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ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 131-2) London, June 20, 1882
   ... "The presumption of the Lassalleans after their arrival in America was inevitable. People who carried the only true gospel with them in their bag could not speak unpretentiously to the Americans, still languishing in spiritual darkness. What was at stake, moreover, was finding a new footing in America to take the place of the one that was disappearing more and more under their feet in Germany. To make up for it we are happily rid of them in Germany; in America, where everything proceeds ten times as fast, they will soon be disposed of." . . .

   That prediction was one of many examples of Engels' over-optimism.

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 139) London, April 24, 1883
   ... "The Volkszeitung has made enough blunders, but still not as many as I expected. And all of them have done their part - Schewitsch, Cuno, Douai, Hepner. They were a know-better quartet of people who know damned little, jointly and severally. Still I felt obliged to write a few lines to the editors; they had printed my cable to you as one addressed to them, and merely falsified the second one, to them, to the effect that Marx died in Argenteuil. We wrote that we here refused to put up with that; in doing this they would make it impossible for me to send them any more communications, and if they again permitted themselves to misuse my name in such a manner they would compel me to ask you at once to state publicly that the whole thing was a forgery on their part. The gentlemen should practice their Yankee humbug among themselves. Moreover, the Americans are much more decent: according to the Volkszeitung a telegram had been sent to me, which I never received, and almost believed the gentlemen of the Volkszeitung had pocketed the money themselves. Now Van Patten writes that no money at all had been available. Now I am compelled to publish this here, otherwise it would be said that I had kept the telegram from the Paris press and the Sozialdemokrat. The answer regarding Most that I sent Van Patten in reply to his inquiry will no doubt have been published before this letter arrives.
   "At the Copenhagen Congress it was decided that Liebknecht and Bebel visit America next spring. It is a question of money for the election campaigns of 1884-85 (all this between the two of us). Liebknecht has suggested that Tussy [Eleanor Marx] go along as his secretary, and she would very much like to do so; thus you are very likely to see her there soon. We haven't made any plans at all as yet." ...

   Van Patten, referred to in the previous letter, was a member of the New York Central Labor Union, and was also SLP National Secretary. He wrote to Engels on April 2, 1883, inquiring (LTA, p. 137):

   "When all parties were united in connection with the recent memorial celebration in honor of Karl Marx, many loud declarations were made on the part of Johann Most and his friends that Most had stood in close relation to Marx and had popularized his work, Capital, in Germany and that Marx had been in agreement with the propaganda which Most had conducted. We have a very high opinion of the capacities and the activity of Karl Marx, but we cannot believe that he was in sympathy with the anarchistic and disorganizing methods of Most, and I should like to hear your opinion as to the attitude of Karl Marx on the question of anarchism versus socialism. Most's ill-advised, stupid chatter has already done us too much harm here, and it is very unpleasant for us to hear that such a great authority as Marx approved of such tactics."

   Some 64+ years later, A.P. quoted Engels' letter to Van Patten without credit (see Part C) in his 1947 preface to Engels' "Socialism: From Utopia to Science". A.P.'s claims that he, De Leon, and the SLP also stood on Marxist principles were consistent with the declarations of Johann Most, but were all false.

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 141) London, June 29, 1883
   ... "Schewitsch has replied to me "dignifiedly," regretting my "pettiness." Dignity sits well on him. He'll get no answer.
   "Nor will Most, who must confirm everything I assert, and for that reason is so furious. I believe he will find support in that sectarian land, America, and cause trouble for some time. But that is just the character of the American movement: that all mistakes must be experienced in practice. If American energy and vitality were backed by European theoretical clarity, the thing would be finished over there in ten years. But that is impossible historically."

Engels to Eduard Bernstein in Zürich
(MEW 36, pp. 97-8) London, February 5, 1884
   ... "I quite agree with you on von der Mark and the "Volkszeitung"*. At Marx's death, Schewitsch falsified my telegram to Sorge and printed it as if it had been sent to the "V.Z.". I protested. He covered the falsification with the lie that the first word was indecipherable - but he printed it correctly! and the other thing he deemed "necessary in the interest of the paper"! Furthermore, he said, my propaganda was "petty". However it was not "petty" [kleinlich] but rather gross [grosslich] how the gentlemen exploited Marx's death for propaganda for themselves and to proclaim their half alliance with {Johann} Most. But Schewitsch is the last socialist Russian aristocrat, and they must always "go farthest" and are accustomed to use the whole world as a means to their ends. The tolerance article was simply silly. The Russians quarreled among themselves amiably [con amore], and the Irish too."
__________
   * "In the Sunday edition of the "New Yorker Volkszeitung" of Dec. 2, 1883, under the pseudonym "von der Mark", an article by the editor Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg had been published which declared the state to be an abstract concept, an alliance of individuals. Under his pseudonym "Leo", Eduard Bernstein published in the "Sozialdemokrat" on December 20, 1883, a reply: "Socialism and the State". Bernstein quoted verbatim Engels' ideas expressed in the third part of "Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft" {Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science} about the historic function of the state and Lasalles's "free people's state" cliché, and then discussed polemically Lassalle's, as well as the anarchist concept of the state. Speaking to the anarchists, Bernstein emphasized that it was necessary to conquer the state "not to do away with it as the anarchists pretend to want." The article ended with the call: "Therefore no delusion about our final goal, but also no mistake about the way to this goal! It is: Win the power in the state."
   "On January 3, 1884, Rosenberg published in the "New Yorker Volkszeitung" under the heading "Herr Leo" a second article in which he tried to show that Engels and August Bebel, since they stood for the dying off of the state and for the idea of no rulers, had made a concession to the anarchists' ideal of statelessness." {From a footnote by the Publisher.}

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 142) London, March 7, 1884
   . . . "I shall hardly have the time to enter into a debate with Stiebeling. Such little gods can safely be left to themselves. Besides, sectarianism cannot be prevented in America for years to come. And so the great {Johann} Most will also end up as Karl Heinz the Second, no doubt. I am getting the Wochen [Weekly] -Volkszeitung, but there isn't much in it.
   "I do not know how matters stand with the trip of Bebel, Liebknecht, or someone else to America. In reply to their inquiry I told them that, in my opinion, it would not do to tap America [financially] every three years for the elections. The situation in Germany, moreover, is very good. Our boys are standing up to it famously. The {Anti-} Socialist Law is involving them in a local struggle with the police everywhere, which entails lots of cleverness and trickery and usually ends victoriously for us, providing the best propaganda in the world. All the bourgeois papers utter sighs from time to time over the enormous progress of our people, and they are all afraid of the coming elections." ...

   In the next letter, Engels speculated on the effects if that year's electoral victories for the German Workers' Party could be duplicated by workers' parties in America and elsewhere.

Engels to August Bebel in Plauen bei Dresden
(MEW 36, pp. 214-5) London, October 11, 1884
   ... "The election excitement has been going around in my head all day long. Our three-year-old great test is an event of European importance, in contrast to which the panic journeys of all the emperors mean nothing. I remember too well how in 1875 the election victories of our side took off in Europe and chased the Bakunist Anarchism from the stage in Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain. And just now such an effect is very much needed again. The caricature anarchists à la {Johann} Most who have already come down from Rinaldo Rinaldini to Schinderhannes and below would, at least for Europe, receive a similar blow and save us a lot of effort. In America, where sects live forever, they could then slowly die off - after all, Karl Heinz kept himself going there for 25 years after he was dead and buried in Europe. The provincial French, who are developing very well, would be much encouraged and the Paris masses would receive a new impulse to emancipate themselves from their position as the tail of the extreme Left. Here in England where the reform bill gives the workers new power, this impulse would come just in time for the next election in 1885 and would offer an opportunity to the Social Democratic Federation - which consists only of the old literati on the one hand, old sectarian remains on the other hand and a sentimental public in the third place - to really become a party. In America, only such an event is still needed to make the English speaking workers finally realize what power they have if they would only use it. And in Italy and Spain it would be a new blow for continuing anarchistic doctrinaire clap-trap. In one word, the victories you achieve have an effect from Siberia to California and from Sicily to Sweden." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, p. 248) London, November 23, 1884
   ... "Bernstein's letter to Paul about Lassalle finds its explanation in this, that in Paris, as in London and New York, the old Lassalle set is still strongly represented among the Germans. They have mostly emigrated, Germany is too hot for them and won't listen to them. But as they are comparatively harmless abroad, and form a useful international cement, besides finding funds for the Germans at home, on les ménage un peu [one fosters them a little]." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 144-5) London, February 10, 1885
   "I herewith return Mr. Putnam's letter - of course it would be a splendid success if we could secure publication by that firm - but I am afraid Mr. P. will stick to his objections, the great strength of which, from a publisher's standpoint, I fully recognize. Perhaps the fact that a new German edition of my work is in actual preparation may shake him a little. My friends in Germany say that the book {"The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"} is important to them just now because it describes a state of things which is almost exactly reproduced at the present moment in Germany; and as the development of manufacturing industry, steam and machinery, and their social outcrop in the creation of a proletariat, in America corresponds at the present moment as nearly as possible to the English status of 1844 (though your go-ahead people are sure to outstrip the old world in the next 15-20 years altogether), the comparison of industrial England of 1844 with industrial America of 1885 might have its interest too.
   "Of course in the new preface to the English translation I shall refer as fully as space will permit to the change in the condition of the British working class which has taken place in the interval; to the improved position of a more or less privileged minority, to the certainly not alleviated misery of the great body, and especially to the impending change for the worse which must necessarily follow the breakdown of the industrial monopoly of England in consequence of the increasing competition, in the markets of the world, of Continental Europe and especially of America."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 146-7) London, June 3, 1885
   . . . "Thanks for the Grönlund and Ely {American Socialist writers}, as well as for the newspapers. Ely is a well-meaning philistine and at least takes more pains than his German companions in adversity and stupidity, which is always to be appreciated. Grönlund, on the other hand, makes a strongly speculative impression on me; his pushing of our views, to the extent that he understands them or not, obviously serves to push his own utopianisms as real live German socialism. In any event, a symptom. . . .
   "You had the same correct forebodings about the Reichstag fellows that I did - they let tremendous petty-bourgeois desires come to light in connection with the steamship subsidy. It almost resulted in a split, which is not desirable at the present time, as long as the {Anti-}Socialist Law is in force. But as soon as we have some more elbow-room in Germany, the split will doubtless occur and then it cannot but be helpful. A petty-bourgeois Socialist fraction {of the party} is unavoidable in a country like Germany, where philistinism, even more than historical law, "ain't got no beginning." It is also useful as soon as it has constituted itself apart from the proletarian party. But this separation now would be merely harmful, if it were provoked by us. If they themselves disavow the program in practice, however, so much the better, and we can seize upon it.
   "You in America also suffer from all sorts of great scholars such as Germany's petty-bourgeois socialists possess in Geiser, Frohme, Blos, etc. The historical digressions of the Stiebelings, Douais, etc., on migrations in the Sozialist amused me very much, since these people have studied all that much better and much more thoroughly than I have. Douai, in particular, gives himself extraordinary airs. Thus, in No. 13 of the Sozialist he says: In the German conquests in Italy, etc., the king received one-third of the land, two-thirds going to the soldiers and officers, of which in turn two-thirds went to the former slaves, etc. "As can be read in Jornandes and Cassiodorus." I was dumbfounded when I read all that. "The same is reported regarding the Visigoths." "Nor was it otherwise in France." Now all that is invented from A to Z, and neither in Jornandes nor in Cassiodorus nor in any other contemporary source is there a word of it. It is both colossal ignorance and impudence to throw such nonsense up to me and to tell me I am "demonstrably wrong." The sources, practically all of which I know, state exactly the contrary. I have let it pass this time because it happened in America, where one can hardly fight such a matter out; let Monsieur Douai take care in the future - I might lose patience sometime." . . .

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(p. 148) London, January 7, 1886
   "I have received your Ms. {Manuscript} but have not as yet been able to look at it, so cannot say how long it will take me. Anyhow I shall lose no time, you may be sure. As to those wise Americans who think their country exempt from the consequences of fully expanded capitalist production, they seem to live in blissful ignorance of the fact that sundry states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc., have such an institution as a Labor Bureau, from the reports of which they might learn something to the contrary."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 148) London, January 29, 1886
   . . . "An American woman [Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky] has translated my book on the working class in England and has also sent me the manuscript for revision - some passages of which will take some time. Publication in America is assured, but I can't understand what this person now finds in the old thing. . . . Give Dietzgen my regards. He has a hard row to hoe, but it will come out all right. After all, the movement in America is making fine progress. It was not to be expected that the Anglo-Americans go at the thing other than in their way, contemptuous of reason and science, but they are coming closer none the less. And, finally, they will come over altogether. Capitalist centralization is proceeding there with seven-league boots, quite otherwise than over here."

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(p. 149) London, February 3, 1886
   "If I am not too often interrupted in the evenings, I hope to be able to send you the remainder of the Ms. {Manuscript} and possibly also the introduction in a fortnight. This latter may be printed either as a preface or as an appendix. As to the length of it I am utterly incapable of giving you any idea. I shall try to make it as short as possible, especially as it will be useless for me to try to combat arguments of the American press with which I am not even superficially acquainted. Of course, if American workingmen will not read their own states' Labor Reports, but trust to politicians' extracts, nobody can help them. But it strikes me that the present chronic depression, which seems endless so far, will tell its tale in America as well as in England. America will smash up England's industrial monopoly - whatever there is left of it - but America cannot herself succeed to that monopoly. And unless one country has the monopoly of the markets of the world, at least in the decisive branches of the trade, the conditions - relatively favorable - which existed here in England from 1848 to 1870 cannot anywhere be reproduced, and even in America the condition of the working class must gradually sink lower and lower. For if there are three countries (say England, America, and Germany) competing on comparatively equal terms for the possession of the Weltmarkt [world market], there is no chance but chronic overproduction, one of the three being capable of supplying the whole quantity required. That is the reason why I am watching the development of the present crisis with greater interest than ever and why I believe it will mark an epoch in the mental and political history of the American and English working classes - the very two whose assistance is as absolutely necessary as it is desirable."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, p. 335) London, February 9, 1886
   ... "At last I have got nearly the whole of the Ms. of the English translation of Vol. I (of Capital) in my hands; the small remnant Edward has promised for Sunday. I shall go at it this week - the only thing that keeps me from it is the revision of a translation (English) of my old book on the English working class by an American lady who has also found a publisher for it in America-strange to say! This I do in the evenings and shall - unless much interrupted - finish this week." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(p. 151) London, February 25, 1886
   ... "I am glad that all obstacles to publication have been successfully overcome. Only I am sorry that Miss Foster has applied to the Executive of the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei {SLP} in New York, as appears from their report of meeting in Der Sozialist, New York, February 13. Neither Marx nor myself has ever committed the least act which might be interpreted into asking any workingmen's organization to do us any personal favor - and this was necessary not only for the sake of our own independence but also on account of the constant bourgeois denunciations of "demagogues who coax the workingmen out of their hard-earned pennies in order to spend them for their own purposes." I shall therefore be compelled to inform that Executive that this application was made entirely without my knowledge or authority. Miss F. no doubt acted in what she thought the best way, and this step of hers is in itself no doubt perfectly admissible; still, if I could have foreseen it, I would have been compelled to do everything in my power to prevent it.
   "The revision of your translation has delayed that of the English translation of Das Kapital by three weeks - and at a most critical period of the year too. I shall set about it tonight and it may take me several months. After that, the German third volume must be taken in hand; you see, therefore, that for some time it will be impossible for me to undertake the revision of other translations, unless few and far between and of small volume." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(p. 152) London, March 12, 1886
   "Deeply buried as I am in the English Capital, I have only the time to write a few lines in haste. It did not require all your exposition of the circumstances to convince me that you were perfectly innocent of what had been done in America with your translation. The thing is done and can't be helped, though we both are convinced that it was a mistake. ...
   "And now I cannot conclude without expressing to you my most sincere thanks to you for the very great trouble you have taken to revive, in English, a book of mine which is half-forgotten in the original German."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 153) London, April 29, 1886
   ... "To be sure, I had not suspected that Douai was so terribly underrated as a great man. May he take with him into the grave the consciousness of his greatness, together with all of its underrating, without seeing it lessened by sugar-coating. But he was the right man for America, and if he had remained an ordinary democrat, I would have wished him the best of luck. But as it is, he got into the wrong pew. ...
   "I think I have already written you that an American lady, married to a Russian, has gotten it into her head to translate my old book. I looked over the translation, which required considerable work. But she wrote that publication was assured and that it had to be done at once, and so I had to go at it. Now it turns out that she turned the negotiations over to a Miss Foster, the secretary of a women's rights society, and the latter committed the blunder of giving it to the Socialist Labor Party. I told the translator what I thought of this, but it was too late. Moreover, I am glad that the gentlemen over there do not translate anything of mine; it would turn out beautifully. Their German is enough, and then their English!
   "The gentlemen of the Volkszeitung must be satisfied. They have gained control of the whole movement among the Germans, and their business must be flourishing. It is a matter of course that a man like Dietzgen is pushed to the rear there. Playing with the boycott and with little strikes is, of course, much more important than theoretical education. But with all that the cause is moving ahead mightily in America. A real mass movement {the Henry George boom} exists among the English-speaking workers for the first time. That it proceeds gropingly at first, clumsy, unclear, unknowing, is unavoidable. All that will be cleared up; the movement will and must develop through its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is a characteristic of all young peoples, but so is rapidity of practical development. As in England, all the preaching is of no use in America until the actual necessity exists. And this is present in America now, and they are becoming conscious of it. The entrance of masses of native-born workers into the movement in America is for me one of the greatest events of 1886. As for the Germans over there, let the sort now flourishing join the Americans gradually; they will still be somewhat ahead of them. And, lastly, there still is a core among the Germans over there which retains theoretical insight into the nature and the course of the whole movement, keeps the process of fermentation going, and finally rises to the top again. ...
   ... "Another thing. A Mr. J. T. McEnnis interviewed me a few days ago under the pretext of getting advice on labor legislation for the State of Missouri. I soon discovered that newspaper business was behind it, and he confessed that he was working for the leading democratic paper of St. Louis, but gave me his word of honor that he would submit every word to me in advance for revision. The man was sent to me by the Russian Stepniak. Nearly two weeks have passed, and I am afraid he did not keep his promise. I have forgotten the name of the St. Louis paper. Therefore, if anything is printed regarding the interview, please have the enclosed statement printed in Der Sozialist, the Volkszeitung, and anywhere else you think necessary. If the man does come and keep his promise, I shall, of course, let you know at once, and you can then tear up the statement." ...

   For the lack of an opportunity to edit the final version of the interview, Engels disclaimed whatever would have been printed without his approval. His disclaimer stated in part:

   ... "I had an opportunity to convince myself that Mr. McEnnis, for lack of the necessary rudimentary knowledge, would hardly be able, even with the best of intentions, to understand my remarks correctly."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, p. 353) May 7, 1886
   ... "On the other hand, in Paris our movement has reached that stage when even a mistake made would not do it too much harm. Of course the speed of future progress depends a great deal upon the leadership given by the heads of groups; but once the masses are on the move, they are like a healthy body which has the strength to eliminate the elements of disease and even a little poison."

Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Leipzig
(MEW 36, p. 483) London, May 12, 1886
   ... "The Chicago-affair probably means the end of the anarchist comedy in America. People are allowed to yell as much as they want, but with regard to pointless brawls the Americans have no tolerance since they have become an industrial nation." ...

Engels to Eduard Bernstein in Zürich
(MEW 36, pp. 486-7) London, May 22, 1886
   ... "Our Frenchmen are doing fine. Here, on the other hand, everything remains amateurish play. The anarchist stupidities in America can become useful; it is not desirable that the American workers achieve too rapid successes while they are at their present still quite bourgeois stage of thinking - high wages and short working time. That could strengthen the one-sided trades-union spirit more than necessary." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, p. 355) London, May 23, 1886
   ... "The victory at Dec[azeville] would have been exceedingly nice, but after all the defeat may be more useful to the movement in the long run. So I do believe, too, that the anarchist follies of Chicago will do much good. If the present American movement - which so far as it is not exclusively German, is still in the Trades Union stage - had got a great victory on the 8 hours question, Trades Unionism would have become a fixed and final dogma. While a mixed result will help to show them that it is necessary to go beyond "high wages and short hours.""

LAURA LAFARGUE TO FREDERICK ENGELS IN LONDON
(ELC I, pp. 356-7) Paris, May 25, 1886
   ... "I cannot help thinking that they are rather overdoing it in the American Sozialist with Deutschland {Germany}. It may be all right in the States but it is all wrong for France. It has been hard enough to get the glib and skipping Frenchies to take kindly to the ponderous "têtes carrées" [square-heads (i.e., Germans)] and, even were it true, it is impolitic to boast that the whole of the French movement is kept alive by German money. It is taking away all value from the subscriptions received from Germany, the moral effect of which has been so great." ...

ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY IN ZURICH
(MESC, pp. 371-2) London, June 3, 1886
   "Whatever the mistakes and the Borniertheit [Narrow-mindedness] of the leaders of the movement, and partly of the newly awakening masses too, one thing is certain: the American working class is moving, and no mistake. And after a few false starts, they will get into the right track soon enough. This appearance of the Americans upon the scene I consider one of the greatest events of the year. What the breakdown of Russian Czarism would be for the great military monarchies of Europe - the snapping of their mainstay - that is for the bourgeois of the whole world the breaking out of class war in America. For America after all was the ideal of all bourgeois; a country rich, vast, expanding, with purely bourgeois institutions unleavened by feudal remnants or monarchical traditions and without a permanent and hereditary proletariat. Here everyone could become, if not a capitalist, at all events an independent man, producing or trading, with his own means, for his own account. And because there were not, as yet, classes with opposing interests, our - and your - bourgeois thought that America stood above class antagonisms and struggles. That delusion has now broken down, the last Bourgeois Paradise on earth is fast changing into a Purgatorio, and can only be prevented from becoming, like Europe, an Inferno by the go-ahead pace at which the development of the newly fledged proletariat of America will take place. The way in which they have made their appearance on the scene is quite extraordinary: six months ago nobody suspected anything, and now they appear all of a sudden in such organised masses as to strike terror into the whole capitalist class. I only wish Marx could have lived to see it!" ...

   About American conditions, Marx wrote in Capital in 1867 (NW 17, p. 773):

   ... "[T]he American Civil War brought in its train a colossal national debt, and, with it, pressure of taxes, the rise of the vilest financial aristocracy, the squandering of a huge part of the public land on speculative companies for the exploitation of railways, mines, &c., in brief, the most rapid centralisation of capital. The great republic has, therefore, ceased to be the promised land for emigrant labourers. Capitalistic production advances there with giant strides, even though the lowering of wages and the dependence of the wage-worker are yet far from being brought down to the normal European level." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 158-60) Eastbourne, August 13, 1886
   ... "If the thing {"The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State"} is to come out in English at all, it ought to be published in such a way that the public can get hold of it through the regular book trade. That will not be the case, as far as I can see, with Die Lage {"The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"}. Unless the trade arrangements are very different in America from those in Europe, the booksellers will not deal in works published by outside establishments belonging to a workingmen's party. This is why Chartist and Owenite publications are nowhere preserved and nowhere to be had, not even in the British Museum, and why all our German party publications are - and were, long before the Socialist Law - not to be had through the trade, and remained unknown to the public outside the party. That is a state of things which sometimes cannot be avoided but ought to be avoided wherever possible. And you will not blame me if I wish to avoid it for the English translations of my writings, having suffered from it in Germany for more than forty years. The state of things in England is such that publishers can be got - either now or in the near future - for socialist works, and I have no doubt that in the course of next year I can have an English translation published here and the translator paid; and as I have moreover long since promised Dr. Aveling the translation of the Entwicklung [Socialism: Utopian and Scientific] and the Ursprung {"Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"}, if he can make it pay for himself, you see that an American edition, brought out outside the regular book trade, would only spoil the chance of a London edition to be brought out in the way of the regular trade and therefore accessible to the public generally and everywhere.
   "Moreover, I do not think that this book is exactly what is wanted at the present moment by the American workingman. Das Kapital will be at their service before the year is out; that will serve them for a pièce de résistance [main dish]. For lighter, more popular literature, for real propaganda, my booklet will scarcely serve. In the present undeveloped state of the movement, I think perhaps some of the French popularizations would answer best. ...
   "August 14. To return to the Ursprung. I do not mean to say that I have absolutely promised Aveling to let him have it, but I consider myself bound to him in case a translation is to come out in London. The final decision then would depend very much upon the nature of the publishing arrangements you can make in America. To a repetition of what Miss Foster has done with Die Lage I decidedly object. When I see my way to an English edition, brought out by a firm known in the bourgeois trade, and not only of this book, but probably of a collection of various other writings, with the advantage of having the translation done here (which saves me a deal of time), you will admit that I ought to look twice before sanctioning the bringing out, in America, of this little book alone and thereby spoiling the whole arrangement. And with the present anti-socialist scare in America, I doubt whether you will find regular publishers very willing to associate their name with socialist works.
   "A very good bit of work would be a series of pamphlets stating in popular language the contents of Das Kapital. The theory of surplus value, No. 1; the history of the various forms of surplus value (cooperation, manufacture, modern industry), No. 2; accumulation and the history of primitive accumulation, No. 3; the development of surplus value making in colonies (last chapter), No. 4 - this would be specially instructive in America, as it would give the economic history of that country, from a land of independent peasants to a centre of modern industry and might be completed by specially American facts.
   "In the meantime you may be sure that it will take some time yet before the mass of the American working people will begin to read socialist literature. And for those that do read and will read, there is matter enough being provided, and least of all will Der Ursprung be missed by them. With the Anglo-Saxon mind, and especially with the eminently practical development it has taken in America, theory counts for nothing until imposed by dire necessity, and I count above all things upon the teaching our friends will receive by the consequences of their own blunders to prepare them for theoretical schooling."

Engels to August Bebel in Plauen bei Dresden
(MEW 36, p. 509) London, August 18, 1886
   ... "This entrance of the Americans into the movement, and the revival of the French movement by the three Labor deputies and Decazeville - those are the two world historic events of this year. In America various stupidities are happening - the Anarchists here, the Knights of Labor there - but that doesn't matter, the thing is going and will develop quickly. There will be many disappointments - the wirepullers of the old political parties are already getting ready to get the sprouting Labor Party under their secret direction - and quite colossal blunders will be made, but nevertheless things will proceed more rapidly there than elsewhere.
   "In France the 108,000 votes for Roche have proven that the radical workers are beginning to dissociate themselves from the Radicals, and that in masses. To secure this success, this newly-won position, our people have managed to have the temporary organization for Roche's election changed into a permanent one, and so they have become the theoretical teachers of the workers who are turning away from the Radicals. All these people call themselves Socialists, but are learning now through bitter experience that their faded trash by Proudhon and L. Blanc is pure bourgeois and petty-bourgeois muck, and therefore are sufficiently open to Marx's theory. That is the result of the Radicals being half in power; should they get complete power, all the workers will secede, and I assert: victory for Radicalism, i.e. the faded old French Socialism in the Chamber means victory for Marxism, first in the Paris City Council. Oh, if only Marx could have seen this, how his maxim holds good in France and America, that the democratic republic today is nothing but the battle-ground on which the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is being fought." ...

   Let us digress here into a portion of a story about Joseph Dietzgen, as reported in Sorge's book entitled "The Labor Movement in the United States" (pp. 242-3):

   ... "Since the majority of the organized German workers are socialists, one could assume that by the description of the activities of German workers in the United States the discussion concerns only socialists. However - there are socialists and Socialists. There are socialists as such, to which most of the organized German workers belong, and there are Socialists in particular, official Socialists, members of the Socialist Labor Party, socialists par excellence. There remains something to be said about the latter, especially about their national executive committee, their executive, as it is called here for short.
   "The executive of the Socialist Labor Party resided during this whole period in the two neighboring towns of New York City and Brooklyn and made continuous, if largely unsuccessful, efforts to expand this socialist organization. During the first three years (1886-1889) especially, the executive strictly adhered to the letter of socialist dogma and thus often lost the spirit of it. They obstinately insisted on adhering to the statute of the organization without considering the peculiar development of the situation which cannot be forced into a straitjacket; they always wanted to be first and often ended up last because of their clumsiness. They lacked understanding of the important events in 1886 and 1887 and the initiative to exploit these events for the socialist cause, as well as the courage and virility to maintain a secure position.
   "During the great New Yorkers' election campaign in 1886, the executive acted rather listlessly, and it approved the 1887 campaign (Progressive Labor Party) only a few days before the election. The executive observed the struggle almost indifferently because the little word socialist did not appear at the head of the ballot and proclamations. These people missed the point that movement, vigorous agitation, is the first requisite for existence and any progress. They embraced words instead and finally collapsed pitifully.
   "When the bomb exploded in the Haymarket and the white terror reigned in Chicago, when the workers' press was censored there, the right of assembly suspended, the personal security of the habeas corpus abolished, and the sanctity of the home disrespected, when the official bourgeoisie started to destroy the leaders of the proletariat in the giant city on Lake Michigan, then the executive of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) could think of nothing better to do than to whine into the world and into the ears of the bourgeoisie: We are no anarchists, we have nothing to do with them.
   "Josef Dietzgen, the philosopher of the proletariat as Marx called him, moved to Chicago in March 1886 where the executive ordered him to remain as a co-worker of the Socialist, the central organ of the SLP, and to write reports of the situation in and around Chicago. Almost every number of the journal in March and April of 1886 contained writings by Dietzgen. When his report on the Haymarket bomb affair reached the editorial staff of the Socialist, they showed it to the executive, which rejected it. The latter asked its secretary to inform Dietzgen that his report, the report of an eyewitness, did not agree with the point of view of the executive sitting 1,000 miles away and therefore could not be published. Fear, it seemed, lay in the bones of this peculiar labor party executive, and it is almost surprising that they did not fare as Lingenau, who became famous through his last will and who died as a result of the fears that the poor fellow suffered during the railroad unrest.
   "The executive thirsted quite madly for a testimonial of good behavior, and the police finally relented and gave it a certificate of good conduct for the person who replaced Dietzgen. This man wrote his reports for the Socialist to the liking of his bosses in New York. As it happened, the police arrested him, as they did many people in Chicago at that time. He was brought before a police captain who questioned him about his work and status. The party comrade and correspondent of the Socialist explained to the policeman that he tried to write about the mistakes and sins of the anarchists with whom neither he nor his party comrades had anything in common. The supervisor of the law and nightstick heroes was happy to make the acquaintance of such a solid, honorable man and released him with the following words, recorded by the correspondent. "You are a right fellow; go home and write that, it's all right!"
   "One should compare that with the deeds and presence of Dietzgen" ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 161) London, September 16, 1886
   ... "A fine gang seems to be at the head of the party in New York; the Sozialist is a model of what a paper should not be. But neither can I support Dietzgen in his article on the anarchists* - he has a peculiar way of dealing with things. If a person has a perhaps somewhat narrow opinion on a certain point, Dietzgen cannot emphasize enough (and often too much) that the matter has two sides. But now, because the New Yorkers are behaving contemptibly, he suddenly takes the other side and wants to picture us all as anarchists. The moment may excuse this, but he shouldn't forget all his dialectics at the decisive moment. However, he has gotten over it by now, no doubt, and is certainly back on the right track; I have no worries on that score.
   "In a country as untouched as America, which has developed in a purely bourgeois fashion without any feudal past, but has unwittingly taken over from England a whole store of ideology from feudal times, such as the English common law, religion, and sectarianism, and where the exigencies of practical labor and the concentrating of capital have produced a contempt for all theory, which is only now disappearing in the educated circles of scholars - in such a country the people must become conscious of their own social interests by making blunder after blunder. Nor will that be spared the workers; the confusion of the trade unions, socialists, Knights of Labor, etc., will persist for some time to come, and they will learn only by their own mistakes. But the main thing is that they have started moving, that things are going ahead generally, that the spell is broken; and they will go fast, too, faster than anywhere else, even though on a singular road, which seems, from the theoretical standpoint, to be an almost insane road." ...
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   * "In an article in the Chicago Vorbote, Dietzgen had proposed that no distinction should be made, for the time being, between anarchists, socialists, and communists." {Note by International Publishers.}

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, p. 373) London, September 24, 1886
   ... "I had a letter from Tussy {Eleanor} on her arrival in N[ew] Y[ork], she had a very pleasant voyage, but was rather disappointed at the live American bourgeois she met on board; it rather damped her enthusiasm for America, but prepared her for the realities of American life." ...

PAUL LAFARGUE TO FREDERICK ENGELS IN LONDON
(ELC I, p. 376) Paris, September 30, 1886
   ... "Our acquittal has been an immense victory; it is the first time that the bourgeois have acquitted Socialists because they are Socialists: that is a big step. It shows, to some extent, that the bourgeoisie is ready for some part of our theories. Unfortunately the anarchistic form is too beloved in France, otherwise we could do more propaganda amongst the bourgeois, who are frightened off by the large phrases of the anarchists which the revolutionaries are compelled to use up to a point.
   "What a success the three travelers in socialism have had in New York! The telegraph reports their triumphal progress. This trip will have big repercussions in America and in England: it will greatly help the development of the American socialist movement and give Tussy and Aveling standing in England. They may on their return exercise greater influence on the Socialist League and guide it in the right direction." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, pp. 377-8) London, October 2, 1886
   ... "I am afraid Paul exaggerates the significance of the Paris verdict in so far as it is a symptom of the accessibility of the industrial bourgeoisie for socialist ideas. The struggle between usurer and industrial capitalist is one within the bourgeoisie itself, and though no doubt a certain number of petty bourgeois will be driven over to us by the certainty of their impending expropriation de la part des boursiers [by the moneybags], yet we can never hope to get the mass of them over to our side. Moreover, this is not desirable, as they bring their narrow class prejudices along with them. In Germany we have too many of them, and it is they who form the dead weight which trammels the march of the party. It will ever be the lot of the petty bourgeois - as a mass - to float undecidedly between the two great classes, one part to be crushed by the centralization of capital, the other by the victory of the proletariat. On the decisive day, they will as usual be tottering, wavering and helpless, se laisseront faire [will offer no resistance], and that is all we want. Even if they come round to our views they will say: of course communism is the ultimate solution, but it is far off, maybe 100 years before it can be realised - in other words: we do not mean to work for its realisation neither in our, nor in our children's lifetime. Such is our experience in Germany.
   "Otherwise the verdict is a grand victory and marks a decided step in advance. The bourgeoisie, from the moment it is faced by a conscious and organised proletariat, becomes entangled in hopeless contradictions between its liberal and democratic general tendencies here, and the repressive necessities of its defensive struggle against the proletariat there. A cowardly bourgeoisie, like the German and Russian, sacrifices its general class tendencies to the momentary advantages of brutal repression. But a bourgeoisie with a revolutionary history of its own, such as the English and particularly the French, cannot do that so easily. Hence that struggle within the bourgeoisie itself, which in spite of occasional fits of violence and oppression, on the whole drives it forward - see the various electoral reforms of Gladstone in England, and the advance of radicalism in France. This verdict is a new étape [stage]. And so the bourgeoisie, in doing its own work, is doing ours." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC I, pp. 395-6) London, November 24, 1886
   "I hope you have recd the American letters I sent you yesterday; today I can keep my word and write. Our people {Liebknecht and the Avelings} have indeed hit upon a lucky moment for their journey, it coincides with the first formation of a real American working men's party and what was practically an immense success, the Henry George "boom" in N[ew] York. Master George is rather a confused sort of a body and being a Yankee, has a nostrum of his own, and not a very excellent one, but his confusion is a very fair expression of the present stage of development of the Anglo-American working-class mind, and we cannot expect even American masses to arrive at theoretical perfection in six or eight months - the age of this movement. And considering that the Germans in America are anything but a fair and adequate sample of the workmen of Germany, but rather of the elements the movement at home has eliminated - Lassalleans, disappointed ambitions, sectarians of all sorts - I for one am not sorry that the Americans start independently of them, or at least of their leadership. As a ferment, the Germans can and will act, and at the same time undergo, themselves, a good deal of useful and necessary fermentation. The unavoidable starting point, in America, are the Knights of Labour, who are a real power, and are sure to form the first embodiment of the movement. Their absurd organisation and very slippery leaders - used to the methods of corrupt American partisanship - will very soon provoke a crisis within that body itself, and then a more adequate and more effective organisation can be developed from it. All this, I think, will not take very long in Yankeeland; the great point gained is that the political action of the working class as an independent party is henceforth established there." ...

ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE IN HOBOKEN
(MESC, pp. 373-5) London, November 29,1886
   "The Henry George boom has of course brought to light a colossal mass of fraud, and I am glad I was not there. But in spite of it all it was an epoch-making day. The Germans {SLP} do not know how to use their theory to set the American masses in motion; most of them do not understand the theory themselves and treat it in a doctrinaire and dogmatic way as something that has got to be learned by heart and which will then satisfy all requirements without more ado. To them it is a credo and not a guide to action. What is more, they learn no English on principle. Hence the American masses had to seek out their own path and seem to have found it for the time being in the Knights of Labor, whose confused principles and ludicrous organisation seem to correspond to their own confusion. But from all I hear, the Knights of Labor are a real power, especially in New England and the West, and are becoming more so every day owing to the brutal opposition of the capitalists. I think it is necessary to work inside this organisation, to form within this still quite plastic mass a core of people who understand the movement and its aims and will therefore take over the leadership, at least of a section, when the inevitable, now impending break-up of the present "order" takes place. The worst side of the Knights of Labor was their political neutrality, which has resulted in sheer trickery on the part of the Powderlys, etc.; but the edge of this has been taken off by the behaviour of the masses in the November elections, especially in New York. The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the constitution of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, much more rapidly than we had a right to expect, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of this party is still confused and extremely deficient and that it has raised the banner of Henry George are unavoidable evils but also merely transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they have the opportunity only when they have a movement of their own - no matter in what form so long as it is their own movement - in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn from their experience. The movement in America is at the same stage as it was in our country before 1848; the really intelligent people there will first have to play the part played by the Communist League among the workers' associations before 1848. Except that in America things will now proceed infinitely faster. For the movement to have gained such election successes after scarcely eight months of existence is wholly unprecedented. And what is still lacking will be set going by the bourgeoisie; nowhere in the whole world do they come out so shamelessly and tyrannically as over there, and your judges brilliantly outshine Bismarck's imperial pettifoggers. Where the bourgeoisie wages the struggle by such methods, a crucial stage is rapidly reached, and if we in Europe do not hurry up the Americans will soon outdistance us. But just now it is doubly necessary that there should be a few people on our side who have a firm grasp of theory and well-tried tactics and can also speak and write English; because for good historical reasons the Americans are worlds behind in all theoretical questions; and although they did not bring over any mediaeval institutions from Europe, the did bring over masses of mediaeval traditions, religion, English common (feudal) law, superstition, spiritualism - in short, every kind of imbecility which was not directly harmful to business and which is now very serviceable for stupefying the masses. If there are some theoretically lucid minds there, who can tell them the consequences of their own mistakes beforehand and make them understand that every movement which does not keep the destruction of the wage system constantly in view as the final goal is bound to go astray and fail - then much nonsense can be avoided and the process considerably shortened. But it must be done in the English way, the specific German character must be laid aside, and the gentlemen of the Sozialist will hardly be capable of doing this, while those of the Volkszeitung are cleverer only where business is involved.
   "In Europe the effect of the American elections in November was tremendous. That England and America in particular had no labour movement up to now was the big trump card of the radical republicans everywhere, especially in France. Now these gentlemen are dumbfounded; Mr. Clemenceau in particular saw the whole foundation of his policy collapse on November 2nd. "Look at America", was his eternal motto; "where there is a real republic, there is no poverty and no labour movement!" And the same thing is happening to the Progressives and "democrats" in Germany and here - where they are also witnessing the beginnings of their own movement. The very fact that the movement is so sharply accentuated as a labour movement and has sprung up so suddenly and forcefully has stunned these people completely." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 165-7) London, December 28, 1886
   ... "Of course the appendix {to "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"} is now a little out of date, and as I anticipated something of the kind, I proposed that it should be written when the book was ready through the press. Now a preface will be much wanted, and I will write you one; but before, I must await the return of the Avelings to have a full report of the state of things in America; and it seems to me that my preface will not be exactly what you desire.
   "First, you seem to me to treat New York a little as the Paris of America, and to overrate the importance, for the country at large, of the local New York movement with its local features. No doubt it has a great importance, but then the Northwest, with its background of a numerous farming population and its independent movement, will hardly accept blindly the George theory.
   "Secondly, the preface of this book is hardly the place for a thoroughgoing criticism of that theory, and does not even offer the necessary space for it.
   "Thirdly, I should have to study thoroughly Henry George's various writings and speeches (most of which I have not got) so as to render impossible all replies based on subterfuges and side-issues.
   "My preface will of course turn entirely on the immense stride made by the American workingman in the last ten months, and naturally also touch Henry George and his land scheme. But it cannot pretend to deal extensively with it. Nor do I think the time for that has come. It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root, and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than to learn by one's own mistakes, "durch Schaden klug werden." {To learn by bitter experience} And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical and so contemptuous of theory as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H{enry} G{eorge} or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own. Therefore I think also the Knights of Labor a most important factor in the movement which ought not to be pooh-poohed from without but to be revolutionised from within, and I consider that many of the Germans there made a grievous mistake when they tried, in the face of a mighty and glorious movement not of their own creation, to make of their imported and not always understood theory a kind of alleinseligmachendes [it alone bringing salvation] Dogma, and to keep aloof from any movement which did not accept that dogma. Our theory is not a dogma but the exposition of a process of evolution, and that process involves successive phases. To expect that the Americans will start with the full consciousness of the theory worked out in older industrial countries is to expect the impossible. What the Germans ought to do is to act up to their own theory - if they understand it, as we did in 1845 and 1848 - to go in for any real general working-class movement, accept its faktische [actual] starting point as such, and work it gradually up to the theoretical level by pointing out how every mistake made, every reverse suffered, was a necessary consequence of mistaken theoretical orders in the original programme; they ought, in the words of the Communist Manifesto: in der Gegenwart der Bewegung die Zukunft der Bewegung zu repräsentieren [To represent in the movement of the present the future of that movement]. But above all give the movement time to consolidate; do not make the inevitable confusion of the first start worse confounded by forcing down people's throats things which, at present, they cannot properly understand but which they soon will learn. A million or two of working men's votes next November for a bona fide working men's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform. The very first attempt - soon to be made if the movement progresses - to consolidate the moving masses on a national basis will bring them all face to face, Georgeites, Knights of Labor, trade unionists, and all; and if our German friends by that time have learnt enough of the language of the country to go in for a discussion, then will be the time for them to criticise the views of the others and thus, by showing up the inconsistencies of the various standpoints, to bring them gradually to understand their own actual position, the position made for them by the correlation of capital and wage labor. But anything that might delay or prevent that national consolidation of the working men's party - on no matter what platform - I should consider a great mistake, and therefore I do not think the time has arrived to speak out fully and exhaustively either with regard to Henry George or the Knights of Labor." ...

   Engels' insightful analyses of the American political terrain of that time period are still valuable for understanding the situation we find ourselves in today. The following extract from Engels' January 1887 Preface to the American edition of "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" is another fine example of his powers of observation (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 16):

   "In February 1885, American public opinion was almost unanimous on this one point; that there was no working class, in the European sense of the word, in America*; that consequently no class struggle between workmen and capitalists, such as tore European society to pieces, was possible in the American Republic; and that, therefore, Socialism was a thing of foreign importation which could never take root on American soil." {Engels then went on to enumerate fresh signs of activity in the American workers' movement in the subsequent years of 1886-7.}
_______
   * "An English edition of my book, which was written in 1844, was justified precisely because the industrial conditions in present-day America correspond almost exactly to those which obtained in England in the 1840s, i.e., those which I described. How much this is the case is evident from the articles on "The Labour Movement in America." by Edward and Eleanor Marx-Aveling published in the March, April, May and June Issues of Time, the London monthly. I am referring to these excellent articles with all the greater pleasure because it offers me an opportunity at the same time to reject the miserable slanderous accusations against Aveling which the Executive of the American Socialist Labor Party was unscrupulous enough to circulate." {Footnote by Engels.}

   In his footnote, Engels referred to an experience in which Eleanor (Tussy) Marx-Aveling accompanied her husband - Dr. Edward Aveling - and Wilhelm Liebknecht on a propaganda tour of America. They had been hired by the SLP to agitate for the Party, after which the SLP Executive Committee accused Aveling of "fabricating accounts". In his correspondence, Engels "helped Aveling to prove the absurdity and falsity of those charges"*.
_________
   * From publisher's note #6 to "The Condition of the Working Class in England", Frederick Engels, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 336.

   In his same Preface, Engels described "three more or less definite forms under which the American labor movement thus presents itself" - Henry George's United Labor Party, the Knights of Labor, and the SLP (Ibid., p. 22):

   "The third section consists of the Socialist Labor Party. This section is a party but in name, for nowhere in America has it, up to now, been able actually to take its stand as a political party. It is, moreover, to a certain extent foreign to America, having until lately been made up almost exclusively by German immigrants, using their own language and for the most part, little conversant with the common language of the country. But if it came from a foreign stock, it came, at the same time, armed with the experience earned during long years of class struggle in Europe, and with an insight into the general conditions of working-class emancipation, far superior to that hitherto gained by American working-men. This is a fortunate circumstance for the American proletarians who thus are enabled to appropriate, and to take advantage of, the intellectual and moral fruits of the forty years' struggle of their European class-mates, and thus to hasten on the time of their own victory. For, as I said before, there cannot be any doubt that the ultimate platform of the American working class must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant working class of Europe, the same as that of the German-American Socialist Labor Party. In so far this party is called upon to play a very important part in the movement. But in order to do so they will have to doff every remnant of their foreign garb. They will have to become out and out American. They cannot expect the Americans to come to them; they, the minority and the immigrants, must go to the Americans, who are the vast majority and the natives. And to do that, they must above all things learn English."

   Remarkably enough, Engels wrote that "the ultimate platform of the American working class must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant working class of Europe, the same as that of the German-American Socialist Labor Party." That old pre-SIU platform is reproduced in Appendix 2, and calls for a less bureaucratic democracy than what the republic enjoys today.

ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY IN NEW YORK
(MESC, p. 378) London, January 27, 1887
   ... "The movement in America, just at this moment, is I believe best seen from across the Ocean. On the spot, personal bickering and local disputes must obscure much of the grandeur of it. And the only thing that could really delay its march, would be the consolidation of these differences into established sects. To some extent, that will be unavoidable, but the less of it the better. And the Germans have most to guard against this. Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learnt by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is crammed into the Americans from without and the more they test it through their own experience - with the help of the Germans - the more it will become second nature with them. When we returned to Germany in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of gaining the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. When Marx founded the International, he drew up the General Rules in such a way that all working-class Socialists of that period could join it - Proudhonists, Pierre-Lerouxists, and even the more advanced section of the English Trades Unions; and it was only through this latitude that the International became what it was, the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sects, with the exception of the Anarchists, whose sudden appearance in various countries was but the effect of the violent bourgeois reaction after the Commune and could therefore safely be left by us to die out of itself, as it did. Had we from 1864-73 insisted on working together only with those who openly adopted our platform - where should we be today? I think all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organisation, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 169-174) London, February 9, 1887
   ... "As to the distorted passage from my letter which the irrepressible Eaton could not refrain from publishing, it is no use for Rosenberg and Co. to saddle Aveling with it. The passage about the hundred thousands and millions occurred in my letter {dated December 28} to you and in no other letter. So you will know who is responsible for this indiscretion and for putting this nonsense into my mouth. As far as I am concerned I have no objection to your publishing the whole passage and indeed the whole letter.
   "Your fear as to my being unduly influenced by Aveling in my view of the American movement is groundless. As soon as there was a national American working-class movement, independent of the Germans, my standpoint was clearly indicated by the facts of the case. That great national movement, no matter what its first form, is the real starting point of American working-class development. If the Germans join it, in order to help it or to hasten its development in the right direction, they may do a great deal of good and play a decisive part in it. If they stand aloof, they will dwindle down into a dogmatic sect and be brushed aside as people who do not understand their own principles. Mrs. Aveling, who has seen her father {Marx} at work, understood this quite as well from the beginning, and if Aveling saw it too, all the better. And all my letters to America, to Sorge, to yourself, to the Avelings, from the very beginning, have repeated this view over and over again. Still I was glad to see the Avelings before writing my preface, because they gave me some new facts about the inner mysteries of the German party in New York.
   "You appear to take it for granted that Aveling has behaved in America as a swindler, and not only that: you call upon me, upon the strength of assertions and allusions contained in your letter, to treat him as such and to do all in my power to have him excluded from the literary organs of the party. Now for all these assertions you cannot have any proof because you have not been able to hear any defense. Still you are better off then we here; you have at least heard one side, while we do not even know what the distinct charge is!
   "In the early hole-and-corner stages of the working-class movement, when the workingmen are still under the influence of traditional prejudices, woe be to the man who, being of bourgeois origin or superior education, goes into the movement and is rash enough to enter into money relations with the working-class element. There is sure to be a dispute upon the cash account, and this is at once enlarged into an attempt at exploitation. Especially so if the "bourgeois" happens to have views on theoretical or tactical points that disagree with those of the majority or even of a minority. This I have constantly seen for more than forty years. The worst of all were the Germans; in Germany the growth of the movement has long since swept that failing away, but it has not died out with the Germans outside Germany. For that reason Marx and I have always tried to avoid having any money dealings with the party, no matter in what country.
   "And when the Avelings went to America I had very strong misgivings on that point. Only when it was arranged that the tour should be made together with Liebknecht, I felt more at rest, because Liebknecht, as an old hand, would know how to deal with such complaints, and because any charges brought against him on that score would merely make the complainants ridiculous in Germany and in Europe generally. Well, the tour was arranged differently afterwards, and here is the result.
   "From this you will see that I look upon this matter a great deal cooler than what people seem to do in New York. But moreover, I have known Aveling for four years; I know that he has twice sacrificed his social and economic position to his convictions, and might be, had he refrained from doing so, a professor in an English university and a distinguished physiologist instead of an overworked journalist with a very uncertain income. I have had occasion to observe his capacities by working with him, and his character by seeing him pass through rather trying circumstances more than once, and it will take a good deal (more than mere assertions and innuendoes) before I believe what some people tell about him now in New York.
   "But then, had he tried to swindle the party, how could he do that during all his tour without his wife being cognizant of it? And in that case the charge includes her too. And then it becomes utterly absurd, in my eyes at least. Her I have known from a child, and for the last seventeen years she has been constantly about me. And more than that, I have inherited from Marx the obligation to stand by his children as he would have done himself, and to see, as far as lies in my power, that they are not wronged. And that I shall do, in spite of fifty Executives. The daughter of Marx swindling the working class - too rich indeed!
   "Then you say: "No one here imagines that Dr. Aveling put the money in his pocket, or spent it as the bills indicate. They believe that he merely tried to cover his wife's expenses." That is a distinct charge of forgery, and this you give as an extenuating charitable supposition. What then, if this be the attenuated charge, what is the full charge? And on what ground is this charge made? "The ridiculous bills which Dr. Aveling sent in." I should like to see a few of these "ridiculous" bills. For fifteen weeks they were sent every Sunday to the Executive who gave no sign of disapproval. Nor did they budge when the Avelings, Dec. 19, returned to New York. It was only on the 23rd, when they were on the point of leaving, when they could no longer defend themselves against charges, real or trumped-up, that the Executive discovered these bills, to which, singly, they had never objected, were ridiculous when added up! That is to say they object, not to the bills, but to the rules of addition. Why, then, did the Executive, instead of shortening the tour, try to extend it, and just at the close of it plan a second visit of the Avelings to Chicago, which fortunately did not come off? It strikes me that in all this it is not the bills which are ridiculous but the Executive.
   "Well, at the meeting of December 23d, the Avelings hear for the first time that these bills are ridiculous, and the Executive lays before them a statement of account drawn up by themselves. As soon as his statement is objected to Dr. Aveling at once accepts that of the Executive, according to which - as I have seen myself in Rosenberg's handwriting - a balance is due to him of $176.00. Then, being again bullied by Walther, he refuses that balance, returns $76.00 at once, and sends the rest from London. And then you say that "Dr. Aveling's returning the $100.00 has not helped matters at all." Why, what in the name of goodness do these people want then? Is Aveling to be treated as a swindler because the Executive appropriate $176.00 which, on their own showing, belong to him?
   "Then the mystery with which the Executive envelop this matter becomes darker and darker. When the article in the New York Herald appeared and was cabled across, the Avelings sent the enclosed circular to the sections, and at the same time, to the Executive. That circular - unless I take Aveling to be a liar and a swindler, which I decline doing until further conclusive evidence - is in my eyes conclusive against the Executive, at least until I see their reply. But what do the Executive do? They get infamous attacks into the Volkszeitung, they spread rumors and reports behind Aveling's back, they call meetings of the sections and lay their version before them, and get them to vote resolutions in a matter which cannot be judged without an impartial audit of the whole accounts and a full defense of the absent accused. And having, as it appears, succeeded in their New York circle to slander Aveling, not as a man who has spent their money extravagantly (for such, rightly or wrongly, might be their honest conviction), but as a swindler and forger of accounts, they rise to the level of the occasion created by their own inventive genius, and promise a circular proclaiming Aveling a swindler and forger to the working class of the whole world! And all this, mind you, behind the back of, and unknown to the man whom they charge, and who can, not only not defend himself, but not even make out the precise facts on which the charge is based! If this is the way people are to be judged in our party, then give me the Leipzig Reichsgericht [Supreme Court of Germany] and the Chicago jury. [The hand-picked jury that convicted eight militant workers of murder after the Haymarket massacre of May 4, 1886]
   "Fortunately we have passed that stage in the older parties in Europe. We have seen Executives rise and fall by the dozen; we know they are as fallible as any pope, and have even known more than one that lived sumptuously on the pence of the workingmen, and had swindlers and forgers of accounts in their midst. In their circular, the Executive will not only have to define their charge - which perhaps will thus at last become known to us - but also to prove it. People on this side do not take the work of their own Executives for gospel, much less that of Mr. Walther and Mr. Rosenberg, be it ever so "official".
   "In my opinion, the Executive have placed themselves in a very uncomfortable position. Had they grumbled at the accounts as merely extravagant, they might have secured a hearing outside their own circle, for that is more or less a matter of opinion. But having never objected to the accounts sent in, they felt they had cut the ground from under their own feet, and, as weak people do under the circumstances, exaggerated the charge in order to cover themselves. Thus they came to the fresh charge of swindling and forgery which they can never prove and must be content to insinuate. But an infamy insinuated to cover mere weakness remains neither more nor less an infamy. And having swelled what was originally a mere trifling matter of disputed accounts into a criminal offense, they actually feel bound to go before the various working-class parties with it. And naturally, they do it in a sneaking underhand way, preventing the accused from even hearing the charge. One mistaken step leads to another, and at last they arrive in a complete mess and are caught in their own net. And all that not out of inborn malice, but sheer weakness.
   "You will now see that I must distinctly decline following your advice as to "giving Kautsky a hint, not to let the letters appear which are advertised in the name of Aveling," because the Executive are going to launch "an official circular" against Aveling, and "his name as one of the staff can only injure any organ." Neither Kautsky nor myself has, I believe, ever given any ground for anyone to suppose that we would treat thus the friends we have worked with for years, upon the strength of mere assertions and innuendoes. And if I were to say anything of the kind to Kautsky, I should simply drive him to the conclusion that I was either falling rapidly into dotage or that I was no longer to be trusted across the road. Indeed I feel certain you regretted having written this passage as soon as the letter had gone.
   "I see very well that you wrote your letter in what you considered the interests of the party, and thus were led to represent to me the case of Aveling as hopeless and judged without appeal. But so far he is judged by nobody but the Executive who are themselves parties, accusers, judges, and jury all in one, for the resolution of the New York sections, whatever it may be, counts for nothing. What the other sections may say remains to be seen, but even they, if impartial, can only declare themselves incompetent until they have the full facts and until the accused has been heard. And I for one consider it utterly ruinous to the party to introduce into it, and even to outdo, the kind of justice practiced by Bismarck and the American bourgeois, who do at least respect forms and give the prisoner at the bar a hearing - and for us to act thus at the very moment we protest against these infamous proceedings.
   "No doubt it may suit the Executive, under the pretense of avoiding public scandal, to shirk publicity. But that will not do. Either they must retract the dishonoring charge, reduce the case to its simple dimensions of a dispute about accounts, and settle that honorably and straightforwardly, or they must come out publicly with the charge and have it fought out. There has already too much of it been allowed to leak out, and it cannot remain where it is, nor is Aveling the man to leave it there. And as I cannot allow the Avelings to be accused of infamies behind their back, it was my duty to communicate your letter to Mrs. Aveling (he being too ill at present) and to read her my reply. And if at any time circumstances should require the publication of this my letter, you are at liberty to publish it in full, while I reserve to myself the same right, of course without dragging in your name, unless the people should have done so previously."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 175) London, Feb. 12, 1887
   ... "The gentlemen of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party are behaving quite abominably towards the Avelings. After the Herald article was published through their indiscretion, if not inspiration, a quite infamous article appeared in the Volkszeitung, for which I can only hold Mr. Douai responsible for the present. The Avelings answered the Herald scandal with the enclosed circular, which was sent out from here around January 18th to all the sections as well as to the Executive. Well, on January 28th the latter had a person whom I may not name for the present, but whom you must therefore guess, write me an embarrassed letter in which it is asserted as a fact, an undisputed fact, that Aveling tried to cheat them. He sent in false accounts - so it is assumed out of Christian charity - in order to cover his wife's hotel expenses (the party paid only the railroad fare for Tussy), and returning the $176.00 does not change matters, for that isn't the point at issue at all, etc. Nothing but insinuations, not a single fact, not even a definite charge. And then it is said: they have already had the New York sections pass a resolution on the matter in order to issue a circular to all the European parties to brand Aveling. And I am called upon to warn Kautsky not to print anything more by such a blackguard as Aveling, who is to be expelled from all party organs!
   "You can imagine how I replied to these dirty tricks. If I can find anyone to make a copy of the letter I shall send you it - with my inflamed eye I cannot copy it for the third time. The gentlemen haven't the slightest pretext. For when Aveling first heard on December 23rd, through a letter from Rosenberg, that the Executive would object to some items in his statement of account, he answered Rosenberg at once, sending the letter by special messenger: "I cannot discuss money matters with the party, and am ready to accept anything without discussion that the National Executive of the S.L.P. thinks right!" And that was before he knew what they would say and offer him! And now these fellows go ahead, pocket $176.00, which belong to the Avelings according to their own reckoning, and declare for that very reason that Aveling, and not they themselves, is a swindler!
   "Now we shall have to go through with the affair. Unfortunately, however, we here know no one in New York except yourself who can be relied on, ever since the Volkszeitung, too, has behaved so vulgarly. I should be pleased if you could let us know how Schewitsch and others stand, whether or not they have already let themselves be duped by the Executive's lies. We should at least know whom to turn to in New York without bothering you. But one must marvel at the fact that the very people in New York who are indignant about the Chicago jury outdo the disgracefulness of that jury in this case and damn people without even giving them a hearing, without even telling them what the charges against them are."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC II, p. 26) London, February 24, 1887
   ... "In a day or two you will get a printed circular with Aveling's reply to the charges of the N[ew] York Executive. If this Circular has not been sent to the German club in Paris then it has not been sent to Paris at all. It is nothing but the usual complaint of Knoten against Gelehrte [louts vs. men of learning] that they lived extravagantly on the pence of the working men. Fortunately we have a good reply."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 177-8) London, March 10, 1887
   "Postcard and letter of February 21 received. You guessed right. It would be useless to send a copy of the long letter, as the formulation of the complaints in the Executive's circular is considerably different and milder, and up to now all the rest is only private gossip. How the people in Europe see the thing is shown by Singer's reply to the circular sent him: "It is the old story; it's only a pity that the Avelings have to suffer for it." No doubt you have received this circular, which I sent you in four English and four German copies, as well as my letter of about a week ago.
   "W[ischnewetsky] is not able to translate the Manifesto. Only one man can do that, Sam Moore, and he is working on it now; I already have the first section in ms. But it should be remembered that the Manifesto, like almost all the shorter works of Marx and myself, is far too difficult for America at the present time. The workers over there are only beginning to enter the movement . . . they are still quite crude, tremendously backward theoretically, in particular, as a result of their general Anglo-Saxon and special American nature and previous training - the lever must be applied directly in practice, and for that a whole new literature is necessary. I suggested to W[ischnewetsky] some time ago that she embody the main points of Capital in popularly written independent little pamphlets. Once the people are somewhat on the right road, the Manifesto will not fail to make its impression, whereas now it would be effective only among a few. ...
   "The Socialist Labor Party may be what it likes*, and claim for itself the results of its predecessors' work as much as it likes, but it is the sole workers' organization in America wholly standing on our platform. It has more than 70 sections throughout the North and West, and as such, and only as such, have I recognized it. I have expressly said that it is a party only in name. And I am convinced that the gentlemen of the Executive were very much disappointed with my preface and would have preferred not to have it. For they themselves belong to the wing which I say will ruin the party if it gains the upper hand. And it seems to be aiming at that. In the local Justice Rosenberg attacks the K. of L. {Knights of Labor} because of the longshoremen's strike {involving 30,000 workers}; he may not be entirely wrong about the individual facts, but he displays a lack of insight into the course of the movement that will soon destroy the party if these people continue to rule. The very blunders of the careerist leaders of the K. of L. and their inevitable conflicts with the Central Labor Unions in the big Eastern cities must lead to a crisis within the K. of L. and bring it to a head, but the blockhead doesn't realize that." ...
__________
   * "Engels had received complaints regarding the comments on the Socialist Labor Party made in his preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. " {Note by International Publishers.}

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 178-80) London, March 16, 1887
   "Many thanks for your letters of February 28th and March 2nd. with the enclosures, and for your many efforts. I am returning the Exec[utive]'s circular herewith, as we have it. We sent the enclosed letter to J[onas] at once in reply to the Volkszeitung article (so the pretty Jonas kept Aveling's reply for a whole month before deciding to print it). If he should not print it and you can exert any pressure upon him, it would be excellent. But his article seems to indicate a certain retreat already.
   "The great point in dispute regarding the objectionable items in A[veling]'s account will doubtless have been solved by our circular of February 26th. It is extraordinary that people who make a fuss about such details, which cannot be understood at all out of their context, do not say to themselves that the other side of this context must be heard before one takes it upon oneself to sit in judgment. But these expenses would also have been found in Liebk[necht]'s account if the latter had handed in his accounts at all. He said, however, that the party must bear all my expenses, and so I'll not write anything down. And they were satisfied with that. The Ex[ecutive] then says nothing about the fact that Aveling, in Boston, for instance, paid almost all the expenses, not only for L[iebknecht], but for his daughter as well, although it is set forth in the accounts and we were decent enough not to mention it in the circular. L[iebknecht] let all the wine, etc., be brought to A[veling]'s room and thus charged to A[veling]'s account during their trip. The Executive knows all that and suppresses it. But the meanest of all is that it sent out its circular over there on January 7th, but sent it to us only on February 3rd, so that it gained a whole month's unhampered headstart in its calumnies before we even learned what A[veling] was really accused of.
   " I do not believe without further proof that the resol[ution] has been adopted by most of the sections. The way in which the Knights of Labor are being treated is, if I am to base myself upon A[veling]'s and Tussy's reports, diametrically opposed to the views of all the sec[tions] in the West. But if that is the case, the whole "party" can bury itself alive.
   "It is really fortunate that you sent me the Soz[ialist]. Up to now I was able to give Kautsky or the Avelings the second copy received from the Executive, so that it had its uses. This week the fine gang no longer sent me the paper. I take that to mean that the next numbers will again contain contemptible slanders of A[veling]. We wrote to Müller in St. Paul, asking him also to print the second circular of February 26. While the Ex[ecutive] exploits secret journalism in its own way as it pleases, it apparently wants to place the onus upon A[veling] if he is the first to publish.
   "It seemed to us here to be a matter of course that A[veling] did not answer the New York Herald. The art[icle] was so weirdly absurd and, what is more, both of them said it wasn't customary in America to answer such farces seriously. From what I know of the Herald they would hardly have printed it either. Only after the art[icle] was reprinted here did A[veling] reply at once. But even if A[veling] had answered the Herald art[icle], how would that have helped him against the Ex[ecutive]? Thus this seems to me to be a lame excuse of Schewitsch's. In general, I am astounded at the enormous flabbiness of most of the New Yorkers that has come to light in this connection. The Ex[ecutive] disseminates lies as big as your fist and every one believes it - from Jonas to Schewitsch and to the Wischnewetzkys! The Ex[ecutive] does seem to be a great authority in New York after all." ...

