Letter to Paul Lafargue, May 7, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written


First published in Le Socialiste, No. 115, Paris, 24 novembre 1900
Printed according to the newspaper
Translated from the French
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE 196

IN PARIS

[Excerpt]

[London,] 7 May 1886

I congratulate you on Sunday's victory which has indeed confirm- ed the severance of the Parisian working man from radicalism.[1]

What idiots those Radicals are! But it is the fatal idiocy that seizes hold of any bourgeois party as soon as it finds itself on the threshold of power and thus loses the characteristics of an opposition party. They are impatient to take over the administration, although they know that the moment has not yet come; they play at running a shadow government, but nevertheless become responsible for the follies and faults of the government of the day. At the same time they are con- fronted by the Workers' Party 20 ' growing from day to day as a result of the follies of the government the responsibility for which they can only partially disclaim. The Workers' Party will no longer accept fine words and promises; it will call upon them to act and this they can- not do. While wanting to retain it, they are compelled to act against it. Being not, as yet, in power and finding that the masses are desert- ing them in increasing numbers, they are reduced to pointing a finger at the monarchist conspirators, to representing them as a real danger, to uttering the cry: Let us unite to save the Republic, in short, to becoming Opportunists.2 3 6

Any party is lost if tries to assume power before the time is ripe for the imple- mentation of its own programme. But the impatience of the bourgeois par- ties to arrive is such that all founder prematurely on this rock. That gives us even less time in which to develop.

On the other hand our movement in Paris has entered a phase in which even a blunder would do it no great harm. There can be no doubt that the rate of progress in the future will largely depend upon the group leaders. But once the masses are on the move, they will be like a healthy body that is strong enough to eliminate traces of dis- ease and even a modicum of poison.

  1. ↑ The reference is to the by-elections to the Chamber of Deputies held in Paris on 2 May 1886. The socialist parties and groups (with the exception of the Possibilists, see Note 237) put forward Ernest Roche as their candidate, whilst the Radicals no minated Alfred Nicholas Gaulier. Roche received 100,000 votes, and Gaulier 146,000. At the previous elections on 4 October 1885 the socialist vote had been over 35,500.
    At the poll to elect part of the Paris municipal council on 31 October 1886 the socialist candidate Duc-Quercy received 901 votes, whilst Faillet collected 988 votes for the Possibilists.