London, 5 March 1895 
41 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear citizen Vaillant, 

I was unable to reply sooner to your letter of 8th January—at the moment 
our friends in Germany are having to hurry as much as possible with the 
publication of all works, brochures, articles, etc., now in preparation before 
the new reactionary legislation which is now threatening them is enforced. ** 
That has kept me, and is still keeping me, busy from morning to night with 
both literary work and the accompanying correspondence. 

To return to your draft laws, **° the first, No. 384, agricultural delegates, 
deals with an institution of indisputable importance; as a means of 
propaganda among farm workers it will have a very favourable effect; but it 
has no chance of becoming law, particularly in France, where the inspection 
of factories is still so neglected. 

No. 928, communal agricultural land. This draft goes into too much detail 
for me to pass knowledgeable judgement on it. First of all one would need to 
know whether, in the great majority of cases, this communal land does not 
consist of forests, moorland, heath or, at very most, land suitable only for 
grazing, and where agriculture proper cannot be practiced to advantage. Such 
is the case in Germany and, if I am not mistaken, in a large part of northern 
France. In these cases, farming such land, unless kept within very narrow 
territorial confines, would risk falling into the errors of the National 
Workshops of 1848. °°? However, as I have just said, one needs very 
specialised knowledge to form an opinion on this subject. 

No. 933, an eight-hour working day and a minimum wage for workers, 
etc., employed by the state, corresponds more or less to what has been 
instituted here by the County Council, and in part also by the ministries of 
war and the navy. A measure very useful both as an example for the 
capitalists, and as a means of propaganda; however, the day before yesterday 
the workers abandoned the County Council Progressives who had 

introduced these measures. Three of these progressives have been black- 
balled because tiny minorities (50 to 300 votes) were cast for ‘socialist’ 
candidates who are more or less ‘revolutionary’, but these minorities were 
sufficient to ensure the election of reactionary ‘moderates’. °”° 

No. 939, ministry of labour, etc. This subdivision of work, which would 
remove some of the functions of the ministry of the interior and unite them 
with new functions hitherto neglected seems to me to be very useful. As for 
the details of the attributes of the new ministry, we can discuss this at greater 
length when the idea becomes feasible in practice. 

I see these proposals simply as a means of propaganda, since with the 
present house there is no chance of seeing them accepted. From this point of 
view, we would first have to assure ourselves of their efficacy, and then 
determine whether or not they might be of interest for future action by the 
party when we are in a position to proceed to positive legislative activity. It 
is from this angle that I have formulated my criticism, and here I find just 
one point that seems to me to be dubious; whether it is wise to promise 40 
million annually to the peasants in a form and for a purpose so clearly 
defined. The peasants could one day present us with this promissory note, 
and at a time when we might have better uses for such a sum. 

Thank you for your comments concerning Wroblewski". I have calculated 
that the roughly 45 socialist deputies receive a total of 400,000 fr. annually 
from the state, and that it would not perhaps be wholly impossible to provide 
on the basis of this sum, an annual income of, say, 1,200 francs to the sole 
surviving general of the Commune. I am perfectly well aware that the 
requests made by electoral constituencies on the funds of their deputies are 
not very reasonable, but here it seems to me to be a question of the honour of 
the whole of revolutionary France. It will be difficult to make the world 
understand that the survivors of and successors to the Commune are 
represented in the house by 45 deputies, and that a party of this size is not, 
however, capable of guaranteeing its most senior general against the most 
extreme poverty. And indeed, I still dare to hope that it will be found pos- 
sible to use this means of enabling him to live out his life, without exposing 
him to the humiliation of a public subscription. 

Here socialist sentiment (it is far more a sentiment than a clear idea) is 
continuing to make progress among the masses, but the existing or- 
ganisations and their leaders are also continuing with the disputes and 

* See this volume, p. 420 

rivalries that keep them powerless. It is a matter for despair for those who do 
not know the English character; in any case the European continent would 
seem about to give the English the impetus it so needs. That band of 
swindlers who govern and exploit France shamelessly will not retain support 
much longer. The same is true for Italy, where bribery and corruption is even 
more shameless. In Germany, everything is leading to a crisis, generals and 
high-ranking officials are openly calling for a coup d’état. The end of the 
century is taking a decidedly revolutionary turn. In France, the socialists are 
the only serious and honourable party, in Germany they are the only real 
opposition party; if a crisis comes, there will be no other party to turn to 
except this. In Austria, everyone agrees that the socialists will enter 
parliament, and it only remains to decide through which door. And in Russia, 
little Nicholas '' has done us the service of making revolution absolutely 
inevitable. 
Yours sincerely, 

F. Engels