| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 4 May 1880 |
ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE
IN LONDON
London, 4 May 1880
My dear Lafargue,
What are we to do about the introduction Malon has submitted?[1]
Grateful as I am for his good intentions, what is needed here are facts, and where would he get them from? The history of German socialism from 1843 to 1863 is not yet in print, and Malon's German friends in Zurich know hardly anything about that period, which preceded their entry into political life. So it is natural enough that Malon's introduction should omit the most important facts while going into details which can hardly interest the French reader and should, besides, be riddled with mistakes of a fairly serious kind. To mention only one — Lassalle was never editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. He never so much as contributed to it, if one excepts a feuilleton in a single issue— a feuilleton which was, moreover, completely rewritten by the editorial staff. At that time Lassalle was almost wholly taken up with the adulteries and divorce proceedings of Countess Hatzfeldt and her husband[2] ; and had he offered to join the editorial department, we should have refused outright to associate ourselves with a man up to his eyes in the filth necessarily arising from the conduct of such a scandalous case. Neither Marx nor I have ever collaborated with Lassalle.
In about 1860 he suggested we should join him in founding a big daily newspaper in Berlin, but the conditions we laid down were such that he was bound to find them unacceptable.
Come to that, if someone is needed to introduce me to the French public, as is very possible, it seems to me that it could only be you, who have taken the trouble to translate my articles[3] and who alone are in a position to get hold of the necessary information which I have asked Marx to let you have. To my mind, I owe it to you as much as to myself to take on no one else.
Yours ever,
F. Engels