Letter to Laura Lafargue, March 14, 1892

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 14 March 1892


First published in Labour Monthly, No. 10, London, 1955
Reproduced from the original
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

AT LE PERREUX

London, 14 March 1892

My dear Laura,

I have a whole heap of your letters before me, such a heap that I hardly dare look at it without being ashamed of myself—but you have no idea how I have been worked, interrupted, tracassé, embêté[1] etc. etc. by all sorts of people. My best working time—January to April — has been frittered away and I have not had a moment to even look at the 3rd volume[2] which I was determined to advance a good bit — and over the critical point — by Easter. All vanity of va- nities. Now, my time up to a week after Easter is already engaged (by 10 April I shall have Bebel here for a fortnight or so, before that time I must go to Ryde to see Pumps who has had a sore time of it, Percy had 1) influenza, 2) pneumonia and 3) and last is now laid up with pleurisy) and it will cost a damned effort of energy and a determina- tion to reply to no letters whatever and do no work for no matter whom if I want to use May and June for the 3rd volume.

But damn all this, you don't want to hear my grumbling. I am glad there are prospects of a daily paper for Paris,[3] that will make up for many a mishap in other parts of the world. Though mishaps to our party are getting few and far between, unless we provoke them our- selves. We have such capital allies. Young William[4] brags about his ally God who so arranged all things from the creation of the world, that they must turn out to the greatest glory of the Prussian monarchy in general and young William in particular. But the poor boy does not see that all the time he is a better ally to us than God ever was or will be to him; and even if he was to see it, he could not help it, it's the nature of the beast!

My article[5] of the Almanach[6] and Neue Zeit[7] has now been translat- ed into Italian (Critica Sociale — got me into a row with that confusio- nario l'illustre[8] Bovio[9] ), Roumanian (Revista Socialä[10] ), Polish (Przedswit) and English (New York People).

We have just come back (3.30 p. m.) from Highgate, the cemetery is in a disgusting state of soft clay, we had half a hundredweight stick- ing to each foot. On the grave Tussy (I suppose) had planted a small cypress, and one of the old crocus bulbs has come out in flow- er. The sprig of ivy which Motteler had brought from Ulrich von Hutten's grave on Ufnau Island in the Lake of Zürich, and which we planted after poor Nimmy's burial, having trained it on our balcony, had already been robbed of its best part last summer, but what is left, now grows well and is rooted deeply in the soil, so that no further de- secration is possible.

Here we are also busy about the 1st of May. It is a beautiful play of intrigues woven and cut to pieces and woven afresh, Penelopean fash- ion. The 8 Hours Committee[11] (Edward, Tussy and their friends) tried to be first in the field but the Trades Council,[12] that reaction- ary relict of the Old Trades Unions, was out before them. Now the Trades Council and the S. D. F.[13] are for the nonce friends, as against all the rest; at present they do not compete one with the other, and have common interests in putting down all 'outsiders'. So when the 8 Hours Committee proposed to act with the Trades Council, in the same way as last year, they got a complete rebuff. But then the 8 Hours Committee secured the Park[14] for themselves, before the Trades Council had thought of it, and then again offered co-operation with the Trades Council which was again haughtily declined. Then both bodies addressed the Metropolitan Radical Federation (of Radical clubs 430) to co-operate with them; and the M. R. F. decided to medi- ate, but under all circumstances to act with the'8 Hours Committee to whom the whole movement from the origin was due. So that the Trades Council and the Social-Democratic Federation, as usual over- estimating their strength, have put themselves in an awkward posi- tion: either they must knuckle under, or have a separate demonstra- tion, and bear the responsibility of the split. At all events our demon- stration is now an assured success, whatever the others may do.

Hyndman gets more foolish every day. His blind hatred of the Ger- mans makes him support the Berlin Unabhängige[15] and keep as his German chief of staff that outrageous scamp Gilles who is evi- dently in the pay of the German Embassy and has been, with a lot of malcontents, turned out of the German Communist Club here (our old Verein[16] ). So that he has now lost even the little foreign sup- port he had; in Germany they used to have some little regard to his position as leader of at least a section of English socialists, but he has forfeited that; in France his friends Brousse and Co. are so down, that even Hyndman himself had to protest against their 'hygienic' prog- ramme for their next congress.[17] One does long for a good strong breath of revolutionary air to sweep away all these pettifogging Jam- merkerle[18] — but it is coming, slowly, slowly as everything does come among these verdammten[19] Schleswig-Holsteiners' (as Marx called the English) but when it comes it is safe.

