ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE* 


AT LE PERREUX 
London, 16 April 1890 


My dear Laura, 

At last! a free hour to write a line to you. I am pestered almost to 
death with letters, verbal and other applications of all sorts, and wish I 
could shut myself off for a month or so—for I find it impossible to reply 
to all my letters, much less to do any serious work. 

Many thanks for the kind wishes in your poem but I am afraid the 
Lord on high and the lord below will settle my hash for me some day 
and find me a place somewhere. But that need not trouble us now. 

And now a little business: 


1) Will you give me Longuet’s address? 

2) Will Paul procure me the title, publisher’s name, etc. of a pocket 
edition (cheap) of the Code Napoléon as at present in force, for Sam 
Moore? (les cing codes suffiront, civil, procédure civile, pénal, procédure 
criminelle, de commerce*) and price. 

3) Enclosed a bill found in last lot of French newspapers. 


The Parisian workmen are acting indeed as if they had but one purpose 
to live for, and that is to prove how utterly undeserved was their revolu- 
tionary reputation. It’s all very well for Paul to repeat over and over again 
that they are Boulangists out of pure opposition against the bour- 
geoisie—but so were those who voted for Louis Bonaparte, and what 
would our Parisians say if the German workmen, to spite Bismarck and 
the bourgeoisie, threw themselves blindfold in the arms of young 
William? It is plainly cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the 
Parisians have still so much left of their former esprit that they can still 
back up the worst of all possible causes by the best of all possible reasons. 

No, the cause of this surfeit of Boulangism lies deeper. It is 
Chauvinism. The French Chauvins, after 1871, resolved that history 
should stand still until Alsace was reconquered. Everything was made 
subordinate to that. And our friends never had the courage to stand up 


4 five statutes will suffice: civil, civil and penal procedure, criminal procedure and 
commerce 


480 Letters — 1890 


against this absurdity. There were fellows at the Citoyen and Cri* who 
howled with the masses against everything German, no matter what, and 
our friends submitted to that. The consequences are there. The only 
excuse for Boulangism is la revanche, Alsace reconquered. What not one 
party in Paris ever dared to oppose, is it a wonder that the Parisian 
workmen now cling to as a gospel? 

But in spite of French patriots, history did not stand still—only 
France did, after the fall of McMahon.'”8 And the necessary consequence 
of this French patriotic aberration is that the French workmen are now 
the allies of the Czar? against not only Germany, but against the Russian 
workmen and revolutionists too! In order to preserve to Paris the posi- 
tion of revolutionary centre, the revolution must be crushed in Russia, 
for how to reconquer, without the help of the Czar, the leading position 
belonging to Paris by right? 

If the desertion en masse to Boulanger of the French or rather 
Parisian workmen should cause socialists abroad to consider them as 
completely déchus,‘ there would be no cause to be astonished. What else 
can they expect? 

Of course, I should not be so hasty in my judgment. This momentary 
aberration should not lead me to such a conclusion. But it is the third time 
that such an aberration recurs since 1789—the first time Napoleon No. I, 
the second time Napoleon No. 3 was carried to the top by that wave of 
aberration, and now it’s a worse creature than either—but fortunately the 
force of the wave, too, is broken. Anyhow, we must apparently come to 
the conclusion that the negative side of the Parisian revolutionary charac- 
ter—chauvinistic Bonapartism—is as essential to it as the positive side, and 
that after every great revolutionary effort, we may have a recrudescence of 
Bonapartism, of an appeal to a saviour who is to destroy the vile bourgeois 
qui ont escamoté la révolution et la république’ and in whose traps the 
naifs ouvriers have fallen—because, being Parisians, they know every- 
thing from birth and by birth, and need not learn like vulgar mortals. 

So I shall welcome any revolutionary spurt the Parisians may favour 
us with, but shall expect them to be again volés‘ afterwards and then fly 
to a miracle-performing saviour. For action I hope and trust the Parisians 
to be as fit as ever, but if they claim to lead with regard to ideas, I shall 
say thank you. 


@ Cri du Peuple (see also Engels to Lafargue, 30 October 1882, present edition, 
Vol. 46) — > Alexander III ~° degraded — 4 Who have done away with the revo- 
lution and the Republic ~ * Simple working men —‘ cheated 


Letters (694 \t 


By the bye - ie ae so de dele now that the bee zihees ae 
eee sey on bus oe ele 
Pee afin 


fi ii iu 
Lope te Lt of May ee ts cation of ou 
rat eds, itu err ih hey how 
ote Posts and may mark th hein th a ton 
dn The! lt May esution was the best ou con os 
proves ur power al over the won, «beter na a th 
eran anally tern, ad hon 


eae 


_ Letters — 1890 


i hij ji a sig roduced from the o si 7 
Det Ldap Creyndoe 
mal 


) 
Loney, No.1 


ee  — — — — —— ————— 


{09 J pitas. 1004 


Letters — 1890 , 481 


By the bye Boulanger is so deep down now that the other day Frank 
Rosher who was in Jersey on business—a boy of 22, and the most 
conceited snob in London—called on him and was received courteously 
and both assured each other of their mutual bienveillance et protection"! 

I hope the 1st of May will not disappoint the expectations of our 
French friends. If it turns out a success in Paris, it will be a heavy blow