Letter to Paul Lafargue, April 1, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 1 April 1889


First published, in full, in the language of the original (French), in: F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance t. II, 1956
Printed according to the original. Translated from the French in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE[1]

AT LE PERREUX

London, 1 April (St. Bismarck's Day)[2] 1889

My dear Lafargue,

If this business of the congress has done nothing else, it has at least taught me a capital lesson in patience, a virtue in which I can hardly be said to excel. Barely do we succeed in eliminating one difficulty than you conjure up another, and wax wroth about nothing at all. I have again questioned Bernstein, in whose word I have complete faith, and he has again assured me that no resolution of any kind was taken clandestinely in your absence. It is ridiculous to suppose that they were trying to hide something from you. If you did happen to be absent, Bonnier was there and could, besides, understand everything that was said in German. And unless I hear anything to the contrary, I must suppose he was sufficiently in the know to pass the information on to you; if not, what the devil was he doing there? Especially since I have drawn your attention on more than one occasion to the fact that Bonnier was, or ought to have been, exceptionally well-posted, and you have never replied to, let alone contradicted, this.

And what will be the result of this squabbling with the Germans, unless to preclude any sort of congress and to enable Messrs Brousse & Co. to flaunt their victory before the eyes of all the world and his wife.

That the Germans should have no desire to expose themselves to a bout of fistcuffs with Possibilists, aided and abetted as these would be by the police, nor to have their heads broken, as Prussians and Bismarckians, by the Paris riff-raff—valiant as in all big cities when the odds are ten to one—I can readily understand. We know from our expe- rience in Lassallean days how unprofitable hand-to-hand fighting with a rival party can be when that party is in alliance with government and police[3] —and that was on our home ground. You certainly cannot hold it against them if they hesitate to engage in a similar struggle on ground where the mere cry of Prussian, of Bismarck's agent, would be enough to rouse against them an ignorant mob, eager to prove its patriotism at small cost to itself. And although it is my personal belief that the impact of the congress would be far greater in July than at any other time, I have

no right to tell Liebknecht or Bebel that they would not be exposed to such risks, were they to fall in with your plan.

So you can see that in no circumstances is your July congress feasible. The more you insist, the less you will get. You have the majority against you and, if you wish to co-operate with it, you will have to submit. Demand everything and you get nothing, grasp all, lose all. You should remember that, though the Germans, the Dutch and the Danes can get along very well without a congress, you cannot. For you, the congress is essential if you are not to disappear for years from the international scene.

If only you had a tiny little paper, as a token of your existence! The most puny party in other countries has its weekly, and you have nothing with which to make your presence felt or to keep you in regular touch with the rest. For you, it was either a daily or nothing at all. Are you going to make the same mistake over the congress?—Either all or noth- ing? All right, then, it'll be nothing, and no one will ever allude to you again and, six months from now, Boulanger will do the rest and snuff you out, you and the Possibilists as well.

To the best of my knowledge, Antoine[4] never did anything in the Reichstag other than protest. From his own point of view he could do nothing else.

The Radicals are mad. It is the height of stupidity to try and destroy Boulanger by means of a lawsuit[5] and to suppose that the tide of universal suffrage (foolish as this is) will be turned by a political verdict. You will get him all the same, the good Boulanger whom you crave, and the Socialists will be his first victims. For a First Consul has got to be impartial and, for every time he lets the blood of the Stock Exchange, he will place another curb on the proletariat, if only to even things out. If it weren't for war, this new development would be a prize joke, it would soon be over, and then there really would be something to laugh about.

Yours ever,

F. E.

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was first published in the journal La Pensee, No. 61, 1955. About the first English publication of the letter, see note 77.
  2. ↑ April 1 - Bismarck's birthday. Engels refers to April's Fool Day (1 April).
  3. ↑ A hint at the ties with the Prussian police and the Bismarck government, incriminating for Johann Baptist von Schweitzer, President of the General Association of German Workers.
  4. ↑ Jules Dominique Antoine
  5. ↑ The French government, alarmed at General Boulanger's popularity, decided to put him on trial on the pretext of his conspiring in a plot threatening the security of the republic. On 1 April 1889, Boulanger and some of his supporters fled abroad. On 8 April Boulanger was deprived of his parliamentary immunity; and on 14 August 1889, the Supreme Court sentenced him, together with Dillon and Rochefort, who had fled in company with Boulanger, in absentia, to banishment.