   On Aveling's behalf, and in his name, Engels wrote the following note, dated March 16, 1887, to the editors of the New York Volkszeitung (MECW 26, pp. 617-8):

   "In your article concerning me in the Volkszeitung of March 2 you maintain

   "that Aveling is said to have submitted a bill which contained items that a labour agitator, who must know that the donations raised to finance agitation come almost entirely out of the pockets of hard-working labourers, really should not present."

   "Passing over all the minor points and restricting my reply to the one main point, I wish to state:
   "The weekly bills submitted by me to the Executive contained all my expenses, that is to say both those chargeable to the Party and others to be met by me personally. I had made it clear to the Executive in advance and in the most unambiguous way - first in a verbal agreement with the treasurer, R. Meyer, and then in several letters - that all the purely personal expenses were to be defrayed by me in return for the $366.00 ($3.00 per day) guaranteed to me by the Executive, and that I left it entirely up to the Executive to decide which items of expenditure should be passed on to the party, and which items should be charged to me personally.
   "I never expected - even less demanded - that any of these personal items of expenditure should be paid for "out of the pockets of hard-working labourers", and indeed none of them have been. For further information about this I refer you to my enclosed circular of February 26 to the sections, to the publication of which I can no longer object after what has occurred." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 180-1) London, April 6, 1887
   "Postcard with Dietzgen clipping of March 24th and letter of the 25th received. Hepner will hardly be in a position to judge from a few isolated facts whether Aveling should have been "franker." I myself do not dare to decide it, but I merely know that in money matters Aveling is just as much of an unlucky fellow as Hepner himself. Both of them have an enviable talent for getting themselves innocently involved in differences regarding money. ...
   "Wilhelm [Wilhelm Liebknecht], who cloaked himself in silence at first, is suddenly all afire. Here is what he writes me on March 28th (between the two of us - please do not transmit to others the literal text, but only whatever part of the content you consider fitting):
   ""The New Yorkers will probably come around. I wrote them in a very sharp tone weeks ago - that under no circumstances will I allow myself to be played off against Aveling and Tussy. I categorically demanded an apology, and as I have said, I think they will submit. It is a great pity that Aveling did not write me at once when he returned" (this is an empty excuse, as I informed him of the principal charges, as far as we knew them then, as early as January 20th). "I learnt of the whole affair only through you, and the election campaign, which naturally took all of my time, was in progress then. And so much time has been lost. But everything will be straightened out. If the New Yorkers are stubborn, I shall proceed against them publicly. Tell that to Aveling and Tussy."
   "In general the paper takes a strong stand against the gentlemen of the Executive. Aveling has received sympathetic letters from many private sources in New York. The Am[erican] Section in Rochester declares that it continues to have confidence in him, while the German Sect[ion] in Cleveland (or Buffalo, I forget) takes his side completely. And a month ago the Ex[ecutive] - without waiting for the Sections' vote - sent all the documentary material to the auditing commission for a decision, thus again appealing to a new tribunal! Of course we wrote the commission at once, sent them documents, and demanded access to certain letters, etc.
   "You will have received a copy of A[veling]'s reply to the second Volkszeitung article, which is indeed even more scurrilous." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 181-2) London, April 9, 1887
   "I wrote you on the 6th and received your letter on March 29th. Thanks for your efforts with regard to Jonas. I think they will bear fruit.
   "So the Ex[ecutive] wants to reply. That will mean a new concealment of facts. But this resolve to reply itself proves how absurd and shabby it was to try to cheat the sect[ions] into rendering judgment upon its initial allegations. First the sect[ions] are to decide. Then, even before the period agreed on has expired, the Ex[ecutive] begs the auditing commission for a verdict. And now it itself confesses that further light is required before a decision can be rendered!
   "In any event the gentlemen have ruined themselves. And if the Wischnewetzkys, who have behaved rather like Washragskys in the whole affair, have been constrained to call them liars, things must have reached a pretty pass. The very fact that Mrs. W[ischnewetzky] decided to show you my letter proves the dilemma the two of them are in. I was "humane" enough to judge the Ex[ecutive] to be real German louts as much as a year ago.
   "This pleases me in so far as I now hope to be relieved of Mrs. W[ischnewetzky]'s harassing about translations. First of all, she translates like a factory, leaving the real work to me; second, she neglected its publishing miserably, letting these louts get hold of it. We are no longer so badly off that we have to go begging with our manuscripts. And now, after I wrote an additional preface for her, things are at a standstill, evidently just because this preface is not to the taste of the Ex[ecutive]!
   "The A[veling]s have also received sympathetic letters and section resolutions from Springfield, Mass.; others will probably arrive in the next few days from the West." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC II, p. 33) London, April 13, 1887
   ... "The N[ew] York affair is going very well. The gentlemen of the Executive Committee have made so many blunders since then that they are as good as routed. It's a very long business and very involved, but we have nothing further to hear from that quarter." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 183-4) London, April 23, 1887
   "I wrote you on the 9th. Thanks for the postcard and the things you sent. The publication of my preface in the Volkszeitung in a translation made over there is effrontery twice over. First, because I want to have nothing to do with the paper so long as it behaves so scurrilously towards Aveling. And, second, because I cannot put up with any outsider's translation of my English writings into German, and especially such a translation, which is full of mistakes and misunderstands the most important points. This woman has had my preface ever since the beginning of February (sent on January 27th), and in the only letter I have received from her since then, dated March 19th (postmarked April 8th), she merely mentions the plan of a German edition, for which she asked my consent - she knew that I had no copy of it here. I wrote her at once to return the original to me so that I might translate it. There are things in it where each word must be weighed. And then she connives behind my back with Jonas and Co!
   "I protested at once. Let her show you my letters. This is the last straw. It is impossible for me to work with a person who continually commits such silliness.
   "But she'll hear from me. Her last long letter on the Aveling affair can be characterized by one word alone: filth. The endeavor of a weak person, influenced by every gust of wind, to justify herself in a wrong cause, which she herself must consider wrong. I shall answer her next week con amore [with love]. This kind of person must not think that she can bamboozle me like a baby.
   "Hyndman's correspondence in the Standard is pitiable and cowardly. He wants to maintain contact with {Henry} George, while the latter grows more and more set on his land fad, and therefore must suppress all that is socialist. Things are going badly with him here, too. The sensational effects have vanished and new ones can't be had every day. But without them Hyndman cannot maintain himself in his role. The Avelings, on the other hand, have begun very effective agitation in the Radical clubs of the East End, laying special emphasis on the American example of an independent labor party. And the American example is the only thing that has an effect here - besides the German elections. The cause is making good progress and - if things continue in America as they have been going - can cost the Liberals the whole East End of London in a year." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC II, p. 38) London, April 26, 1887
   ... "The N[ew] Y[ork] Executive have launched in their despair another circular against Aveling saying that his statements are lies, yet making very important admissions in our favour. We shall of course reply. But the affair is practically ended, the Ex[ecutive] are themselves accused in N[ew] Y[ork] as swindlers and liars in another affair and on their trial before the N[ew] Y[ork] sections; so that whatever they have said, say or may say, loses all importance. In the meantime the Aufsichtsbehörde {Board of Supervision} of the American party appeals to them (to Edward and Tussy) to let the matter drop, and from very many places they receive very nice letters both from Americans and Germans. So that matter is virtually settled.
   "Edward and Tussy's agitation in the East End clubs is going on very favourably. The American example has its effects; it at last offers a handle to stir up the English working people."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 184-6) London, May 4, 1887
   "What you write on April 28th regarding the New York louts is certainly quite true, but you must not forget that I can answer only the points that you emphasize yourself, and not those about which you say nothing.
   "The Manifesto has been translated, and only my accursed eyes prevent me from looking over the work. In addition, a French, an Italian, and a Danish manuscript are in my desk, waiting to be looked through! What is more, forty years ago you were Germans, with a German aptitude for theory, and that is why the Manifesto had an effect at the time, whereas, though translated into French, English, Flemish, Danish, etc., it had absolutely no effect upon the other peoples. And for the untheoretical, matter-of-fact Americans I believe simpler fare is all the more digestible since we experienced the story told in the Manifesto, while they did not.
   "The affair with my book has been simply bungled by Mrs. Wischn[ewetzky], who gave Miss Foster plein pouvoir [full powers], which Miss Foster then turned over to the Ex[ecutive]. I protested immediately, but it had been done already. Up to the present Mrs. Wischnewetzky has bungled everything she has handled; I shall never give her anything again. She can do what she wants, and I shall be glad if she accomplishes something; but I have enough, and let her leave me in peace in the future. I answered her last letter a week ago.
   "Aveling is carrying on splendid agitation in the East End of London. The American example is having an effect; the Radical clubs - to whom the Liberals owe their 12 seats out of the 69 in London - have approached [Aveling] for lectures on the American movement, and Tussy and he are actively at work. It is an immediate question of founding an English workers' party with an independent class program. If this turns out well, it will force both the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League into the background, which would be the best solution of the current squabbles. Hyndman sees that his existence is menaced, especially as he has fallen out with almost all his followers. He has therefore reprinted the Executive's charges against Aveling in Justice. This is very good, for it puts an end to the gossip behind one's back and gives Aveling a chance to discuss the matter everywhere. Let us hope that the position of the Socialist League is also cleared up at Whitsuntide; the anarchists must be expelled or we'll drop the whole mess.
   "The Avelings have sent you Time with their articles on America; I take it you have received it? (March, April, May numbers.) Even the Tory Standard praises them! At the present moment the Avelings are doing more than all the others here and are much more useful - and then I'm supposed to answer Mother Wischnewetzky's childish misgivings regarding the grave charge under which Dr. A[veling] will stand until he has disproved the circ[ular] of the Ex[ecutive]! The madam seems to have quite forgotten, among her gossipy German sisters, that it is not A[veling] who has to disprove, but the Ex[ecutive] that has to prove!" ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 186-7) London, May 7, 1887
   "I wrote you on the 4th and received yours of April 26th. Many thanks for the reports, which were doubtless written under severe physical tribulations. I can only take the passage regarding Mrs. Wischnewetzky and her regretting having written her denunciatory letter to mean that it was written with her consent to spare her a direct pater peccavi [Father, I have sinned]. I had to write her today and I told her "if that, as I must suppose, was written with her consent, I was perfectly satisfied and had no longer any reason to revert to that subject in a spirit of controversy." You see, I want to make it as easy for her as possible. But she is awkward and, besides, a luckless person of the first water. She writes me that she wants to publish my preface* in German. I have no objections, naturally. But she knows that I kept no copy, and yet she does not send me the Ms. {manuscript} so that I can translate it. Nor do I receive the book itself or even a single galley proof of the preface. Instead, the preface is turned over to the Volkszeitung for a thoroughly dull translation, containing errors, to boot, which almost lead me to conclude that she even copied my English Ms. incorrectly. Well, now she writes me that she has sent the Ms. off to me at last (not a word about the V[olks] z[eitung] trans[lation]) - but what doesn't arrive is the Ms.!
   "I am especially pleased to hear that Mr. Jonas has had to climb down a peg. In view of his business jealousy of the Ex[ecutive] he was the last one to have any reason for zeal in this affair on the Ex[ecutive]'s behalf; throughout this whole period he has behaved as scurrilously as possible, just because he realized that he had burned his fingers.
   "Our friend Liebkn[echt], too, suddenly does not want "to break with the Executive." I have put a pistol to the head of the good-hearted L[iebknecht], who doesn't want to spoil his relations with either side, and he'll come around all right. If he hadn't made fools of us in that manner, our reply to Circular II would have been finished already. But it is hardly so pressing, and it should be a crushing answer. We have won, thanks to your support and activity, without which we should be far from where we are now. It is good that we old fellows can still rely upon one another."
__________
   * "Engels had written the preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 in English." {Note by International Publishers.}

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 187-8) London, May 7, 1887
   "I have received your note of April 25th with thanks, but no preface; if I receive it per next steamer on Monday I shall send you word at once. In the meantime as I received no copy of the book as yet, will you please see that I get at least something to work upon, a proofsheet or whatever it is, as the V[olks]z [eitung] translation cannot pass under any circumstances. I shall work at the translation as fast as my inflamed eye will allow; I am only sorry you did not send me the Ms. or a proof as soon as the idea of a German edition occurred to you.
   "Sorge writes to me: "The Wischnewetzkys greatly regret that the dissimulations and suppressions of the Executive led them to send you that letter, and they have made all conceivable efforts to obtain justice for Aveling in the New York section." If this, as I must suppose, was written with your consent, then I am perfectly satisfied, and have no desire whatever to return to that subject in a spirit of controversy.
   "Nobody was more rejoiced than I when I learnt that the book was finally out of the hands of that despicable Executive and of the S.L.P. generally. Forty years' experience has shown me how useless and literally thrown away are all those publications by small cliques, that by their very mode of publication are excluded from the general book market, and thereby from literary cognizance. It was the same thing even with the party publications in Germany up to 1878; and only since the Sozialistengesetz [Anti-Socialist Law] which forced our people to organize a book trade of their own, in opposition both to the government and to the officially organized Leipzig book trade, has this been overcome. And I do not see why in America, where the movement begins with such gigantic and imposing force, the same mistakes, with the same drawbacks in their wake, should be quite unnecessarily gone through over again. The whole socialist and, in England, Chartist literature has thereby been made so extinct that even the British Museum cannot now procure copies at any price!"

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC II, pp. 42-3) London, May 21, 1887
   ... "You will have seen in Justice how Hyndman has tried to bring out Edward's American bother, but has apparently got more than he expected - his retreat in this week No. is undignified enough. A 3d circular on this affair is in the printer's hands. I have had some droll correspondence with Liebk[necht] about the letter from him it will publish. In N[ew] York we are completely victorious and that is the chief point; and our final circular I hope will settle the business." ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 36, p. 665) London, June 4, 1887
   "No movement makes so much fruitless work as one that is still in the stage of a sect. You know that as well as I. And so this letter about English affairs." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 188-9) London, June 30, 1887
   ... "I am writing to the Wischnewetzkys to phrase the footnote as follows: "to repudiate the absurd slanders which Aveling has been exposed to in consequence of his agitational tour of America." If they don't want that either, they can turn to you, and then you can, if necessary, authorize them to delete the whole footnote. For I cannot quote Aveling without saying a word about the stuff as well.
   "The story of Scribner's announcement of Capital looks like deliberate piracy. Thanks for the information; I shall turn it over to Sonnenschein. As far as I know, Scribner is not Sonnenschein's agent in New York.
   "That the men of the Ex[ecutive] believed they had purchased Liebk[necht]'s silence with the election funds was to be expected and was not unjustified. Fortunately, I had L[iebknecht] completely under my thumb as a result of his first bragging letter and made very resolute use of it when he tried to withdraw.
   "Hyndman continues to gossip about A[veling] here too, and has been greatly aided by A[veling]'s bashfulness in speaking about the affair. If we could only get hold of the fellow once, he would have cause to remember it, but in the meantime he himself is ruining his position more and more. He is so miserably envious that he cannot tolerate any competitor, and is living in open or concealed warfare with everyone. And A[veling] has become zealous for battle at last, and Tussy will see to it that he remains so. . . .
   "I am fed up with Father McGlynn, and George has turned into a real founder of a sect. Nor did I expect anything else, but this experience was hard to avoid in view of the newness of the movement. Such people must have the length of their tether, but the masses learn only from the consequences of their own mistakes." . . .

