Letter to Heinrich Nonne, between February 9 and 21, 1884

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	9 February 1884

First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47

ENGELS TO HEINRICH NONNE

IN PARIS

[Draft]

[London, between 9 and 21 February 1884]

I cannot say anything definite about the plan outlined by you, so long as I do not know what persons are involved and what your intentions are. All I can say is that I could, in certain circumstances and provided they were worth the trouble, enter into a cartel, but never form an alliance, with people who have not completely and unreservedly adopted the revolutionary communist standpoint. Besides my time is completely taken up with work that it is absolutely imperative I should do, and my international correspondence is, in any case, already extensive enough. Clemenceau would certainly have to be induced to go considerably further before we could ally ourselves with him; whether, as the immediate ministerial candidate of the extreme Left, he would wish to be on more than ordinarily 'good terms' with us would seem to be debatable. One can remain thus on good terms with socialists of the most diverse shades of opinion until a difference of principle or tactics crops up, whereupon sympathy turns into antipathy. Accordingly, it is now for you to decide whether I am a man who would suit your book.