... Matters may indeed reach the point where Engels and I would be compelled to issue a public statement against the Leipzigers and their Zurich allies. This is the state of affairs: Bebel wrote us that they wanted to found a Party organ  in Zurich and he requested our names as collaborators. We were informed that Hirsch  would probably be the editor. Thereupon we accepted, and I wrote direct to Hirsch (then in Paris, from where he has since been banished, for the second time) to accept the editorial post, for he alone afforded us the certainty that a mob of doctors, students, etc, and a professorial socialist rabble, such as strut about in the Zukunft, etc, and have already begun to penetrate the Vorw rts,  would be kept out, and the Party line would be adhered to strictly... These fellows, nonentities in theory and incompetent in practice, want to draw the teeth of socialism (which they interpret in accordance with university recipes) and particularly of the Social-Democratic Party, to enlighten the workers or, as they put it, to supply them with cultural elements from their confused half-knowledge, and above all to make the Party respectable in the eyes of the philistines. They are poor counter-revolutionary windbags... Now if the weekly,  the Party journal, should actually proceed along the lines initiated by H chberg s  Jahrbuch, we should be compelled to take a public stand against such a debasement of Party and theory! Engels has drawn up a circular (letter) to Bebel, etc  (only for private circulation among the German Party leaders, of course), in which our standpoint is set forth without reserve. Thus the gentlemen have been warned in advance, and they know us well enough to understand that this means: either bending or breaking! If they want to compromise themselves, so much the worse for them! In no event will they be allowed to compromise us. You can see how low they have already been brought by parliamentarism for example from the fact that they are accusing Hirsch of having committed a great crime why? Because he has handled the scoundrel Kayser somewhat roughly in the Laterne for the latter s disgraceful speech on Bismarck s tariff legislation.  But now they say the Party, that is, the handful of parliamentary representatives of the Party, had authorised Kayser to speak like that! All the more shame for this handful! But even that is a miserable excuse. In fact they were foolish enough to let Kayser speak for himself and on behalf of his constituents; but he spoke in the name of the Party. However that may be, they are already so far affected by parliamentary idiotism that they think they are above criticism, and they denounce criticism as a crime: l se-majest ...
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1879