The penultimate letter from Liebknecht to U.S. comrades describes the International becoming a material force in European politics and a wave of strikes in Germany.

‘Letter from Leipzig, XXIV’ by Wilhelm Liebknecht from Workingman’s Advocate (Chicago). Vol. 8 No. 2. October 28, 1871.

Leipzig, September 10, 1871

To the Editor of the WORKINGMAN’S ADVOCATE:

All those childlike persons who think that human history is but the history of a few big and great men, and that the development of mankind is not according to eternal laws, the work of mankind itself, but of a parcel of big people, privileged by the accident of birth “or genius,” who tower over the common herd, and serve it, as leading bulls or wethers–all those childlike persons are of course struck with awe by the conference between such remarkable big people as Messrs, Stieber, Bismarck, Hohenwart, Beust, King Emperor William, King Franz Joseph. And as those childlike persons form the immense majority of what we call the intelligent public and since ninety-nine hundredths of our newspapers are humoring their way of thinking, either sincerely or from policy, it is very natural that the doings at Gastein, are now constituting the principal topic of the day, and creating a tremendous hubbub. You know my opinions with regard to the supposed almightiness of Kings, Emperors, and Statesmen, and I should not have mentioned the meeting of the two Emperors and their rulers anymore, had it not transpired that the social questions, and the steps to be taken for its “solution,” and for the suppression of the socialist movement, have been one of the chief subjects of discussion and negotiation. I gave you at the beginning of the year some explanations about the Prussian Press Bureau, and told for anyone acquainted with its mechanism and composition, and was able to calculate [it is] rather an easy thing to find out what the scribes of the Press Bureau are trying to hide, and towards which aim they want to guide or misguide the “vile multitude.” Well, from the attitude of the journals, under the direction of the Berlin Bureau, it can be guessed now with absolute certainty: 1. That it was Mr. Bismarck who sought and seeks the friendship of Austria, and in whose head originated the plan of the private interview, and 2. That the trump card he played at Gastein, in order to frighten the Austrians into an alliance with Prussia has been the International Workingmen’s Association. Whether Bismarck was successful, we do not know, yet a paper which is said to receive official communications on the part of the Hohenwart Ministry, the Vienna Tagespresse (Daily Press) tells us, when Bismarck talked of the danger of the International, and of the necessity of taking common measures against this most dangerous society, Hohenwart had replied to him: We in Austria are not afraid of the International Workingmen’s Association, and our laws are sufficient to save us from all dangers arising from socialism. If the Austrian Minister has really spoken that, he has, under existing circumstances, spoken rather terribly, but, at the same time spoken an egregious untruth. Of all European governments, the Austrian is the only one which has shown the greatest fear of socialism, though having less cause for it than any other government.

However, be that as it may, the social question is “on the tapis” and in connection with the “Gastien Conference,” the whole press of Germany is without a single exception discussing the ways and means and how to get rid of it. If the social question cannot be got rid of without being solved, and as it cannot be solved without destroying the old society of selfishness, privileges and oppression, and without founding a new society based on justice, that is equal rights for all, it is evident that the organs of the old society cannot wish for a real solution, and are obliged to propose all kinds of sham solutions instead. So it is not to be wondered that the most ridiculous propositions emerge. An officious wiseacre tells us the government must oppress the socialist movement, and while forbidding the working classes to take their own affairs in their own hands, carry out reforms which will prevent discontent in the future. Unfortunately the good soul who gives this ingenious advice has forgotten to state what sort of reform he meant. Another one is less scrupulous and simply says, the whole social question is an illusion, let those in whom the illusion is most powerful be sent to prison, and we shall not hear any more of a “social question.” A third one is rather of a meditative mind, contradicts the former, and is of the opinion that the question can only be solved after having been studied by the government. The honest man is apparently not aware that Bismarck, who gave rise to the present discussion, had been in his way studying the social question for the last eight or nine years, and that all of his studying has not brought him an inch nearer to the “solution.” Simply because, being a Junker and one of the gainers by the old society, he does not want to solve the social question, but only to play with it, and to use it as a tool for his political ends. And this is the case with all other governments. The most radical proposition emanates from the Kreuzzeitung (Gazette of the Cross), the organ of Prussian Junkerdom. It argues logically:

The workingmen’s movement is the upshot of the unnatural position in which the modern working classes find themselves, all measures will prove futile which do not attack the evil at the root. As long as we have an industrial proletariat–and our workingmen are proletarians–we shall have the social question with its concomitant terrors. There is but one cure: the modern Proletariat must be abolished.