I intended to enclose a line to Paul. I had a letter from him from Marseilles—but it's getting dinner-time, and I am afraid of being stopped in the midst of it. I am afraid their new alliance with Granger and Co. will not turn out to their satisfaction. First of all, these men have shown that they are absolutely unreliable when they passed over to Boulanger, and we can only expect being betrayed by them on the first occasion. Secondly, Paul says we must reap where Boulan- ger has sown. Exactly so, but reap the masses and discard the leaders, as the plan was with the Possibilists; but these leaders have no masses behind them, and are themselves highly undesirable bedfellows. Thirdly, they have crept into the Chambre under false pretences and are sure to be kicked out next election, so that it seems to me our friends are leaning upon an already broken reed. And as to foreign pol- icy, fourthly, these men are pledged Chauvinists — otherwise they could not have got elected — and if Paul and friends form a party with them, they may be outvoted, kicked out, or driven to a split on the first occasion. I hope I may be wrong, but I am afraid I am not. The passage to Boulanger of these fellows was an unpardonable trea- son, and I'd rather have Vaillant than the whole lot of them — indeed I thought it a blessing that they had made themselves impossible. Louise will write to you as soon as possible. She has been rather out of sorts for the last 8 days and is only just coming round again. To- morrow I must go to see old Harney at Richmond where he is ill with the windpipe and his rheumatic gout. And then you want me to say something to the Parisians about the 18 March.[20] I'll be hanged if I know what! Mais nous verrons![21]

Ever yours affectionately,

F.E.

Kind regards from Louise.

  1. ↑ harassed, annoyed
  2. ↑ of Capital
  3. ↑ This concerns the plan for turning Le Socialiste, the weekly newspaper of the French Workers' Party (see Note 146), into a daily. Engels had asked Laura and Paul Lafargue to keep him informed of the progress of the negotiations. The plan failed to materialise.
  4. ↑ William II
  5. ↑ 'Socialism in Germany'
  6. ↑ Almanach du Parti Ouvrier
  7. ↑ See this volume, p. 354.
  8. ↑ Manuscript damaged.
  9. ↑ notorious muddlehead
  10. ↑ This is an inaccuracy. The Revista Socialäappeared from 1884 to 1887. Engels' article was published in the Romanian Social-Democratic journal Critica Sociald, Nos 2 and 3, 1892, under the headline 'Socialismul in Germania'.
  11. ↑ The Legal Eight Hours and International Labour League was founded in 1890, with Engels' participation, by a group of British socialists led by Edward and Eleanor Aveling. Based on the committee which had organised the first May Day demonstration in England (1890), the League saw its task in obtaining the eight-hour working day and other legislative measures tending towards the ultimate emanci pation of the working classes and in implementing the resolutions of the Paris Con gress of the Second International (see Note 51). It organised the British workers' May Day demonstrations in 1891 and 1892, which were also held under the slogan of the eight-hour day. League representatives took part in organising (1893) the Independent Labour Party of Britain (see Note 515).
  12. ↑ The London Trades Council (the Council of all London Trades Unions) was formed in May 1860 at a conference of various London trades unions. The Council was composed of the leaders of the biggest ones. In the earlier half of the 1860s it head ed the workers' campaigns against British intervention in the USA and in support of Poland and Italy. Later it fought for the legalisation of the unions. In the early 1890s the Council, which embraced mostly old-established unions, opposed the movement for the formation of new ones and for the eight-hour working day, but popular pressure compelled it to take part in the May Day demonstrations.
  13. ↑ The Social Democratic Federation, set up in August 1884, consisted of English social ists of different orientations, mostly intellectuals. For a long time the leadership of the Federation was in the hands of reformists led by Hyndman, an opportunist sec tarian. In opposition to them, the revolutionary Marxists within the Federation (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Edward Aveling, Tom Mann and others) worked for close ties with the revolutionary labour movement. In the autumn of 1884 — following a split and the establishment by the Left wing of an independent organisation, the Socialist League (see Note 49) — the opportunists' influence in the Federation in creased. However, revolutionary elements, discontented with the opportunist lead ership, continued to form within the Federation, under the impact of the masses.
  14. ↑ Hyde Park (see also this volume, pp. 370-71.)
  15. ↑ Independents
  16. ↑ Society
  17. ↑ Engels means the congress of the Possibilists (see Note 3) which was to meet in Paris in July 1892. It was to deal mostly with municipal organisation and social hygiene.
  18. ↑ miserable people
  19. ↑ damned
  20. ↑ For 18 March 1892 Engels wrote 'Greetings to the French Workers on the Occasion of the 21st Anniversary of the Paris Commune' (see present edition, Vol. 27, pp. 275-76), published in Le Socialiste, No. 79, 26 March 1892.
  21. ↑ But we shall see!