London, 3 December 1891 

Dear Kautsky, 

Your letter of 30 October has long been awaiting an answer; the 
blame for this must be placed upon Volume III which I am once 
again sweating away at. I have just got to the most difficult part, i.e. 
the last chapters (six to eight or thereabouts) on money capital, 
banks, credit, etc., and, once having started, I shall have to keep at it 

* Theodor Liebknecht-° of Capital 

without a break and work through the relevant literature again, in 
short make myself completely au fait, if only so that I may— as is 
probable — eventually leave most of it as it stands, yet at the same 
time feel quite sure that I have committed no blunders either in the 
positive or the negative sense. , 

Very many thanks for the reports on Erfurt *°'; they were of value 
to me in many respects, the discussions of the programme committee 
being of particular interest. You describe the Executive’s draft as his, 
Liebknecht’s. Bebel sent me all the material relative to the genesis of 
this draft °° from which it is evident that at each stage a fair portion 
of Liebknecht’s initial work had been dropped and replaced with Be- 
bel’s propositions until in the end little or nothing remained. What 
did remain, however, was a lack of coherence, of rigour in the co- 
ordination of individual propositions, both being attributable to the 
consideration paid to Liebknecht’s work. That was what gave your 
draft ?°° the advantage, as everyone was bound to acknowledge at 
first glance, and it was that, too, along with Bebel’s public admission 
of the fact, which immediately convinced the others. 

The recent investigations, which have rendered obsolete Marx’s 
chapter on the historical trend of capitalist accumulation,*’> are in 
any case the work of Geiser who is of course regarded in Breslau * as 
a genuine scientific authority. However it is also possible that in his 
embarrassment Liebknecht said (for he was obviously unaware that 
these propositions had been taken from Capital) the first ‘bit of non- 
sense’, as he would put it, that came into his head. 

At any rate the theoretical part of the programme is now perfectly 
presentable; the main thing is that it should contain nothing that is 
theoretically controversial and in the main this aim has been 
achieved. The practical demands contain all kinds of snags; many of 
them seem philistine — if applied to conditions today — but now that 
we occupy a position of power we can reply quite rightly that they will 
certainly not be implemented until we come to the helm and that 
they will then assume quite a different character. As, for instance, free 
legal advice. A six hours’ working day up till the age of 18 obviously 
ought to have gone in—— as also the banning of night work for women 
and of any sort of work at the very least one month before and 
6 weeks after a confinement. 

I’m sorry for Liebknecht. For he had to sing the praises of the new 

@ Wroctaw 

programme although it was perfectly plain to everyone that he had 
had no part in it whatever. But he took on the job of his own accord, 
so what can one do about it? 

What you say about Toélcke’s speech is new to me and most interest- 
ing. Ede’s work ! goaded the Old Lassalleans into a state of 
great activity at a time when Marx’s letter* had already roused them 
from the complacency induced by the obligatory deification of Las- 
salle. Even Jacob Audorf, the discoverer of the path of boldness along 
which we were led by Baron Izzy °7’ (as Marx used to call the chap), 
has been letting forth indignant battle cries amidst the Sunday chit- 
chat of the Hamburger Echo.” But they no longer count for anything. 
Incidentally, Ede got much more upset than he needed to over Be- 
bel’s, etc., criticism. Bebel was most reasonable, merely demanding 
that, so far as the form was concerned, his procedure should be such as 
not, at the very outset, to frighten off those readers with a tradition of 
Lassalle worship or to give the Old Lassalleans any justified grounds 
for complaint. To this was added the unfortunate circumstance that 
Ede had inserted a note that was admittedly quite uncalled for (be- 
cause he turned it into a piece of tittle-tattle by using ‘probably’) 
about syphilis 7°° and the worthy censors in Berlin did not spot this note 
until it was too late. The fact that they had made a hash of the business 
caused them, of course, to fly momentarily into a mighty Achillean 
rage whereupon Ede, of course, had to atone, not only for Avs own 
lapse but even more for theirs, by receiving a number of indignant let- 
ters. Naturally I have backed him up as best as I could throughout 
the whole affair. 

The opposition press dives on the antithesis of the national Lassalle 
and the unpatriotic Social-Democrats. So they'll take care not to lay 
their hands on a book in which the legend of the nationalist Lassalle is 
so thoroughly demolished. 

Ede’s work is really very good and gave me great pleasure; it will 
elicit the major response it deserves in Germany——in the course of 
time— and, on completion of this edition, ought to be printed sepa- 
rately and/or expanded by Ede and divested of its special purpose. By 
then things will have progressed far enough for this to be perfectly 
feasible. In this country, too, it will have a good effect, for over here 
your socialistically inclined bourgeois is also seeking to oppose Marx 
by making a legend out of Lassalle. 

@ K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. -* [J. Audorf,] ‘Zum Parteikongresse’, Ham- 
burger Echo, No. 245, Ist Supplement, 18 October 1891. 

I shall take another look at the letter Labriola wrote to Tussy. My 
impression is that it would be better not to print it. Labriola is very 
dissatisfied with the way things are going in Italy and I’m not sure 
that it may not have something to do with his disappointment over 
the fact that Azs joining the movement did not immediately revive and 
revolutionise it. So far as I recall, the letter was of the kind that might 
have elicited dozens of replies. Some strange things are certainly go- 
ing on there. 

You will regret Lafargue’s translation from Pélagie* to the Cham- 
ber. It will deprive you of many a nice article. 

Addto. 
Your 
F.E. 

Plekhanov’s articles are excellent.”