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS
(ELC II, p. 50) London, July 15, 1887
   ... "I was obliged to give a card of introduction (to Paul) to a young Dr. Conrad Schmidt of Königsberg, who dabbles in question sociale. He is about the greenest youth I ever saw, he was here about 3 months, seems a decent fellow, as decent fellows go nowadays, frisst keine Schuhnägel and säuft keine Tinte [Eats no shoe nails, and drinks no ink]. If Paul deposits him rue Richelieu, Bibliothèque nationale, he will not trouble him much. He admires Zola in whom he has discovered the "Materialistische Geschichtsanschauung." [The materialist conception of history]"

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 188-9) London, Aug. 8, 1887
   . . . "The story about the Wischnewetzkys is becoming more and more entertaining.* Such an Executive would have been deposed long ago in Germany. These people must think everything is permitted them, and that the party will follow them through thick and thin as a reward for their expecting the Americans to place themselves under the command of a German group, in which the purest louts seem to be getting more and more of an upper hand. If Messrs. Germans make that the condition for their participation over there, the movement will soon stride over them. History is on the move over there at last, and I must know my Americans badly if they do not astonish us all by the vastness of their movement, but also by the gigantic nature of the mistakes they make, through which they will finally work out their way to clarity. Ahead of everyone else in practice and still in swaddling clothes in theory - that's how they are, nor can it be otherwise. But it is a land without tradition (except for the religious), which has begun with the democratic republic, and a people full of energy as no other. The course of the movement will by no means follow the classic straight line, but travel in tremendous zigzags and seem to be moving backwards at times, but that is of much less importance there than with us. Henry George was an unavoidable evil, but he will soon be obliterated, like Powderly or even McGlynn, whose popularity at the moment is quite understandable in that God-fearing country. In autumn much will be - I won't say cleared up, but more and more complicated, and the crisis will come closer. The annual elections, which force the masses to unite over and over again, are really most fortunate." . . .
___________
   * "In meetings of the New York Section the Wischnewetzkys had bitterly attacked the Executive for its stand in the Aveling affair, and had been expelled for so doing." {Note by International Publishers.}

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 190-2) London, September 15, 1887
   "I am glad the pamphlet* sells so well. The copies I received I shall hand over to Aveling, who has just returned from the country, to be distributed partly among the socialist periodicals, partly at his East End meetings at his lectures on the American movements. I shall also try through him to get an agent for its sale and let you know the result. ...
   "The repudiation of the socialists by {Henry} George is in my opinion an unmerited piece of good luck which will redeem to a great extent the - unavoidable - blunder of placing George at the head of a movement he did not even understand. George as the standard-bearer of the whole working-class movement was a dupe; George as the chief of the Georgeites will soon be a thing of the past, the leader of a sect, like the thousands of other sects in America. ...
   "The reply of the Executive to my footnote is in itself so deprecatory and meaningless that to reply to it would be a work of supererogation. I cannot reply in time for the congress**, and the fact remains that I have openly taken sides against the Executive in this matter. A fresh controversy across the Atlantic can lead to nothing. As to the Socialist and the Volkszeitung boycotting me, I am sorry for it on account of the book and pamphlet, otherwise it is a matter of perfect indifference to me; I have got over such chicanery too often by simply waiting and looking on.
   "Your expulsion I read in the Volkszeitung at the time; it was what I expected. I hope your pamphlet will come in time for the congress; it would have been well if it had been out a month ago so as to come into the hands of the sections before they sent delegates. I am curious what the congress will do, but do not hope for too much. ...
   "Fortunately the movement in America has now got such a start that neither George, nor Powderly, nor the German intriguers can spoil or stop it. Only it will take unexpected forms. The real movement always looks different to what it ought to have done in the eyes of those who were tools in preparing it."
__________
   *   "The preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844." {Note by International Publishers.}
   **  "The national convention of the Socialist Labor Party, which met in Buffalo in September 1887." {Note by International Publishers.}

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 192-3) London, September 16, 1887
   . . . "I shall be able to look for and find Marx's letter on {Henry} George only when I begin putting things in order, that is, as soon as some new bookcases I have ordered to give me more space arrive. Then you'll get a translation at once. There's no hurry - George must still compromise himself some more. His repudiation of the socialists is the greatest good fortune that could happen to us. Making him the standard-bearer last November was an unavoidable mistake for which we had to pay. For the masses are to be set in motion only along the road that fits each country and the prevailing circumstances, which is usually a roundabout road. Everything else is of subordinate importance, if only the actual arousing takes place. But the mistakes unavoidably made in doing this are paid for every time. And in this case it was to be feared that making the founder of a sect the standard-bearer would burden the movement with the follies of the sect for years to come. By expelling the founders of the movement, establishing his sect as the special, orthodox, George sect, and proclaiming his narrow-mindedness as the borne [boundary] of the whole movement, George saves the latter and ruins himself.
   "The movement itself will of course, still go through many and disagreeable phases, disagreeable particularly for those who live in the country and have to suffer them. But I am firmly convinced that things are now going ahead over there, and perhaps more rapidly than with us, notwithstanding the fact that the Americans, for the time being, will learn almost exclusively from practice and not so much from theory.
   "The reply of the New York Executive to my footnote is pitiful. Nor do I hope for much from their convention. The people in the East - the sections - do not seem to be worth much, while a shift in the center of gravity of the Social-Democratic Party to the West is rather unlikely." . . .

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 36, p. 705) London, September 16, 1887
   ... "The trades-union congress here has proven again that the revolution in the old trades-unions is progressing. Against the leaders, especially against Broadhurst and the rest of the labor-parliamentarians, they have decided on the founding of a special Labor Party. An armchair-socialist Austrian delegate of the Reich Council was quite amazed at the change since 1883, when he was here last." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(pp. 196-7) London, Feb. 22, 1888
   ... "I am not astonished at Grönlund's proceedings. I was rather glad he did not call on me here. From all I hear he is full of vanity and self-conceit. . . . Es muss auch solche Käuze geben [it takes all sorts to make a world]. In America not less than in England all these self-announced grands hommes [great men] will find their own level as soon as the masses begin to stir - and will then find themselves shifted to that level of their own with a velocity that will astonish them. We have had all that in Germany, and in France, and in the International, too. ...
   "Your remarks about my books being boycotted by the official German Socialists of New York are quite correct, but I am used to that sort of thing, and so the efforts of these gents amuse me. Better so than to have to undergo their patronage. With them the movement is a business, and "business is business." This kind of thing won't last very long; their efforts to boss the American movement as they have done with the German-American one must fail miserably. The masses will set all that right when once they move.
   ... "Home Rule for Ireland and for London is now the cry here, the latter a thing which the Liberals fear even more than the Tories do. The working-class element is getting more and more exasperated, through the stupid Tory provocations, is getting daily more conscious of its strength at the ballot-box, and more penetrated by the Socialist leaven. The American example has opened their eyes, and if next autumn there were to be a repetition, in any large American town, of the New York election campaign of 1886, the effect here would be instantaneous. The two great Anglo-Saxon nations are sure to set up competition in Socialism, as well as in other matters, and then it will be a race with ever-accelerated velocity."

Engels to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis in the Hague
(MEW 37, p. 31) London, February 23, 1888
   ... "The best proof of how much things are progressing among the workers here comes through the workers' East End radical clubs. The example of the New York election campaign in November 1886 worked among them first; for, what America does makes more of an impression here than what the whole European continent does. The New York example makes it clear to people that, in the end, it would be best if the workers formed their own party. When the Avelings came back, they took advantage of this mood and since then have been very active in these clubs - the only political workers' organizations of importance existing here." ...

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(p. 199) London, April 11, 1888
   ... "The free trade question will not disappear from the American horizon until settled. I am sure that protection has done its duty for the United States and is now an obstacle, and whatever may be the fate of the Mills bill*, the struggle will not end until either free trade enables the United States manufacturers to take the leading part in the world market to which they are entitled in many branches of trade, or until both protectionists and free traders are shoved aside by those behind them. Economic facts are stronger than politics, especially if the politics are so much mixed up with corruption as in America. I should not wonder if during the next few years one set of American manufacturers after the other passed over to the free traders - if they understand their interests they must . ...
   "I am glad of your success against the Executive as far as it goes** - from Volkszeitung Weekly March 31st I see they won't give in yet - there you see what an advantage it is to be on the spot. The non-resisting weakness which went straight against the Avelings because they were absent - that weakness you could work around to your favor because you were not absent; and thus the hostility to you is reduced to mere local klatsch [gossip], which with perseverance you are sure to overcome and live down." . . .
__________
   *  "A tariff bill before Congress at the time."
   ** "Mrs. Wischnewetzky had attacked the Executive Committee of the S.L.P. for its careless publication of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. For this she was expelled from the party, but reinstated in August, 1888." {2 notes by International Publishers.}

ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY
(p. 200) London, May 2, 1888
   ... "I am boycotted here almost as much as you are in New York - the various socialist cliques here are dissatisfied at my absolute neutrality with regard to them, and being all of them agreed as to that point, try to pay me out by not mentioning any of my writings. Neither Our Corner (Mrs. Besant) nor To-day nor the Christian Socialist (of this latter monthly, however, I am not quite certain) has mentioned the Condition of the Working Class though I sent them copies myself. I fully expected this but did not like to say so to you until the proof was there. I don't blame them, because I have seriously offended them by saying that so far there is no real working-class movement here, and that, as soon as that comes, all the great men and women who now make themselves busy as officers of an army without soldiers will soon find their level, and a rather lower one than they expect. But if they think their needle-pricks can pierce my old well-tanned and pachydermatous skin, they are mistaken."

   In 1888, Engels visited America, and traveled a bit in New England, New York, and Canada, mostly for the benefit of his health. He scrupulously tried to avoid the New York Socialist scene until the very end.

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 200-1) London, July 11, 1888
   "In all haste, information which you must, however, keep absolutely secret. You must not be surprised if you see me over there around the middle of August or a few days later - I shall perhaps make a short pleasure trip across the ocean. Be so good as to tell me at once where you live so that I can look you up, and in case you shouldn't be there at that time, where I can find you. Also whether the Wischnewetzkys will be in New York around that time. I shall see nobody else upon my arrival, for I do not want to fall into the hands of the Messrs. German Socialists - that is why the thing must be kept secret. If I come, I shall not come alone - with the Avelings who have business to transact over there. More soon."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 201) London, July 11, 1888
   ... "I expect that little Cuno will be lying in wait for me, but I think I have a magic spell to make him tractable. When I return, shortly before we sail, I shall have to see various people at the Volkszeitung. That can't be avoided, nor does it do any harm, but at the beginning I want a rest." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC II, p. 151) London, August 6, 1888
   "When you receive this letter I shall be floating away on the "City of Berlin", with Tussy, Edward, and Schorlemmer towards the shores of the New World. The plan has been of pretty long standing, only it was constantly being crossed by all sorts of obstacles . . . . The affair had to be kept secret, first because indeed of the series of obstacles which threatened to wreck it, and secondly in order to save me as much as possible from the interviewers of the N[ew] Y[ork] Volkszeitung and others (among whom, as Sorge writes, little Cuno is now one of the most formidable) and from the delicate attention of the German Socialist Executive, etc. of N[ew] York, on arrival, as that would spoil all the pleasure of the trip and rend all its purpose. I want to see and not to preach, and principally to have a complete change of air, etc., in order to get finally over the weakness of the eyes" ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 202) London, August 28, 1888
   "Arrived here yesterday morning ... This Boston is badly scattered, but more human than New York City. Cambridge, in fact, is very pretty, quite Continental European in appearance." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 202-3) Boston, Aug. 31, 1888
   ... "Yesterday we were in Concord, visiting the reformatory and the town. We liked both of them very much. A prison in which the prisoners read novels and scientific books, establish clubs, assemble and discuss without warders present, eat meat and fish twice daily with bread ad libitum [at will], with ice water in every workroom and fresh running water in every cell, the cells decorated with pictures, etc., where the inmates, dressed like ordinary workers, look one straight in the eye without the hangdog look of the usual criminal prisoner - that isn't to be seen in all Europe; for that the Europeans, as I told the superintendent, are not bold enough. And he answered in true American fashion, "Well, we try to make it pay, and it does pay." I gained great respect for the Americans there.
   "Concord is exceedingly beautiful, graceful, as one wouldn't have expected after New York and even after Boston, but it's a splendid hamlet to be buried in, but not alive! Four weeks there, and I should perish or go crazy.
   "My nephew Willie Burns is a splendid fellow, clever, energetic, in the movement body and soul. He is getting along well; he works on the Boston and Providence R.R. (now the Old Colony), earns $12.00 a week, and has a nice wife (brought along from Manchester), and three children. He wouldn't go back to England for any money; he is exactly the youngster for a country like America.
   "Rosenberg's resignation and the strange debate on the Sozialist in the Volkszeitung seem to be symptoms of collapse."*
______________
   * "The collapse (of the Socialist Labor Party) came one year later."... {Note by International Publishers.}

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 37, p. 90) Niagara Falls, N.Y. September 4, 1888
   "The fact that Jonas has found me out is one more reason to postpone the return to New York as long as possible. However, even if now he sends me his Cuno I don't mind, I am finished with the trip and he can bother me at most for half an hour."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 203-4) Montreal, September 10, 1888
   ... "The St. Lawrence and the rapids are very pretty. Canada is richer in ruined houses than any other country but Ireland. We are trying to understand the Canadian French here - that language beats Yankee English holler. ...
   "It is a strange transition from the States to Canada. First one imagines that one is in Europe again, and then one thinks one is in a positively retrogressing and decaying country. Here one sees how necessary the feverish speculative spirit of the Americans is for the rapid development of a new country (presupposing capitalist production as a basis); and in ten years this sleepy Canada will be ripe for annexation - the farmers in Manitoba, etc., will demand it themselves. Besides, the country is half-annexed already socially - hotels, newspapers, advertising, etc., all on the American pattern. And they may tug and resist as much as they like; the economic necessity of an infusion of Yankee blood will have its way and abolish this ridiculous boundary line - and when the time comes, John Bull will say "Yea and Amen" to it."

Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Berlin
(MEW 37, p. 103) London, October 8, 1888
   ... "America has interested me very much; one really has to have seen this country with one's own eyes, a country whose history goes back no further than commodity production and is the promised land of capitalist production. Our ordinary conceptions of it are as wrong as those of a German schoolboy of France." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 207) London, October 10, 1888
   ... "So Jonas has extricated himself from the trap very cleverly and fabricated an interview in a way that I cannot easily repudiate.*
   "Mother Wischnewetzky is furious because I "was in New York for ten days and did not find the time to undertake the two hours' easy railway journey to her; she had so much to talk over with me." Well if I hadn't caught cold and weren't plagued with indigestion, and if I had been in New York for ten days on end at all!"
______________
   * "This refers to an article in the New York Volkszeitung on Engels' visit to the United States." {Note by International Publishers. The article was very short and contained nothing pertinent to America.}

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC II, p. 165) London, November 28, 1888
   ... "Let us hope that the unconscious logic of French history will overcome the conscious breaches of logic committed by all parties - but then one must not forget that the form of all unconscious developments is the Negation der [of the] Negation, the movement by contrasts, and that this in France means republicanism (or respectively socialism) and Bonapartism (or Boulangism), and Boulanger's avènement [Accession] would be a European war - the very thing most to be feared."

Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Zurich
(MEW 37, p. 133) London, January 11, 1889
   ..."You won't have any other choice now but to become a writer, and for that Berlin is, of course, the best place in the Reich. I am glad that you don't talk any more (in your 2nd letter) of your American plans. You would have experienced a great disappointment over there. That, under the rule of the Emergency Law, one finds the German-American Socialist press to be a good one, I understand, especially from the point of view of a journalist. In reality it doesn't amount to much, either from the theoretical, or from the local American point of view. The best is the "Philadelphia Tageblatt"; Well-meaning but weak the "St. Louis Tageblatt"; managed well as a business but precisely mainly as a business, the "New Yorker Volkszeitung". Very bad the "Sozialist", (N.Y.), official organ of the German party. For theoretical brains there is for the time being little room in America. The Germans insist - at least in their official organization - on remaining a branch of the German party, and look down with Lassallean arrogance on the "ignorant" Americans, demand that the latter join their German party, that is, put themselves under German leadership; in short, they behave with sectarian narrowness and pettiness. In the interior it is better, but the New Yorkers still remain on top. The "Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung" (now edited by Christensen), I see only rarely. In short, in America one can be effective only in the daily press, and one has to have been there for at least a year in order to acquire the necessary knowledge of people and the necessary self-assurance; furthermore, one has to submit to the public opinion there, which often is the more narrow-minded because the boorishness eliminated in Germany by big industry still finds representatives among the Germans there. (That is the strange thing about America; that, beside the newest and the most revolutionary, the most ancient and outmoded drags on). In a few years it probably can and will be better, but, whoever wants to help with the development of the scientific side finds here in Europe a much better prepared public." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 209) London, January 12, 1889
   ... "Mother Wischnewetzky is very much hurt because I did not visit her in Long Branch instead of getting well in your home and putting myself in shape for the trip. She seems to be hurt by a breach of etiquette and lack of gallantry towards ladies. But I do not allow the little women's rights ladies to demand gallantry from us; if they want men's rights, they should also let themselves be treated as men. She will doubtless calm down." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE At LE PERREUX
(ELC II, pp. 194-5) London, February 4, 1889
   ... "Well, I hope the new paper will come out; we must take the situation as it is and make the best of it. When Paul gets to work at a paper again, he will brace himself up for the fight and no longer say despondently: il n'y a pas à aller contre le courant [There's no going against the current]. Nobody asks of him to stop the current, but if we are not to go against the popular current of momentary tomfoolery, what in the name of the devil is our business? The inhabitants of the Ville Lumière have proved to evidence that they are 2 millions, "mostly fools," as Carlyle says, but that is no reason why we should be fools too. Let the Parisians turn reactionists if they cannot be happy otherwise - the social revolution will go on in spite of them, and when it's done they can cry out: Ah tiens! c'est fait - et sans nous - qui l'aurait imaginé! [Bless my soul, it's happened-and without us - who would have thought it!]"

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 210-11) London, February 23, 1889
   "Postcard of January 19th and letter of February 10th received. I get the Labor Standard [published by J. P. McDonnell in Paterson, N.J.] and am giving Wischnewetzky's articles to Tussy, who will use them if a new edition of the Labor Movement is issued. They contain material that is characteristic of America. Such neglect of safety measures against fire and the like would simply not pay in Europe. But over there it is like the railways and everything else: if they only exist, no matter how, it suffices.
   ... "I shall write Kautsky what you say about Rappap[ort]: lack of material and the desire for comprehensiveness brings many a person in who doesn't belong there. [in the columns of Die Neue Zeit]" ...

   Many of Engels' letters to Sorge during the spring and summer of 1889 focused on a European labor congress in which many of the same forces that had clashed during the last days of the First International clashed again with renewed vigor. The March 30 and April 6 editions of "Der Sozialdemokrat" of 1889 published Engels' "An Answer to Justice", dealing with controversial information about German Social-Democrats in Great Britain and America that appeared in Hyndman's journal of the Social-Democratic party in England. A portion of Engels' article dealt with the record of the Germans in America and the rest of the world (MEW 21, pp. 513-4):

   ... "the Socialist Labor Party of America, although originally only, and still even today consisting mostly of Germans, has numerous non-German sections: Anglo-American, Slavic, Scandinavian, etc., besides many German newspapers which are either completely, or partly, identical, the party publishes an English periodical, the "Workmen's Advocate" and covers its still considerable deficit (see the New Yorker "Sozialist" of March 2, 1889, Report of the National-Executive), provides out of their own funds the cost for an agitator for the Anglo-American workers - Professor Garside - and in America has to let itself be reproached for being only a bunch of foreign intruders who are interfering in American affairs which are none of their business and which they do not understand. And that is said of them quite regardless of the fact that the German-Americans are either American citizens or are planning to become citizens and to remain in America. If the Germans in England, almost all of whom are here only temporarily, would follow the instructions given to them by "Justice", i.e. publish English papers for English readers, participate in public agitation among Englishmen, interfere in English politics, fulfill all duties of Englishmen and demand all rights of Englishmen, the same reproach would be hurled at them and, among others, possibly also by "Justice".
   "With regard to the assertion that the German-Americans "are forced to learn English", I can only say I wish it were so. Unfortunately, however, this is not so at all.
   "But wherever there have been German Socialists, they can claim to have collaborated as far as they were able, actively and successfully, with socialist agitation. Neither in America nor in Switzerland nor in Eastern and Northern Europe would Social Democracy occupy its present position had it not benefited from the activities of the Germans living in these countries. They were everywhere and always the first to establish communication between the Socialists of the various nations, and the German Arbeiterbildungsverein [Workers' Education Society] was, if we go back to 1840, the first international socialist society. If these facts are unknown to "Justice", the international police and international capital know them very well. Wherever foreign socialists are being molested, persecuted and expelled by continental police, in three of four cases they were Germans, and the law to prevent immigration of foreign socialists pending now before the American Congress is directed mainly against Germans."

Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Borsdorf bei Leipzig
(MEW 37, p. 258) Eastbourne, August 17, 1889
   ... "You should have realized by now that it happens to you very frequently that you are not at home when one wants to take you by your word, or one wants something from you which should be a matter of course. How was it with the Aveling affair in America? At the beginning, under the immediate impression of the mean trick played by the New York Executive, you wrote; "The New Yorkers owe Aveling an apology, I will demand it from them, and if they dig their heels in, I will stand up publicly against them." But later, when the time came to make good on your promise, things looked quite different: You wrote a statement which was neither fish nor flesh, didn't do Aveling any good nor the New Yorkers any harm - unforeseen circumstances! And only gentle pressure from me brought forth from you a statement which contained at least part of what you promised." ...

Engels to Hermann Engels in Engelskirchen
(MEW 37, pp. 262-3) Eastbourne, August 22, 1889
   ... "in England, big industry has ruined the crafts, but has not known what to replace them with. The Germans have not had the sole privilege of furnishing bad merchandise for good money; the Londoners can do that brilliantly. That's really different in America. I think for ordinary, everyday business, where speculation doesn't play any role, America is the most solid country in the world, the only one where one still gets "good work"." ...

Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart
(MEW 37, p. 275) London, September 15, 1889
   ... "In Denmark, the old party leadership badly disgraced themselves in the Congress affair, and the opposition, Trier, Petersen, etc. are winning ground strongly. You should engage Trier as a correspondent for the "Arbeiterzeitung"" ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 37, p. 276) London, September 26, 1889
   "Thanks for the "Volkszeitung", etc. The revolution in the glass of water that happened over there is very funny. Possibly the start of something better to come. The nemesis marches slowly but surely; it is part of the irony of history that the same people who always relied on the New Yorkers to be against the mass of the party, especially the Westerners, are being toppled precisely by the New Yorkers."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 219) London, Oct. 12, 1889
   ... "The New Yorker revolution is growing funnier and funnier - the efforts of Rosenberg and Co. to stay at the top à tout prix [at any price] are amusing but, fortunately, useless too. Your correspondence with the Nationalists* in the W.A. [Workmen's Advocate] pleased me, first because one recognized old Sorge ten miles away, and second because it is a public sign of life again from you." . . .
__________
   * "Sorge was then engaged in a controversy with Daniel De Leon in the columns of the Nationalist organ." {From a note by International Publishers. But, the W.A. was really an SLP organ. The debate is reproduced in Appendix 2. - K.E.}

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 220) London, Dec. 7, 1889
   . . . "Things won't turn out that well: to have the "Socialist Labor Party" liquidated. Rosenberg has a lot of other heirs beside Schewitsch, and the conceited doctrinaire Germans over there certainly have no desire to give up their usurped position of teachers to the "immature" Americans. Otherwise they would be nothing at all.
   "Over here it is being proved that a great nation simply cannot be tutored in a doctrinaire and dogmatic fashion, even if one has the best of theories, evolved out of their own conditions of life, and even if the tutors are relatively better than the S.L.P."

