["Vorwärts" No. 268, November 16, 1894]

According to reports in the party press, Comrade Vollmar, in the agrarian debate of the Frankfurt party congress on October 25, invoked the resolutions of the French socialist congress of Nantes, "which have
met with the express approval of Friedrich Engels".
According to the "Vorwärts" of November 10, this is also being spread further by the hostile press. I am therefore compelled to declare that this is a mistake, and that Vollmar must have been entirely misinformed as regards myself.

As far as I remember, I made only two communications to France in connection with the Nantes programme. The first,
before
the congress, in reply to an inquiry from a French comrade, was to the effect that: The development of capitalism is irreparably destroying small peasant landed property. Our party is perfectly clear about this, but it has absolutely no occasion to accelerate this process still further by its own intervention. No objection can therefore be raised in principle to correctly chosen measures designed to make the inevitable ruin less painful for the small peasants; if one goes further, however, and seeks to preserve the small peasant permanently, then, in my opinion, one strives for something economically impossible, sacrifices the principle, and becomes reactionary.

The second,
after
the congress, was confined to the supposition that our French friends would stand alone in the socialist world with their attempt to perpetuate not only the small peasant proprietor, but also the small tenant farmer who exploits the labour of others.

Thus, insofar as I have spoken on the matter at all, I have explained the very opposite of what Vollmar has been told.

Once entangled in this affair, I shall hardly get out of it again, however, without expressing myself more clearly. I therefore intend to place a
short article
at the disposal of the "Neue Zeit" for the exposition and substantiation of my view.

London, November 12, 1894

F. Engels