London, 16 December 1882 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

Schorlemmer complains that he has not received the Sozealdemo- 
krat for some little while; his subscription expired and he sent me the 
encl. cheque (which I forgot about) no less than a month ago with the 
request that his annual subscription be renewed and ‘the balance be 
used for party purposes’. 

The ms. of the Mark has had to be completely rewritten 3 times; on 
top of that I again had to go through about 5 or 6 of Maurer’s 10 fat 

volumes, besides which there were other sources to compare. 
I have now sent it to Marx who has slogged away at the subject much 
more thoroughly and for much longer than I have*7°; I expect it 
back on Monday. 

Malon se moque de Vollmar. Otherwise he would certainly have 
corrected the latter’s howler to the effect that the ‘Alliancists’ at- 
tacked by the Egalité were understood in the sense of the Bakuninist 
Alliance. °’ Far from it. The Possibilists were thus described because 
they are now wholly indistinguishable from the people in the Alliance 
socialiste which was founded some 4 years ago by Jourde, the ex- 
Communard for finance, with the help of past and present Proudhon- 
ists (e.g. Longuet) and which constitutes La Justice’s socialist re- 
serve. You must certainly have seen this Alliance mentioned in con- 
nection with elections; it put up candidates for the recent general 
election to the Chamber and obtained nearly as many votes—-in 
some arrondissements at any rate—as the Parti ouvrier.” If Vollmar 
knew nothing of this, despite his year and a half in Paris, it was 
because Malon deliberately kept it from him like much else. 
That’s what happens when you give a gang your uncritical sup- 
port. 

I have to chuckle when Vollmar praises Malon as the party disci- 
plinarian and accuses the others of a breach of discipline. ** 
Who, I ask, is guilty of indiscipline—he who carries the old flag 
high or he who recruits people with the express aim of deserting the 
colours and exchanging the old flag for a new one? Where, I ask, 
would Malon have got his majority at St-Etienne from *°* if he 
hadn’t first recruited people whose intention from the start, and 
this was precisely why they had been recruited, was to subvert the old 
programme? 

That was a choice row between Malon and his Clovis Hugues over 
Louis Blanc. And they call themselves a party! 

You will have seen that the Fédération du Nord *5* has declared 
outright for Roanne. 

Some of Lafargue’s articles in the more recent issues of the Egalité 
have been truly delightful, e.g. on Bontoux’s candidature. +7! 
Witticisms are better suited to them than doctrinaire pontifica- 
tions. 

a 

is making fun of-> Workers’ Party 

Would you please be good enough to see that the issues are sent on 
to Schorlemmer. 

Yours very sincerely, 
FE,