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 37, p. 321) London, Dec. 7, 1889
   ... "Rappaport has been sent to Kautsky. If one has such an atrocious name, one has to be capable of any idiocy.
   "Little Hepner is such a clever little man, so impartial in his own eyes and at the same time so impractical (what the Jews call Schlemiel - a born loser) that I wonder how he has not come to grief over there long ago. It's a pity about the little guy, but that can't be helped." ...

ENGELS TO HERMANN SCHLÜTER IN NEW YORK
(MESC, p. 389) London, Jan. 11, 1890
   ... "The fact that you have got rid of Rosenberg and Co. is the main point about the revolution in your American socialist tea-pot. The German party over there must be smashed up as such, it is the worst obstacle. The American workers are coming along already, but just like the English they go their own way. One cannot at the outset cram theory into them, but their own experience and their own blunders and the evil consequences of them will soon bump their noses up against theory - and then it will be all right. Independent nations go their own way, and of them all the English and their offspring are surely the most independent. Their insular stiff-necked obstinacy is often enough annoying, but it also guarantees that what is begun will be carried out once a thing has been set going."

Engels to August Bebel in Berlin London, January 23, 1890
(MEW 37, p. 351)
   "From America you will hardly get much money. That is au fond {basically} good. A real American party is for you and the world much more useful than the few pennies you would get, precisely because that so-called party is not a party but a sect and, moreover, a purely German sect, a branch, on foreign soil, of the German party, specifically of its out-dated Lassalle elements. But now the Rosenberg clique has been defeated and thereby the greatest obstacle for the development of and absorption into a real American party has been eliminated."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 224-6) London, Feb. 8, 1890
   ... "In my opinion, we hardly lose anything worth mentioning by the defection of the official Socialists over there to the Nationalists. If the whole German Socialist Labor Party went to pieces as a result, it would be a gain, but we can hardly expect anything as good as that. The really useful elements will finally come together again all the same, and the sooner the dross has separated itself, the sooner this will happen; when the moment comes at which events themselves drive the American proletariat farther on, there will be enough of them fitted by their superior theoretical insight and experience to take over the role of leaders, and then you will find that your years of work have not been for nothing. ...
   ..."The Schleswig-Holsteiners and their descendants in England and America are not to be converted by lecturing; this pigheaded and conceited lot must experience it in their own persons. And this they are doing more and more from year to year, but they are most conservative - just because America is so purely bourgeois, has no feudal past at all, and is therefore proud of its purely bourgeois organization - and so they will get rid of the old traditional mental rubbish only through practical experience. Hence it must begin with the trade unions, etc., if it is to be a mass movement, and every further step must be forced upon them by a setback. But once the first step beyond the bourgeois point of view has been taken, things will move quickly, like everything in America, where the velocity of the movement, growing with natural necessity, is setting some requisite fire underneath the Schleswig-Holstein Anglo-Saxons, ordinarily so slow; and then, too, the foreign elements in the nation will assert themselves by greater mobility. I consider the decay of the specifically German party, with its ridiculous theoretical confusion, its corresponding arrogance, and its Lassalleanism, a real piece of good fortune. Only when these separatists are out of the way, will the fruits of your work come to light again. The {Anti-}Socialist Law was a misfortune, not for Germany, but for America, to which it consigned the last of the louts. When I was over there, I often marveled at the many loutish faces one encountered, faces which died out in Germany, but are flourishing over there.
   ... "We have our Nationalists here too: the Fabians, a well-meaning lot of "eddicated" bourgeois, who have refuted Marx with the rotten vulgarized economics of Jevons, which is so vulgarized that one can make anything out of it, even socialism. As over there, their chief aim is to convert the bourgeois to socialism and thus introduce the thing peacefully and constitutionally. They have published a bulky book* about it, written by seven authors."
__________
   * "Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by George Bernard Shaw, London, 1889." {Note by International Publishers.}

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 227-8) London, April 12, 1890
   "The matter of Miquel's letters* involves great difficulties. "Wilhelm" [Wilhelm Liebknecht] also would have liked to have them, in order to blurt them out at an inopportune time, thus permanently spoiling our means of exerting pressure on Miquel. For once the scandal is over, Miquel will snap his fingers at us. But it is of much greater value to me to have the fellow somewhat under the thumb through this means of pressure than to make a useless clamor, as a result of which he would be released and would be glad, to boot, that he had weathered it. What is more, the whole world knows that he was a member of the {Communist} League.
   "I have had altogether too brilliant experiences with American journalism to bite at this chance. If it became known at the Volkszeitung that these letters were in America, those sensationalists would not rest until they had them - and I don't want to expose anyone to this temptation and torture. Moreover, what guarantee have I how long Schlüter remains with the Volkszeitung and whether they don't make the release of these letters the condition for his staying?
   "In short, it is impossible for me to enter this deal. ...
__________
   * "Engels had been requested to send Johannes Miquel's letters to Marx to America for publication when the opportunity should present itself." {Note by International Publishers.}

   The publication of Bellamy's book Looking Backward gave birth to the Nationalist movement. The next letter assessed both the movement and its journal - The Nationalist - with which De Leon was associated before moving on to the SLP:

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 229-31) London, April 19,1890
   "I get the Nationalist regularly; unfortunately there is not much in it. They are a feeble imitation of the Fabians here. Superficial and shallow as the Dismal Swamp, but full of conceit regarding the lofty generosity with which they, the "eddicated" bourgeois, condescend to emancipate the workers, in return for which the latter must politely keep quiet and must submissively obey the orders of the "eddicated" cranks and their isms. Let them have their brief pleasures; one fine day the movement will wipe all that out. An advantage we continentals have, who have felt the influence of the French Revolution in an altogether different fashion, is that such a thing isn't possible here. ...
   "The foregoing details concerning persons and momentary dissensions are solely for your information, of course, and must not get into the Volkszeitung at any cost. This once for all - for I have already had instances here of the fact that Schlüter sometimes takes things a bit too lightly in this respect." ...

Engels to Hermann Schlüter in New York
(MEW 37, p. 416) London, June 14, 1890
   ... "So far, everything is all right here in Germany, too. Wilhelmchen {the German Kaiser} threatens with elimination of universal suffrage - nothing better could happen to us! We are drifting fast enough anyway either into world war or world revolution - or both."

Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart
(MEW 37, p. 433) London, August 5, 1890
   ... "Sorge ... is the best man for you. I want to write to him about it, too. Of course, you have to pay him exceptionally well - or else he prefers to give music lessons. Also, it will be difficult to make him report regularly, and it is better that way. Sometimes months can pass when nothing decisive is happening, and sometimes he might have to report on something critical every week." ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 37, p. 449) London, August 27, 1890
   "Who is now the editor-in-chief of the "Volkszeitung"? Tussy met Schewitsch in London at a meeting, he told her that he heard in New York that I talked very maliciously about him. But this is definitely a lie. Should that come from A. Jonas?"

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 37, p. 476) London, September 27, 1890
   ... "Concerning Schewitsch your news is probably correct.* When he passed through here he fell into Tussy's hands at a meeting and told her that he had heard that I had expressed myself in a malicious way against him; therefore he preferred not to visit me. I attributed this to Jonas - it may also have been the subterfuge of a bad conscience. It's the old story of so many Russians: une jeunesse orageuse et une vieillesse blasée [a tumultuous youth and a blasé old age], as one of them called it."...

   * (MEW 37, Note #469, p. 603): "In two letters to Engels, both dated Sept. 10, 1890, F. A. Sorge wrote about the fact that Sergei Schewitsch had begged the tsar for clemency and had been given a position in Riga. This news was supposedly confirmed through a letter from Schewitsch in which he asked that his possessions be sent to him at an inn in Riga where he wanted to stay."

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 37, p. 506) London, November 26, 1890
   ... "Your debut in the "Neue Zeit" is very good, do continue in this manner. You will soon get back into writing. (The remuneration is approximately double of what contributors get here (5 Marks per page); when you get into it again and work faster you won't find that so low. What Schlüter told you I would like to have better verified. That I and others get 5 Marks per page in the "Neue Zeit", and that that is the usual fee, is certain. I myself have written to Kautsky that you should be offered more. Schlüter sometimes blabbers out things without thinking. Of course, in American terms, $2 per page is very little, and if you find that you must ask American prices, you are quite right to do it. But Kautsky, who surely does everything for you, must also take into account Dietz, who is the treasurer, and I do not wish that the door to the "Neue Zeit" should be opened, because of such considerations, to someone of the "Volkszeitung" or the "Sozialist". Think again about this matter, and if you insist on additional payment write me, and I will appeal to Kautsky on this; that will then leave all doors open.
   "The boycott against me* had already been declared by Rosenberg and Co., and if now the Nationalists fall in with them, it serves me right. Why don't I desist then from the class struggle! Marx and I had the same experience here with the Fabians who also want to bring about the liberation of the workers through the "Jebildeten"." {educated}

   * (MEW 37, Note #493, p. 606): "Friedrich Adolph Sorge on Oct. 14, 1890, had written the following to Engels: "The Messrs. Nationalists have proclaimed a boycott against you. I heard about it already last summer and found, however, upon closer inspection that, in their announcements and book reviews, your writings were never mentioned, your name was never said. Professor De Leon, whose name is probably known to you (the same with whom last year I had a correspondence which I published) is said to have stated that your writings are harmful to the movement (the Nationalist movement, of course). The man speaks frequently now from the tribunes of the New York Socialists and is considered a great figure. But the best thing was that the conceited Kantist L. Daniel, editor of the 'Workmen's Advocate' (a Frenchman by birth) extended this boycott to the 'Workmen's Advocate' and co-workers had to force him, through threats, to give up the boycott.""

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 233) London, Jan. 29, 1891
   ... "I see clearly enough that things are going downhill with the S.L.P. from its fraternization with the Nationalists*, compared to whom the Fabians here - likewise bourgeois - are radicals. I should have thought that the Sozialist would scarcely be able to beget extra boredom by cohabiting with the Nationalist. Sorge sends me the Nationalist, but despite all my efforts I cannot find anyone who is willing to read it.
   "Nor do I understand the quarrel with Gompers**. His Federation is, as far as I know, an association of trade unions and nothing but trade unions. Hence they have the formal right to reject anyone coming as the representative of a labor organization that is not a trade union, or to reject delegates of an association to which such organizations are admitted. I cannot judge from here, of course, whether it was propagandistically advisable to expose oneself to such a rejection. But it was beyond question that it had to come, and I, for one, cannot blame Gompers for it.
   "But when I think of next year's international congress*** in Brussels, I should have thought it would have been well to keep on good terms with Gompers, who has more workers behind him, at any rate, than the S.L.P., and to ensure as big a delegation from America as possible there, including his people. They would see many things there that would disconcert them in their narrow-minded trade-union standpoint - and besides, where do you want to find a recruiting ground if not in the trade unions?"
___________
   *   "The National Citizens Alliance, a short-lived middle-class political group, collaborating with the Knights of Labor for the formation of a third political party.
   **  "The A.F. of L. had refused a charter to the New York Central Labor Federation on the ground that a section of the SLP was affiliated to it.
   *** "The second congress of the Second International was held in Brussels, August 16-22, 1891." {3 Notes by International Publishers.}

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 38, p. 30) London, February 11, 1891
   ... "I am very glad that you want to do away with the "Nationalist". Here I can find no one, but absolutely no one, who wants to read it, and I myself have no time to scrutinize the pieces of wisdom of the various respectable upstarts. I would have proposed this to you a long time ago, but I thought: since Sorge sends me this, at last there must be something to it, for once." ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 38, p. 46) London, March 4, 1891
   ... "Hyndman is once again bubbling over against me, that happens every 6 months, but he can stand on his head and march all around London on his head, I won't answer him. He is also pitching in again against Aveling, and mentions also the American affair. Do you think that, now that Rosenberg has been thrown out, a satisfactory declaration can be obtained from the American party? I am only asking your opinion, I am not authorized to demand that any steps be taken." ...

Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart
(MEW 38, p. 88) London, April 30, 1891
   ... "The American militia system is practically nothing but a kind of voluntary national guard of bourgeois, and Hyndman wrote 10 years ago from America already to Marx that there the bourgeois are drilling extensively in order to protect themselves from the workers. How absolutely useless it is against exterior enemies is shown in all wars conducted by the United States with newly formed regiments of volunteers (recruited) and especially in the Civil War. There the militia disappeared completely. Already in America I have heard of the armories of the militia regiments in the interior of New York as being real fortresses. As long as every worker does not have his repeater-rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition in his house, everything is nonsense."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 58) London, May 4, 1891
   ... "They {Hyndman's SDF in England} have been made to feel their real position, and that is: the same position which the Germans in the Socialistic Labour Party in America hold there, that of a sect. And that is their position, though they are real live Englishmen. It is very characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race and their peculiar mode of development, that both here and in America the people who, more or less, have the correct theory as to the dogmatic side of it, become a mere sect because they cannot conceive that living theory of action, of working with the working class at every possible stage of its development, otherwise than as a collection of dogmas to be learnt by heart and recited like a conjurer's formula or a Catholic prayer. Thus the real movement is going on outside the sect, and leaving it more and more." ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 38, p. 112) London, June 10, 1891
   ..."Thanks for the American pirate edition {of "Capital"}. Schlüter wrote me strange things about it. Please thank him for his detailed letter, I am sorry I can't answer it now."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 234) London, June 10, 1891
   ..."The movement here is getting along very well. The Gas Workers and General Laborers Union is taking first place here more and more, thanks to Tussy especially. The movement is proceeding in an English fashion - systematically, step by step, but surely - and the comical phenomenon that here, as in America, the people who claim to be the orthodox Marxists, who have transformed our concept of movement into a rigid dogma to be learned by heart, appear as a pure sect, is very significant. What is more, that over there these people are foreigners, Germans, while over here they are true-blue Englishmen, Hyndman and his set." . . .

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 234) Ryde, Isle of Wight, Aug. 9-11, 1891
   . . . "I am very grateful for the information regarding the Journal of the Knights of Labor - I have to look through such a pile of papers that it is often very hard for me to get my bearings without such reports. Likewise, regarding Gompers and Sanial*; very important, should I see them in London?" ...
___________
   * "Sorge had informed Engels in a letter dated July 14, 1891, of the enmity between Sanial (delegate of the Socialist Labor Party to the Brussels Congress of the Second International) and Gompers (delegate of the American Federation of Labor). Sorge had expressed the fear that Gompers would exploit this feud at the congress for his own political ends." {Note by International Publishers.}

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 38, p. 155) Helensburgh, Scotland, Sept. 14, 1891
   ... "Among the American delegates I saw Mac-Vey and Abraham Cahan, the Jewish apostle; I liked them both.
   "The Congress is, after all, a splendid victory for us - the Broussists stayed away completely, and the Hyndman people have put away their opposition. And the best thing is that they have thrown out the Anarchists, just like at the Hague Congress {of 1872}. Where the old International broke off, just there the new, much bigger and declared Marxist one is beginning again."

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 38, p. 166) London, September 30, 1891
   ... ""The "People" is unreadable. Such a silly collection of junk in a newspaper I haven't seen for a long time. Who is the translator of my "Entwicklung"*? Jonas?

   * (MEW 38, Note #238, p. 610): "The Socialist Labor Party of North America had, in 1891, without Engels' knowledge, published his paper "Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissensschaft" {"The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science"} in the weekly "The People". As can be seen from Friedrich Adolph Sorge's letters to Engels of October 9 and 12, 1891, Engels' paper was translated by De Leon and H. Vogt, (obviously from the German edition of 1883); it was also to be published as a pamphlet."

ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE IN HOBOKEN
(MESC, p. 411) London, Oct. 24, 1891
   ... "Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus [Socialism: Utopian and Scientific] will be published here in a translation prepared by Aveling and edited by me (in Sonnenshein's Social Series). In face of this authorised translation the American pirate edition* with its miserable English will be rather innocuous. It is moreover not even complete, whatever they found too difficult they have left out." . . .
__________
   * "Engels refers to a translation by De Leon and Vogt which was published by the Socialist Workers' Party of America." {Note by Progress Publishers. It should have read: "Socialist Labor Party". The SWP was organized decades later.-K.E.}

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 236-7) London, October 24, 1891
   . . . "For heaven's sake do me the favor of not sending me any American monthly regularly. I long for the opportunity of reading a book once again; though I am able to look through properly only one-third of the papers sent me, they take all my time - but the movement is gigantic by now and one must remain au courant [well-informed]! ...
   "I can very well believe that the movement over there is ebbing again. Over there everything proceeds with great ups and downs. But every up wins ground conclusively, and so one advances after all. Thus the tremendous strike wave of the Knights of Labor and the 1886-1888 strike movement has put us ahead despite all the recoils. For there is an altogether different life in the masses than before. The next time even more ground will be won. But with all that the native American workingman's standard of living is considerably higher than even that of the British, and that alone suffices to place him in the rear for still some time to come. Then there is the competition of immigration and other things. When the time comes, things will go ahead over there tremendously fast and energetically, but it may take some time until then. Miracles happen nowhere. And then there is the misfortune of the arrogant Germans, who want to play the schoolmaster and commander in one, and make the natives dislike learning even the best things from them" . . .

Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg
(MEW 38, p. 195) London, October 29, 1891
   ... "The "breeding of millionaires", as Bismarck says, seems to really advance in your country with giant steps. Such profits as shown in your official statistics are unknown today in English, French or German textile factories. 10, 15, at most 20% average profit and 25-30% in exceptional years of especial prosperity are considered good. Only in the infancy of modern industry could enterprises with the newest and best machinery which produced their goods with considerably less labor than socially necessary at that time secure for themselves such profit rates. At this time, such profits are made only by successful speculative enterprises with new inventions, that is, by one out of 100 enterprises; the rest are usually complete failures.
   "The only country today, where similar or almost similar profits in some main industries are possible, is the United States of America. There the protective tariffs after the Civil War, and now the MacKinley-Tariff, have led to similar consequences, and the profits must be enormous, which they are. The fact that this depends completely on tariff legislation which can be changed from one day to the next, is sufficient to prevent any great investment of foreign capital (great in relation to the mass of invested domestic capital) in these industries, and thus to stop up the main source of the competition and the lowering of profits."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 239-40) London, Jan. 6, 1892
   ... "There is no place yet in America for a third party, I believe. The divergence of interests even in the same class group is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different groups and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two parties to a very large degree, though today big industry forms the core of the Republicans on the whole, just as the big landowners of the South form that of the Democrats. The apparent haphazardness of this jumbling together is what provides the splendid soil for the corruption and the plundering of the government that flourish there so beautifully. Only when the land - the public lands - is completely in the hands of the speculators, and settlement on the land thus becomes more and more difficult or falls victim to gouging - only then, I think, will the time come, with peaceful development, for a third party. Land is the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native-born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie. Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more, will we have a solid foothold in America! But, of course, who can count on peaceful development in America! There are economic jumps over there, like the political ones in France - to be sure, they produce the same momentary retrogressions.
   "The small farmer and the petty bourgeois will hardly ever succeed in forming a strong party; they consist of elements that change too rapidly - the farmer is often a migratory farmer, farming two, three, and four farms in succession in different states and territories, immigration and bankruptcy promote the change in personnel in each group, and economic dependence upon the creditor also hampers independence - but to make up for it they are a splendid element for politicians, who speculate on their discontent in order to sell them out to one of the big parties afterward.
   "The tenacity of the Yankees, who are even rehashing the Greenback humbug, is a result of their theoretical backwardness and their Anglo-Saxon contempt for all theory. They are punished for this by a superstitious belief in every philosophical and economic absurdity, by religious sectarianism, and idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit.
   "Louise {Kautsky} asks you to send her only the Woman's Journal (Boston) and even this only until March 31st, unless we do not write otherwise before then. She needed it for the Vienna Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung (she, Laura [Marx's second daughter], and Tussy are the chief contributors) and she says it could never occur to her to force the drivel of the American swell-mob-ladies upon working women. What you have so kindly sent her has enabled her to become well-posted again and has convinced her that these ladies are still as supercilious and narrow-minded as ever; she merely wants to give this one magazine a couple of months' trial. In the interim she thanks you most sincerely for your kindness. ...
   "The story about Gompers is as follows: He wrote me and sent me detailed papers of his organization. I was out of town a great deal at the time - in summer - and tremendously busy in-between. Nor was I at all clear about the matter; I thought Iliacos extra peccatur muros et intra [They sin inside and outside the Trojan walls]. Then it was said that Gompers would come to Brussels or over here, and so I thought I would settle the matter orally. Afterward, when he didn't come, I forgot about the matter. But I shall look up the documents and write him that I decline the role* with thanks.
   "I wrote K. Kautsky a few days ago and instructed him to inquire of Dietz regarding the reprinting of your articles in a separate book; I am still waiting for a reply. Haste makes waste is the motto in Germany, especially in [Stuttgart]" . . .
__________
   * "Of arbitrator between the American Federation of Labor and the Socialist Labor Party." {Note by International Publishers.}

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 164) London, March 14, 1892
   ... "Secondly, Paul says we must reap where Boulanger has sown. Exactly so, but reap the masses, and discard the leaders, as the plan was with the Possibilists; but these leaders have no masses behind them, and are themselves highly undesirable bedfellows." ...

Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg
(MEW 38, p. 305) London, March 15, 1892
   ... "But once the Russian peasant is condemned to having to become an industrial or agrarian proletarian, the decline of the land-owner seems to be certain also. From everything, I conclude that this class is indebted even more than the peasants and must gradually sell all their properties. And between the two, it seems, steps a new class of property owners, village kulaks or urban bourgeois - maybe the fathers of a future Russian real-estate aristocracy?
   "The crop failure of last year has made all that crystal clear. I fully share your opinion that the causes are of an entirely social nature. With regard to deforestation, this is, like the ruin of the peasants, an essential condition of vital importance for bourgeois society. There is no "civilised" country of Europe which has not felt this, and America*, and Russia doubtlessly also, are experiencing it at this moment. So deforestation is in my eyes essentially a social factor as well as a social result. But at the same time it provides the interested parties with the favorite pretext of blaming economic failures on a cause for which obviously nobody can be made responsible."
__________
   * "In America I saw this four years ago with my own eyes. There great efforts are being made to work against the consequences and to make good the mistakes." - F.E.

ENGELS TO SCHLUETER (p. 242) London, March 30, 1892
   "Your great obstacle in America, it seems to me, lies in the exceptional position of the native-born workers. Up to 1848 one could speak of a permanent native-born working class only as an exception. The small beginnings of one in the cities in the East still could always hope to become farmers or bourgeois. Now such a class has developed and has also organized itself on trade-union lines to a great extent. But it still occupies an aristocratic position and wherever possible leaves the ordinary badly paid occupations to the immigrants, only a small portion of whom enter the aristocratic trade unions. But these immigrants are divided into different nationalities, which understand neither one another nor, for the most part, the language of the country. And your bourgeoisie knows much better even than the Austrian government how to play off one nationality against the other: Jews, Italians, Bohemians, etc., against Germans and Irish, and each one against the other, so that differences in workers' standards of living exist, I believe, in New York to an extent unheard of elsewhere. And added to this is the complete indifference of a society that has grown up on a purely capitalist basis, without any easygoing feudal background, toward the human lives that perish in the competitive struggle. . . .
   "In such a country continually renewed waves of advance, followed by equally certain setbacks, are inevitable. Only the advances always become more powerful, the setbacks less paralyzing, and on the whole the cause does move forward. But this I consider certain: the purely bourgeois foundation, with no prebourgeois swindle back of it, the corresponding colossal energy of development, which is displayed even in the mad exaggeration of the present protective tariff system, will one day bring about a change that will astound the whole world. Once the Americans get started, it will be with an energy and impetuousness compared with which we in Europe shall be mere children."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 173) London, May 19, 1892
   "How poorly organised your statistical service is! In Germany, we should have had all the results within 3-4 days after the 2nd ballot, and Le Socialiste of the 15th gives only very haphazard and incomplete information. But it will come, you will see that nothing strikes the imagination of the masses so forcibly as a good array of figures of electoral victories, well set out. It is of capital importance above all when it's a matter of making the workers realise the strength of action that universal suffrage gives them. Don't forget to complete your statistical results of May 1st, 1892 - for comparison with the figures which the '93 parliamentary elections will show; should there be an advance, of which I am sure, you will see the effect this will have when friends and enemies can ascertain the progress, the ground won in a year, by incontestable figures." ...

Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg
(MEW 38, p. 364) London, June 18, 1892
   ... "There can be no doubt that the present stormy growth of modern "big industry" in Russia has only been caused by artificial means, protective tariffs, state subsidies, etc. The same happened in France where protectionism has existed since Colbert without interruption, and in Spain, Italy, and since 1878, even in Germany. And that, even though Germany had already almost completed its industrialization when in 1878 protective tariffs were introduced to help the capitalists impose on their domestic customers such high prices that in foreign countries they could sell below cost. And America has done exactly the same in order to shorten the period in which American manufacture would not have been able to compete with England under the same conditions. I do not doubt that America, France, Germany and even Austria will reach the point where they can successfully confront the English competition on the free world market with at least a number of important articles. France, America and Germany have broken England's industrial monopoly already to a certain degree, which is very noticeable here. Will Russia get just as far? I doubt it, because Russia, like Italy, suffers from a lack of coal at the places favorable for industry" ...

Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart
(MEW 38, p. 377) London, June 25, 1892
   ... "Many thanks for your information regarding the Sorge-Dietz affair. Since Sorge has not written me as to how far your negotiations have progressed, and since I needed to know that before I could do anything myself, this was important to me. Dietz is too exclusively after a mass market. If he wants to be the publisher of the scientific socialists, he must establish a department where books which are being sold more slowly can also find a place. If not, someone else must be found. Really scientific literature cannot be marketed by the tens of thousands, and the publisher must provide for that." ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 38, p. 439) Ryde, Isle of Wight, August 23, 1892
   ... "But to Stuttgart I will come on no account, and therefore I will negotiate with Dietz shortly in writing, as soon as I know that he hasn't gone with Bebel on a trip. The matter itself is, after all, already settled, it is only a question of the details, so you can work on the additions, and the more complete they are, the better. Especially if you wanted to treat the time since 1870 a little more fully, it would be good to include also the fortunes of the avowedly socialist German party and the blunders they committed. You must consider that you write for a public that doesn't know anything at all about things there and have to be told the plain truth. And even if the Messrs. leaders in New York and Cincinnati grumble, you don't have to give a fig, you are used to it. ...
   "Last week all of Lancashire voted in all districts, with mostly very large majorities, for 8 hours instead of 10. In short, the thing is marching splendidly here too, and next year not only Austria and France, but England also will march behind Germany, and that will surely finally also have the proper effect on your Anglo-Americans, especially if your militia is doing some more shooting to drive out some of their republican and great-country arrogance." ...

Engels to Victor Adler in Lunz
(MEW 38, pp. 444-5) Ryde, August 30, 1892
   ... "What you say about tactics is only too true. But there are only too many people, who, for the sake of not having to exercise their brains, want to apply for all eternity the tactics meant for the moment. Tactics are not made from nothing, but according to changing circumstances. In our present situation, we must only too often let ourselves be dictated to by our opponents.
   "You are also correct with regard to the independents. I still remember the years when I - at that time still officially corresponding with Liebknecht - constantly had to fight against the German Spiessburgerei [philistinism] which was seeping in everywhere. All in all, we have that behind us in Germany, but what Spiessers are sitting in the party-faction and are continuing to come into it! A labor party in such a situation can choose only between workers who are immediately being disciplined and then go to the dogs as party pensioners, and Spiessburgers who maintain themselves but disgrace the party. And compared with these people, the independents are priceless.
   "What you say about the rapid industrial progress of Austria and Hungary has pleased me enormously. That is the only solid basis for progress in our movement. And that is also the only good side of protectionism - at least for most continental countries and America. Big industry, big capitalists and large masses of proletarians are being bred artificially, the centralization of capital is being accelerated, the middle sectors are being destroyed. In Germany, protective tariffs were actually superfluous, since they were introduced just at the moment when Germany established itself on the world market, and this process they have disturbed; but on the other hand they have filled many voids in German industry which otherwise would have remained voids for a long time. And if Germany is forced to sacrifice its protective tariffs to its position on the world market it will be more competitive than ever before. In Germany, as in America, protective tariffs are now a pure obstacle because they prevent these countries from occupying the proper position on the world market. In America they must therefore soon go down, and Germany must follow.
   "But, as you elevate your industry, you do a good thing for England; the sooner its rule over the world market is totally destroyed the sooner the workers here come into power. The continental and American competition (also the Indian) has finally caused a crisis in Lancashire, and the first consequence was the worker's sudden conversion to the 8-hour day."

Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg
(MEW 38, pp. 468, 470) London, September 22, 1892
   ... "I can't see how the results of the industrial revolution which is going on before our eyes in Russia is in any way different from those we saw in England, Germany, and America. In America, the conditions for management and property in agriculture are different. And that is indeed a difference. ...
   "Take England! The last new market, which, if opened could bring a temporary revival to English trade, is China. Therefore, English capital insists on building Chinese railroads. But Chinese railroads mean the destruction of the entire basis of Chinese small agriculture and cottage industry, and since there isn't even a Chinese grande industrie as a counterweight, it will be made impossible for millions of people to make a living. The consequence will be mass emigration as the world has not seen before, a flooding of America, Asia and Europe by the hated Chinese who will compete with the American, Australian and European worker, because the Chinese standard of living is the lowest in the world. And if the mode of production in Europe by that time has not yet been revolutionized, that will then become necessary.
   "Capitalist production creates its own demise, and you can be sure it will do this also in Russia. It can, and if it lasts long enough, certainly will cause a fundamental agrarian revolution - I mean a revolution in land ownership which will ruin landowners as well as kulaks, and replace them with a new class of big land-owners recruited from village-kulaks and bourgeois speculators from the cities. At any rate, the conservative elements who have introduced capitalism into Russia will one day be awfully astounded by the consequences of their actions."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 211) London, November 12, 1892
   ... "The fruits of your peregrinations through France begin to ripen, and all of us are pleased to see the progress made in France. Do you realise now what a splendid weapon you in France have had in your hands for forty years in universal suffrage; if only people had known how to use it! It's slower and more boring than the call to revolution, but it's ten times more sure, and what is even better, it indicates with the most perfect accuracy the day when a call to armed revolution has to be made; it's even ten to one that universal suffrage, intelligently used by the workers, will drive the rulers to overthrow legality, that is, to put us in the most favourable position to make the revolution."

Engels to August Bebel in Berlin
(MEW 38, pp. 518-9) London, November 19, 1892
   ... "I must congratulate you on your resolutions. They are excellent. I only know one person who could do it better, and that was Marx. The one about state socialism as well as the one about anti-semitism hits the nail on the head. And exactly such resolutions were until now the weakness of the German movement; they are feeble, uncertain, imprecise, verbose; in short, mostly shameful. Luckily they are so untranslatable that the translator in a foreign language is forced to put the sense into them which they didn't have by themselves." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, pp. 220-2) London, December 5, 1892
   ... "Ah le Panama! I can tell you I am 45 years younger again, and living through a second 47. Then La Presse (Girardin's) brought every day a fresh revelation about some scandal, or some other paper brought a reply to some charge of his; and this went on till it killed Louis Philippe. But those scandals and even those of the Second Empire dwindle into nothingness compared with this grand national Steeplechase of Scandals. Louis Bonaparte took jolly good care, when he coaxed the peasants' money out of their buried hoards, to do so for the benefit of his State loans which were safe; but here the savings of the small tradesman, the peasant, the domestic servant and above all of the petite rentier, the loudest howler of all, have gone into irretrievable ruin, and the miracle has been performed of transforming a canal which has not been dug out, into an unfathomable abyss. 1,500 million francs, 60 million pound sterling, all gone, gone for ever, except what has found its way into the pockets of swindlers, politicians, and journalists; and the money got together by swindles and corrupt dodges unequaled even in America. What a base of operations for a socialistic campaign!
   "The thing has evidently been based upon its own immensity. Everybody considered himself safe because everybody else was as deeply in it. But that is just what now makes hushing up impossible; partial disclosures having set in, the innumerable receivers of "boodle" (for here American is the only possible language) are by their very numbers debarred from common and concerted action, everybody fights on his own hook and as best he can, and no talking and preaching can prevent a general sauve-qui-peut {rout}. That the police have placed themselves at the disposal of the Committee after the strike of the courts of law, show that confidence in the stability of swindle is broken, and that it is considered safe to keep well with the "financial purity" side.
   "To my mind c'est le commencement de la fin {it's the beginning of the end}. The bourgeois republic and its politicians can hardly outlive this unparalleled exposure. There are but three possibilities: an attempt at monarchy, another Boulanger, or socialism. The first and the second, if attempted, could only lead to the third, and thus we may be called upon, long before we in consequence of our own action had a right to expect it, to enter upon a career of immense responsibility. I should be glad of it, if it does not come too soon and too suddenly. It will do our Germans good to see that the French have not lost their historical initiative. A country cannot pass through 200 years like what 1648-1848 were for Germany without leaving a small impression of the philistine even on the working class. Our revolution of 48/49 was too short and too incomplete to wipe that out altogether. Of course, the next revolution which is preparing in Germany with a consistency and steadiness unequaled anywhere else, would come of itself in time, say 1898-1904; but revolutionary times, preparing a thoroughgoing crisis, in France, would hasten that process, and moreover, if the thing breaks out in France first, say 1894, then Germany follows suit at once and them the Franco-German Proletarian Alliance forces the hand of England and smashes up in one blow both the triple and the Franco-Russian conspiracies; them we have a revolutionary war against Russia - if not even a revolutionary echo from Russia - vogue la galère! [And let it rip!]" ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 243-5) London, December 31, 1892
   . . . "Here in old Europe things are a little livelier than in your "youthful" country, which still doesn't quite want to get out of its hobbledehoy stage. It is remarkable, but quite natural, how firmly rooted are bourgeois prejudices even in the working class in such a young country, which has never known feudalism and has grown up on a bourgeois basis from the beginning. Out of this very opposition to the mother country - which is still clothed in its feudal disguise - the American worker also imagines that the traditionally inherited bourgeois regime is something progressive and superior by nature and for all time, a non plus ultra [not to be surpassed]. Just as in New England, Puritanism, the reason for the whole colony's existence, has become for this very reason a traditional heirloom and almost inseparable from local patriotism. The Americans may strain and struggle as much as they like, but they cannot discount their future - colossally great as it is - all at once like a bill of exchange; they must wait for the date on which it falls due; and just because their future is so great, their present must occupy itself mainly with preparatory work for the future, and this work, as in every young country, is of a predominantly material nature and involves a certain backwardness of thought, a clinging to the traditions connected with the foundation of the new nationality. The Anglo-Saxon race - these damned Schleswig-Holsteiners, as Marx always called them - is slow-witted anyhow, and its history, both in Europe and America (economic success and predominantly peaceful political development), has encouraged this still more. Only great events can be of assistance here, and if, added to the more or less completed transfer of the public lands to private ownership, there now comes the expansion of industry under a less insane tariff policy and the conquest of foreign markets, it may go well with you, too. The class struggles here in England, too, were more turbulent during the period of development of large-scale industry and died down just in the period of England's undisputed industrial domination of the world. In Germany, too, the development of large-scale industry since 1850 coincides with the rise of the Socialist movement, and it will be no different, probably, in America. It is the revolutionising of all established conditions by industry as it develops that also revolutionizes people's minds.
   "Moreover, the Americans have for a long time been providing the European world with the proof that the bourgeois republic is the republic of capitalist businessmen, in which politics are a business deal like any other; and the French, whose ruling bourgeois politicians have long known this and practiced it in secret, are now at last, through the Panama scandal, also learning this truth on a national scale. But to keep the constitutional monarchies form putting on virtuous airs, every one of them has its little Panama: England, the building societies' scandals, one of which, the Liberator, has thoroughly "liberated" a mass of small depositors from some £8,000, 000; Germany, the Baare scandals and Löwe's guns (which prove that the Prussian officer steals as he always did, but very, very little - the one thing in which he is modest); Italy, the Banca Romana, which is already nearly a Panama, having bought up about 150 deputies and senators; I am informed that documents about this are to be published in Switzerland shortly - Schlüter should watch for everything that appears in the papers about the Banca Romana. And in Holy Russia the Old-Russian Prince Meshchersky is outraged by the indifference with which the Panama disclosures are received in Russia and can explain it to himself only by the fact that Russian virtue has been corrupted by French examples, and "we ourselves have more than one Panama at home."
   "But, all the same, the Panama affair is the beginning of the end of the bourgeois republic and may soon put us in a very responsible position. The whole of the opportunist gang and the majority of the Radicals are disgracefully compromised; the government is trying to hush it up, but that is no longer possible; the documentary evidence is in the hands of people who want to overthrow the present rulers: (1) the Orleanists; (2) the fallen minister Constans, whose career has been ended by revelations about his scandalous past; (3) Rochefort and the Boulangists; (4) Cornelius Herz, who, himself deeply involved in all sorts of fraud, has evidently fled to London only to buy himself out by putting the others into a hole. All these have more than enough evidence against the gang of thieves, but are holding back, first, in order not to use up all their ammunition at once, and second, in order to give both the government and the courts time to compromise themselves beyond hope of rescue. This can only suit us; enough stuff is coming to light by degrees to keep up the excitement and to compromise the dirigeants [leaders] more and more, while it also gives time for the scandal and the revelations to make their effect felt in the most remote corner of the country before the inevitable dissolution of the Chamber and new elections, which however ought not to come too soon.
   "It is clear that this affair brings the moment considerably nearer when our people will become the only possible leaders of the state in France. Only things should not move too quickly; our people in France are not ripe for power by a long shot. But as things stand at present it is absolutely impossible to say what intermediate stages will fill out this interval. The old Republican parties are compromised to the last man, and the Royalists and Clericals sold Panama lottery tickets on a large scale and identified themselves with them - if the ass Boulanger had not shot himself, he would now be master of the situation. I'm curious to know whether the old unconscious logic of French history will again hold good this time. There will be plenty of surprises. If only some general or other does not swing himself to the top during the intervals of clarification and start war - that is the one danger." ...

   Paul Lafargue was not quite as sanguine as Engels over the prospects of immediate revolution in Europe all because of the Panama scandal, as indicated by his January 2, 1893 reply to Engels (ELC III, pp. 226-7):

   . . . "One would have to be an imbecile to believe that Paris is in an uproar and on the eve of revolution. I have already told you that the population is unconcerned; there has not yet been a single popular demonstration; six years ago, during the Wilson affair, 100,000 people surrounded the Chambers demanding Grévy's resignation. The police have had to bring out their anarchists to simulate some sort of agitation; that didn't come off; the police had to arrest their Pemjean sentenced to 8 month's imprisonment, but let him off this time. The population in other industrial centres is equally unconcerned; the Panama swindles don't interest them, they have not been robbed of anything. It is only the small bourgeois who have lost, and all they care about is getting their money back; the financiers are busy starting another Panama. Thiébaud, Boulanger's adviser and bear-leader, made a speech explaining that it only requires a few millions to buy a canal and that it would be "a national crime" if the Americans were allowed to take possession. All the Paris newspapers published the speech.
   "This all goes to show that the population is anything but revolutionary."

LAURA LAFARGUE TO FREDERICK ENGELS IN LONDON
(ELC III, p. 225) [January 2, 1893]
   ... "As for myself, my dear General, you know that it's enough to be a Marxist and Engelsist to stay young forever!" ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 246-7) Sunday, January 18, 1893
   ... "The Fabians here in London are a band of careerists who have understanding enough to realize the inevitability of the social revolution, but who could not possibly entrust this tremendous job to the crude proletariat alone and are therefore kind enough to set themselves at the head. Fear of the revolution is their fundamental principle. They are the "eddicated" par excellence. Their socialism is municipal socialism; the community, not the nation, should become the owner of the means of production, at least temporarily. This socialism of theirs is then represented as an extreme but inevitable consequence of bourgeois liberalism, and from this follow their tactics, not to fight the Liberals decisively as opponents, but to push them on to socialist conclusions: therefore to intrigue with them, to permeate liberalism with socialism - not to put up Socialist candidates against Liberals, but to palm them off and force them upon the Liberals, or to deceive the latter into taking them. They naturally do not realize that in doing this they are either betrayed and deceived themselves or else are betraying socialism.
   "With great industry they have produced, among all sorts of rubbish, some good propaganda writing as well, in fact the best that the English have turned out in this respect. But as soon as they come to their specific tactic: hushing up the class struggle, it gets rotten. Hence, too, their fanatical hatred of Marx and of all of us - because of the class struggle."
   "These people have, of course, a considerable bourgeois following and hence money, and have many able workers in the provinces who would have nothing to so with the S.D.F." {Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation} ...

