AT LE PERREUX 

London, 31 January” 1891 

My dear Lafargue, 

Like nine-tenths of the news published in Paris about Germany, 
the item that has alarmed you !*? is nothing more than a canard. 

The leading committee of the German party has not budged in re- 
gard to 1 May. The parliamentary faction (the socialist members of 
the Reichstag) has resolved (with one dissenting vote) that in Germany 
(but not elsewhere) it’would be desirable to hold the celebrations on 
Sunday 3 May and not on 1 May.!*% That is all. Since the Party Rules 
do not confer any official function on the ‘faction’, it is simply the 
expression of a desire which, however, will probably meet with gen- 
eral approval. 

As to the idea of suggesting to other nationalities that they make 
a similar change in the date of the demonstration, our newspapers say 

* the premises of the Soztaldemokrat editorial office in 1888-90 - 7 30 January in the ori- 
ginal 

not a word. However there is the possibility that individually one or 
other of the deputies might have thought of it. As Bebel is in Zurich for 
his daughter’s* wedding, I shall write to Fischer '** so that a stop can 
be put to this nonsense if, that is, anybody is entertaining it. 

You and Bonnier, whose long letter on the subject I have in my 
pocket,!*> may say whatever you like. The English will probably do 
the same as the Germans and hold their celebrations on Sunday. As 
regards the Germans, they are virtually bound to act in this way. Last 
year you thought their conduct ‘weak’. Well now, in Hamburg, the 
city where we are best organised and in greater strength relative to 
the rest of the population, and where we have the strongest finances 
(both party and trades unions)-—in Hamburg they generally celeb- 
rate 1 May under the noses of the employers. But business being pretty 
bad, the latter took advantage of the one day’s cessation to close their 
workshops and declare that they would reopen only to those work- 
men who left their unions and promised not to unionise in future. The 
struggle continued throughout the summer and into the autumn. 
Eventually the employers abandoned their demands; however our 
trades union organisation in Hamburg has been badly shaken, the 
coffers have been emptied, as indeed elsewhere, as a result of funds 
disbursed for the tocxouts, and nobody has the slightest desire to re- 
peat the performance this spring, conditions in industry having 
worsened still further, 

It’s all very well for you to talk of irresolution and weakness. You 
are in a republic and the bourgeois republicans, in order to defeat the 
royalists, have been obliged to accord you the political rights that we 
are far from possessing in Germany. Moreover, divided as you have 
been hitherto, with the Broussists in the tow of the government, 
you are not particularly dangerous; on the contrary, Constans likes to 
see you ‘demonstrate’ and put the wind up the radicals.'*7 In Ger- 
many our people are a real force, between one and a half and two 
million electors, the only disciplined and growing party. If the gov- 
ernment wants the socialists to hold demonstrations, that is because it 
wants to get them involved in a riot when it would crush them and 
have done with them for the next ten years. For the German socialists 
their best form of demonstration is their very existence and their slow, 
steady, ineluctable advance. We are still a long way from being able 
to sustain an open struggle and it is our duty vis-a-vis the whole of 

* Frieda Bebel 

Europe and America not to suffer defeat but rather, when the time 
comes, to emerge victorious from the first great battle. It is to this 
consideration that I subordinate all others. 

Needless to say, it would be very nice to see all socialist workmen in 
both worlds abstain from work on the same day, 1 May. But it would 
not be a simultaneous, uniform abstention. You in Paris would ab- 
stain from, say, 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening; when the New 
Yorkers began at 8, it would be | in the afternoon in Paris, while the 
Californians would begin 3 hours later. Last year the demonstration 
lost nothing by being spread over 2 days and this year it would lose 
even less. The Austrians are in an altogether different situation; regu- 
lar agitation and organisation have been made so difficult that a 
1 day cessation is their sole means of demonstrating, a procedure ad- 
mirably developed by Adler. 

So console yourselves. The movement won’t suffer as a result of this 
lack of ‘unity’; and such purely formal unity is not worth the price we 
should have to pay for it in Germany and also perhaps in England. 

Your behaviour towards the anti-Broussists °? strikes me as unex- 
ceptional. Making a compact of practical co-operation, setting aside 
for the moment any attempt at a merger, trusting to the passage of 
time and, ultimately, to the International Congress— there could be 
no better way of exploiting the situation in which you find yourselves. 
It is what Marx suggested to Liebknecht at the time of the merger 
with the Lassalleans,°? but our friend was in too much of a hurry. 

Guesde has played a nice trick on him in his articles for the Vor- 
warts.'*° Liebknecht has always championed the bourgeois republic 
in order to annoy the Prussians; in his view Constans, Rouvier, etc., 
were virtually faultless. And along comes Guesde to shatter that illu- 
sion! Delightful and also good for Germany. 

Give Laura a kiss from me. My congratulations to Doctor Z. on the 
article on the Toulon affair.'°° Louise is particularly grateful for it. 
She has happy memories of you and Laura. 

Yours ever, 
F.E.