London, 10 June 1891 

Dear Sorge, 

I am up to the eyes in the new edition of the Origin of the Family, 
etc.*; it has been necessary to go through all the relevant literature of 
the past 8 years and its quintessence must now be worked into the 
book, which is no joke, especially in view of the many interruptions. 
However the worst is behind me and I shall at last be able to get back 
to Volume III.” I have had to cut down on the whole of my corre- 
spondence, otherwise I should make no progress at all. 

In Berlin— strictly between ourselves, for Schliiter must not know 
that it is J who have given you the information; he cannot always 
keep his mouth shut and if you tell him, he’s sure to know that it 
comes from me — in Berlin, then, the chaps have finally come round 
to the view that Liebknecht is a windbag and nothing more. Earlier 
on the position was such that they fad to give him the post of editor of 
the Vorwdrts and at the same time make him an honorary member of 
the Executive. I had long been aware that this was bound to bring 
matters to a head; it was inevitable. They now find that he is editing 
the paper out of existence, for in the first place he does nothing him- 
self and, in the second, he is standing in the way of others who could 
do something. So it’s scandalous that he should allow his son-in-law 
Geiser to write botched leading articles for it, articles of such dreary 
arrogance and tedious ineffectiveness as to be beyond the capabilities 
of anyone save their author— and this is the Geiser who, morally 
speaking, was chucked out of the party at St Gallen.?°3 For the mo- 
ment there’s no telling how the affair will end. They have offered 
Liebknecht another position in which he would act both as a popular 

* the fourth German edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.-” of 
Capital 

speaker and in his earlier capacity of journalistic franc-tireur, but this 
he construes as a dismissal. Now they don’t know how to set about 
pensioning him off in a decent manner, and to do so in such a way 
that he will accept—for that is what it really boils down to. The 
oddest part of all is that while the Anti-Socialist Law '' was in force, 
precluding the outbreak of this conflict, Liebknecht hardly changed 
at all, or at most continued along a course upon which he had long 
since embarked, and that the chaps now find that, upon his transfer 
to Berlin from his Borsdorf retreat, he no longer bears the slightest re- 
semblance to the Liebknecht of old —in other words Liebknecht as 
they had imagined him. The real point is that the others have pro- 
gressed and now suddenly notice the difference; they imagine that 
it is they who have remained as they were, which is by no means 
the case. 

Now for something else. Stanistaw* writes to tell me that Anna 
has approached Paris for money and has actually got some, or will be 
doing so; these attempts at extortion are really a bit thick, he says, 
and suggests we write to America lest there should be further useless 
expenditure over there on the young madame’s behalf. Accordingly 
he has already written to you and asks me to do the same. He de- 
scribes her, Anna’s, way of going about things as downright 
blackmail. 

Today we have at last had a semblance of summer; the vegetation 
is a whole month behind and in that respect the spring is not yet 
properly over, though otherwise we’ve seen no sign of it. 

Thank you for the pirated American edition. Schliter has told me 
some curious things about it.25* Please thank him for his very de- 
tailed letter which I cannot unfortunately reply to just now. 

Over here the movement is making fine progress. The Unron of Gas- 
workers and Generat Lazourers '6* is gradually coming to the fore, 
thanks above all to Tussy. The movement is advancing English- 
fashion, systematically, slowly but surely, and it is an odd, if highly 
significant phenomenon that both here and in America the people 
who make themselves out to be orthodox Marxists and have changed 
the concept of our movement into a rigid dogma to be learned by 
rote — that these people should figure both here and over there as a mere 
sect. But what is even more significant is the fact that whereas in Amer- 

b 

4 Stanistaw Mendelson-? Stanislaw Padlewski 

ica these people are foreigners, i.e. Germans, over here they’re Eng- 
lishmen born and bred, i.e. Hyndman & Co. Tussy has just arrived 
so Ill close. 

Regard from her, Louise and your old friend to you, your wife* 
and Schliter, 

FE. 

Tussy has just told me that at Whitsuntide — when she was on the 
point of leaving for the Gasworkers’ congress in Dublin ?*”7 — she too 
received a letter from Anna similar to the one sent to the Paris people. 
No Notice TAKEN, Of course.