We have every reason to be satisfied with the Brussels Congress.

It was right to vote for the exclusion of the anarchists: that is
where the old International broke off, that is where the new one
resumes. It is quite simply the confirmation, nineteen years later,
of the resolutions of the Hague Congress.

No less important was the way the door was thrown wide open
to the English Trades Unions. The step which shows how well the
situation has been understood. And the votes which tied the
Trades Unions to "the class struggle and the abolition of wage-
labour" mean that it was not a concession on our part.

The Domela Nieuwenhuis incident has shown that the European
workers have finally left behind the period of the domination of
the resounding phrase, and that they are aware of the
responsibilities incumbent on them: they are a class constituted as
a party of "struggle", a party which reckons with "facts". And the
facts are taking an increasingly revolutionary turn.

THE SITUATION IN EUROPE

In Russia there is already famine; in Germany there will be
famine in a few months; the other countries will suffer less. This is
why: the harvest deficit for 1891 is estimated at eleven and a half
million hectolitres of wheat and between 87 and 100 million
hectolitres of rye. The latter deficit will, therefore, mainly affect
the two rye-consuming countries, Russia and Germany.

This guarantees us peace until the spring of 1892. Russia will
not make a move before then; so, excepting some inconceivable
foolishness on the part of Paris or Berlin, there will be no war.

On the other hand, will tsarism survive this crisis? I doubt it.
There are too many rebel elements in the big cities, and
particularly in St. Petersburg, for them not to attempt to seize this
opportunity to depose that alcoholic Alexander III, or at the very
least to place him under the control of a national assembly.
Perhaps he himself will be forced to take the initiative in
convening one. Russia—that is to say, the government and the
young bourgeoisie—has worked enormously hard to create a big
national industry (see Plekhanov's article in the Neue Zeit). This
industry will be stopped dead in its tracks because the famine will
close down its only market—the domestic market. The Tsar will see
the results of making Russia a self-sufficient country independent of
abroad: to the crisis in agriculture will be added an industrial crisis.

In Germany the government will decide too late, as usual, to
abolish or suspend the duty on corn. That will break the protectionist
majority in the Reichstag. The big landowners, the "rurals", will
no longer want to uphold the duties on industrial products, they will
want to buy as cheaply as possible. So we shall probably see a
repetition of what happened at the time of the vote on the
Anti-Socialist Law; a protectionist majority, by itself divided by
conflicting interests arising out of the new situation, which finds it
impossible to reach agreement on the details of a protectionist
system. All the possible proposals being only minority ones; there
will be either a reversion to the free trade system, which is just as
impossible, or dissolution, with the old parties and the old majority
unseated and replaced by a new free-trade majority opposed to the
present government. That will mean the real, definitive end of the
Bismarck period and of political stagnation in home affairs—I am
not speaking here of our party but of parties which might "possibly"
govern. There will be strife between the landed nobility and the
bourgeoisie, and between the industrial bourgeoisie, which is
protectionist, and the men of commerce and a fraction of the
industrial bourgeoisie who are free traders. The stability of the
administration and of domestic politics will be shattered, in short
there will be movement, struggle, life, and our party will reap all the
rewards. And if events take this turn, our party will be able to come
to power round about 1898.

There we have it! I do not speak of the other countries because the
agricultural crisis does not affect them so severely. But if this crisis in
agriculture were to unleash in England the industrial crisis which we
have been awaiting for twenty-five years... Then we'll see!

F. Engels