Letter to Paul Lafargue, March 27, 1889

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 27 March 1889


First published, slightly abridged, in Le Populaire de Paris, No. 948, 29 November 1920, and, in full, in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVIII, Moscow, 1940
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 27 March 1889

My dear Lafargue,

You know what Hegel says: Anything that is spoiled is spoiled for the best possible reasons.[1] And your Parisians are going to the greatest pains to prove it.

This is the position: After the demise of the Socialiste[2] your Party disappeared from the international scene. You had abdicated, you were dead so far as the other Socialist Parties abroad were concerned. It was entirely the fault of your workingmen; for they did not choose to read or support one of the best papers the Party had ever had. But, after having killed off your medium of communication with other Socialists, they must inevitably suffer the natural consequences of their behaviour.

The Possibilists, left in sole possession of the battle field, took advantage of the situation you had yourselves created for them. They had friends in Brussels and in London with whose assistance they have presented themselves to the world at large as the sole representatives of the French Socialists. They have succeeded in enticing the Danes, the Dutch and the Flemish to their congress. And you know what trouble we have been to in neutralising the victories they have won.

Now the Germans are offering you an opportunity, not only of re-entering the stage with éclat, but also of seeing yourselves recognised by all the organised parties of Europe as the only French Socialists with whom they wish to fraternise. They are offering you an opportunity of wiping out at one stroke the effect of all the mistakes you have made, and of all the defeats you have suffered, and of rehabilitating yourselves in the position to which your theoretical understanding entitles you, but which has been compromised by your faulty tactics. They are offering you a congress which all the genuine workingmen's parties, even the Belgian, will attend, they are offering you a chance of isolating the Possibilists so that they will have to confine themselves to a bogus congress—in other words, they are offering you far more than you had a right to expect, having regard to the position you had placed yourselves in. And then—what do you do? Seize it with both hands? Not a bit of it. You behave like spoilt children, you haggle, you ask for more and, when you have at last been persuaded to assent to what has been agreed by everyone else, you insist on conditions which jeopardise everything that has been gained for you.

So far as you are concerned, what is important is that there should be a congress and that it should be in Paris, where you can be acknowledged by all to be the only French Socialist Party to have gained international recognition; also that the Possibilist congress should, for its part, be a bogus congress, notwithstanding the éclat deriving from secret funds and the 14th of July.[3] Everything else is of secondary, indeed less than secondary, importance. If you are to be set on your feet again, your congress must be held, no matter if it's a flop in the eyes of the bourgeois public. In order to regain your position in France, what you need above all is international recognition of yourselves and international condemnation of the Possibilists, etc. You are offered it—and all you do is sulk!

As I have already said, I believe your date to be the better one for creating an impact in France. But then this should have been explained at The Hague.[4] You can't blame anyone else if, at the critical moment, you went to the next room and everything took place in your absence. And I have conscientiously explained your line of reasoning to Bebel, asking him to give it his serious consideration. However, I felt impelled to add that, in my opinion, the meeting of the congress, on no matter what date, must be assured, and that any move that might jeopardise that meeting would be a false one. You cannot but be aware that, by re-opening the question of the date, we shall all become embroiled in endless discussions and disputes and that we can expect, probably some time towards the end of October, to obtain general assent to the date of 14 July—if, indeed, in the absence of another conference, which will certainly never take place, any new date is agreed at all.

And then, with typically Parisian naivete, you say: We impatiently await the fixing of a date for the international congress! But the date had been fixed for the end of September, and it is the same 'we' (who 'await', etc.)—the same 'we' that want to cancel this date and open a fresh debate. 'We' will have to wait until the others have familiarised themselves with the new proposals of these same 'we', have discussed them and have reached an agreement on the matter, if such an agreement is at all possible.

'We also await protests from the Belgians.' But the Belgians will not be the only ones to protest, all are resolved to protest in common. This protest would probably already have been lodged, had you not put everything in question by demanding a change of date. And as long as there is no agreement on this score, nothing will be done.

So accept what is being offered you, it is, in effect, what matters most: victory over the Possibilists. Don't jeopardise the holding of the congress. Don't give the Brussels people a pretext for extricating themselves from the business, for tergiversating and intriguing, don't upset afresh what has already been gained for you. You cannot have all you want, but you can have victory. Don't press the Germans, who are doing everything for you, to the point where they might despair of the possibility to co-operate with you. Withdraw your demand for a change of date, act like men, not like spoilt children who want to have their cake and eat it. Without this, I believe, there will be no congress and the Possibilists will jeer at you, and with good reason.

Yours ever,

F. E.

Needless to say, I have written to tell Bebel that you assent to all the Hague resolutions, but he will say that, after all this, you are putting everything in question again.

I have not found Bernstein, so shan't be able to send you the addresses of the Swiss before yesterday.

Our pamphlet[5] is beginning to have an effect here.

  1. ↑ G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Theil I. Die Logik. Werke, Vol. VI, p.249.
  2. ↑ After Jules Guesde, Gabriel Deville and other members of the French Workers' Party had resigned from the editorial board of the Cri du peuple and after the Voie du peuple, the paper they had started, also ceased publication (see note 18), the Party's weekly La Socialiste likewise closed down (the last issue appeared on 26 March 1887). The Party's paper resumed publication on 11 June 1887.
  3. ↑ 14 July 1889 was the centenary anniversary of the capture of the Bastille
  4. ↑ The International Socialist Conference was held in the Hague on 28 February 1889. It was attended by representatives of the socialist movement of Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. The conference was convened at the suggestion of the Social Democratic faction in the German Reichstag with the aim of framing the conditions for the calling of an International Socialist Working Men's Congress in Paris. The Possibilists refused to attend the conference despite the invitation and did not recognise its decisions. The conference defined the powers of the forthcoming congress, its date and agenda. The International Working Men's Congress took place on 14 July 1889.
  5. ↑ A reference to the pamphlet The International Working Men's Congress of 1889. A Reply to 'Justice', London 1889. Its original version was written by Eduard Bernstein at Engels' suggestion in reply to the editorial comment entitled The German 'Official' Social Democrats and the International Congress in Paris and carried by the newspaper Justice on 16 March 1889, No. 270. Having been edited by Engels, the pamphlet appeared in English in London, and then it was published by the German newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat and signed: E. Bernstein.