| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 26 February 1895 |
ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE
AT LE PERREUX
[London,] 26 February 1895
41 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Lafargue,
I am sending the Manuscript to you by registered post with a few comments—as always the translation is excellent. 517 There has been a delay of a few days, and this is why; in Berlin they want to reprint the three articles by Marx on the events in France in 1848-49 (published in 1850 in the Revue de la Nouvelle Gazette Rhénane[1] and this cannot be done without an introduction; 507 this introduction has become quite long, since besides a general review of the events since that date, it would be necessary to explain why we were right to expect the imminent and definitive victory of the proletariat, why that has not come about, and to what point events have modified the way we saw things then. This is important because of the new laws which are threatening us in Germany. 428 A Reichstag Commission is attempting to transform all the articles of the penal code into rubber articles which are applicable or not, depending on the political party to which the defendant belongs. Arguments in favour of an act declared criminal, etc. will be punished if they are made in circumstances which could justify the opinion that the accused wished to provoke or incite imitation! etc., etc. that is, you who are socialist will be punished for having said something which any conservative, liberal or clerical may say with impunity. The clericals in the commission are worse than the government itself. Just imagine, they are requesting two years in prison for anyone who denies in public or in the press the existence of god or the immortality of the soul.
This is a fury of reaction wholly without purpose, and absolutely inexplicable except on the supposition that all these gentlemen are threatened by a coup d'état. This coup d'état is openly preached by top-ranking officials. Constantin Rössler, ministerial counsellor, has called for it in a brochure.[2] Boguslawski, a retired general, has just done the same thing.[3] The liberals and clericals know that, faced with such determination on the part of the government, there is nothing left for them but to submit. In the presence of 2 million socialist electors, these gentlemen do not have the courage to resist a coup d'état openly—the government uses this threat to disarm them, and they will vote just to 'save' the constitution and domestic peace! Wait and see, they will vote for all the taxes, all the battleships, all the new regiments requested by William[4] —if the electors do not become involved. For our bourgeois deputies are so cowardly that even the courage of cowardice may prove lacking.
In any case, we are striding towards a crisis, if there can be a crisis in this Germany of the Bourgeoisie, where everything is blunted. What is certain is that there will be a new age of persecution for our friends. As for us, our policy should be not to let ourselves be provoked at this point; we would be fighting without the least chance of success, and we would be bled like Paris in 1871, whereas in two or three years our forces may have doubled, as under the exceptional law. 15 Today our Party would be fighting alone against all the others, rallied around the government under the banner of social order; in two or three years we will have on our side the peasants and the petty-bourgeois crushed by taxation. The battle corps does not engage in frontline battles but reserves itself for the critical moment.
Anyway, we shall see how it ends. How ironical that you, one of the most French writers of our age, should be doomed to be published almost always in German! And what German! The translators of Berlin and Stuttgart display a truly Germanic heaviness. There is only Adler who does you justice, and he will not always have the time to translate you himself. The only consolation I can offer is to tell you that I myself always breathe a little of the French spirit when I retranslate mentally your translator; sometimes I succeed.
We have been without water for 15 days, the pipe beneath our road is frozen; otherwise everything at home is going well. For one week we had almost no gas, as paraffins containing C4, C5 and C6, and more of carbon are precipitated in the pipes by the cold. It was one of those periods when London relapses into barbarity. And the Standard tells you that, this is the proof that England has reached the summit of civilisation!
Thank Laura for her fine translation; I still have not received the letter you promised I would receive from her, but I hope that she has received the copy of the 3rd volume[5] for Deville that I sent to her on 1st January.
Greetings from the Freybergers.
Yours,
F.E.
Engels' Comments on the French translation of his On the History of Early Christianity:
P.17* The Philonic school of Alexandria and Greco-Roman vulgar philosophy—Platonic and especially Stoic—played an important role in the development of Christianity as the state religion under Constantine. This role is far from being established in detail etc. etc.
p. 34" What holy indignation was provoked after 1830 in the pious nursery that was Germany at the time by, as Heine called it, Saint Simon's reinstatement of the flesh! The most shocked were the aristocratic estates who dominated at the time (I'm not speaking of the aristocratic class, given that in 1830 classes did not yet exist in our country) who, etc.
same page, last word conception—doesn't this word lend itself too well to a play on words here?