Letter to A. Bebel in Zwickau

An important document written by Engels to A. Bebel, the leader of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, criticizing Lassalleanism in order to criticize the Gotha (Draft) Programme replete with opportunistic errors. The letter was written between 18–28 March 1875, first published in 1911 in Volume 2 of A. Bebel’s memoirs My Life. The Chinese version was first published in 1939 in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, translated by He Sijing and Xu Bing and published by the Yan’an Liberation Publishing House.

On March 7, 1875, Der Volksstaat (The People’s State) and Neuer Social-Demokrat (New Social Democrat) published the Programme of the German Workers’ Party (Draft). The draft, which put forth a whole set of anti-scientific and absurd arguments and acknowledged Lassalleanism in principle, was met with severe criticism by Marx and Engels. While criticizing the opportunist errors of the draft programme, Marx and Engels also wrote many letters of guidance to the leaders of the Eisenachers, pointed out their errors and warned them not to surrender the Lassalleans. Engels to A. Bebel in Zwickau is one of them.

Engels to A. Bebel in Zwickau is closely related in content to the Critique of the Gotha Programme written by Marx, and both of them show the common standpoint and viewpoint of Marx and Engels in their resolute struggle against Lassalleanism to defend the principles of scientific socialism. In the letter, Engels first pointed out that the Eisenachers, “while infinitely superior to the Lassallean leaders in matters of theory, are far from being a match for them where political guile is concerned; once again the ‘honest men’ have been cruelly done in the eye by the dishonest.” Although Marx and Engels were in favor of the unification of the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans, they held that the unification of the two factions must be based on the adherence to correct theoretical principles, and that unprincipled concessions must not be made to the Lassalleans for the sake of unification. The Eisenachers should make the most of their advantageous position and the dilemma of the passive Lassalleans to have it abandon its sectarian principles and erroneous claims and accept, in general, the Eisenach Programme of 1869, or a revised version of it appropriate to the present situation. Because a new program is so important to a workers’ party. “A new programme is after all a banner planted in public, and the outside world judges the party by it.” Yet, in a situation that was extremely difficult for the other side and extremely favorable for themselves, the Eisenachers made theoretical concessions to the Lassalleans that should not have been made. Engels thus sharply criticized the Lassallean errors in the draft program in five aspects. First, the programme’s claim that “in relation to the working class all other classes are only one reactionary mass” is an erroneous view that abandons the allies of the working class; second, the programme’s claim to abandon the principle of the international character of the workers’ movement is a departure from proletarian internationalism; third, the programme’s acceptance of the “iron law of wages” is a Lassallean erroneous viewpoint, and the arguments in favor of it have been proven false by the relevant Marxist economic theories; fourth, “state aid” advocated by the programme is an erroneous viewpoint that Lassalle has stolen from Buchez and has already been rejected by his comrades in the party; fifth, Engels pointed out that “the trade unions [are] the proletariat’s true class organisation”, which the programme avoids mentioning. In addition, Engels also strongly criticized the slogan of the “free people’s state”. He pointed out that the state is a tool of class rule that emerged at a given stage of history, and “so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist.” Therefore, the so-called “free people’s state” is utter nonsense and can only lead to mental and theoretical confusion.

Engels to A. Bebel in Zwickau is an important document in the history of the international communist movement. Engels’ expositions on the party programme and the principle of the irreconcilable struggle against opportunism embodied in the letter is an indispensable guide for the political construction of the proletarian revolutionary party, and an important theoretical ground for proletarian parties for drawing up and implementing their programmes.