So far the Kreuzzeitung is thoroughly logical, and the staunchest socialist can subscribe to every word. But now its logic is an at end, and madness begins, though there is method in it, doubtlessly. How are we to abolish the Proletariat? Well, by abolishing its source, modern industry! Modern industry must be given up; we must return to the dark Middle Ages (of which you, in the New World, have happily no idea) when there were no giant capitalists on one side and starving millions, on the other–when masters and men were members of the same guild, when the men were sure to become masters one day, where, in fact, “labour was organized”–and when (this the Kruezzeitung did think, but not say) the immense majority of the people were serfs, owned as human chattel by the ancestors of the patrons of this very same Kreuzzeitung.

Enough–you see, our adversaries are completely at their wit’s end, and I am afraid they will never recover it again. In the meantime the persecutions are going on merrily. At Crimmitschau (in Saxony), Mr. Hirsch, Mr. Valteich and Mr. Gautrich, the editor, the manager and the printer of the Bürger-und Bauern-Freund (the Burgher’s and Farmer’s Friend), one of our local papers, have been sentenced to four, three and two months of imprisonment, respectively and what for? For having written, published and printed an electoral manifesto (at the last Reichstag Elections), in which the fundamental faults of the New Empire were exposed in the most measured terms. From this single fact you can gather a sufficient knowledge of our freedom of the press, and of the liberality of our elections.

The defeat of the Berlin masons is now acknowledged by all, except the leaders of the strike, who, not to lose their influence, hold back the truth. As if the men could be kept in the dark for any length of time! The high wages, which in the first days after the return to work served as a soothing medicine, have already disappeared, in consequence of the immigration of laborers into Berlin. As for the other Berlin strikes, the most important one, that of the joiners and carpenters, has altogether ceased, the compromise having been accepted by those masters and men too, that refused it in the beginning; the other minor strikes are approaching an arrangement. The same is not to be said of the cigar makers’ and the metal workers’ strikes. which still continue, without any prospect of settlement. The cigar makers exhibit a courage and a discipline really admirable. Those in work pay a regular contribution for those on strike, and in this manner more than 4,000 thalers have been sent to Hanau alone, a sum very high for Germany, where the wages are much lower than in England or the United States, and where until a short time ago, we had no organization at all. If we sum together the money contributed by the German workmen for strikes during the last twelve months I am sure we shall come to a total of a quarter of a million of thalers. The cigar makers still standing out (at Hanau, Halberstadt and Magdburg) are certain of winning, and then the defeat of their less fortunate colleagues will soon be retrieved. The Barmen metal workers will have a hard stand. The masters’ league shows great firmness, and its principal aim being to starve their men into submission, they have not only dismissed all workmen, even those that were ready to submit, but have also caused the manufacturers of other Rhenish towns to deny work to any of the Barmen “strikists,” as they are called in Germany. Thus the struggle between Labor and Capital is getting fiercer and fiercer, and, considering the merciless manner in which the capitalists carry on the war, we must be expectant of a time when no mercy will be shown to them. Who sows the wind, will reap the hurricane.

The Chicago Workingman’s Advocate in 1864 by the Chicago Typographical Union during a strike against the Chicago Times. An essential publication in the history of the U.S. workers’ movement, the Advocate though editor Andrew Cameron became the voice National Labor Union after the Civil War. It’s pages were often the first place the work of Marx, Engels, and the International were printed in English in the U.S. It lasted through 1874 with the demise of the N.L.U.

PDF of issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89077510/1871-10-28/ed-1/seq-1/