London, 3 June 1885 

Dear Sorge, 

I was sorry to hear that you have been incapable of writing and 
trust that the thing has subsided. The Gronlunds and Elys,* as also 
the newspapers, gratefully received. Ely is a well-meaning philistine 
and does at least take more trouble than his German fellow-sufferers 
and fellow-blockheads which, after all, deserves recognition. Gron- 
lund, on the other hand, strikes me as being speculative: his boosting 
of our stuff, in so far as he does or does not understand it, is clearly 
aimed at palming off his own utopian fiddle-faddle as Reau Live 
GERMAN socialism. A symptom at any rate. 

As regards To-Days and Commonweals, I am sending you the 
former from March onwards and the latter from the beginning.? 
However their administrative side is not particularly efficient; should 
the paper (The Commonweal) fail to reach the Sozialist regularly, 
I should be very grateful if you would advise me so that I can provide 
proof of inefficiency, this being invariably denied by the secretary, 
though it undoubtedly exists. 

You would do best to ignore Fabian completely; the man feels 
a need to get himself talked about and there is no necessity to en- 
courage that.‘ His chief grievance against me is that I maliciously 
defamed \/ —1 in the Anti-Dühring, a point on which he complained 
to Marx by letter. ?°° 

You have had the same correct presentiment about the Reichstag 
laddies as I have—the case of the Steamship Subsidies **? has re- 
vealed the immensity of their philistine aspirations. It almost came to 
a split, which would not be desirable at present, so long as the Anti- 
Socialist Law *’ remains in force. As soon as we get a bit more ELBow- 
room in Germany, the split will doubtless come and can then only do 

@ L. Gronlund, The Cooperative Commonwealth in Its Outlines; R.T. Ely, French and Ger- 
man Socialism in Modern Times (see also this volume, p. 192). - ° See this volume, 
pp. 298, 312. - © Ibid., p. 124. 

good. A petty-bourgeois-socialist parliamentary group is inevitable in 
a country like Germany where philistinism, even more than historical 
right, ‘doesn’t have no date’. It will also be useful once it has con- 
stituted itself a body separate from the proletarian party. However 
such a split could only do harm just now if it were provoked by us. But 
if they do in fact renounce the programme, so much the better; we 
shall then be able to let fly. 

You in America also suffer from various great savants of the kind 
possessed by Germany’s philistine socialists in the persons of Geiser, 
Frohme, Blos, etc. The historical digressions in the Sozialist by your 
Stiebelings, Douais, etc., on the subject of Volkerwanderung* 
amused me greatly, for these people have studied the whole thing far 
better and far more thoroughly than I have. Douai, in particular, gives 
himself colossal airs. For instance in No. 13 of the Sozzalist, apropos 
the German conquests in Italy, etc., he tells us that the King acquired 
'j, of the land and the officers and soldiers ?/,, of which */, passed 
in turn to the former slaves, etc. ‘This we learn from Jornandes and Cas- 
stodorus. *°° When I read that I was completely bowled over. ‘Pre- 
cisely similar accounts,’ he goes on, ‘are provided about the Visigoths. Nor 
was it otherwise in France.’ Well, the whole thing is an invention from 
start to finish and you won’t find a word of it either in Fornandes or in Cas- 
stodorus or in any other contemporary source. It reveals at once colossal ig- 
norance and impudence to confront me with such utter rubbish and 
to say that I am ‘demonstrably in the wrong’. The sources, and 
I know practically all of them, state precisely the opposite. I have let 
it pass this time, as it was written in America where one can hardly 
make an issue of that kind of thing. But Monsieur Douai had better 
watch out in future; I might well lose patience some day. 

The 2nd volume of Capital will be out shortly; all I am awaiting is 
the last half proof-sheet of the preface where Rodbertus receives 
a further broadside. The 3rd book is going ahead merrily, but will 
take a long time. Not that that matters, as the 2nd volume must be di- 
gested first. The 2nd volume will cause great disappointment, being 
a purely scientific work with little in the way of agitation. By contrast 
the third volume will again have the effect of a thunderbolt, since the 

* G.C. Stiebeling, ‘Reform oder Revolution’, Der Sozialist, No. 7, 14 February 1885; 
A. Douai, ‘Eine Entgegnung auf Dr. Stiebeling’s Artikel’, Der Sozialist, No. 13, 
28 March 1885. 

whole of capitalist production is dealt with in context for the first time 
and all official bourgeois economics rejected out of hand. But it will 
be quite a task. Since the New Year I have dictated more than half of 
the final version and expect to finish this preliminary work in about 
4 months. But after that there will be the actual job of editing, which 
won't be easy as the most important chapters are in some disorder — 
so far as form is concerned. However everything will work out all 
right, though it will take time. As you can imagine, I shall have to 
leave everything else on one side until I have finished, and hence 
neglect my correspondence; nor can there be any question of writing 
articles. But you would oblige me if you would see to it that nothing of 
what I have said about the 3rd volume gets into the Sozzalist. That 
would inevitably give rise to unpleasantnesses in Zurich and else- 
where. Whatever the readers need to know will appear in my preface 
to the 2nd volume. 

All is well with Tussy so far. The two of them* are very happy to- 
gether, though unfortunately they are not always in good health. 
Lafargue must now do another 4 months on account of the same old 
fine and costs. *°? The police were intent on fomenting a riot in Paris on 
24 May, but nothing came of it and the ministers took fright. *°* So 
the Victor Hugo business went off quietly after all, and that is just as 
well. As there is no Garde Nationale, no weapons are to be had and 
any attempted coup would inevitably be crushed. One just has to 
adapt one’s tactics to the circumstances. Regards to Dietzgen and 
Adolf. ° 

Your 
F. E.