THE LAST DECADE 4OIwho openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate
themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bour-
geois and petit-bourgeois. If the new Party organ adopts a line which
corresponds to the views of these gendemen and which is bourgeois
and not proletarian, then nothing remains for us (much though we
should regret it) but publicly to declare our opposition to it, and to
break the bonds of solidarity which we have hitherto maintained in our
representation of the German Party abroad. But it is to be hoped that
things will not come to such a pass. ...^87However, the Jahrbtich only lasted for two issues and in September
1879 the Sozial-Demokrat was founded. According to Marx the new paper
was 'not worth much'.^88 There were still complaints about the infiltration
of petit-bourgeois ideas and relations continued to be strained. This was
owing more to the military tone of Engels than to Marx, whom Lieb-
knecht (for one) found much easier to deal with.^89 But the whole quarrel
was patched up at the end of 1880 when Bebel and Bernstein undertook
what they described as a 'journey to Canossa' to visit Marx and Engels.
It was agreed that Bernstein should take over the editorship of the Sozial-
Demokrat and, somewhat to the surprise of all, he made a success of it.
(Marx's view of Bernstein is not recorded.) But for all his optimism about
the future, Marx was very caustic about the rising generation. To take
two examples: he remarked to Engels that Dietzgen's work was deteriorat-
ing and that he found the man's case 'quite incurable' j^90 Kautsky (soon
to become the leading Marxist theoretician in Germany) was stigmatised
by Marx as 'a small-minded mediocrity, too clever by half (he is only
twenty-six), industrious in a certain way, busies himself with statistics but
does not derive anything intelligent from them, belonging by nature to
the tribe of Philistines'.^1 "
V. RUSSIA, FRANCE AND BRITAINI Jntil 1875 Marx was extremely sceptical about the possibilities of revolu-
tion in Russia: his optimism immediately after the emancipation of the
serfs in 1861 had been short-lived. In spite of the success of Capital in
Russia and his admiration for individual thinkers such as Chernyshevsky,
lie continued to think of that country as the mainstay of European
1 ruction, more amenable to outside pressure than to internal subversion.
Hy the beginning of 1877 - with the growing tension between Russia and
1111 key - Marx predicted that the 'Eastern Question' would 'lead to
1 evolution in Russia, whatever the outcome of the war'.^92 He and Engels
loi lowed with great attention the Russo-Turkish War (which occupied the