London, 8 November 1884 

Dear Kautsky, 

Between the time your letter arrived and today the elections —i.e. 
five years— have supervened.?°° So I shall revert to it only briefly. 
Herewith Liebknecht’s letter—typical. Why you should not be 
able to edit the Neue Zeit just as well from London as from Zurich is in- 
conceivable. Equally so, why your being in London should mean that 
you'll be lost to the German party. However, this letter provides no 
proof that Liebknecht——under the influence of different surround- 
ings and a different frame of mind— might not very soon think and 
write quite differently. The fact that he was only partially successful 
at Offenbach — we over here don’t yet know the results of the second 
ballot— may have given him reason to pause.*!° The bit about the 
‘impregnable’ position in Stuttgart* is killing. Like the NCO in the 
French revolutionary army telling his bare-footed squad about the 
speech made by the people’s representative: Le représentant a dit: Avec 
du fer et du pain on va jusqu’en Chine. Il n’a pas parlé de chaussures.” 
Impregnable — if there were no police! 
I am writing to Dietz *° telling him to send me the proofs of the 
preface im galley form since a number of alterations will be neces- 

* A reference to the editorial offices of Die Neue Zeit in Stuttgart.-° The representa- 
tive said: With iron and bread we can get as far as China. He didn’t mention boots. - 
“ F. Engels, “Marx and Rodbertus’. 

sary. With this sort of thing, one cannot be too careful about one’s 
mode of expression if one is not to find oneself pinned down to some 
ill-chosen or ambiguous word. 

The elections will elicit an echo throughout Europe and America. 
And what a triumphant day it was! The Kélnische concedes us */, of 
a million votes and, in the hope of obtaining their support in the sec- 
ond ballot, is grovelling before the 4,000 who voted for Bebel in 
Cologne.*'!' To me the A@lnische is more important than any other 
paper because the Rhenish bourgeois are still the most advanced bour- 
geois in Germany and the Kélnische is their mirror. And hence this 
complete volte-face, this sudden respect for a new power, is all the 
more significant. 

But how truly splendid it is! For the first time in history a strong, 
coherent workers’ party exists as a real political power, evolved and 
come of age amidst the harshest persecution, irresistibly capturing 
one position after another, free of all philistinism in the most philis- 
tine, free of all chauvinism in the most cock-a-hoop country in 
Europe. A power the existence and rise of which is as incomprehensible 
and mysterious to governments and the old ruling classes as was the 
rising tide of Christianity to the authorities of the declining Roman 
Empire, but which is working its way to the fore as certainly and in- 
exorably as once Christianity —so certainly that the rate at which its 
velocity will increase, and hence the actual time of its ultimate vic- 
tory, already permits of mathematical calculation. Helped on its way 
rather than suppressed by the Anti-Socialist Law,°*’ it deigns only to 
spurn Bismarck’s social reform 41? and the last desperate measure to 
suppress it momentarily — by fomenting a premature coup— would 
elicit nothing but immortal laughter. 

It’s strange. The best aid to our progress is precisely the backward- 
ness of Germany’s industrial position. In England and France the 
transition to large-scale industry is pretty well complete. The condi- 
tions in which the proletariat now finds itself have already become 
stable; agricultural districts and industrial districts, large-scale indus- 
try and cottage industries have become separated and, as far as is in 
fact possible in modern industry, firmly established. Even the fluctua- 
tions inseparable from the ten-year cycle of crises have become habi- 
tual conditions of existence. The political, if not actually socialist, 
movements that arose during the period of industrial revolution — 
immature as they were— have failed, leaving behind them discourage- 
ment rather than encouragement. Bourgeois capitalist develop- 

ment has proved stronger than revolutionary counter-pressure; if 
there is to be another revolt against capitalist production there must 
be another, more powerful impulse, such as the ousting of England 
from the dominant position she has hitherto occupied in the world 
market, or some special revolutionary opportunity in France. 

In Germany, on the other hand, large-scale industry goes back no 
further than 1848 and is the greatest legacy of that year. ‘The indus- 
trial revolution is still going on, and doing so under the most unfa- 
vourable conditions. Cottage industries, based on small-, free- or 
lease-holdings, still continue to struggle against machinery and 
steam; the foundering smallholder looks to a cottage industry as his 
last sheet anchor, but no sooner is he industrialised than he is again 
subjected to pressure from machinery and steam. Subsidiary income 
from the land, the domestic potato plot, provides the capitalist with 
the most powerful pretext for depressing wages; he can now present 
his foreign customers with the entire normal surplus value — the only 
way he can compete in the world market— the whole of his profits 
being derived from what he deducts from the normal wages. Along- 
side this there is the complete subversion of all living conditions in 
the industrial centres as a result of the enormous strides made by 
large-scale industry. Thus the whole of Germany, with perhaps the 
exception of the Junker-dominated North-East, is becoming swept 
into the social revolution, the smallholder drawn into industry, and 
patriarchal circles being precipitated into the movement, and thus 
is far more fundamentally revolutionised than England or France. 
This social revolution of which the eventual outcome is the expro- 
priation of the smallholder and handicraftsman is, however, taking 
place at the very time when a German, Marx, was destined to make 
a theoretical analysis of the results of historical developments, both 
theoretical and practical, in England and France, to elucidate the 
whole nature of capitalist production and hence its ultimate historical 
fate, and thus provide the German proletariat with a programme 
such as the English and the French, its precursors, have never pos- 
sessed. A more fundamental revolutionising of society on the one 
hand, greater lucidity of intellect on the other——that is the secret 
of the irresistible progress made by the German workers’ move- 
ment. 

I had meant to write to Ede as well, but it has grown too late-— 
moreover Pumps has arrived with her little girl with whom I shall 
have to play. Aveling and Tussy are arriving at 5 and at 7. Morris 

wants to hold a grand consultation with me. So for the time being 
Ede will have to content himself with my good wishes. 

Your 
F. E.