London, 20-23 January 1886 

Dear Bebel, 

So the great bolt has been fired. Schramm did me the honour of 
sending me a copy of the magnum opus’; but it is, I must say, a very 
pauvre* affair and the prompt reference to it in the Sozialdemokrat did 
him too signal an honour. Ede will undoubtedly give him a good 

* Jean Longuet-° C.A.S[chramm], Rodbertus, Marx, Lassalle. Sozialwissenschaf- 
tliche Studie. -° miserable -¢ ‘Zur Aufklarung’, Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 50, 10 Decem- 
ber 1885. 

dressing-down; I have, through Kautsky, drawn his attention to 
a number of points—-the essentials can safely be left to him. °?? 

For Kautsky this controversy with Schramm has been salutory in 
every way. °?3 Schramm, being unable to say anything about the ac- 
tual matter in hand, is skilful enough to pick on all the errors of form 
perpetrated by Kautsky, partly out of youthful impetuosity, partly 
out of the habits acquired at university and in literary practice, and 
this has been a very salutory lesson to him. In this respect Ede already 
has a considerable advantage over Kautsky because, though neither 
a university man nor a professional littérateur, he is, through being 
on the Sozialdemokrat, always in the thick of the fray, besides which 
he’s a business man and, last but not least, a Jew. For after all it’s only 
in war that you learn the art of war. 

What you tell me about the parliamentary group’s frame of mind 
is most encouraging. Provided the party remains sound—-and here the 
petty bourgeoisie will surely not gain the upper hand — the blunders 
of the deputy gentlemen can only serve to give these last a rude les- 
son. As you yourself say——and this is also my opinion—we shall 
never get the right kind of people into the Reichstag in time of peace 
and here the help afforded us by the party through bringing pressure 
to bear on the deputy gentlemen is absolutely invaluable; it shows 
that they must avoid any serious conflict, and the knowledge that this 
is so might, at a crucial moment, be of the utmost importance, since it 
would enable us to make a resolute stand in the certainty that we 
should emerge unscathed. 

Of late Liebknecht has been positively bombarding me with letters 
asking for information about this and that. I took the opportunity of 
telling him, briefly and unequivocally, if in an altogether friendly 
way, just what I thought of his inconsistent conduct; and when, as 
usual, he tried to attribute this to some piece of gossip I must have 
heard, I told him that there was only one person who could harm him 
in my eyes, and that was Wilhelm Liebknecht who was for ever for- 
getting what he had said in his letters and published in the press. 
However that might be, I went on, we should simply have to put up 
with his foibles, and would do so all the more readily for the knowl- 
edge that, when things really came to a head, he would be found in 
the right place.* Whereupon, contrary to his usual customary insis- 
tence upon having the last word, he calmed down again. 

* See this volume, pp. 381-82. 

As he mentioned the matter of the Schleswig-Holstein Canal, 
I took the opportunity of telling him that it would be stupid to vote 
for a shallow canal less than 8 or 9 metres deep, * allegedly out of op- 
position to its use by the Fleet. The tonnage of large merchant ships is 
steadily on the increase, 5,000 or 6,000 tons being already the norm, 
and ever more ports are being adapted to accommodate vessels of cor- 
responding draught. Those that cannot do so become obsolete and 
fall into decay, as will also happen in the Baltic. If the Baltic is to have 
its share of overseas trade, deep water harbours will accordingly have 
to be built there, and this will happen as surely as it has happened 
elsewhere. But to build the canal in such a way that, within the next 
10 or 20 years, it will become as useless and obsolete as the old Eider 
Canal is now, would be throwing money down the drain. 

As regards my proposal for productive cooperatives on state-owned 
land,? its sole purpose was to show the majority — which was, after 
all, then in favour of the Steamship Subsidies 3#? — how they could de- 
cently vote against it and thus emerge from the impasse in which they 
found themselves. But in my view, the principle of the thing was alto- 
gether correct. It is perfectly true that, when we propose something 
positive, our proposals should always be practicable. But practicable 
as such, regardless of whether the present government can implement 
them. I would go even further and say that, if we propose socialist 
measures conducive to the downfall of capitalist production (as these 
are), we should restrict them to such as are essentially feastble, but 
could not be implemented by this government. For this government 
would tamper with and ruin any such measure, and put it through 
merely with a view to sabotaging it. This particular proposal, how- 
ever, would not be implemented by any Junker or bourgeois govern- 
ment. To point the way for the rural proletariat in the Baltic prov- 
inces, if not set it upon the path that would enable it to put an end to 
exploitation by the Junkers and big farmers — to attract into the move- 
ment the very people whose servitude and stultification supplies the 
regiments upon which Prussia entirely depends, in short, to destroy 
Prussia from within, from the root up, is something that would never 
occur to them. The measure for which we must press, come what 
may, so long as big estates continue to exist there, and which we must 
ourselves put into practice the moment we come to the helm, is as fol- 

* See this volume, p. 383.-° Ibid., pp. 239, 240. 

lows: the transfer— initially on lease —of large estates to auton- 
omous cooperatives under state management and effected in such 
a way that the State retains ownership of the land. But the great ad- 
vantage of this measure is that it is perfectly feasible as such, although 
no party except ours would embark upon it, and thus no party can 
bedevil it. And it alone would suffice to put paid to Prussia, so that 
the sooner we popularise it the better for us. 

