| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 30 October 1882 |
ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE
IN PARIS
London, 30 October 1882
My dear Lafargue,
I should be glad if you would send the daily Egalité regularly to the
Editors of the Sozialdemokrat
Zurich, Switzerland.
In return, they will send you the Sozialdemokrat. The exchange — a daily for a weekly paper — may not be fair, but all the same it is you who will benefit. The idea is to keep the editors of the Sozialdemokrat in touch with what is going on in Paris and, as you yourself will realise, it is impossible for a + proletarian editorial board to subscribe to all the sheets that keep springing up and disappearing in Paris.
Up till now, the Sozialdemokrat's chief source of Parisian news has been Vollmar, a German Reichstag deputy and ex-officer who was paralysed as a result of a wound. He is a friend of Malon's, so you can imagine the extent to which the latter has turned him against your party. To that end he has not only made use of the many mistakes with which you have unfailingly supplied him (an example being Léon Picard's absurd article about the Germans in Paris last September 4) but, as is his wont, has also told him one lie after another.
For all that, Vollmar is a good chap; in Germany he issued a pamphlet so impossibilist that he will no longer be able to remain a Possibilist in France. It would be worth finding an opportunity to talk to him and get him to see the other side of the coin. I haven't got his Paris address, but it shouldn't be difficult to find.
In Zurich I am bringing out a German edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific with a great many addenda. I shall send you some copies as soon as they arrive. The thing will be about twice as long as your translation. Would there be any chance of publishing a new French edition based on this German one?
Again I repeat that, for you, it is of the utmost importance to keep the Sozialdemokrat informed; Bernstein could not be more willing, but from over here we cannot keep him in touch with things of which we ourselves are so often left in ignorance. You would do well to seek occasion to write to him, asking for information of some sort, etc. It is by such innocent means that Malon succeeds in ingratiating himself with others, means which you persist in ignoring. You should remember from time to time that Paris is no longer the capital of the world (which no longer has a capital) and less still the world itself.
Love to Laura. Yesterday Marx dined with me and in the evening we all had supper at his house, after which we sat together drinking rum until one o'clock, and today he has left for Ventnor.
Yours ever,
F.E.