Letter to Paul Lafargue, February 7, 1888

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 7 February 1888


First published in English in Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue. Correspondence. 1887-1890, Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1960
First published, in the language of the original (French), in: F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. II, Paris, 1956
Printed according to the original
Translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 7 February 1888

My dear Lafargue,

Herewith the cheque for LI5. I am overwhelmed with work. The business of the English Manifesto has at last been rushed through and I expect to have the proofs in a few days' time.[1] I am counting on Laura for improvements to the transla- tion, my own revision having had to be done in something of a hurry, and this would be of the greatest help to me in the event of a reprint.

Then, I am writing a critique of Bismarck's policy generally. It is to appear as an appendix to the Anti-DUhring's Theory of Force, or rather, as its application to current practice. I promised to deliver the ms. on the

20th of this month and, as you can well imagine, the thing has got to be carefully considered and reconsidered. Now, that is something that would have done nicely for the Socialiste had you not killed it off just by this time.

The disappearance of the Socialiste spells your own disappearance qua party from the Paris scene.[2] After all, the Possibilists manage to keep the Prolétariat going and, if you cannot do as much, it means you are contracting instead of expanding; it is not the weekly organ that is to blame—the other's a weekly too. Meanwhile I refuse to believe that the Paris workingman has embarked irretrievably on a period of decadence. The French are unpredictable and capable of springing all manner of surprises. So I shall wait and see.

As for Bismarck he, no less than the Russian Panslavists[3] and French chauvinists, is playing with fire. The present situation suits him so long as a glimmer of life remains in old Lehmann (nickname for William,[4] as you doubtless know). Bismarck has every reason to make himself indis- pensable against the day the old man dies. He and young William[5] have hatched something of a plot against the Crown Prince[6] in an attempt to induce him to have a laryngotomy, i.e. to have his throat slit.[7] Since the Crown Prince and his wife[8] are perfectly well aware of this, Bismarck has made himself all but impossible so far as they are concerned. And that's one of the reasons why the new Anti-Socialist Law has failed to get through the Reichstag.[9] A Catholic from Cologne[10] declared in open session that, before 30 September (when the existing law expires) the ministry might well have changed hands.

That debate on the Anti-Socialist Law was, for us, a real masterpiece. It is the first time our men have scored an out-and-out victory in the Reichstag. The law will be extended for two years, probably for the last time. But not all the arguments nor all the facts in the world would have sufficed to bring about the rejection of the government's demands had there been any immediate prospect of young William's succession; he is your true Prussian, insolent and arrogant as the officers in Berlin in 1806, who would use the steps of the French embassy to whet their swords on only, vanquished, to surrender those swords to Napoleon's soldiers two months later.[11]

The possibility of war led me to embark once again on the study of things military. If there isn't a war, so much the better. But if it does break out—and this depends on all manner of imponderable events—I hope that the Russians will be well and truly trounced and that nothing very decisive will happen on the French border—for then there might be a chance of reconciliation. With five million Germans under arms, called upon to fight for things of no concern to themselves, Bismarck would no longer have the upper hand.

In the meantime I am taking care of my eyesight which is improving under the treatment prescribed by my specialist, although he hasn't yet butchered my tear duct. But I have to spare my eyes.

My love to Laura.

Yours ever,

F. E.

  1. ↑ In his letter of 20 February 1887 Sorge suggested to Engels that Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky should be asked to translate the Manifesto of the Communist Party into English for publication in the USA. This project did not materialise. An English edition of the Manifesto, in Sam Moore's translation and edited by Engels, appeared in London in 1888.
  2. ↑ In his letter of 5 February 1888, Paul Lafargue informed Engels about the cessation of the publication of the newspaper Socialiste, an organ of the French Workers Party (Guesdists), on 4 February of the same year (see note 33)'
  3. ↑ Pan-Slavism was a social and political movement predicated on the notion that the Slavonic peoples ought to oppose themselves to other peoples and merge in a single state with tsarist Russia. In Russia itself, Pan-Slavism assumed a reactionary character in the 1830s. The Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin, drawing on official populism, asserted that the Slavs were superior to other nations and that Russia was destined for hegemony in the Slavonic world. The same ideas, with various modifications, were propounded by the Slavophiles in the 1850s and 1860s (see note 187).
  4. ↑ William I
  5. ↑ William II, son of Frederick William
  6. ↑ Frederick William (later Frederick III)
  7. ↑ Frederick William had larynx cancer
  8. ↑ Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa
  9. ↑ The debates in the Reichstag about the motion to prolong the Anti-Socialist law (see note 52) in January-February 1888 ended in a defeat for the government. This outcome was largely predetermined by the speeches of August Bebel (30 January and 17 February) and Paul Singer (27 January and 17 February) during the first and the third reading of the draft bill, respectively. Both speakers exposed the provocative activities of the governmenhich was planting spies in the labour unions. On 17 February 1888, the Reichstag prolonged the law for the last time, but not for a term of five years, as the government had suggested - the action of the law was extended for two years only (until 30 September 1890). The new clauses suggested by the government for the law were not adopted (see note 220).
  10. ↑ Peter Franz Reichensperger (Speech in the Reichstag on 27 January 1888)
  11. ↑ An allusion to the entry of Napoleon's troops into Berlin in 1806 following the defeat of the Prussian forces, at Jena and Auerstedt.