London, 28 October 1885

Dear Bebel,

Liebknecht’s defeat in Saxony makes me feel sorry for him as a man, but in other respects it can do him no harm. He sets far too much store by popularity, to which he is prepared to sacrifice more than is proper, and it will therefore do him good to see for once that no amount of concessions to the Right will be of any avail, particularly when suffrage is qualified by age and property, in which case they won’t even earn him the vote of the petty bourgeoisie. *°*

Your news about the independent spirit of the masses gave me much pleasure. However, the gentlemen of the right wing will refuse to credit it until some of them have been made an example of; they live within the orbit of small cliques and what they hear they assume to be the voice of the people. The scales will soon fall from their eyes.

Chronic pressure on all the crucial branches of industry continues without remission, not only in this country, but also in France and America. Particularly in iron and cotton. It is an unprecedented state of affairs, for all that it is the inevitable consequence of the capitalist system: overproduction on such an enormous scale that it can’t even manage to produce a crisis! The overproduction of disposable capital seeking investment is so great that the discount rate here actually fluctuates between | and 1'/,°4 per annum, while for money invested in short-term loans which can be paid off or called in any day (Money aT CALL) barely '/,°4 per annum is obtainable. But the very fact that the financial capitalist prefers to invest his money thus rather than in new industrial enterprises amounts to an admission that the economy is, in his eyes, rotten to the core. And this fear of new investment and any kind of speculation, already a feature of the 1867 crisis, is the main reason for the inability to bring about an acute crisis. But sooner or later it is bound to come and then, with any luck, it will put paid to the old trades unions over here. These cheerfully retain the same old guild character which has attached to them from the start and becomes daily more unbearable. You might suppose that any

worker would be admitted without more ado by the engineers, carpenters, masons, etc., if he practised the relevant trade. Not a bit of it. Anyone seeking admission must have been bound apprentice for a number of years (usually 7) to a workman belonging to the trades union. This was supposed to restrict the number of workers, but served no other purpose, unless to bring in money to the master, in return for which he in fact did nothing at all. This may have been all right up till 1848. But since that time the tremendous growth of industry has created a class of workers as, if not more, numerous than their ‘skilled’ counterparts in the TRADES unions, and who do as much, if not more, work than they, yet can never be admitted as members. These people have been virtually brought into being by the guild regulations of the Traps unions. But do you suppose the unions have ever thought of doing away with this antiquated rubbish? Not on your life! I cannot remember ever reading about a proposal of that kind at ance with their own set-up, not their own set-up in accordance with society’s process of development. They cleave to their traditional superstitions, which harm only themselves, instead of getting rid of the lumber and thus doubling their numbers and strength to become in fact what they daily resemble less and less, namely anti-capitalist associations of all the workers of a particular trade. This will, I think, help you to understand much in the behaviour of these privileged working men.

What is really essential here is for the official labour leaders to get into Parliament en masse. That would speed things up all right; they’d quickly show themselves for what they were. The elections in November should prove a great help since 10 or 12 of them are sure to get in, provided their Liberal friends don’t play some trick on them at the last moment.’ The first elections under a new system 29° are always a kind of lottery and reveal only the least part of the revolution they usher in. But universal suffrage-— and its recent introduction here will, in view of Britain’s industrial lead and the absence of a peasant class, lend the workers as much power as it did in Germany — is today the best lever a proletarian movement can have, and so it will prove in this country also. That’s why it is so important to smash the Socia, Democratic Freperation?°° at the earliest opportunity, for its leaders are nothing but adventurers, literati and political careerists.

Hyndman, their boss, is doing all he can to further this end; he can hardly wait for the little bell to strike twelve, as the folk song has it, * and makes more of an ass of himself every day, so frantically does he pursue success. He’s a wretched caricature of Lassalle.

