London, 16-17 September 1886

Dear Sorge,

I am forcing myself to take an hour offin order to write to you. For weeks I have been kept so busy with the proofs (in triplicate) of the translation of Capital,* that I have been unable to do anything else, and now they are coming thick and fast. Allegedly I am to get 6 sheets a week (i.e. 18 sheets a week to be corrected), and the whole thing is supposed to be finished in 4 weeks’ time. We shall see. But I’m going to have a lively time of it since, apart from anything else, old Becker? is arriving tomorrow from Geneva to stay with me, the following week I shall have Schorlemmer and probably the Lafargues, not to mention other people from Switzerland who are proposing to come over here. So I know that, if I don’t get a letter written today, there'll be no chance of doing so later on.

Many thanks for the trouble you have gone to over the interviewer.° He shall be the last. Now the chap has broken his word and I shall be justified in sending them packing, unless it’s to our advan-

* the English translation of the first volume; see also this volume, pp. 462, 506.> Johann Philipp Becker-° John T. McEnnis

tage to impose upon some liar of this ilk. You are right in saying that I haven’t, on the whole, any cause for complaint; the man does at least try to be decent from the personal point of view, and not he, but the American bourgeoisie, is to blame for his stupidity. 59°

A fine crew they’d seem to be at the head of the party in New York °*° and as for the Sozzalist, it’s a model of what a paper ought not to be. But nor can I congratulate Dietzgen on his article re anarchists °?6; it’s an odd way he has of going about things. If, for in- stance, a person takes a somewhat narrow-minded view of a particular point, Dietzgen is at pains—— often undue pains—to stress that there are two sides to every question. But now, because of the New Yorkers’ abject behaviour, he suddenly takes the other side and tries to make us all out to be anarchists. This may be excusable as things are now, but even at a crucial juncture he should not, after all, entirely forget his dialectics. However, he has probably long since worked all this out of his system and is certainly back on the right track again, so there’s no cause for alarm.

In a country as unsophisticated as America which, though wholly without a feudal past, has evolved along purely bourgeois lines yet has uncritically taken over from England a mass of ideology deriving from feudal times, such as English common law, religion, sectarianism, and where the exigencies of practical work and of the concen- tration of capital have engendered a general contempt, only now diminishing amongst the most highly educated and learned circles, for all theory —in such a country, the people will have to find out what their own social interests are by making one blunder after another. Nor will the workers be spared this experience; the confusion of the TRADES UNIONS, the socialists, the Knicuts or Lasor, etc., will persist for some time yet, until wisdom is born of their own misfortunes. But the main thing is that they are now in motion, that they are actually progressing, and that the spell has been broken; things will move fast, faster than anywhere else, even though the course they take may seem erratic and, from the theoretical standpoint, almost demented.

Your letter arrived too late for me to speak to Aveling about Brooks §?’ —I only saw him, Aveling, for a couple of hours on 30 August, and I had left your letter behind in Eastbourne. °°° Anyhow, you will have seen him meanwhile in New York, also Liebknecht.

It would seem that your Adolf* has already dissolved his partrner-

sip with the agent in Rochester; I trust he has not burnt his fingers in the process, as may happen even to the best of men on such occasions.

I shall shortly be sending you the missing numbers of To-Day, in so far as I myself receive them, also Commonweals. It’s not possible to subscribe to them direct. I shall send you some French papers when I myself get any from Paris. A few went off from Eastbourne. You should be able to obtain the Socialiste over there; the editorial and administrative offices are at 17 rue du Croissant, Paris, and the paper comes out weekly. Abonnement étranger* 4 frs a half year, incl. postage. I myself get it very irregularly and often have to write, but I have to keep it for REFERENCE.

I am also sending you some surplus proof-sheets of the Capital translation so that you can see how the thing’s progressing and what it looks like.

I hope your health is improving; I seem robust enough, but for 3 years now my mobility has been restricted, sometimes very considerably and always to a certain extent by an internal ailment, so that I am, alas, no longer fit for active service.

The first thing I shall have to do, as soon as the translation is finished, is rid myself of the minor jobs that have been foisted on me — revising other people’s work, notably translations —and avoid getting myself saddled with any more, so that I can return to the 3rd vol- ume.” The whole thing’s there, ready dictated, but there’s still a good 6 months’ hard slogging to be done. This confounded English translation has taken up the better part ofa year. But it was absolutely essen- tial and I don’t regret it.

17 September

The proof-sheets went off yesterday and the Commonweals up to 18 September will follow today. I have got to look out the copies of To-Day.

The movement over here is still in the hands, on the one side of adventurers (Democratic Federation °°) and, on the other, of hobby- horse riders and sentimental socialists (Socialist League 3*°); the masses are still holding aloof, although here too beginnings of a movement are perceptible. But it will be some time before the masses are in full spate, which is a good thing because it means that there will be time for proper leaders to emerge.

In Germany, some kind of movement will, presumably, at last come into being again among the bourgeoisie, whose cowardly inertia is becoming harmful to us; on the one hand the now imminent change of monarch* will induce a general state of instability, on the other Bismarck’s kow-towing to the Tsar” is arousing even the most lethargic from their slumbers.°?° In France things are going famously. Our people are learning discipline, in the provinces from the srrixes, in Paris from their opposition to the Radicals. *?°

Kindest regards,

Your F.E.