FREDERICK ENGELS
Engels to August Bebel Correspondence
Engels to Bebel -party unity and splits
June 20, 1873
Engels to Bebel -On the recent release of the Gotha Programme
Mar 18, 1875
Engels to Bebel -important letter revealing the proletarian line
of Marx and Engels
Aug 15, 1879
Engels to Bebel -the French Revolution
Oct 28, 1882
Engels to Bebel -on the Democratic Federation in London
Aug 30, 1883
Engels to Bebel -England and industry
Jan 18, 1884
Engels to Bebel -on the German elections
Nov 11, 1884
Engels to Bebel -industry and workers, politics in Germany
Dec 11, 1884
Engels to Bebel -on Karl Kautsky
July 24, 1885
Engels to Bebel -trade unions in England, upcoming elections
Oct 28, 1885
Engels to Bebel -prospects for a socialist movement
Jan 20, 1886
Engels to Bebel -Hyndman and protest in Tafalgar Square
Feb 15, 1886
Engels to Bebel -Franco-Prussian war danger
Sep 29, 1891
Engels to Bebel -on his article on their position in the event
of war
Oct 24, 1891
Engels to Bebel
Written: London, 20 June, 1873
Published: Gesamtausgabe, International Publishers, 1942
With regard to the attitude of the Party towards Lassalleanism, you can of
course judge what tactics should be adopted better than we, especially in
particular cases. But there is also this to be considered. When, as in your
case, one is to a certain extent in the position of a competitor to the
Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiter Verein (General Association of German Workers) it
is easy to pay too much attention to one's rival and to get into the habit of
always thinking about him first. But both the General Association of German
Workers and the Social-Democratic Workers' Party together still only form a very
small minority of the German working class. Our view, which we have found
confirmed by long practice, is that the correct tactics in propaganda is not to
draw away a few individuals and members here and there from one's opponent, but
to work on the great mass which still remains apathetic. The primitive force of
a single individual whom we have ourselves attracted from the crude mass is
worth more than ten Lassallean renegades, who always bring the seeds of their
false tendencies into the Party with them. And if one could only get the masses
without their local leaders it would still be all right. But one always has to
take a whole crowd of these leaders into the bargain, and they are bound by
their previous public utterances, if not by their previous views, and have above
all things to prove that they have not deserted their principles but that on the
contrary the Social-Democratic Workers' Party preaches true Lassalleanism. This
was the unfortunate thing at Eisenach, not to be avoided at that time, perhaps,
but there is no doubt at all that these elements have done harm to the Party and
I am not sure that the Party would not have been at least as strong to-day
without that addition. In any case, however, I should regard it as a misfortune
if these elements were reinforced.
One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for "unity." Those who have
this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension, just
as at present the Jura Bakuninists in Switzerland, who have provoked all the
splits, scream for nothing so much as for unity. Those unity fanatics are either
the people of limited intelligence who want to stir everything up together into
one nondescript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the
differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now all
together in one pot (you have a fine example of this in Germany with the people
who preach the reconciliation of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie)--or else
they are people who consciously or unconsciously (like Mühlberger*, for
instance) want to adulterate the movement. For this reason the greatest
sectarians and the biggest brawlers and rogues are at certain moments the
loudest shouters for unity. Nobody in our lifetime has given us more trouble and
been more treacherous than the unity shouters.
Naturally every party leadership wants to see successes and this is quite good
too. But there are circumstances in which one must have the courage to sacrifice
momentary success for more important things. Especially a party like ours, whose
ultimate success is so absolutely certain, and which has developed so enormously
in our own lifetime and under our own eyes, momentary success is by no means
always and absolutely necessary. Take the International, for instance. After the
Commune it had its colossal success. The bourgeoisie, struck all of a heap,
ascribed omnipotence to it. The great mass of the membership believed things
would stay like that for all eternity. We knew very well that the bubble must
burst. All the riff-raff attached themselves to it. The sectarians within it
began to flourish, and misused the International in the hope that the most
stupid and mean actions would be permitted them. We did not allow that. Well
knowing that the bubble must burst some time all the same, our concern was not
to delay the catastrophe but to take care that the International emerged from it
pure and unadulterated. The bubble burst at the Hague, and you know that the
majority of Congress members went home sick with disappointment. And yet nearly
all these disappointed people, who imagined they would find the ideal of
universal brotherhood and reconciliation in the International, had far more
bitter quarrels at home than those which broke out at the Hague! Now the
sectarian quarrel-mongers are preaching conciliation and decrying us as the
intolerant and the dictators. And if we had come out in a conciliatory way at
the Hague, if we had hushed up the breaking out of the split--what would have
been the result? The sectarians, especially the Bakuninists, would have got
another year in which to perpetrate, in the name of the International, much
greater stupidities and infamies even; the workers of the most developed
countries would have turned away in disgust; the bubble would not have burst
but, pierced by pinpricks, would have slowly collapsed, and the next Congress,
which would have been bound to bring the crisis anyhow, would have turned into
the lowest kind of personal row, because principles had already been sacrificed
at the Hague. Then the International would indeed have gone to pieces---gone to
pieces through "unity"! Instead of this we have now got rid of the rotten
elements with honour to ourselves--the members of the Commune who were present
at the last decisive session say that no session of the Commune left such a
terrible impression upon them as this session of the tribunal which passed
judgment on the traitors to the European proletariat--we have left them to
expend all their forces in lying, slander and intrigue for ten months--and where
are they? They, the alleged representatives of the great majority of the
International, now announce that they do not dare to come to the next Congress
(more details in an article which is being sent off for the Volksstaat with this
letter). And if we had to do it again we should not, taking it all together, act
any differently-tactical mistakes are of course always committed.
In any case I think the efficient elements among the Lassalleans will fall to
you of themselves in course of time and that it would therefore be unwise to
break off the fruit before it is ripe, as the unity people want.
For the rest, old Hegel has already said: A party proves itself a victorious
party by the fact that it splits and can stand the split. The movement of the
proletariat necessarily passes through different stages of development; at every
stage one section of people lags behind and does not join in the further
advance; and this alone explains why it is that actually the "solidarity of the
proletariat" is everywhere realised in different party groupings which carry on
life and death feuds with one another, as the christian sects in the Roman
Empire did amidst the worst persecutions.
*Mühlberger, Arthur. A physician, follower of Proudhon; anonymous author of a
series of articles on the housing question (1872) to which Engels addressed in
his book, The Housing Question.
Engels to August Bebel
Written: London, March 18-28, 1875
First Published: A. Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, Part 2, Stuttgart, 1911
Translated: Peter and Betty Ross
London, March 18-28, 1875
Dear Bebel,
I have received your letter of February 23 and am glad to hear that you are in
such good bodily health.
You ask me what we think of the unification affair. We are, unfortunately, in
exactly the same boat as yourself. Neither Liebknecht nor anyone else has let us
have any kind of information, and hence we ...
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