I don’t believe your opinion of the French is altogether fair. The masses in Paris are ‘socialist’ in the sense of a neutral middle-of-theroad socialism distilled over the course of years from Proudhon, Louis Blanc, Pierre Leroux, etc. The only experience they have had of communism was that of Cabet’s utopia, which culminated in a model col- ony in America, i.e. in flight from France and discord and semibankruptcy 1 in America: 438 Anything over and above that they de- rive from Germany, nor is it surprising that France which, from 1789 to 1850, was in every case the first country, not only to give clear expression to political ideas, but also to put them into practice, should be somewhat reluctant to endorse her own abdication as leader in matters of revolutionary theory; particularly after the glorious Commune and, what is more, vis-a-vis a Germany that was, to all intents and purposes, defeated by the Paris workers in 1870, seeing that the German army did not dare occupy Paris— a case, be it noted, unprecedented in the history of warfare. Then again, you should ask your- self how the French workers are to increase their discernment. Even the French edition of Capital is to them a sealed book; and not to them alone, but to a large part of the educated class as well. The only thing they are familiar with is my Socialism: Utopian and Scientific which, in fact, has proved surprisingly influential. None of the leaders know German, except Vaillant whom I don’t count because being Lafargue is now at last translating the Manifesto into good French. **+ Even the leaders’ knowledge of theory still leaves something to be desired and, if you knew Paris, you would realise how easy it is to live and agitate, as opposed to doing any serious work there. So whence is discernment to come to the French workers?

And now a further word about the elections. In Germany it is easy to vote for a Social Democrat because we are the only real opposition party and because the Reichstag has no say in things, so that ultimately it doesn’t matter whether one votes at all, or for which of the ‘dogs that we all are’! one does vote. The only other party to have

Vol. 4, Mannheim, 1835, pp. 174-75.

a policy of its own is, perhaps, the Centre. ?*° But in France, things are altogether different. There, the Chamber is the effective power in the land and there can be no question of chucking away one’s ballot paper. Besides which it must be remembered that every time the Gambettists pit themselves against the Monarchists, and the Radicals **° against the Gambettists, a step forward is made. And indeed practice proves this to be the case. In Germany Junker-style reaction has flourished since 1870 and everything is retrogressing. In France, they have the best schools in the world with compulsory education to match, and whereas Bismarck cannot get rid of the clergy,? the French have already ousted them completely from their schools. Our German army, apart from the growing Social Democratic element, is a more infamous tool of reaction than ever before. In France, general conscription has brought the army infinitely closer to the people, and it is primarily the army that makes monarchy impossible (cf. 1878). +? And if the Radicals come to the helm and are compelled to implement their programme, there will be decentralisation of the adminis- tration, self-government for departments and communes, as in America and in the France of 1792-98, and separation of Church and State, every man to pay his own parson. We are not yet in a position to direct historical developments either in Germany or in France. This does not mean that those developments are standing still, however, but only that in the German Empire they are temporarily retro- gressing, while in France they are for all that advancing. But our turn will not come — such is the slow but sure course of history — until the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, having demonstrated, publicly and in practice, their inability to govern the country, find them- selves up a gum tree. (After a French revolution we might, somewhat anticipande,* come to power in Germany but only if carried there by always supporting the most radical party possible is right from one point of view. As soon as the Radicals come to the helm, the same instinct will drive the workers into the arms of the Communists, for the Radicals are pledged to their o/d, muddled, socialist (not communist) programme and this will be their undoing. And then instinct and reason will coincide; the most radical party possible will then be the party of the proletariat as such, and things will happen fast. But the

* before our time

fact is that the English and the French have long since forgotten their pre-revolutionary state of virginity, whereas we Germans, not having had a revolution of our own, are still trailing around with this sometimes very awkward encumbrance. Both conditions have their ad- vantages and disadvantages; but it would be most unjust to use the same one-sided standard in assessing the varying attitudes of the workers in those three countries.

Kautsky has given me Adler’s very superficial book* which is largely based on Stieber.” I shall help him write the review.°

Won’t you come over here some time? Should business take you to the Rhine, you could be here in no time.

Your F.E.