Engels Attentat auf den gesunden Menschenverstand oder Der wissenschaftliche Bankerott im Marxistischen Sozialismus. Ein offener Brief an meine Freunde in Berlin von Abraham Enss.
Grand-Saconnex (Schweiz): Selbstverlag, 1877. First edition. In publisher’s wrappers. 24 p. Collection stamp and shelfmarks, written in ink and pencil on the cover and the title-page. Distributor’s stamp on the cover. With traces of folding. Cover slightly dusted. Pages yellowed due to ageing. First five leaves with minor damage to the lower corners. Overall in fine condition.
Scarce pamphlet reflecting on the debate on early Marxist communism countering Engels for Anti-Dühring.
First and only edition of the socialist theorist Abraham Enss’ pamphlet in which he criticises Marx and his followers for “doing humbug with socialism” and virulently defending Dühring from Engels’ “pseudoscientific” diatribes on him. Since the editors of Berliner Freie Presse refused to accept his writing, Enss self-published his open letter dated to February 4, 1877, and supplemented by two postscripts, dated to March 1 and March 18 respectively, in the present pamphlet in Switzerland. In response to the appearance of his writings, Engels called Enss the “Sancho Panza” of Dühring, who he referred to as “modern Don Quixote”, while Liebknecht wrote in his letters to Engels that “Enß is stupid and will soon go to the madhouse” and that he is “generally regarded as a donkey, even an idiot”.
Abraham Enss was a follower and friend of Eugen Dühring. From 1887, he edited Der Antikrat, a Dühringian paper with anti-Semitic tendencies which appeared with the subtitle Gegen Parteigewalt und Hebräer-Einfluß. Für selbständige Geistesführung und sociale Gerechtigkeit. (Against Party Violence and Hebrew Influence. For Independent Spiritual Leadership and Social Justice).
Scarce, WorldCat locates only one copy in institutional holding in the US, in the Columbia University Library in New York.
Literature: Engels, F.; Marx, K.: Marx & Engels Collected Works. Volume 25. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1987. p. 298.; Firedlaender, B.: Der freiheitliche Sozialismus: im Gegensatz zum Staatsknechtsthum der Marxisten. Mit besonderere Berücksichtigung der Werke und Schicksale Eugen Dühring’s. Berlin: Freie Verlagsanschaft, 1892., p. 71; Gay, J.: The Blind Prometheus of German Social Science. Eugen Dühring as Philosopher, Economist, and Controversial Social Critic. Universität Erfurt, 2012.; Liebknecht, W.: Briefwechsel mit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2020. pp. 212–214.; Nettlau, M.: Bibliographie de l’anarchie. Année 1897. — N° 8. Bruxelles: Bibliothèque des Temps Nouveaux, 1897. p. 41.
.
Price: €8,000.00