ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY *% 

London, 3 February 1891 

Dear Kautsky, 

You’d have thought that we over here would have been bombard- 
ed with letters about Marx’s article*—on the contrary; not a sign 
nor a word have we had. 

When the Neue Zeit failed to arrive on Saturday,” I thought some- 
thing had gone wrong again. On Sunday Ede arrived and showed me 
your letter, whereupon I believed that the attempt at suppression had 
been successful. The issue finally arrived on Monday and, not long af- 
ter, I found the piece had been reprinted in the Vorwdéirts.1>! 

The disciplinary action 4 da Anti-Socialist Law having failed,'*? 
this daring move was the best thing the chaps could have done. But it 
was also good in another way, namely in going a fair way towards re- 
pairing the almost unbridgeable gulf alluded to by August © in the first 
moment of alarm. Not that that alarm was in any way unjustified, 
arising as it did out of concern for what their opponents might make 
of the thing. By printing it in the official organ, they forestalled hostile 
exploitation and put themselves in the position of being able to say: 
‘See how we criticise ourselves — we are the only party that can af- 
ford to do so; just you try and do the same!’ This was, in fact, the cor- 
rect attitude and one the chaps should have adopted from the start. 

Another consequence is that it will be difficult to initiate discipli- 
nary action against yourself. My request that the thing might be sent 
to Adler‘ was intended on the one hand to put pressure on Dietz and, 
on the other, to relieve you of responsibility by presenting you with 
Hobson’s choice. I also wrote and told August that I was prepared to 
take full responsibility. !5° 

If anyone else is to be held responsible, that person is Dietz. As he is 

Critique of the Gotha Programme - > 31 January - ° August Bebel - 4 See this volume, 
p. 103. 

aware, I have, where he is concerned, always shown myself very cou- 
lant* over such matters. I have not only complied with, but actually 
exceeded, every request he has made to tone things down. Had he 
side-lined anything else, that too would have received consideration. 
But if'a thing met with no objection from Dietz, why should it not be 
passed by me? 

Come to that, having once got over their initial alarm, almost 
everyone save Liebknecht will be grateful to me for having published 
the thing. It will eliminate all possibility of prevarication and phrase- 
mongering in the next programme and will provide irrefutable argu- 
ments such as the majority of them would hardly have had the cour- 
age to advance on their own initiative. Their failure to change a bad 
programme while the Anti-Socialist Law was in force because unable 
to do so is no cause for reproach. And they have after all now voluntar- 
ily relinquished that programme. Nor need they hesitate to admit 
today that, 15 years ago, they behaved like boobies over the matter of 
unification? and allowed themselves to be done in the eye by Hassel- 
mann, etc. At all events, the programme’s 3 ingredients — 1. specific 
Lassalleanism, 2. vulgar democracy @ la People’s Party !>* and 3. 
balderdash, have not improved as a result of 15 years’ pickling qua 
official party programme, and if this can’t be openly said today, when 
if ever can it be? 

If you hear anything new, please let us know. Many regards, 

Your 
F.E.