Letter to F.A. Sorge (19th of April, 1890)

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Letter to F.A. Sorge 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, First English Edition, Vol. 48, Lawrence & Wishart, London.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a letter from Comrade Friedrich Engels in London, England, United Kingdom to Comrade Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken, New Jersey, United States dated the 19th of April, 1890. It was first published in 1906 in the collection Letters and Excerpts From Letters From Johann Philipp Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to F.A. Sorge and Others.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#LETTER TO F.A. SORGE

#Friedrich Engels
#19th of April, 1890

#★

#London
#19th of April, 1890

Dear Sorge:

I get the Nationalist regularly, but unfortunately there's not much in it. Just feeble reflections of our Fabians1 over here. Dreary and shallow as the Dismal Swamp,2 but pleased as Punch about the magnanimous magnanimity with which they, eddicated bourgeois, condescend to emancipate the workers, who, however, are expected in return to be sweetly submissive and kowtow obediently to the eddicated cranks and their «-isms». Let them enjoy their little pleasure while they may; one fine day, the movement will efface all this. Indeed, we Continentals are at an advantage in that this sort of thing would not be possible in our case, because of the very different effect the French revolution has had on us.

Today, I am also sending you The People's Press, which, so far as reports on the new trade unions are concerned, has now taken the place of the Labour Elector. The latter, as you will have seen, no longer carries any factual news, because the workers flatly refuse to have anything further to do with it. Not that this prevents Burns, Mann, and others (particularly some of the dockers) from consorting a great deal with Champion on the sly and allowing themselves to be influenced by him. The People's Press is edited by a very youthful Fabian named Dell, the second-in-command being the parson Morris; both, from what I have heard so far, are decent people and most obliging to the gas-workers. The (secret) leader of the gas-workers is Tussy, and the union is, to all appearances at any rate, far and away the best of the lot.3 The dockers have been spoiled by the philistines' subventions and are anxious not to blot their copybook with the bourgeois public. Moreover, their secretary, Tillett, is the mortal enemy of the gas-workers, whose secretary he vainly strove to become. The dockers and gas-workers, large numbers of whom are dockers in the summer and gas-workers in the winter, really belong together; hence, the latter proposed an agreement whereby anyone who was a member of one of the two unions should not, on changing their job, be forced to join the other. So far, this has been rejected by the dockers, who demand that gas-workers who turn dockers in the spring should pay their joining fees and membership dues. Hence a lot of unpleasantness. Altogether, the dockers are putting up with a hell of a lot from their Executive. The Gas Workers and General Labourers take in all the unskilled workers, and, in Ireland, the agricultural day labourers are also flocking to join it — to the annoyance of Davitt, who has progressed no further than Henry George and considers, though quite without reason, his domestic Irish policy to be threatened.4 Here in London, the gas-workers south of the Thames have been thoroughly trounced by the South Metropolitan Gas Company,5 that was all to the good, as they were getting altogether much too cocky and thought they could carry everything before them; in Manchester, they suffered a like fate, and now they are calming down and starting to consolidate the organization and fill its coffers. In the union, Tussy represents the girls and women of Silvertown (India Rubber, and so on, Works), whose strike she led,6 and will probably soon take her seat on the London Trade Council.7

In a country such as this, with an old political and labour movement, there will always be a vast accumulation of traditionally received rubbish to be gradually got rid of. There are the prejudices, all of which need to be broken down, of the skilled unions — Engineers, Bricklayers, Carpenters, Joiners, Type Compositors, and so on — the petty jealousies between individual trades, which, fomented in word and deed by the leaders, are surreptitiously exacerbated to the point of outright enmity and strife; there are the incompatible ambitions and the intrigues of the leaders — this one wants to get into Parliament, so does that, the other wants to get on to the County Council8 or the School Board, yet another to establish the universal centralization of all workers, and another still to found a newspaper, a club, and so on, and so forth — in short, there are endless causes of friction; and, in the middle of it all, the Socialist League,9 contemptuous of everything that is not downright revolutionary (which means here in England, as with you in America, everything that's not confined to spouting hot air to the exclusion of everything else), and the Federation,10 which continues to behave as if, except for itself, there were nothing but fools and bunglers, even though the modicum of support it is regaining is due solely to the vigour of the new movement. In short, anyone who merely considered the surface of things would say that all was confusion and personal quarrels. But, beneath the surface, the movement continues, spreading to ever wider strata, for the most part precisely those at the very basis of the until now inert masses, nor is the day far off when those masses will suddenly discover their identity, when it will dawn on them that it is they who are these vast dynamic masses, and, on that day, short work will be made of all the shabby tricks and petty quarrels.

