Letter to Paul Lafargue, November 16, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 16 November 1889


First published in: F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II, Paris, 1956
Translated from the French
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE[1]

AT LE PERREUX

London, 16 November, 1889

My dear Lafargue,

Let us say no more about your proclivity for Boulangism, now happily a thing of the past, and why re-read, at this late date, your letters of yester- year? In any case the gallant general has ruined himself, not only by his fail- ure to remain on the field of battle, but—and this was infinitely worse—by his royalist and Bonapartist alliances; this he now sees and would like to recover his Republican virginity but, as in the case of the fair Eugénie:

Should he this night find a maidenhead,

(Bonaparte, on his wedding-night) It'll mean the fair lady had two.

No one is in any doubt that the discontent underlying Boulangism[2]

is justified, but it is precisely the form assumed by that discontent which goes to show that the majority of Parisian working men are as little aware of their situation as in 1848 and 1851. Then, too, their discontent was justified; the form it assumed, Bonapartism, cost us eighteen years of Empire—and what an Empire! And at that time a fair number of the Parisian working men were still fighting against it; but in 1889 they thought fit to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of 1789 by grovelling at the feet of a mere scallywag. That being so, you can hardly expect other people to defer to the Parisians with the same respect they so read- ily accorded their forebears.

I am much relieved to hear that the Boulangists—genuine or other- wise—have been kept at arm's length by the Party, and the Possibilists[3]

likewise. Had they been admitted such as they are I should have been at a loss what to say to the English, Danes, Germans, etc. For the past twenty years we have been advocating the formation of a Party that was distinct from and opposed to all bourgeois parties—and the inclusion of men elected under Boulanger's banner, a banner whose protection, in those same elections, was extended to the Monarchists and repudiated by them—would have spelt our French Party's ruin vis-à-vis other

national parties. And how exultant would the Hyndmans and Smiths have been then!

You say that the attacks on Boulé achieved nothing save to gain him access to the Intransigeant and to get him nominated as a municipal candi- date—in other words, publicly profess himself a Boulangist, fall into line with that crew and receive the due reward of his treachery.[4] Thank you!

Your plan is very good if it is practicable—if, that is to say, the provinces are prepared to assume the leadership of this committee.[5]

You keep talking about your provincial papers, but you hardly ever send me any.[6] A few used to be forwarded to me by Bonnier, but now I seldom see one. Everything you send me, or get others to send me, will bear fruit in that it will help me keep Bebel posted, and Bebel is ten times more important than Liebknecht; if, moreover, I know what is going on, I can get to work on Ede and the Sozialdemokrat.

It would be a good idea if all your newspapers were to arrange exchanges with the Sozialdemokrat and the Labour Elector, 13 Paternoster Row, E. C. In all other countries this is done as a matter of course; but the French gentlemen wait to be begged—and sometimes begged in vain—to put us in a position to work in their interest. Should this kind of behaviour exceed certain limits, we for our part might begin to tire. Is it really too much to expect some small modicum of order and organisation?

But enough of that. I stand up for you so often and with such ardour vis-à-vis other people that, by way of return, it is only fair that I should give you a thorough dressing-down. At the moment I have no means of checking M. de Paepe's intimations[7] and the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung has received confirmation of his death[8] from St. Petersburg; in view of the Russian government's mendacity and the myths about Russian revo- lutionaries, there's no knowing what is true and what is false.

Now for Laura.

Yours ever,

F. E.

  1. ↑ A brief excerpt from this letter was first published in French by the journal La Pensee, No. 61, 1955. For the first publication of this letter in English, see note 40.
  2. ↑ After his resignation from the post of War Minister, General Boulanger continued to whip up a revanchist campaign with the support of the chauvinist elements of different parties, from the radicals to the monarchists. On 8 July 1887, when Boulanger was leaving for Clermont-Ferrand to assume command of the 13th Corps, his supporters staged a chauvinist demonstration at the Lyons railway station. Boulangism was a reactionary movement in France in the mid-1880s, led by ex-War Minister General Boulanger. It urged a revanchist war against Germany to win back Alsace, annexed by Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. In alliance with the monarchists, the Boulangists sought to capitalise on the masses' discontent with the government's policy. Their large-scale demagogic propaganda was especially effective among the lower ranks of the army. France was under the threat of a monarchist coup. Measures taken by the republican government, with the support of the progressive forces led to the collapse of the Boulangist movement. Its leaders fled from France.
  3. ↑ The Possibilists (Broussists) were a reformist trend in the French socialist movement between the 1880s and the early 20th century. Its leaders - Paul Brousse and Benoit Malon -caused a split in the French Workers' Party (see note 33) in 1882 and formed the Federation of Socialist Workers. Its ideological basis was the theory of municipal socialism. The Possibilists pursued a 'policy of the possible' ('la politique des possibilites'). At the beginning of the 20th century the Possibilists merged with the French Socialist Party.
  4. ↑ Mr Boule, representing the French syndicats, was running as a Socialist candidate at the by election in Paris in January 1889; thereupon, at a municipal election in the department of Haute Marne, he nominated his candidacy as a Boulanger supporter. As a result, he forfeited his post of Secretary of the Federation of Syndical Chambers in Paris in the autumn of 1889. The newspaper Le Parti ouvrier exposed Boule in J. Vidal's article 'Execution d'un traitre' published on 26 October. The newspaper Intransigeant on 29 October carried E. Roche's article in Boule's defence and, on 2, 3 and 5 November it featured a series of Boule's articles on the port workers' strike at Bourget.
  5. ↑ See this volume, p.402 3
  6. ↑ Probably a reference to Le Cri du Travailleur (Lisle), Le Salariat (Rouen) and L'Action sociale (Lyon).
  7. ↑ Engels had received from Lafargue an article by C. de Paepe; published by the Belgian press, it contained a report on Nikolai Chernyshevsky's death.
  8. ↑ The death of Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky