Letter to Laura Lafargue, September 22, 1885

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 September 1885


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 36, Moscow, 1964
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

IN PARIS

London, 22 September 1885

My dear Laura,

Yesterday when I was going to write to you, people came in and made one miss the post. So I can only today send you the cheque £ 10. - which is all I can spare until I get some more money in which I hope won't be long. I have not heard from Schorlemmer but sup-

[1]

pose you must as you expect him, and this being the case I naturally pass a step further and give expression to the expectation that he will bring you over with him which will be some time next week. We are quite ready for you.

While you had a fine row in Paris last Sunday, Tussy and Aveling had one here in the East End, I will forward you The Daily News which has the best report and a leading article.[2] They were here this morning, my opinion is that unless they can get the Radicals who are very eager, apparently, on their side, to take the matter up, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.[3] The Socialists are nowhere, the Radicals are a power. If the question can be made one for which a dozen Radicals will have themselves arrested, the government will give way — if only in view of the elections.[4] If only Socialists are the victims, they will go to prison without any effect.

I like the systematic and theoretically correct way in which the French go about working the scrutin de liste. Each party makes a complete list of its own. The consequence will be that everywhere the relatively strongest party will get all their own men in, the rest none. But at the same time each party will count itself and know its strength. And at the next elections, the necessary result will come out: that the parties nearest to each other will combine for a joint list according to their relative strength — unless indeed this is not already done now on the eve of the voting. Scrutin de liste compels Radicals[5] and Socialists to have a joint list, as it will gradually compel Opportunists and Monarchists to join in a common list, at least in sundry departments. But it is characteristic of the génie français[6]

that this can only come out as the result of actual experience. It is this ideological, absolute character which gives to French political history its classical form, as compared to the muddled politics of other nations.

I am overwhelmed with proof-sheets, revisions, prefaces to write, etc., etc., so that I have not had the time yet to look seriously at your translation of the Manifest. As soon as the most urgent business is off, end of this week I hope, I shall go at it and then we can discuss the matter here. I am glad you are at last taking the bushel off your light and helping us to get some good things translated into French, our own native Frenchmen being apparently unable to understand German. When you are once at it, you will continue by the law of the force of inertia, and gradually begin to like the treadmill.

Now the post-time is up and so good-bye until we see you here when I hope you will bring the rest of your translation.

Nim sends her love.

Yours affectionately,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ 13 September; see also this volume, p. 323.
  2. ↑ The reference is to the English socialists' free speech struggles against the police suppression of outdoor meetings. Between July and September 1885 the London police on several occasions arrested socialist speakers at meetings in the East End. One of them, John E. Williams, a member of the Social Democratic Federation, was sentenced to a month's hard labour. This prompted the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist League, the Labour Emancipation League and the London Radical Clubs (see Note 659) to organise a joint meeting on 20 September in the area of Dod Street, which was attended by several thousand people. The police tried to arrest the speakers, but met with resistance. Several people were detained, but released the next day. This was reported in The Daily News of 21 and 22 September.
  3. ↑ The game is not worth the candle.
  4. ↑ See this volume, p. 361.
  5. ↑ The Radicals — in the 1880s and 1890s a parliamentary group which had split away from the party of moderate republicans in France ('Opportunists', see Note 236). The Radicals had their main base in the petty and, to some extent, the middle bourgeoisie and continued to press for a number of bourgeois-democratic demands: a single-chamber parliamentary system, the separation of the Church from the State, the introduction of a system of progressive income taxes, the limitation of the working day and settlement of a number of other social issues. The leader of the Radicals was Clemenceau. The group formed officially as the Republican Party of Radicals and Radical Socialists [Parti républicain radical et radical-socialiste) in 1901.
  6. ↑ French mind