° Every Sunday, what is more, they give a very well-attended 
lecture in Paris, when Lafargue speaks on the materialist view of his- 
tory, and Deville on Capital.'’° I shall write and ask them to send 
you the things, all of which are printed. It’s fortunate that they 
haven’t got a daily in Paris just now, since it’s much too early for that. 
A new edition of The Poverty of Philosophy is coming out in Paris. 
Likewise a German one in Zurich and a Russian in Geneva. I don’t 
believe I have yet sent you a copy of my Entwicklung,” never having 
received more than one or two myself. (The oafs!) Now the thing has 
come out in a 3rd edition, as well as in French, Italian, Russian and 
Polish. Aveling wishes to translate it into English.° He, too, is an ad- 
mirable young man, but he has Too Many IRONS IN THE FIRE and is cur- 
rently engaged in time-consuming strife with his former friend Brad- 
laugh; the socialist movement here is cutting the ground from under 
the latter’s feet — and with it his livelihood. That means he must fight 
for it, but it isn’t easy for that narrow-minded and rascally fellow. 

So far, all-is well with Tussy who generally comes here on Sundays. 
Lenchen is, as you know, keeping house for me. In a fortnight’s time 
I shall be able to settle down in real earnest to Volume II of Capr- 
tal— another huge task, but I look forward to it. 

You should read Morgan (Lewis H.), Ancient Society, published in 
America in 1877. A masterly exposé of primitive times and their com- 

4 La Défense des travailleurs and Le Travailleur- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - 
© See this volume, p. 394. 

munism. Rediscovered Marx’s theory of history all on his own, and con- 
cludes by drawing communist inferences in regard to the present 
day. 

Kindest regards to Adolf.* 

Your 
F. E.