The matter has nothing whatever to do either with Schulze- 
Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both supported small cooperatives, in one 
case with, in the other without, state aid; but in neither were the co- 
operatives to take possession of the already extant means of production; 
rather they were to introduce new cooperative production alongside 
already extant capitalist production. My proposal envisages the in- 
troduction of cooperatives into existing production. They are to be given 
land which would otherwise be exploited along capitalist lines; just as 
the Paris Commune demanded that the workers should manage coop- 
eratively the factories closed down by the manufacturers.* Therein 
lies the great distinction. Nor have Marx and I ever doubted that, in 
the course of transition to a wholly communist economy, widespread 
use would have to be made of cooperative management as an in- 
termediate stage.” Only it will mean so organising things that so- 
ciety, i.e. initially the State, retains ownership of the means of pro- 
duction and thus prevents the particular interests of the coopera- 
tives from taking precedence over those of society as a whole. The 
fact that the Empire is not a land-owner is neither here nor there; 
you will find some formula, just as you did in the Polish debate, 
for here again the expulsions were no immediate concern of the 
Empire’s. 574 

Precisely because the government cannot envisage anything of the 
sort, there would be no harm in demanding the grant I propose as 
a counterpart to the steamship grant. Had there been any possibility 
of the government’s assenting to it, you would, of course, have been 
right. 

The disintegration of the German Free Thinkers ?*! in the sphere 
of economics tallies exactly with what is happening among the Eng- 
lish Radicals. *!5 The old Manchester School men @ /a John Bright 
are dying off and, just like the Berliners, the younger generation is 

@ See K. Marx, The Civil War in France (present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 328-35).~" See 
Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866.... 4. Co-operative labour. 

dabbling in piecemeal social reform. Save that here the bourgeois 
wish to help not so much the industrial worker as the agricultural la- 
bourer who rendered them such signal service during the late elec- 
tions **” and, in true English fashion, are demanding intervention 
not so much by the State as by the local authorities. For rural work- 
ers, allotments and potato patches, for those in the towns, sanitary 
improvements and the like, such is their programme. It is an excellent 
sign that the bourgeois should already be having to sacrifice their pet 
classical economic theory, partly on political grounds and partly be- 
cause they themselves have lost faith in it as a result of its practical 
consequences. The same thing is evident in the growth of armchair 
socialism °* which, in one form or another, is increasingly supplant- 
ing classical economics in academic faculties on both sides of the 
Channel. The real contradictions engendered by the mode of produc- 
tion have in fact become so glaring that no theory will now serve to 
conceal them save the hotch-potch of armchair socialism which, how- 
ever, is not a theory but sheer drivel. 

Six weeks ago there were said to be indications that business was 
looking up here. Now all that is over and done with; poverty is worse 
than ever before, as is the mood of hopelessness and, on top of that, 
the winter is an exceptionally severe one. This is already the eighth 
year in which overproduction has exerted pressure on the markets 
and, instead of improving, the situation is getting steadily worse, nor 
can there be any doubt that it is essentially different from what it used 
to be. Since the appearance of serious rivals to Britain on the world 
market, the era of crises, in the old sense of the term, has come to an 
end. If, from being acute, the crises become chronic yet lose nothing 
of their intensity, what is likely to happen? There is bound to be 
another, if brief, period of prosperity after the vast stocks of goods 
have been run down, but I am curious to see what will come of it all. 
Of two things, however, we may be sure: We have entered a period 
which poses a far greater threat to the existence of the old state of so- 
ciety than did the period of ten-year crises; and, secondly, prosperity, 
if it comes, will affect. Britain to a much lesser extent than before, 
when it alone used to skim the cream off the world market. The day 
when this is clearly realised in this country will be the day when 
the socialist movement will begin here in real earnest—and not 
before. 

I shall have to leave the composition of the English Liberals to 

another time. It is a complex subject because it involves depicting 
a state of transition. *3° 

This morning I received from Dresden the debate on the Polish mo- 
tion (Ist day). No doubt the 2nd day will follow shortly. * It is all the 
more essential for me to be sent these things now that I see only the 
weekly edition of the Kélnische Zeitung which contains only brief ex- 
cerpts from the debates. How are the short-hand reports sold? I will 
gladly pay for those of all debates in which our people take a serious 
part. 

Whatever happens, it’s essential that you should also go on the 
American tour. On the one hand, its success greatly depends on 
your presence. On the other, the party will not be properly represent- 
ed unless you are there. If you don’t go, the first-comer will be sent 
along with Liebknecht, and who knows what might not happen then. 
Thirdly, you should not miss the opportunity of seeing with your own 
eyes the most progressive country in the world. Life in Germany 
exerts an oppressive and constricting influence on anyone, even the 
best, as I know from my own experience, and one ought to get out of 
the place-—— from time to time at any rate. And in that case we might 
also see you over here again. Had I been able to get away from my 
work, I should long since have slipped across to America, as I was al- 
ways hoping to do with Marx. Anyway, to people abroad, you and 
Liebknecht represent the party and there is no substitute for either of 
you. Should you not go, it will mean a loss of anything between 5,000 
and 10,000 marks, if not more. 

It might, in fact, be a very pleasant experience. For Tussy and 
Aveling have been corresponding with American free-thinkers about 
the possibility of a trip to that country, and would like to combine it 
with yours. They expect to hear within the next 3 or 4 weeks. If it 
comes off, the four of you would make agreeable travelling compan- 
10ns. 

But now, good-bye for the present. Apropos, Ede exceeded my ex- 
pectations in his first anti-Schramm article. °?? Absolutely splendid. 

 Stenographische Berichte tiber die Verhandlungen des Reichstags. VI. Legislaturperiode. 
IT, Session 1885/86, Vol. 1. 25th sitting on 15 January 1886, 26th sitting on 16 January 
1886. 

He has indeed learnt to make war in accordance with the rules of 
strategy and tactics. 

Your 
F. E.