Needless to say, the above details as to persons and momentary differences are solely for your own information and must not on any account be allowed to get into the Volkszeitung [People's Newspaper]. Let this be understood once and for all — for, when Schlüter was over here, he more than once demonstrated a tendency to take this sort of thing rather too lightly.

I much look forward to the 1st of May. In Germany, the group in the Reichstag was duty-bound to restrain any excess of zeal. The bourgeois, the political police, whose «bread and butter» is at stake, the worthy officers — all are itching for mayhem and slaughter and are seeking any pretext to persuade young Wilhelm11 that it's never too soon to shoot. But this would completely ruin our game. First, we have to get rid of the Anti-Socialist Law,12 that is, survive the 30th of September. And, after that, our prospects in Germany will be much too brilliant for us to wreck them merely for the sake of blowing our own trumpet. Come to that, the parliamentary group's proclamation13 is bad; it stems from Liebknecht, and the nonsense about a «general strike» was wholly unnecessary. But, either way, our people have been so elated by the 20th of February14 that a certain amount of restraint is necessary if blunders are to be avoided.

In France, the 1st of May might be a turning point, for Paris at any rate, provided it helps to restore to their right minds the large numbers of working people who have gone over to Boulangerism there. For this, our people have only themselves to blame. They have never had the courage to oppose the outcry against the Germans, as Germans, and now, in Paris, they are falling victim to chauvinism. Luckily, the position is better in the provinces. But abroad, people look only to Paris.

If the French sent me their stuff, I would send it on to you. But I think that they themselves are ashamed of the things. Well, it's in the French nature — defeat is more than they can stomach. The moment they again have a taste of success, all will suddenly change.

Cordial regards to your wife and yourself.

Likewise to the Schlüters.

Schlorlemmer returned to Manchester last Monday. We are both of necessity strict abstainers. Quelle horreur! [How awful!]

  1. Editor's Note: The British Fabian Society was founded by democratic-minded intellectuals in 1884. This society was named after the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus (3rd century BCE), who was named «The Delayer» from his cautious tactics in the war against Hannibal. Playing the leading part in it were Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Bernard Shaw, and others. Local organizations of the Fabian Society sometimes included working-class members. Rejecting notions of militant class struggle and the revolution, the Fabians believed that it was possible to move from capitalism to socialism by means of reforms implemented within the framework of «municipal socialism». ↩

  2. Editor's Note: This refers to a boggy terrain in Virginia, United States. ↩

  3. Editor's Note: The Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union was the first trade union of general and unskilled workers in the history of the British working-class movement; it was formed in late March and early April 1889 against the background of the growing strike movement of the 1880s and '90s. Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling did much for the organization and guidance of this union. The Union put forward a demand for a legislative enactment of an eight-hour workday. Within a brief space of time, it gained considerable influence — as many as 100'000 gas workers joined it within a year. It took an active part in organizing the London dockers' strike of 1889. ↩

  4. Editor's Note: Michael Davitt was an eminent activist in the Irish national movement and a champion of a union between the working class of Ireland and England. He supported the struggle of the new trade unions for a law on an eight-hour workday. However, he also suggested setting up independent unions of English and Irish workers at every enterprise; this applied, in particular, to the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union in London and Ulster. ↩

  5. Editor's Note: The gas-workers' strike in South London took place in December 1889-February 1890. It was touched off by the failure of the company owners to honour the earlier agreement on an eight-hour workday, higher wages, and employment priority for unionized workers, members of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union. Among other things, the strikers demanded that three activists of the Union, dismissed from their job, be reinstated. The strike action did not succeed in the absence of vigorous support from other unions, the Dockers' Union in particular. ↩

  6. Editor's Note: In September-December 1889, there was a strike in Silvertown, a district in London's East End, by workers engaged in the production of underwater cables and rubber articles. The strikers, about 3'000 strong, demanded higher pay rates (both hourly and piecework rates), higher pay for overtime and on holidays, as well as higher wages for women and children. Eleanor Marx-Aveling was actively involved in the organization of this strike, during which she helped form the Women's Branch of the Gas Union. The strike, which continued for nearly three months, ended in failure. The Silvertown workers were supported by other unions, notably the Gas Workers and the Dockers unions. ↩

