Letter to Paul Lafargue, December 7, 1885

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 December 1885


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 36, Moscow, 1964
Printed according to the original translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE

IN PARIS

London, 7 December 1885

My dear Lafargue,

I shall speak to Tussy about Davitt. She may be able to get you what you want.

In opposition to your Social Studies Group 179 the good Malon and the no less celebrated Elie May have just set up a Republican Social Economy Society with ready-made rules.[1] Let's hope this 'research group' will be confined to Malon who will do his research in May's bosom, and to May who will do his research in Malon's heart. They are petty panjandrums whom you would be well advised to ignore completely; that would infuriate them most of all. It's Karl Blind to the life.

Why are you making such a splash in the Socialiste with Williams and the Social Democratic Federation? 501 You ought to know what attitude to take with respect to Hyndman, and this time you have fallen into a fine old trap. In the first place, Hyndman has contrived to make his party a laughing-stock second to none. Williams collected 27 votes out of 10,000, Fielding in North Kensington 32 out of 10,000, Burns in Nottingham 598 out of 11,000.[2] Whereupon the liberal press kicked up an almighty fuss, alleging that the money needed for these foolish candidatures had been provided by the TORIES, and that the socialists had so lowered themselves as to do that party's dirty work for it. Williams then wrote to The Echo on 5 December[3] saying that all this had been arranged while he was in Liverpool, that they had recalled him by telegram without giving details, that he had been treated by the leaders as a mere tool and that he now saw

  • 'that we cannot trust the middle class men of our movement any longer. I am not prepared to be made the tool of middle class men. I call upon my fellow wage-slaves to meet me as soon as possible and to say good-bye to the middle class men and to shut them out from what must be a real working men's organisation', * etc.

— in short he has now adopted a stance directly opposed to Hyndman, Champion, etc.

Now for what has been happening in the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION (by the same post you will be getting a lettter via Aveling from Bland, one of its members). Hyndman was given money by the TORIES to put up candidates against the Liberals — £340 has been admitted. But it must have been in the region of £1,000, since the official expenses of the 3 candidates amounted to more than £600.— With the exception of Burrows, the Executive Committee sanctioned Hyndman's action. However opposition arose within the main body of the federation. But before this could make itself felt, Hyndman, already seeing himself in the role of political arbitrator à la Parnell, left with Champion for Liverpool to offer his services to — Chamberlain, the Radical leader[4] ! The proposal they made the latter was that they would support the Liberals if Chamberlain was prepared to withdraw a Liberal candidate in Birmingham in favour of Hyndman and thus secure him the Liberal vote. Chamberlain showed them the door.

Opposition within the federation is increasing. At the last Committee meeting, at which many other members of the federation were present, the correspondence relating to the Tory money was read out, despite opposition from Hyndman who wished to suppress it. Great rumpus. Why had the sections not been consulted on so vital a matter? In short there is to be a general meeting and we shall have to see whether the federation survives it.

Obviously one may accept money from another party if that money is given unconditionally and if it does not do more harm than good. But Hyndman has acted like an idiot. In the first place he ought to have known that his candidatures couldn't help but manifest the ridiculous weakness of socialism in England. Again, he ought to have known that, by accepting money from the TORIES, he has damned himself once and for all in the eyes of the radical working men who form the vast majority and to whom alone socialism can look for support. In short, if one does such things, one advertises them, one boasts about them, but one doesn't make a secret of them. Hyndman, however, is a caricature of Lassalle; to him all means are good, even if not conducive to an end. He is in such a hurry to play the political panjandrum that he has no time to consider his real position. He combines all the bad qualities of your English PROFESSIONAL POLITICIAN— your ADVENTURER — with a quality common enough in France but rare over here, of seeing facts not as they are but as he would like them to be.

All this has come so soon after his infamous behaviour towards Aveling[5] that he has not yet been forgiven — even within his own party — and he is bound to have a pretty hard time of it if he is to survive the affair. In any case, if the Social Democratic Federation continues, it will no longer have any substance.

A kiss for Laura.

Yours ever,

F.E.

  1. ↑ The Republican Social Economy Society (Société Républicaine d'Économie sociale) was founded on 7 November 1885 at the initiative of the Possibilist (see Note 237) leader Benoît Malon. The society set itself the aim of studying the social question and putting forward plans for imminent reforms.
  2. ↑ Cf. the relevant figures in the previous letter.
  3. ↑ Henry Mayers Hyndman and Henry Hyde Champion, the leaders of the Social Democratic Federation (see Note 300) received money from the Conservative Party to put up their candidates at the 1885 general election (see Note 487). The Federation fielded candidates in London constituencies — Hampstead and Kensington— where they had no prospects of winning but could capture a proportion of the Liberal vote to the benefit of the Conservatives. The Federation's leadership attempted to justify their agreement to these conditions by claiming that the election campaign merely served as propaganda for the future revolution. This created displeasure among many of the Federation's members, as a result of which a number of them resigned and several local organisations split from the Federation. The Echo, Nos. 5285 and 5287, 5 and 7 December 1885 carried a statement from John Edward Williams, one of the Federation's candidates, claiming he was not aware of the receipt of any money from the Tories, an editorial giving details of how the money had been received and a note by Federation member Charles L. Fitzgerald criticising the leadership. Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 51, 17 December 1885, published an editorial based on this letter by Engels, material from The Echo and a letter by Hubert Bland, one of the Federation officials, dealing with the meetings of the Executive Committee on 9 and 12 November at which Hyndman and Champion had been censured for their actions.
  4. ↑ Tories—traditional name of the Conservative Party.
    The Whigs were the right wing of the Liberal Party, and the Radicals its left wing. The Whigs expressed the interests of the landed, and in part, financial aristocracy, of the big and medium capitalist farmers, whilst the Radicals were the representatives of large sections of the trading and industrial bourgeoisie, the bourgeois intelligentsia and the rich trade unions. The Liberal Party exerted an influence on the trade unions through the Radicals, who recognised the need for democratic social reforms. The differences between the Whigs and the Radicals became particularly clear during the preparations for the electoral reform of 1884, when the Whigs opposed the extension of the suffrage to Irish peasants and the establishment of constituencies of equal size, thus backing the Conservatives. Most of the Radicals favoured Home Rule and improvements in the agrarian law. However some of them, headed by J. Chamberlain, wanted to keep the Union of 1801 intact. The rivalry between the Whigs and the Radicals became aggravated on the eve of the 1885 general election which the Radicals expected would bring them victory in the party and the country as a whole (see notes 299 and 487). It was at this time that the political outlook of the Radical movement took its final shape, as expressed in 'The Radical Programme with a Preface of J. Chamberlain', London, 1885 (see also Note 430).
  5. ↑ The reference is to two notes by Henry Mayers Hyndman published in Justice, No. 90, 3 October and No. 92, 17 October 1885 where he accuses Edward Aveling of offending against an agreement concluded between various socialist organisations about speeches to be made by socialists at the Dod Street demonstration of 27 September 1885. Hyndman's accusation was refuted in a statement signed by 31 members of socialist organisations. The statement together with both notes from Justice was carried by The Commonweal, No. 10, November 1885 in an article entitled 'Free Speech and the Police'.