London, 11 January 1878 
Dear Old Man, 

Avant tout? a Happy New Year to you, and may it bring you less 
in the way of troubles and burdens than the previous one! 

a Marx is rendering a passage from Th. Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and 
Power of the Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. - > First of all 

21* 

The package eventually arrived a few days ago.* My best thanks. 
I have not quite finished looking through the Bulletin jurassien; I 
find it interesting to follow the decline of that gang and its 
ultimate relegation to the back of the stage as a result of our 
electoral victories of 10 January 1877.%’ Let them now scheme 
and snarl to their heart’s content; they've gone to pot and there 
they will remain. 

You will be receiving from the post office a money order for 50 
frs which you should regard as our contribution to the Précurseur. 
In accordance with the new regulations, I have to retain over here 
the receipt they gave me; the money order, or so they tell me, will 
be sent to you from Basle. 

We are pretty well. Marx is notably better as compared with 
former years; his wife is not quite up to the mark, but the doctor? 
promises a complete cure; I myself cannot complain. 

Things seem to be going very well indeed for you people in 
Switzerland; the formation of a workers’ party is a great step 
forward and, even if the programme isn’t nearly radical enough 
for the taste of Messieurs les Bakounistes, it doesn’t matter a damn. 
A party that has the political means to take a direct part in the 
struggle, and the prospect of soon being able to throw a not 
inconsiderable weight into the scales, as is the case in Switzerland, 
has better things to do than to force each individual collaborator 
to accept its ultimate aims as dogma. There is, of course, much 
room for improvement in the programme, but it was modelled on 
the garrulous programme concocted in Germany at the time of 
the unification,'”’ 

In Germany, too, big mistakes were made, in particular as 
regards thé attitude adopted—in a spirit altogether Bakuninist— 
towards the French crisis.” And yet on this occasion we again saw 
how far ahead of us France has come in matters of practice. Lousy 
though the solution may have so far proved to be, it is 
nevertheless the first time that anything has been achieved there 
without a violent upheaval **’—and violence there, so soon after 
the bloodbath of 1871, could only lead to the revival of repression 
and of Bonapartism. But as it is, there is every prospect that the 
workers will very shortly gain freedom of the press, the right of 
association and assembly and whatever else is requisite for 
organisation and struggle, and that is all they need to begin with. 
They are in a position to discover where they stand theoretically, 
as is most necessary, and at last, when the opportunity presents 

4 See this volume, p. 214. - » George Allen 

itself, to enter the revolution as a tightly knit party and with a 
definite programme. And then again, the debonapartisation and 
republicanisation of the peasants, which is now in full swing, is 
another tremendous gain. And, lastly, the decisive point was 
reached because the common soldier declared he would not fight—the 
collapse of militarism has begun from within and may soon find a 
sequel in Germany, especially if present policy should make it 
necessary to lead the army into the field in support of the 
Russians. 

Another big mistake in Germany is to have allowed students and 
other ignorant ‘scholars’, in the guise of scientific representatives 
of the party, to flood the world at large with vast quantities of the 
most arrant nonsense. However, this is a childish ailment which 
has to be got over, and it is precisely in order to hasten it on that I 
made such a thorough example of Duhring.* 

That apart, things are going quite splendidly there as well and, 
if they now really get cracking with their anti-Russian agitation, it 
might prove very effective. 

Apropos, Buffenoir, whom the Vorwdrts is presently making 
such a fuss of,°” is a somewhat ambiguous individual; in the first 
place, he’s a clericalist, in the second he has recently eulogised 
Gambetta in effusive poetical verse and has no standing whatever 
amongst the workers of Paris. Another instance of Liebknecht’s 
‘getting himself into a mess. 

I hope the peace terms proposed by the Russians will be such 
that the war will go on. Not having any bridges over the Danube, 
their army is cut off and might starve miserably if the weather 
stays bad. And an undecided war, or fresh defeats, would 
undoubtedly give rise to revolution in Petersburg. Initially started 
by the court and constitutional, in other words 1789 preceding 
1793.°7' Just let a national assembly convene in Petersburg, and 
the whole of Europe will assume a different aspect. 

Your old friend 
F. E.