  7. Editor's Note: The London Trade Council was elected at a conference of trade-union delegates held in London in May 1860. The Council headed the London trade unions, numbering many thousands, and was fairly influential among the British workers. In the first half of the 1860s, it led the British workers' campaign against intervention in the US Civil War, in defence of Poland and Italy, and later for the legislation of the trade unions. The leaders of the large trade unions played a major role in the Council. ↩

  8. Editor's Note: This refers to the elected council of London County in charge of taxes, local budgets, and so on. All persons entitled to take part in parliamentary elections were eligible to elect county councilors as well as women 30 years of age and older. This reform of local government was implemented in August 1888. ↩

  9. Editor's Note: The Socialist League was founded in December 1884 by a group of English Socialists who had withdrawn from the Social-Democratic Federation. The League's organizers included Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Ernest Belfort Bax, and William Morris. The Manifesto of the Socialist League (published in The Commonweal, No. 1, February 1885) stated that its members advocated «the principles of revolutionary international Socialism» and sought «a change in the basis of society [...] which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities». The tasks of the League included the formation of a countrywide Socialist Party, the «conquest of political power» through the election of Socialists to local government bodies, and the promotion of the trade-union and cooperative movements. In the League's early years, its leaders took an active part in the working-class movement. However, in 1887, the League split into three factions (Anarchists, «Parliamentarians», and «Anti-Parliamentarians»). With sectarian tendencies growing stronger, the League gradually distanced itself from the day-to-day struggle of the British workers and finally disintegrated in 1889-90. ↩

  10. Editor's Note: The Social-Democratic Federation was a British Socialist organization, the successor of the Democratic Federation, reconstituted in August 1884. It consisted of heterogeneous Socialist elements, mostly intellectuals, but also politically active workers. The Programme of the Federation provided for the collectivization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Its leader, Henry Hyndman, was dictatorial and arbitrary, and his supporters among the Federation's leaders denied the need to work among the trade unions. In contrast to Hyndman, the Federation members grouped around Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, William Morris, and Tom Mann sought close ties with the mass working-class movement. In December 1884, differences on questions of tactics and international cooperation led to a split in the Federation and the establishment of the independent Socialist League. In 1885-86, the Federation's branches were active in the movements of the unemployed, in strike struggles, and in the campaign for the eight-hour workday. ↩

  11. Editor's Note: This refers to Emperor Wilhelm the Second of Germany. ↩

  12. Editor's Note: The Anti-Socialist Law (Law Against the Efforts of Social-Democracy Endangering the Common Good) was introduced by the Bismarck government, with the support of the majority of the Reichstag, on the 21st of October, 1878, as a means of combating the Socialist and working-class movement. It imposed a ban on all Social-Democratic and working-class organizations and on the Socialist and workers' press; Socialist literature was subject to confiscation, and Social-Democrats to reprisals. However, under the Constitution, the Social-Democratic Party retained its group in parliament. By combining secret work with the use of legal possibilities, in particular by working to overcome reformist and Anarchist tendencies in its own ranks, the Party was able to consolidate and expand its influence among the masses. Marx and Engels gave the Party leaders considerable help. Under the pressure of the mass working-class movement, the Anti-Socialist Law was repealed on the 1st of October, 1890. ↩

  13. Editor's Note: The appeal of the Social-Democratic parliamentary group in the Reichstag, To the Workers of Germany!, was adopted at its meeting in Halle on the 13th of April, 1890, and published in the newspaper Berliner Volksblatt [Berlin People's Paper] on the 15th of April, 1890. The appeal contained the Party leadership's reply to the demand by the opposition of «The Young» to stage a general strike on the 1st of May. The appeal pointed to the danger of such a demand under the conditions of the still-operating Anti-Socialist Law, after the Reichstag election of the 20th of February, 1890, when all kinds of provocations were possible on the part of the ruling classes. It appealed instead to German workers to give no support to the idea of a general strike and to resort to work stoppages only whenever a serious conflict could be avoided; otherwise, it advised the workers not to go beyond holding demonstrations and rallies. The 1st of May strikes held in some German cities involved about 10% of the labour force. ↩

  14. Editor's Note: Another regular election to the German Reichstag was scheduled for the 20th of February, 1890. Eventually, the Social-Democratic candidates polled 1'427'298 votes, or nearly 20% of the total ballots cast. The Social-Democrats could thus claim 35 seats in the Reichstag, which meant an astounding victory for the Party. ↩