Engels to Louis Héritier
(MEW 39, p.12) London, January 20,1893
   ... "Our working class has to take the few hours it can dedicate to reading out of rest and sleep; it therefore has the right to demand that everything we offer it be the result of conscientious work, and not give occasion to controversies that it cannot possibly follow."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 211) London, February 25, 1893
   ... "As for the Millerand & Co. Rad[ical] Soc[ialists], it is absolutely essential that the alliance with them should be based on the fact that our Party is a separate party, and that they recognise that. Which in no way rules out joint action in the forthcoming elections, provided that the distribution of seats to be jointly contested is made in accordance with the actual state of the respective forces; those gentlemen are in the habit of claiming the lion's share.
   "Do not let the fact that your speeches do not create as much stir as formerly discourage you. Look at our people in Germany: they were booed for years on end, and now the 36 dominate the Reichstag. Bebel writes saying: if we were eighty or a hundred (out of 400 members), the Reichstag would become an impossibility. There is not a debate, no matter what the subject, in which we do not intervene and we are listened to by all the parties. The debate on the socialist organisation of the future lasted five days, and Bebel's speech was wanted in three and a half million copies. Now they are having the whole debate published in pamphlets at five sous, and the effect, already tremendous, will be doubled!" ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 248-9) London, March 18, 1893
   ... "The silver business in America does not seem to be able to settle down otherwise than through a crash. Nor does {President} Cleveland seem to have the power and courage to break the necks of this bribery ring. And it would be really good if things came to a head. A nation - a young nation - so conceited about its "practice" and so frightfully dense theoretically as the Americans are gets thoroughly rid of so deep-rooted a fixed idea only through its own sufferings. The plausible idea of imagining that there isn't enough money in the world because one hasn't any when one needs it - this childish idea common to the paper-currency swindle à la Kellogg and to the silver swindle is most surely cured by experiment and bankruptcy, which may also take a course that is very favorable for us. If only some sort of tariff reform is effected this fall, you may be quite satisfied. The rest will follow; the main thing is that American industry is enabled to compete in the world market.
   "Here things are going very well. The masses are unmistakably in motion; you are getting the details from Aveling's somewhat long-winded reports in the Volkszeitung. The best evidence is that the old sects are losing ground and must fall into line. The Social-Democratic Federation has actually deposed Mr. Hyndman; he is allowed to grumble and complain a bit about international politics here and there in Justice, but he is finished - his own people have found him out. The man provoked me personally and politically wherever he could for ten years; I never did him the honor of answering him, in the conviction that he was man enough to ruin himself, and in the end I have been justified." ...

ENGELS TO MR. F. WIESEN (p. 250) London, March 14, 1893
   "I do not see what violation of the social-democratic principle is necessarily involved in putting up candidates for any elective political office or in voting for these candidates, even if we are aiming at the abolition of this office itself.
   "One may be of the opinion that the best way to abolish the Presidency and the Senate in America is to elect men to these offices who are pledged to effect their abolition, and then one will consistently act accordingly. Others may think that this method is inappropriate; that's a matter of opinion. There may be circumstances under which the former mode of action would also involve a violation of revolutionary principle; I fail to see why that should always and everywhere be the case.
   "For the immediate goal of the labor movement is the conquest of political power for and by the working class. If we agree on that, the difference of opinion regarding the ways and means of struggle to be employed therein can scarcely lead to differences of principle among sincere people who have their wits about them. In my opinion those tactics are the best in each country that leads to the goal most certainly and in the shortest time. But we are yet very far from this goal precisely in America, and I believe I am not making a mistake in explaining the importance still attributed to such academic questions over there by this very circumstance." ...

Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken
(MEW 39, p. 54) London, March 18, 1893
   ... "A young man from Texas, F. Wiesen in Baird, asked me to declare something against the nomination of candidates "for president", that this was a denial of revolutionary principle, since the position of president was to be done away with. I answered him the enclosed; should it get to the public in a garbled form, do me the favor to have it printed in the "Volkszeitung"."

   The following is a portion of an interview with Engels by a reporter from Le Figaro about German Socialism. The interview was also reprinted in Le Socialiste of May 20, 1893 (ELC III, pp. 392-3):

   "Will the Socialist Party put up candidates in all the constituencies?"
   "Yes, we shall stand candidates in 400 constituencies. It is important for us to test our strength."
   "And the final aim of you German Socialists?"
   "But we have no final aim.. We are evolutionists, we have no intention of dictating definitive laws to mankind. Preconceptions regarding the detailed organisation of the society of the future? You will find no trace of any such thing among us. We shall be quite satisfied when we have put the means of production into the hands of the community, and we know well enough that that is impossible with the monarchic and federal government of to-day."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 253) London, May 17, 1893
   ... "The May First demonstration here was very nice; but it is already becoming somewhat of an everyday or rather annual matter; the first fresh bloom is gone. The narrow-mindedness of the Trades Council and of the socialist sects - Fabians and the S.D.F. - again compelled us to hold two demonstrations, but everything went off as desired and we - the Eight-Hour Committee - had many more people than the united opposition. In particular, our international platform had a very good audience. I figure that there was a total of 240,000 in the park, of which we had 140,000, and the opposition at most 100,000." . . .

ENGELS TO HOURWICH (pp. 253-4) London, May 27, 1893
   ... "As to the burning questions of the Russian revolutionary movement, the part which the peasantry may be expected to take in it, these are subjects on which I could not conscientiously state an opinion for publication without previously studying over again the whole subject and completing my very imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case by bringing it up to date. But for that, I am sorry to say, I have not at present the time. And then, I have every reason to doubt whether such a public statement by me would have the effect you expect of it. I know from my own experience (1849-1852) how unavoidably a political emigration splits itself up into a number of divergent factions so long as the mother-country remains quiet. The burning desire to act, face to face with the impossibility of doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and energetic heads an overactive mental speculation, an attempt at discovering or inventing new and almost miraculous means of action. The word of an outsider would have but a trifling, and at best a passing, effect. If you have followed the Russian emigration literature of the last decade, you will yourself know how, for instance, passages from Marx's writings and correspondence have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways, exactly as if they had been texts from the classics or from the New Testament, by various tions of Russian emigrants. Whatever I might say on the subject you mention would probably share the same fate, if any attention was paid to it. And so for all these various reasons, I think it best for all whom it may concern, including myself, to abstain."

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, pp. 271-3) London, June 27, 1893
   ... "Then you say: the French Workers' Party is at one with German S[ocial] - D[emocracy] against the German Empire, with the Belgian Workers' Party against the Cob[ourg] monarchy, with the Italians against the Savoy monarchy, etc., etc.
   "There would be nothing against all that if you had added: and all these parties are at one with us against the bourgeois Republic which oppresses us, Panamises us and ties us to the Russian tsar. After all, your Republic was made by old Wilhelm and Bismarck; it is quite as bourgeois as any of our monarchist governments, and you mustn't suppose that with the cry of "Long live the Republic" on the day after Panama, you will find a single supporter in the whole of Europe. The republican form is no more than the simple negation of monarchy - and the overthrow of the monarchy will be accomplished simply as a corollary to revolution; in Germany the bourgeois parties are so bankrupt that we shall pass at once from monarchy to the social republic. Hence you cannot go on opposing your bourgeois republic to the monarchies as something to which other nations should aspire. Your republic and our monarchies are all one in relation to the proletariat; if you help us against our monarchist bourgeois, we shall help you against your republican bourgeois. It's a case of reciprocity and by no means the deliverance of the downtrodden Monarchists by the great-hearted French Republicans, this doesn't tally with the international outlook and even less with the historical situation which has brought your republic to the feet of the tsar. Don't forget that, if France makes war on Germany in the interests and with the help of the tsar, it is Germany which will be the revolutionary centre.
   "But there is another very regrettable affair. You are "at one with German S[ocial]-D[emocracy] against the German Empire". This has been translated in the bourgeois press as "gegen das deutsche Reich". And that is what everybody will see in it. For Empire means "Reich" as well as "Kaisertum" (imperial regime); but in "Reich" the emphasis is laid on the central power as representing national unity, and for this, the political condition of their existence, the German Socialists would fight to the end. Never would we wish to reduce Germany to the pre-1866 state of division and impotence. Had you said against the emperor, or against the imperial regime, not one could have said much, although poor Wilhelm is hardly of a stature to deserve being honoured in this way; it is the owning class, landlords and capitalists, which is the enemy; and that is so clearly understood in Germany that our workmen will not understand the meaning of your offer to help them to defeat the crackpot of Berlin.
   "So I have asked Liebk[necht] not to mention your declaration insofar as the bourgeois papers do not do so; but if, based upon this unfortunate expression, there were attacks on our people as traitors, it would give rise to a rather painful argument.
   "To sum up: a little more reciprocity could do no harm - equality between nations is as necessary as that between individuals.
   "On the other hand, your manner of speaking of the republic as a desirable thing in itself for the proletariat, and of France as the chosen people, prevents you mentioning the - unpleasant but undeniable - fact of the Russian alliance, or rather the Russian vassalage." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 256) London, Oct. 7, 1893
   ... "I saw De Leon and Sanial in Zurich. They did not impress me."

Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg
(MEW 39, pp. 148-9) London, October 17, 1893
   ... "In the Berlin "Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt", a Mr. P. v. Struve has published a long article about your book. In one respect I must agree with him: I also think that the present capitalist phase in the development of Russia is an unavoidable consequence of the historical conditions which were created by the Crimean War, of the way in which, in 1861, the revolution in the agrarian system came about, and of the political stagnation in Europe in general. He is definitely wrong in comparing Russia's present situation with that of the United States in order to refute what he calls your pessimistic view of the future. He says that the bad consequences of modern capitalism in Russia will be overcome just as easily as in the United States. Here he is completely forgetting that the USA from the very beginning were modern, bourgeois; that they were founded by petit bourgeois and peasants who fled from European feudalism in order to establish a purely bourgeois society. In contrast to this, in Russia we have a base of a primitive communist character, a gentil society stemming from the time before civilization which, although falling apart, still serves as the base, the material on which and with which the capitalist revolution (for it is a real social revolution) operates. America has had for more than a century a money economy; in Russia the rule was almost exclusively an economy of exchange of natural products. Therefore it is a matter of course that the revolution in Russia has to be much more violent, much more incisive and accompanied with much more suffering than in America."

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 257-8) London, Dec. 2, 1893
   ... "The repeal of the silver-purchase law has saved America from a severe money crisis and will promote industrial prosperity. But I don't know whether it wouldn't have been better for this crash to have actually occurred. The phrase "cheap money" seems to be bred deep in the bone of your Western farmers. First, they imagine that if there are lots of means of circulation in the country, the interest rate must drop, whereby they confuse means of circulation and available money capital, concerning which very enlightening things will be brought out in Volume III {of "Capital"}. ond, it suits all debtors to contract debts in good currency and to pay them off later in depreciated currency. That is why the debt-ridden Prussian Junkers also clamor for a double currency, which would provide them with a veiled Solonic riddance of their debts. Now if they had been able to wait with the silver reform in the United States until the consequences of the nonsense had also reacted upon the farmers, that would have opened many of their dense heads.
   "The tariff reform, slow as it is in getting started, does seem to have caused a sort of panic among the manufacturers in New England already. I hear - privately and from the papers - of the layoff of numerous workers. But that will calm down as soon as the law is passed and the uncertainty is over; I am convinced that America can boldly enter into competition with England in all the great branches if industry.
   "The German socialists in America are an annoying business. The people you get over there from Germany are usually not the best - they stay here - and in any event they are not at all a fair sample of the German party. And as is the case everywhere, each new arrival feels himself called upon to turn everything he finds upside down, turning it into something new, so that a new epoch may date from himself. Moreover, most of these greenhorns remain stuck in New York for a long time or for life, continually reinforced by new additions and relieved of the necessity of learning the language of the country or of getting to know American conditions properly. All of that certainly causes much harm, but, on the other hand, it is not to be denied that American conditions involve very great and peculiar difficulties for a steady development of a workers' party.
   "First, the Constitution, based as in England upon party government, which causes every vote for any candidate not put up by one of the two governing parties to appear to be lost. And the American, like the Englishman, wants to influence his state; he does not throw his vote away.
   "Then, and more especially, immigration, which divides the workers into two groups: the native-born and the foreigners, and the latter in turn into (1) the Irish, (2) the Germans, (3) the many small groups, each of which understands only itself: Czechs, Poles, Italians, Scandinavians, etc. And then the Negroes. To form a single party out of these requires quite unusually powerful incentives. Often there is a sudden violent élan, but the bourgeois need only wait passively, and the dissimilar elements of the working class fall apart again.
   "Third, through the protective tariff system and the steadily growing domestic market the workers must have been exposed to a prosperity no trace of which has been seen here in Europe for years now (except in Russia, where, however, the bourgeois profit by it and not the workers).
   "A country like America, when it is really ripe for a socialist workers' party, certainly cannot be hindered from having one by the couple of German socialist doctrinaires." ...

ENGELS TO SCHLUETER (p. 259) [London] Dec. 2, 1893
   . . . "Now you are at last on the road to getting rid of bimetallism and of the McKinley tariff; that will do much to promote developments over there, though a good silver crash would have been very good to enlighten the marvelously stupid American farmer and his cheap money." . . .

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 325) London, March 6, 1894
   ... "Then your Mr. Juarès, this doctrinaire professor, who is nevertheless ignorant, above all, of political economy, and of essentially superficial talents, misuses his gift of the gab to push himself to the fore and pose as the mouthpiece of socialism, which he does not so much as understand. Otherwise he would never have dared to put forward State socialism which represents one of the infantile diseases of proletarian socialism, a disease which they went through in Germany, for example, more than a dozen years ago, under the regime of the Anti-Socialist Laws, when that was the only form tolerated by the government (and even protected by it). And even then only a negligible minority of the Party was caught in that snare for a short while; after the Wyden Congress [1880] the whole thing petered out completely.
   "Ah, yes, but we have a republic in France, the ex-Radicals will say; it's quite another matter in our case, we can use the government to introduce socialist measures!"

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 261) London, March 21, 1894
   ... "After the tariff business is put in order somewhat over there and the import duty on raw materials is abolished, the crisis will probably subside and the superiority of American over European industry will have a telling effect. Only then will things grow serious here in England; but then they'll do so rapidly." . . .

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 263) London, May 12, 1894
   ... "The Social-Democratic Federation here shares with your German-American Socialists the distinction of being the only parties who have contrived to reduce the Marxist theory of development to a rigid orthodoxy, which the workers are not to reach themselves by their own class feeling, but which they have to gulp down as an article of faith at once and without development. That is why both of them remain mere ts and come, as Hegel says, from nothing through nothing to nothing. I haven't had time as yet to read Schlüter's polemic with your Germans, but shall look through it tomorrow. From former articles in the Volkszeitung the right tone seems to have been struck." . . .

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 332) London, June 2, 1894
   ... "It is always on the cards that the whole thing will not turn out too badly, and even well; but, in the meantime, you will go through some curious experiences, and I am glad for us all that there is a solid body of troops in Germany whose actions will decide the battle. This socialist mania which is emerging in your country may lead to a decisive struggle in which you win the first victories; the revolutionary traditions of the country and of the capital, the character of your army, reorganised since 1870 on a far more popular basis - all this makes such an eventuality possible. But to ensure victory, to destroy the foundations of capitalist society, you will need the active support of a much stronger, more numerous, more tried and more conscious socialist party than you have at your command. It would mean the achievement of what we have foreseen and predicted for many years. The French give the signal, open fire, and the Germans decide the battle.
   "In the meantime, we are nowhere near that and I am very curious to see how the confused enthusiasm surrounding you will resolve itself." ...

Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart
(MEW 39, p. 277) London, July 28, 1894
   "In all of America not a single intelligent correspondent can be found, with the exception of Sorge and Schlüter, because the Germans there stubbornly adhere to the same tarian attitude towards the working masses which is maintained here by the Social Democratic Federation. Instead of viewing the movements of the Americans as the progressive element which, even through wrong ways and detours, must finally lead to the same result as that which they brought with them from Europe, they see in them (in the American movements) only the wrong ways and pompously look down on the stupid blind Americans, brag about their orthodox superiority, repulse the Americans instead of attracting them, and they therefore themselves remain a powerless little sect. For that reason their writers fall into pure ideology and see all conditions wrongly and narrowly." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 341) [August 23 or 24, 1894]
   ... "The last two {Congresses} will deal with the question of peasants and rural workers. In general the views of the two national groups are the same, save that you {in France}, the uncompromising revolutionaries of yesterday, now lean rather further towards opportunism than the Germans, who will probably not support any measure serving to maintain and store up the smallholding against the disintegrating action of capitalism. On the other hand, they will agree with you that it is not our task to accelerate or force this disintegrating action, and the important thing is for small landowners to combine in agricultural associations to farm jointly on a large scale."

ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 263-6) London, Nov. 10, 1894
   ... "The movement over here still resembles the American movement, save that it is somewhat ahead of you. The mass instinct that the workers must form a party of their own against the two official parties is getting stronger and stronger; it again showed itself more than ever in the municipal elections on November 1st. But the various old traditional memories, and the lack of people able to turn this instinct into conscious action and to organize it all over the country, encourage the persistence, in this early stage, of haziness of thought and local isolation of action. Anglo-Saxon sectarianism prevails in the labor movement, too. The Social-Democratic Federation, just like your German Socialist Labor Party, has managed to transform our theory into the rigid dogma of an orthodox sect. It is narrow-mindedly exclusive and, thanks to Hyndman, it has a thoroughly rotten tradition in international politics, which is shaken from time to time, to be sure, but which hasn't been broken with as yet. ...
   "The war in China has given the old China a deathblow. Isolation has become impossible; the introduction of railways, steam engines, electricity, and large-scale industry has become a necessity if only for reasons of military defense. But with it the old economic system of small peasant agriculture, where the family also made its industrial products itself, falls to pieces too, and with it the whole old social system which made relatively dense population possible. Millions will be turned out and forced to emigrate; and the millions will find their way to Europe, en masse. But as soon as Chinese competition sets in on a mass scale, it will rapidly bring things to a head in your country and over here, and thus the conquest of China by capitalism will at the same time furnish the impulse for the overthrow of capitalism in Europe and America." ...

FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX
(ELC III, p. 366) London, January 22, 1895
   ... "So that, with the complete revolution in weapons since 1870 and, in consequence, of tactics, there is a total uncertainty about the outcome of a war where so many imponderables are involved and regarding which all the calculations made in advance are based on fictitious quantities." ...

ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 269-70) London, Jan. 16, 1895
   . . . "The temporary decline of the movement in America has attracted my attention for some time now, and the German socialists won't stop it. America is the youngest, but also the oldest country in the world. Over there you have old-fashioned furniture styles alongside those you have invented all yourselves, cabs in Boston such I last saw in 1838 in London, and in the mountains stagecoaches dating from the seventeenth century alongside the Pullman cars, and in the same way you keep all the intellectual old clothes discarded in Europe. Anything that is out of date over here can survive in America for one or two generations. Karl Heinzen, for instance, not to mention religious and spiritualist superstition. Thus the old Lassalleans still survive among you, and men like Sanial, who would be superannuated in France today, can still play a role over there. That is due, on the one hand, to the fact that America is only now beginning to have time, beyond concern for material production and enrichment, for free intellectual labor and the preparatory education that this requires; and, on the other hand, to the duality of American development, which is still engaged in the primary task - clearing the tremendous virgin area - but is already compelled to enter the competition for first place in industrial production. Hence the ups and downs of the movement, depending on whether the mind of the industrial worker or that of the pioneering farmer gains predominance in the average man's head. Things will be different in a couple of years, and then great progress will be observed. For the development of the Anglo-Saxon race with its old Germanic freedom is quite peculiar, slow, zigzag in form (here in England in small zigzags, in your country colossal ones), a tacking against the wind, but it advances none the less." ...

Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart
(MEW 39, p. 484) London, May 21, 1895
   ... "One more thing. I have suggested to Sorge that he should publish his articles about the American movement separately when they are finished. He agreed, but says that there will be much to be worked over, to be improved and filled out, and that before the next summer vacation he would hardly find time. He accepted my proposal to bring up the matter with Dietz. Will you be so kind as to ask Dietz whether he would like to take it on, and if yes, under what terms. The articles are the best and only authentic writings we have about the American movement, and I consider it very desirable that they should be preserved for the public as a separate entity."

   As far as I know, the series of articles by Sorge that were serialized in the Neue Zeit were not collected, translated and made available to the public, aside from the batch that went into his "The Labor Movement in the United States". If Engels thought that they were so valuable, it may be past time to make them available.

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