| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | October 1887 |
ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE[1]
IN PARIS
[ E x t r a c t ] [End October 1887]
... to outwit it, he says, the Republic is always in danger and it always will be in danger so long as every working man does not have in his home a Lebel rifle and fifty ball cartridges. And this is what Clemenceau has not dared to concede—still less propose—and it is what you ought to din into his ears day in day out. The Republic will always be in danger so long as the soldier has his rifle and the working man has not. But Clemenceau is a bourgeois and, as such, is closer to Ferry than to the Socialists. He might be a staunch Radical, were it not for the revolutionary Socialists. And now that his ideal—republican America where the labour question was unknown—no longer exists, he must be in a curious frame of mind. On top of all that, there's the position he's in, to judge by what you say, and this makes me realise how it is that a Ferry-Clemenceau cabinet might seem to him an acceptable solution...
F. E.