London, 3 December 1892 
Dear August, 

I was delighted by what you said in your letter of the 22nd about the 
disinclination you people feel for any further ‘nationalisation’ of the party 
press. *’ So there’s no need to waste any more words on the subject. 

As regards the May Day celebrations, I concede that you were perfectly 
right so far as the Berlin resolution was concerned. But the fact remains that 
the general impression you produced in Brussels was that in future you too 
would celebrate on | May and not invoke the permission not to do so that 
was granted purely by way of an exception.’ So you shouldn’t be surprised 
by the hullabaloo to which the Berlin resolution has given rise. But your 
intention of getting Congress to settle on Sunday as the day on which 
celebrations should be held in future is likely to hit on some snags. Except 
for the English everyone will be against it, many of the smaller parties out of 
sheer bravado. It would be a sorry retreat and the last people to join in its 
official proclamation would be those who secretly reserve the right to do 
likewise, whether it was proclaimed or not. 

Well, yesterday evening I got a rabid letter from Bonnier (he never writes 
any other kind) in which, having read your article in the Neue Zeit, *’ he 
declares in the name of the French that, if the first Sunday in May were to be 
adopted, they would drop the whole business of May Day. ‘“Jamais,’ he 
writes, ‘notre parti n’acceptera (le dimanche) et nous sommes bien décidés a 
tenir ferme.’ And he believes you people are playing with fire. 

I wrote and told him? 1. that things are never as black as he paints them, 2. 
asking who had authorised him to speak in the name of the French party, 3. 
that before May 1893, and between then and August ‘93 in Zurich ~° and 
between then and May ‘94 much might happen 

* Our party would never agree (to the Sunday) and we are fully determined to stand firm. - ° See 
this volume, Letter 28 

that we didn’t expect and that, with 3 acute political crises in the offing 
(Army in Germany, ” Panama in France “ Ireland in England ’’) and a 
general industrial crisis, we probably had better things to do than bicker 
about how best to demonstrate on 1 May ‘94, when we might have work of a 
very different nature to do; 4. how his proposal to allow the English, and 
them only, to celebrate on the Sunday chimed in with French logic; 5. that I 
knew of only one party—the Austrian *'—which had any right to reproach 
the Germans, that the May Day celebrations in Berlin more than made 
amends for those in Paris and 6. that I had passed on his ultimatum to you, 
but purely as his own private opinion. 

The man is consumed by an irrepressible urge to be up and doing but, such 
being the case, he shouldn’t have gone to Oxford where he is all on his own 
with red Wolff" who is completely out of everything. It’s a priceless idea, 
wanting to direct the European labour movement from Oxford—the last 
genuine remnant of the Middle Ages still to be found in Europe—but for us it 
makes an infuriating amount of unnecessary work and I shall protest in no 
mean terms to Paris about this go-between. The really unfortunate thing is 
that he’s the only person who understands German save for Laura, and she 
lives out of town. 

For the rest, the Party Congress went off quite well, but subscribing to the 
resolution “* despite the sundry rubbish it contains, must have been a bitter 
pill for Vollmar to swallow. 

Ede came to see me, bringing with him a whole bunch of letters from K. 
Kautsky—who had also written to me—all of them concerned with the Neue 
Zeit, and wanting me to add my mite. My opinion is that, if you accept the 
change proposed by Dietz, you should think it out and prepare for it properly, 
and not go ahead till January, otherwise it will be altogether premature. *° But 
speaking generally, I should say that, since becoming a weekly, the Neue Zeit 
has to some extent relinquished its old character in favour of a new one 
which it has not been completely successful in assuming. The paper is now 
being written for two sets of readers and cannot do full justice to either. 

If it is to become a popular, part-political, part-literary and artistic and 
part-learned journal, a la Nation, then it will have to move to Berlin. The 
political section of a weekly must be written at the hub of things, on the eve 
of publication, otherwise it will always be lagging behind. And, 

* Ferdinand Wolff 

save for the correspondents, those working on the political section must 
always be in the same place. The idea of editing a review in Berlin and 
London and publishing it in Stuckert * doesn’t seem feasible to me. In any 
case there would be a 20 or 30 per cent difference in subscriptions between a 
Berlin and a Stuttgart weekly. I am regarding this simply from a bookselling 
point of view, having no more than a nodding acquaintance with the other 
aspects that need to be considered and about which you out there will be 
better informed than I. 

But if the Neue Zeit undergoes these changes, it will appeal to only one 
section of its former public and will have to be organised solely for their 
benefit. It would then no longer be open to those articles from which it has 
hitherto derived its greatest and most enduring value—the longer, learned 
papers which run on through 3 to 6 numbers. Hence, alongside the Neue Zeit 
there would have to be a predominantly learned monthly— if necessary even 
quarterly—journal with a correspondingly restricted circle of subscribers, and 
this would have to be offset by raising the price if the paper was to be kept 
going. 

