Draft Letter to Emile Vandervelde (After the 21st of October, 1894)

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Draft Letter to Emile Vandervelde has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the edition published in the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 50, Lawrence & Wishart, London.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a letter drafted by Friedrich Engels in London, England, United Kingdom after the 21st of October, 1894. It was first published in the Works of Marx and Engels, First Russian Edition, Volume 29, Moscow, 1946.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#DRAFT LETTER TO EMILE VANDERVELDE

#Friedrich Engels
#After the 21st of October, 1894

#★

Dear Citizen Vandervelde:

Allow me to express my congratulations to you personally on your election, and also to our Belgian comrades in general on their splendid successes these last two Sundays.1 This second victory of the Belgian proletariat is of great importance for us all. If a small country like yours is not destined to resolve the great problems of our epoch on its own, small countries, such as Belgium and Switzerland, are our modern political laboratories, the testing ground where experiments are carried out which can be later applied to the large States. It is often from these small countries that there comes the first impulse of a movement destined to overturn Europe. Thus, before the February Revolution,2 there was the Swiss War Against the Special League.3

At the moment, we are, it seems to me, in a period of high tide, a period which dates from the suffrage victory of the Belgian workers.4 After Belgium, Austria joined the suffrage movement; following Austria, proletarian Germany has just requested that universal suffrage be extended from the Reichstag to the parliaments of the federal states. The repressive laws launched against the workers' parties in France5 and Italy,6 similar laws being prepared in Germany, will have no more success than the violent measures of the Austrian government. Today, the Socialist movement everywhere is more powerful than the so-called public force. This splendid victory of the Belgian Socialists marks a new stage.

As for the Belgian workers, the 14th of October assures them an even stronger position. For the first time, they have learned to know precisely their own forces and those of the enemy; thus, from now on, they will be able to base their tactical decisions on knowledge of the situation; and you and the other Socialist representatives will be able to raise your heads still higher, and will be listened to with considerably more attention, following official recognition of the fact that you are the mouthpiece of 350'000 Belgian citizens. It is with you that the Belgian proletariat is making its «joyous entry» into parliament, an entry that is joyous, not only for you, but for the proletarians of the whole of Europe!

  1. Editor's Note: On the 14th and 21st of October, 1894, Belgium had its first elections in accordance with the new electoral law adopted on the 18th of April, 1893. The Belgian Workers' Party succeeded in having 30 of its representatives elected to the Chamber of Deputies. By calling the Belgian elections a second victory, Engels meant to say that the first victory was won in April 1893 when the Belgians gained universal adult male suffrage. ↩

  2. Editor's Note: This refers to the French Revolution of February 1848. ↩

  3. Editor's Note: The Special League was a separatist union of the seven economically backward Catholic cantons formed in 1843 to resist progressive bourgeois reforms and to defend the privileges of the Church and the Jesuits. The decree of the Swiss Diet of 1847 dissolving the Special League served as the pretext for the latter to start hostilities against other cantons early in November. On the 23rd of November, 1847, the Special League forces, consisting largely of militia detachments, were defeated by the Federalist army. ↩

  4. Editor's Note: The years 1890-93 saw a mass campaign for universal suffrage in Belgium. In April 1893, the General Council of the Belgian Workers' Party declared a general political strike for a revision of the acting electoral law. Under the pressure of mass actions and work stoppages, the Chamber of Deputies was compelled, on the 18th of April, 1893, to adopt a law on universal adult male suffrage (with certain reservations, however); the franchise was granted to men over 25 on the condition that they had been resident in the country for no less than a year (residential qualification). On the other hand, this law introduced a system of multiple voting, whereby some categories of voters were eligible for an additional one or two ballots depending on their property status, education, and government service record. ↩

  5. Editor's Note: Using the Anarchist acts of terrorism as a pretext, the French government enacted laws against Anarchists, the vague wording of which made it possible to apply them against Socialists as well. The first enactment was endorsed in December 1893 after August Vaillant had thrown a bomb in the French Chamber of Deputies; the second enactment was approved at the end of July 1894 after the assassination of President Carnot by the Italian Anarchist Caserio, against heavy resistance from the Socialists and some of the Radicals. These two bills imposed restrictions on freedom of the press and provided for special courts to handle cases of violation of the laws on the press. ↩

  6. Editor's Note: Engels means the Exceptional Law on Public Security passed by the Italian parliament on the 14th of July, 1894. This law, enacted with the aim of combating the Anarchists, was used by the Crispi government against the working-class movement and Socialists as well. It banned the Socialist Party of the Italian Working People, closed workers' organizations and workers' periodicals; arbitrary arrests, searches, and trials assumed mass proportions. All this notwithstanding, the Italian Socialists kept up their struggle and, in January 1895, they convened in Parma underground for a Third Congress of their Party. ↩