| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 13 June 1891 |
ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE
AT LE PERREUX
London, 13 June 1891
My dear Laura,
I am sure I do not know how to thank you for the trouble you have taken with Rave's blundering work. I was rather surprised at your heroism in tackling it altogether; I sent you his specimen of Bebel,[1] and my notes, showing exactly the same class of mistakes and slovenly renderings — though not in such perfection — as in your anthology. May la génération infâme pursue him like the Erinnyes pursued Orestes!
Anyhow, I have just finished the introduction to the new edition which I shall send to Kautsky for the Neue Zeit if he likes to have it.[2]
But before sending it off there is one point on which I should like to be sure. I state Bachofen's new discoveries to be these: 1) hétairisme as he calls it, 2) Mutterrecht,[3] as its necessary corollary, 3) women consequently held in high esteem in ancient times, and 4) that the transition to monogamy, where the woman belonged exclusively to one man, involved the violation of the ancient traditional right of the other men to the same woman, a violation which had to be atoned for, or the toleration of which had to be purchased, by surrendering the woman for a limited period of time.[4]
Now as to this point No. 4 I am not quite certain. You have no idea what thieves these prehistoric bookmakers are, and therefore all I recollect that somewhere I have found Bachofen quoted as the discoverer of this fact, and I believe even a reference to Mutterrecht,[5] preface p. XIX. But I cannot find it again. Now as you have my copy of Bachofen with you, would you mind (unless you remember it without looking) referring and letting me know whether I am, generally speaking, justified in attributing this discovery to Bachofen? It is so long since I have looked at the book, and as in defence of Morgan's claims I have to be rather severe on a lot of his exploiters, I should not like them to catch me in the wrong box. As soon as I have your answer, the ms. can go off and then Rave can have a proof-sheet to go on with.
I had to read the whole literature on the subject (which entre nous[6] I had not done when I wrote the book — with a cheek worthy of my younger days) and to my great astonishment I find that I had guessed the contents of all these unread books pretty correctly — a good deal better luck than I had deserved. My contempt against the whole set — Bachofen and Morgan excepted — has considerably increased. There is no science where cliqueism and camaraderie are more dominant, and as the set is small, it can be carried on internationally and with success. Giraud Teulon[7] is as bad and as great an appropriator of other people's ideas as any Englishman amongst them. The only amusing fellow is Létourneau.[8] What a charming specimen of the Parisian philistine! And with what splendid self-complacency he proves to his own most intense satisfaction, that not only all the prehistoric tribes and present savages, in spite of all their excès génétiques[9] as he calls it, are Parisian philistines at least, but so are, too, even the animals of the brute creation! The whole animated world one immense 'Marais'[10] and boulevard du Temple, peopled by either contributors or readers of what the Siècle used to be under Louis Philippe, and the greatest authority on les origines du mariage et de la famille— Paul de Kock!
De a Létourneau (evidently of the breed of le petit étourneau d'Amérique— icterus pecoris — qui change de femelle au jour le jour,[11] p. 33) to Rave il n'y a guère un pas.[12] Rave has a publisher, Carré, rue St André des Arts, could not that man be got to publish the new edition of the Misère de la philosophie? To hear Rave, he seems very enterprising in our line.
I send you The Workman's Times regularly. It is the only working-class paper belonging to working people. It was started by the Northern Factory hands etc. and originally published at Huddersfield; now its headquarters are in London. It is a non-political paper, that is to say it goes in for the formation of an independent working men's party and Labour representation in all elective bodies. It is over-crowded with detail information, but giving facts. There is a regular crop of 'Labour' papers: The Trade Unionist, by Tom Mann — soft like Mann himself, who, for a Mann,[13] has one n too much in English and one too little in German; nice sincere fellow as he otherwise is, as far as a man without backbone can be so. Then The Worker's Cry, by Frank Smith, late Social Wing, Salvation Army. — Then The Labour World, founded and abandoned by Michael Davitt and brought to speedy grief and extinction by Massingham, once of The Star. I shall send you specimens of these if they live.
Longuet's behaviour seems indeed worse than incomprehensible. At all events it is a good job for poor Même[14] that she is with you again. For the rest you leave us in the dark. Si Longuet s'est refait une jeunesse auprès de Marie, Marie a-t-elle réussi à se refaire une virginité en même temps?[15] And how are the boys[16] getting on? What's to become of them while he is gallivanting at Caen? How about the Conseil de Famille? etc., etc.
Louise keeps rummaging up all the papers, pamphlets, newspaper cuttings, etc., etc., brought over here from Maitland Park.[17] The letters are in tolerable order. Lassalle's will be published in Germany; Bernstein is now using them for an introduction to Lassalle's works to be published by the party. The Lassalleans will not like it, but since Liebknecht has taken Lassalle's party so much in the Vorwärts, I am determined to have it out, and to use their own Lassalle-veneration as the peg whereupon to hang a criticism of the man.
Sam Moore suffers off and on from African fever here — has gone into the country. Very little news from Jollymeier. Salut à Paul.
Grüsse von Louise.
Dein alter[18]
F.E.