ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE
AT LE PERREUX
London, 27 May 1889
My dear Lafargue,
By the same post I am sending you the report on the Alliance[1] Would you also like to have the Fictitious Splits?[2] Send me the article for the Russian review,[3] and I'll send it on to Danielson.
Since Lavrov has turned coy,[4] write to N. Axelrod, Képhir-Anstalt, Hirschengraben, Zurich and ask him to get you, besides his own, the signatures of Vera Zasulich (since you haven't got her address), and those of G. Plekhanov and other Russian Marxists. That will astound our worthy eclectic.
The English Convocation[5] is already at the printers; tomorrow I shall have the proofs, and distribution will begin the day after.
Parnell has refused his signature as a private person, but has given it in his capacity as the HONORARY SECRETARY of the LABOUR ELECTORAL ASSOCIATION.
Since you must have received this signature, together with those of its other members (Champion, Mann, Bateman), I did not telegraph you, for you would, of course, take the signatures as sent to you direct, and not from my letter.
The reason is that he is being sent by his TRADES UNION (cabinet makers) to the Possibilist congress, where he and Burns will support our line. If the Possibilists oppose their proposal for a merger, they might even part company with them and join us. But that is, as yet, the music of the future.[6]
If I seemed insistent, it was because of the contradictory information that was coming in from Paris, and because I didn't know whether or not agreement had been reached as to the text of the Convocation. But now things will get going over here as well.—It will be a thunderbolt.
Your tactics are best, more especially since you haven't got a paper and since everyone in France has already taken sides. Here, where not a few are still sitting on the fence and where, in addition, we must try and shake the faith of those who have already gone over to the enemy—and it can be done—we must go into the attack.
Tomorrow I shall at least, I hope, be able to put in a little anti-Hyndman work[7] ; today, all my time has been taken up with arrangements for the English Convocation and with running errands.
The letter from Lyons was in the enclosed envelope. I sent it to you so that you might decipher the name and address of the signatory for me.[8] It contained a request for copies of my writings. However, you appear to have received my accompanying letter asking you to enlighten me on the above.
Yours ever,
In haste F. E.
Farjat must let us have a definite yea or nay—perhaps he had left before the vote was taken?[9]
- ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association. Report and Documents, Published by Decision of the Hague Congress of the International (see present edition, Vol. 23)
- ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Fictitious Splits in the International (see present edition, Vol. 23)
- ↑ P. Lafargue asked Engels to write to Nikolai Danielson (see Lafargue P., E Engels, 14 May 1889, Correspondence, Vol. 2, Moscow 1960) and request him to get in touch with the publishers of the Northern Review. In 1889, in its issue No. 4, this journal published the Russian translation of Lafargue's article 'The Machine as a Factor of Progress' (see note 468), the final chapter of his major work Das Proletariat der Handarbeit und Kopfarbeit published by Die Neue Zeit, No. 3, 1888.
- ↑ The reference is to the difficulties in getting the signatures of Russian Socialists to the circular about the convocation of the Paris Congress (see note 432). Lafargue had approached Pyotr Lavrov, with whom he was acquainted, on the matter. Lavrov declined at first by saying that, not being a representative of any particular revolutionary organisation in Russia, he was not entitled to sign. Subsequently he was authorised to do this. However, by that time Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinsky, Vera Zasulich, Pavel Axelrod and Georgy Plekhanov had given their consent.
- ↑ The circular about the convocation of an International Working Men's Congress, written by P. Lafargue and J. Guesde, was sent by the authors to Engels on 14 May, 1889. In June 1889 it was printed in the form of a leaflet in French in Paris and in English in London, and also published in German by the newspapers Der Sozialdemokrat on 1 June and Berliner Volksblatt on 2 June. The newspaper The Star had also printed it on 14 May 1889 in the Feature The People's Post Box (in English); the circular likewise appeared in the weekly Commonweal on 8 June and also as an appendix to the pamphlet The International Working Men's Congress of 1889, II, A Reply to the 'Manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation' (see note 444).
- ↑ The expression 'music of the future' gained popularity with the publication, in 1861, of Richard Wagner's letter to Frederic Villot, the custodian of French museums, under the title: 'Zukunftsmusik. An einen franzosischen Freund' ('Music of the Future. To a French Friend').
- ↑ A reference to the pamphlet The International Working Men's Congress of 1889, II, A Reply to the 'Manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation', London 1889. Its original version was written by Eduard Bernstein on Engels' initiative in connection with the campaign waged by the leadership of the Social Democratic Federation (see note 62) in support of a Congress convened by the Possibilists in Paris, with the aim of preventing the success of an International Socialist Workingmen's Congress which the Marxists were to hold. This work was edited by Engels and published as a pamphlet in English.
- ↑ Engels had received a letter from the workmen of Lyon, but, since the signatures and the address were illegible, he asked Lafargue to transcribe them.
- ↑ According to The Manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation, the International Congress of Trade Unions in London (see note 320) voted unanimously to authorise the Possibilists to convene an International Workingmen's Congress in Paris. The manifesto also claimed that Gabriel Farjat, described as a representative of the 'French soidisant Marxists, or Guesdists', voted for this resolution. E. Bernstein, in his pamphlet The International Working Men's Congress of 1889, II, A Reply to the Manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation rebutted these fabrications by proving that as a representative of the French trade unions, not Socialists, Farjat could not vote for this resolution. Subsequently one of the publications released by the Organising Committee for the Convocation of an International Working Men's Congress in Paris had a special postscript witarjat's statement to the effect that, far from voting for the resolution entrusting the convocation of an International Congress to the Possibilists, he could not do it for the simple reason that the resolution was never put to the vote.