Dear Baron,

Ede wants to know when I shall be back in London, but instead of
giving me his address he merely states that he has left Kilchberg and
is en route to Zurich; moreover, all the times he gives are so vague as
to make it quite impossible to correspond with him at this range. As
I imagine that you are better informed than I am, perhaps you would
tell him that I return to London the day after tomorrow, the 6th.°?°

My lameness still rules out any possibility of my travelling further
than that. In London I shall probably have to spend another two
weeks lying on the sofa, but otherwise the thing is of no significance.

Sorge’s article on Homestead naturally takes precedence. Come to
that, I am in no great hurry provided the German text appears at the
same time as the English one or a little later. Needless to say
I have heard nothing about the latter for the past two months.

Had you been here during the last election, you would have

* of the Arbeiter-Zeitung

spoken differently about the Fasians.*’ As regards our tactics we have
one firm rule for all modern countries and for all times and that is to
prevail upon the workers to form their own independent party in opposition to all bourgeois parties. At the last election the English workers, impelled by the course of events, took, if still only instinctively,
their first decisive step in this direction; that step proved surprisingly
successful and contributed more towards the development of the
workers’ minds than any other event of the past 20 years. And what
did the Fasians do — not this or that individual] but the Fabian Society
as a whole? It preached and practised the affiliation of the workers to the
Liberals, the result being what one might expect. The Liberals assigned
them four seats, none of which could possibly have been won and
the Fabian candidates met with a resounding defeat. That paradoxical man of letters, Shaw — extremely talented and witty as a writer
but utterly useless as an economist and politician, though an honourable man nevertheless and no careerist — wrote to Bebel saying that if
they didn’t pursue this policy of imposing their candidates upon the
Liberals, they would reap nothing but pereat and disgrace (as though
defeat was not often more honourable than victory) — and now, having pursued this policy, they have reaped both.

That is the crux of the whole matter. Now that, for the first time,
the workers are taking an independent stand, the Fabian Society is
urging them to remain an appendage of the Liberals. And this must
be made abundantly clear to the continental Socialists; to hush it up
would be to connive at it. And that is why I am sorry that the Avelings’ postscript should have failed to appear.°? It was not written
post festum,* not as an afterthought, but was overlooked in the hurry
to get the article off. The article is incomplete without the description
of the attitude of the two Socialist organisations” in regard to the elections — and the readers of the Neue Zeit have a right to hear about
this.

I believe that I myself told you in my last letter that both in the So.
cial Democratic Feperation ?° and in the Fapian Society the provincial
members are better than the central body. But that won’t do any
good so long as the attitude of the central body determines that of the
Society. As to the rest of those sterling fellows, I know none of them
apart from Banner. Since joining the Fabian Society Banner has not,
oddly enough, put in an appearance at my house. J imagine he was

@ after the event- The Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Federation

impelled by disgust at the Socra, Democratic Feperation and the need
for some kind of organisation perhaps also by a few illusions. But
this particular swallow doesn’t make a summer.

You feel that there is something half-baked about the Fasian So.
ciety. On the contrary, the chaps are only too well done, a clique of
middle class ‘socialists’ of varying calibre from the careerist to the sentimental socialist and the philanthropist, who are united only in their
fear of impending Labour rule and are moving heaven and earth to
avert this threat by consolidating their own leadership — the leadership of the ‘heddicated’.* If they then admit a working man or two to
their central executive, thereby enabling the latter to perform an Albert owvrier of 1848 act in the shape of a constantly outvoted minority, that ought to deceive nobody.

The means employed by the Fabian Society are indistinguishable
from those employed in corrupt parliamentary politics: money, intrigue, careerism, i.e. after the English fashion where it is taken for
granted that every political party (save only, it seems, in the case of
Labour!) should pay its agents in one way or another or reward them
with posts. These chaps are up to their eyes in the intrigues of the
Liberal party and hold office in it, one such being Sydney Webb
who is altogether a typical British rotrmcian. There is nothing one
can tell the workers to beware of that these chaps are not already
practising.

This is not to suggest, of course, that you should treat these people
as enemies. But in my view they should no more be shielded from criticism than anyone else. And that is what the omission from the Avelings’ article of the passage relating to them certainly looked like. But
if you would like the Avelings to supply you with an article on the history and attitude of the various socialist organisations in England,
you have only to say so and I shall suggest it to them.

I was very taken with your article on Vollmar‘; it will do him more
harm than any amount of wrangling in the Vorwaerts.°°?, Moreover,
the endless threats of expulsion ought no longer to remain uncensured.
Today they are wholly uncalled for reminders of the dictatorial
period of the Anti-Socialist Law.!! One must now give the rotten elements time to become so rotten that they defect virtually of their own
accord. The discipline of a party numbered in millions is quite differ-

* The Berlin dialect in the original.-? Albert the working man-° K. Kautsky, ‘Vollmar und der Staatssozialismus’, Die Neue Zeit, 10. Jg. 1891/92, 2. Bd., Nr. 49.

ent from that of a sect numbered in hundreds. What you might have
gone into a bit further is the way in which ‘state socialism as such’ necessarily turns in practice into fiscality, and this in the only land
where it is practicable, namely Prussia (which you expound very
nicely).

Ede’s critique of Proudhon °*? was also very nice. I was especially
glad to see that he is his old self again.

Your
FLE.