Letter to Victor Adler, December 27, 1894

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 27 December 1894


First published abridged in the Arbeiter-Zeitung. No. 1, 1 January 1895 and in full, in Russian, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Printed according to the original collated with the newspaper
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50


ENGELS TO VICTOR ADLER

IN VIENNA [Draft]

[London, 27 December 1894]

Dear Victor,

I would ask you to convey my congratulations to the Austrian workers on their daily paper. Its first daily paper invariably signifies a tremendous step forward in the life of a party, especially of a workers' party. It is the first position from which it can tackle its opponents with the same weapons, at least in the field of the press. You have won this position; now the second is at stake: suffrage, parliament. And you are certain of this too, if you exploit the political situation—becoming ever more favourable to you as it is with the same skill as [you have done] in the past fifteen months; if you are determined to act at the right time, but also, as so often necessary, determined to wait at the right time; if you know how to let circumstances act on your behalf.

Good luck and success to the daily Arbeiter-Zeitung!

Yours