ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN % 

London, 24 March 1884 

Dear Ede, 

In great haste, a bit of gossip. We have at last wound things up to- 
day at Maitland Park } and handed back the old house to its own- 
er. * I, on the other hand, am still in the throes of sorting out the books 
and papers nor, until this has been done, shall I be able to embark on 
any regular work. 

The demonstration of the 16th caused two people to make fools 
of themselves— Hyndman and Frohme. 

Hyndman, without having actually given his assent, had been 
proposed as speaker— by, it is said, Rackow. Not being convinced 
of success, he declared in Justice that ‘a working man’ must speak and 
that as for Aim, he would merely listen.” The same issue of Justice con- 
tained an extremely impertinent notice on the last number of To- 
Day — amounting to a veiled declaration of war. ?°° Hyndman next 
proceeded to intrigue against the despatch of delegates to the 
Roubaix congress, '°> alleging that those responsible were in a minority 
and that one ought not to go meddling in internal French dis- 
putes.?°’ But at a committee meeting of the Democratic Frperation °° 
the following Tuesday,* he was well and truly defeated; his most 

* Edwin Willis- H.M. Hyndman, ‘A Sad Anniversary. To the Editor of Justice’, 
Justice, No. 8, 8 March 1884.-° 18 March 

trusty followers took the floor against him, nor could he confess the 
real motives for his intervention; it was enthusiastically resolved to 
participate in both demonstration and congress, and Hyndman, who 
would now have gladly spoken in Highgate, had cut off his own line of 
retreat, the invitation to speak having passed to Aveling and been 
gladly accepted. That’s what invariably befalls these clever-clever 
cliquists— they are hoist with their own petard. 

Frohme apparently spoke very well in Highgate and, by contrast, 
quite atrociously at the Society.? I am sending you the Deutsche 
Londoner Keitung in which the philistine reporter naively betrays his de- 
light at the way Frohme had, with his atrocious platitudes, voiced his 
inmost thoughts for him.* This, apparently, was altogether too much 
of a good thing and gave rise to a tremendous row in the Society; 
Frohme was given a dressing-down and is said to have declared that 
he hadn’t met a single socialist, let alone a human being, in London. 
He’s unlikely to reappear for some time to come. He has left me 
alone, I’m glad to say. 

Many thanks for the Deutsches Tageblatt which I return herewith. 
To reply to Bernhard Becker’s balderdash would be doing him too 
great an honour. What the ex-president of mankind ?°? writes and 
the Tageblatt prints is a matter of complete indifference, and even in 
Berlin it has long been forgotten. This kind of impotent malice chokes 
on its own bile. But what sort of press must it be to print such stuff? 
Even the Parisian Figaristes were more adept liars, albeit only during 
the period of general alarm immediately after the Commune. 

All things considered, the March article was very good, with the 
right emphasis on essential points. So, too, was the one in the next 
issue, about the People’s Party ?°* man preaching to the peasants, its 
only fault being to invoke the ‘concept’ of democracy.” That concept 
changes according to the demos and hence does not get us one step 
fufther. What in my view should have been said is this: For the sei- 
zure of political power, democratic forms are also necessary to the pro- 
letariat for whom, however, like all political forms, they are only 
a means. But if, today, you want democracy.as an end, you have to 
look for support to the peasants and petty bourgeoisie, i.e. to classes 
which are in decline and which, from the moment they try to preserve 

@ ‘Die Marzfeier in London’, Londoner Zeitung. Hermann, No. 1316, 22 March 1884. - 
> [E. Bernstein,] ‘Zum Gedenktage der Marzkampfe’, Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 11, 13 
March 1884 (leader); ‘Zur Naturgeschichte der Volkspartei’, Der Sozialdemokrat, 
No. 12, 20 March 1884 (leader). 

their existence by factitious means, are reactionary in their relations 
with the proletariat. Another thing that should not be forgotten is 
that the logical form of bourgeois rule is, precisely, a democratic re- 
public which, however, has become too much ofa risk only because of 
the progress already made by the proletariat, but which, as France 
and America go to show, is still feasible simply as bourgeois rule. Re- 
garded, therefore, as ‘definite, historically evolved’, the ‘principle’ of 
liberalism is really just an illogicality; a liberal constitutional monar- 
chy is an adequate form of bourgeois rule 1) at the beginning, when 
the bourgeoisie has not yet quite done with absolute monarchy, and 
2) at the end, when the proletariat has already rendered a democratic 
republic too much of a risk. And yet a democratic republic is still the 
final form assumed by bourgeois rule, the form in which it comes to 
grief. And here I conclude this rigmarole. 
Nim sends her regards. I didn’t see Tussy yesterday. 

Your 
F.E.