London, 25 December 1890 

Dear Frankel, 

Having just got a minute or two to spare—by no means usual dur- 
ing the daytime (the only time in which I am allowed to write)—I 
shall reply to you straight away. 

Many thanks for your telegram and retrospective good wishes. You 
must excuse me for not having acknowledged receipt of the former. 
I have been swamped, in the truest sense of the word, with corre- 
spondence. 

Well, let’s have done with the formalities and get on to the main 
point of your letter. I was already aware of your attitude to the ruc- 
tions in France '!'°—an entirely understandable one in view of your 

* See this volume, p. 5. 

long absence from the movement there—as a result of reading your 
article in the Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung* which had been sent to me 
from Berlin. The ructions are just as regrettable and just as inevitable 
as were those in the past between the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers 
for the simple reason that in both cases cunning business men placed 
themselves at the head of one of the two parties and exploited that 
party for their own business interests for as long as the party would 
tolerate it; accordingly it is no more possible to co-operate with 
Brousse & Co., than with Schweitzer, Hasselmann and partners. If, 
like me, you had been engaged in the struggle from the beginning 
and in its every detail, you would see as clearly as I do that in this 
case unification would above all mean capitulating to a gang of 
schemers and place-seekers who are betraying to the ruling bour- 
geoisie the party’s true basic principles and its well-tried fighting meth- 
od ... the better to secure positions for themselves and small, insig- 
nificant advantages for the working men who support them. Uni- 
fication would thus amount to the same thing as capitulating to these 
gentlemen outright, a point further borne out by the discussions at 
the Paris Congress of 1889.°! 

Unification will come, just as in Germany, but it can only last if the 
fight is fought to a finish, the contradictions are resolved and the ras- 
cals hounded out by their own supporters. When the Germans were 
drawing close to union, Liebknecht came out for union at all costs. 
We were against it on the grounds that, since the Lassalleans were 
near to collapse, we should await the completion of that process, 
when unification would come about of its own accord. Marx wrote 
a long critique of the so-called unification programme, which was dis- 
tributed in manuscript form.” 

They didn’t listen to us, with the result that we had to bring Has- 
selmann into our ranks and rehabilitate him in the eyes of the world, 
only to chuck him out as a blackguard six months later.''' And we 
had to incorporate Lassallean inanities into our programme, thereby 
destroying the programme for good. It was a double fiasco which, 
given a little more patience, could have been avoided. 

In France the Possibilists are going through just the same process of 
disintegration as did the Lassalleans in 1875. The leaders of both the 

* L. F[rankel,] ‘Zur französischen Arbeiterbewegung’, Sachsische Arbeiter-Zeitung, Nos. 
170 and 178, 3 and 12 December 1890.-" K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. 

persuasions that emerged from the split °* are, in my view, worthless. 
This process, in which the leaders devour one another and which 
nevertheless brings over to us the intrinsically sound majority of 
members, can, in my view, be interrupted or checked—ff not actually 
brought to a complete halt—by only one error on our part—that is to 
say if we make a premature attempt at unification. 

On the other hand we have already taken a decisive step which will 
in any case hasten the advent of unification and may, perhaps, 
achieve it straight away. For at my suggestion—after Tussy had dis- 
cussed it with Aveling, Bernstein and Fischer (presently of the party 
leadership ?°)-—first the French (our Marxists) and then the Germans 
at Halle,’? where they also had the support of the Swiss, Danes, Swedes 
and Austrians, resolved unanimously that, instead of holding a separ- 
ate congress in 1891, they should attend the congress in Brussels con- 
voked by the Possibilists in view of the fact that the Belgians had ac- 
cepted the conditions laid down by us in 1889, conditions which, 
axiomatic though they were, were nevertheless rejected by the Possi- 
bilists. You will admit that this was a major concession on our part, 
since the overwhelming majority of the European parties were behind 
us. Yet we acted as we did because we knew we had to fight the Possi- 
bilists with like weapons and on like terms if the supremacy of Brousse 
on the one hand and of Allemane on the other was to be brought 
swiftly to an end. Not until the bulk of the Possibilist working men see 
that they are isolated in Europe, that they have no sure allies save 
Messrs Hyndman & Co. (who are in the same boat vis-a-vis their sup- 
porters as was Brousse) and that all the braggadocio has been solely 
for the benefit of the leaders, will the fuss die down. And that will 
clear the way for the congress. 

So just be patient for another six months. Any attempt on our part 
to achieve a settlement sooner would be interpreted by Brousse as 
well as by Allemane as a sign of weakness and would hinder rather 
than help us. But when the time comes, and in my view, it is not far 
off, the Possibilist working men will join us just as the Lassalleans did 
and, what’s more, without our having to offer leading positions to the 
schemers, traitors and ne’er-do-wells among them. 

No one is more anxious than I am to see a strong socialist party in 
France. However I have to pay due regard to the facts as they are and 
I am anxious that it should come about only on a basis which holds 

out a promise of permanence, which is real and which won’t result in 
a HUMBUG movement @ /a Brousse. 
With warm regards. 

Your old friend 
F. Engels 

Thank you also for the Bataille article.''? Louise Kautsky, who is 
here and will be staying here, sends you her warm regards.