ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN*” 

Eastbourne, 22 August 1889 
4 Cavendish Place 

Dear Ede, 

Who is Paul Fischer? He wishes to translate my old article in 
Progress for the Berliner Volks-Tribüne. Since I should have to do 
some notes for it and thus appear as an actual contributor to the Volks- 
Tribüne, | have my reservations which, having sent a non committal 
answer, I shall keep in abeyance until my return. 

In your next number? you ought to deal with the dock labourers’ 
strike.*8? The matter is one of crucial importance so far as this country is 
concerned. Hitherto the East End had been in a state of poverty-stricken 
stagnation, its hallmark being the apathy of men whose spirit had been 
broken by hunger, and who had abandoned all hope. Anyone who 
found himself there was lost, physically and morally. Then, last year, 
there came the victorious strike of the match-girls.4° And now, this 
gigantic strike of the most demoralised elements of the lot, the dock 
labourers, not the regular, strong, experienced, relatively well-paid men 
in steady employment, but those who have happened to land up in dock- 
land, the Jonahs who have suffered shipwreck in all other spheres, 
starvelings by trade, a welter of broken lives heading straight for utter 
ruin and for whom Dante’s words, ‘lasciate ogni speranza, voi che’ 
entrate’”> might be written up on the dock gates! 

And this dully despairing mass of humanity who, every morning 
when the dock gates are opened, literally fight pitched battles to be first 
to reach the chap who signs them on—literal battles in the competitive 
struggle of the redundant workers amongst themselves—that mass, 
haphazardly thrown together and changing every day, has successfully 
combined to form a band 40,000 strong, maintain discipline and inspire 
fear in the powerful dock companies. It is something I am glad that I 
have lived to see. For this stratum to be capable of organisation is a fact 

* of Der Sozialdemokrat - »‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ Dante, 

Inferno, III, 9 

of great significance. Whatever the outcome of the strike may be—and 
I’m never sanguine about such matters before the event—it means that, 
with the dockers, the lowest stratum of East End working men has 
entered the movement and that the higher strata are bound to follow 
suit. The East End has a greater number of ordinary labourers, those 
whose work requires little or no skill, than anywhere else in England. 
The organisation of these strata of the London proletariat, hitherto 
treated with contempt by the Trades Unions of skilled working men, 
will set an example for the provinces. 

And there’s more to it than that. Because of the lack of organisation 
and the passively vegetable existence of the real East End workers, the 
lumpen proletariat has hitherto had last say there, purporting, and 
indeed being held, to be the prototype and representative of the million 
starvelings in the East End. That will now cease. The hawker and his ilk 
will be pushed into the background, the East End working men will be 
able to develop a prototype of their own and so organise themselves as 
to assert it, and this will be of enormous value to the movement. Scenes 
such as took place during Hyndman’s procession along Pall Mall and 
Piccadilly*”! will no longer be possible; a ne’er-do-well who tried to go 
on the rampage would simply be put down. 

In short, it is an event. And just look how even the abject Daily News 
is covering the affair!* That alone shows what a tremendous impact it has 
made. It’s just like the miners’ strike at home***—a new stratum is 
coming into the movement, a new army corps. And your bourgeois 
who, only 5 years ago, would have been cursing and fuming, now finds 
himself forced to applaud half-heartedly just when, and precisely 
because, his bowels have turned to water. Hurrah! 

What you said about parliamentarianism and its decline in your arti- 
cle on the anarchists? is absolutely right. I was delighted. 

Here it’s so-so—changeable weather—am again somewhat lame as a 
result of too much walking, and hence teetotal, whatever Julius’ may 
say—but I’m not allowed tea in the evenings because of my nerves, and 
therefore I do take a glass of beer instead—on teetotal grounds! 

Regards to your wife and children and all our friends. 

Your 

EE. 

@ Daily News, 20 August 1889 - > E. Bernstein, ‘Anarchistische Phraseologie’, 
Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 34, 24 August 1889 ~ ¢ Probably Julius Motteler 

366 Letters ~ 1889