Indeed, it seems to me altogether necessary, if the party publishers wish 
increasingly to secure a monopoly of party publications, including learned 
ones, that they should not aim at bulk sales for everything, whether suitable 
for that purpose or not. An original paper on political economy is bound to 
be primarily a detailed treatise, nor can it be expected to sell in bulk. 
Similarly, a genuine historical work, the outcome of independent research, 
does not lend itself to publication by installments. In short, I think there 
should be two separate departments, one for bulk sales, the other for 
ordinary, slower-moving sales through booksellers, in smaller quantities and 
at a correspondingly higher price. 

What happens when an attempt is made to boost sales beyond the limits 
called for by the nature of the case is something I have learned from my own 
experience. Though written as popularly as possible, my Anti-Dühring is by 
no means a book to suit every working man. But along comes Dietz, takes 
over part of the Zurich edition and then tries to boost sales by remaindering 
the thing at a reduced price with 11 assorted booksellers. This is not at all to 
my liking and next time I shall be on my guard. It is the only longer work I 
have written since 1845 and, whichever 

* Stuttgart 

way one looks at it, it is degrading to see it treated in that way. By the by, 
there’s no need to say anything to Dietz about this—the thing is over and 
done with and cannot be altered, nor would I have mentioned it to you had it 
not provided an apt illustration of what I mean by the wrong way of selling 
books. 

For the rest, times are growing critical. Every morning when I read the 
Daily News and such French papers as have arrived, it takes me right back to 
‘47. At that time, too, one expected some further scandalous revelations each 
morning and one was seldom disappointed. The Panama affair “ beats 
everything that went on in the way of corruption under Louis-Philippe and 
under Bonaparte II I. The initial outlay, including bonifications to the press 
and Parliament, amounted to 83 million francs. This will be the ruin of the 
bourgeois republic, for the Radicals *° are as deeply implicated as the 
Opportunists. *’ On every side attempts are being made to hush things up, of 
course, but the more they are hushed up the worse they get. Once the 
revelations were under way and a few people had become irretrievably 
implicated in the scandal, these had perforce to cover themselves by 
betraying their accomplices and showing that they had only been swimming 
with the stream. Already the committee is in possession of such enormously 
compromising statements that there’s no holding back; a few may slip 
through the net, but large numbers have already been named and, of course, 
the fewer the names that are compromised the greater the odium that attaches 
to the bourgeois republic. Though much may still happen in the meantime, 
this is nevertheless the beginning of the end. Fortunately all the monarchist 
parties are completely done for, nor will it be at all easy to find another 
Boulanger. ° 

Herewith an extract from Lafargue’s letter for the Vorwdrts—but do 
ensure that the paper gives no indication whatsoever that the letter emanated 
from a deputy. ** 

What Liebknecht entirely overlooked in the matter of Bismarck’s Ems 
forgery was that that’s the sort of thing diplomats do in secret but never boast 
about. ” But if one of them does happen to boast about it, the breach of 
etiquette is such as to render him persona non grata. After this it will never 
again be possible to appoint Mr Bismarck Imperial Chancellor, otherwise any 
foreign government could refuse to enter into negotiations with a man who 
not only is not above using such methods, but actually boasts of having used 
them. The Imperial Government would risk incur- 

ring a general international boycott were Bismarck to become Chancellor 
again. I believe it would do a lot of good if this were said on the floor of the 
Reichstag. 
Many regards to your wife.* 
Your F.E. 

[Postscript from Louise Kautsky] 

Dear August, 

It seems to be my fate that my space should be rationed because I once over-stepped the 
mark and wrote a leader, so rather than look at your last letter, I shall look instead at the 
pretty inkstand that invites kind, happy thoughts and was inaugurated with the proofs of the 
second volume of Capital. Thank you very much for it—how good you both are; now that 
I’m equipped, I am, it seems, likely to run on and to be rapped over the knuckles for so 
doing. Well, that isn’t what I was intending to write about—all I meant to say was that not 
once this week have I been able to get round to writing, there having been, alas, so much to 
prevent me—glass-workers, transport workers, Reumann, Victor,” meeting of the 
unemployed and, last but not least, the Jews. They are not getting the Vorwdrts, August, so 
could you please make inquiries? Then, some time ago, I asked if you could let me have 
another copy of the Vorwärts’ report on the Congress, but you probably forgot—I’d like two 
if at all possible, otherwise one; it’s the report on the Party Conference I want, not the one 
made by you people at the Conference. Victor enjoyed the time he spent with you and wrote 
saying that to him it seemed as though the poor Austrians were standing guard in the wet and 
the cold, whereas you people were sitting snug in your encampment, despite the struggle and 
the fighting. Then there’s another thing—lI still have two English reports on the International 
Glassworkers’ Congress “’ to spare. Would you like one? It’s very interesting, but you would 
have to write a few lines about it by way of justification and send a sample copy, and would 
you please ask Fischer if he might perhaps write something for a Bavarian paper, in which 
case I would send him the other copy. I would, of course, send them without any strings 
attached but I feel responsible because it’s the English who have to pay for the whole thing, 
so I'd be grateful if you’d let me know. I must close, so more anon; it’s time for the post and 
I must close. 

With loving kisses to you and Julie, 
the Witch 

[Postscript from Engels] 

Please convey my most sincere thanks to the parliamentary group for their kind telegram 
last Sunday. ”° 

* Julie Bebel - ° Adler