London, 3 January 1895 

Dear Baron, 

Firstly, a very Happy New Year from one household to the other, and, 
secondly, my thanks for the amusing report of the MARE’S NEST discovered 
by Liebknecht. Hardly had I read the first couple of lines of your account 
than I realised that it could only refer to the old business with Schweitzer and 
for me that gave twice the savour to the humour of the situation. *” 
Incidentally it will be sufficient if you make a note in your own copy of the 
variations of the original from the printed text and let me have them some 
time or other for insertion in mine. I would rather not enter into 
correspondence with Liebknecht about the copyright of the original ms., for it 
is improbable that it would get us anywhere. 

Parts of Fireman’s article* are, I agree, rendered so complex by his mis- 

* P. Fireman, Kritik der Marx’schen Werttheorie. In Jahrbiicher für Nationalékonomie und 
Statistik. 3. Folge, Bd. 3, 1892 

guided incursions into other aspects of Marx’s theory and by all manner of 
metaphysical, i.e. anti-dialectical divagations, as virtually to conceal the fact 
that, by a happy chance, he has been able to get closer than anyone else to 
the crux of the problem. Hence the total ineffectuality of the article. Only 
someone who gives his undivided attention to the specific problem under 
discussion will make the discovery that here is something which, if pursued, 
will lead to the solution of the whole problem. 

It would seem that you will be having a thoroughly lively year in 
Germany. If Mr von Koller carries on in this way, “ no thing is impos- 
sible—conflict, dissolution, granting concessions, coup d’état. Obviously he 
would also be content with less. The Junkers would be happy enough with 
more generous douceurs, but to obtain these he will have to appeal to certain 
cravings for personal domination and pander to them to the point at which 
elements of resistance are also brought into play, and it is here that chance— 
i.e. what is involuntary, incalculable—comes into play. And to secure those 
douceurs he will have to raise the spectre of conflict—if he goes a step 
further, the original aim, the douceur, will become of secondary importance 
and then it will be a case of Crown versus Reichstag, of bend or break, and 
that’s when the fun may begin. At the moment I am reading Gardiner’s 
Personal Government of Charles“ in which the parallels with present-day 
Germany are so close as to be almost absurd. As, for instance, the arguments 
over immunity from the consequences of actions performed in Parliament. 
Were Germany a Latin country, a revolutionary conflict would be inevitable, 
but as it is, you can’t be certain about nowt, as Jollymeier* used to say. 

Meanwhile the business of the peasants has quietly fizzled out, though 
August’s attack was most meritorious nevertheless and made good much of 
which had been omitted at Frankfurt. *” 

The worthy Bavarian socialists who favour reserved rights will be in no 
hurry to burn their fingers again. 

Amongst the various small factions over here things are, for the moment, 
jogging along in the usual dilatory way. Though their mutual squabbles are 
no longer so heated, the intrigues behind the scenes are being conducted with 
proportionately greater zeal. The masses, on the other hand, who are being 
instinctively drawn towards socialism, are experiencing a growing urge for 
conscious and unified action. Though less 

*Carl Schorlemmer 

clear-sighted than individual leaders, the masses are certainly far better than 
the leaders as a whole, yet the process of acquiring consciousness is slower 
than elsewhere, since pretty well all the old leaders also have an interest in 
diverting this burgeoning consciousness into one specific channel or another, 
or, to put it crudely, in vitiating it. Well, one must just be patient. 

So once again a Happy New Year and many regards. 

Yours, 
F. Engels