London, 21 June 1882 

Dear Bebel, 

I shall have to answer your letter from memory, having given it 
to Tussy for forwarding to Marx‘ since when I have not seen it 
again. 

For the past 3 weeks or so Marx has been staying with his daughter? 
at Argenteuil near Paris, is said to be looking very well, brown as a 
real ‘Moor’ (this being his nickname, as you know), and in very good 
humour, his only ailment now being a bronchial cough. In order to 
get rid of this he has at last had to do Vogt the favour of becoming 
a member of the Brimstone gang.*?* For he is undergoing a sulphur 
cure at the neighbouring town of Enghien. What further peregrina- 
tions he makes is for the doctors to decide. 

That there will ultimately be a show-down with the bourgeois- 

* Adolph Sorge-° Lilian Rosher-° See this volume, p. 266.-4 Jenny Longuet 

minded elements in the party and a parting of the ways between right 
and left wings is something about which I have long harboured no il- 
lusions and, indeed, had already declared desirable in my hand- 
written commentary* on the Jahrbuch article. That you should have 
come to take the same view can only be most welcome to us. If I did 
not expressly mention the point in my last letter,” it was because I saw 
no immediate necessity for a split of this kind. Were the gentlemen to 
decide of their own free will to form a separate right wing, everything 
would soon be in order. But they are hardly likely to do so; they know 
they would be an army consisting solely of officers without soldiers, 
like the ‘Robert Blum column’ which came over to us in the 1849 
campaign and insisted on fighting only ‘under the command of that 
brave man Willich’.?*° Upon our asking how many effectives went to 
make up this heroic column, we were told—-and you can imagine 
our mirth— one colonel, eleven officers, a bugler and two men. On 
top of which the colonel was at great pains to look like a stalwart 
Schinderhannes and had a horse he was unable to ride.— Every one 
of these gentry wants to be a leader, but they can’t even act the part of 
leader except within our party, and so they will take good care not to 
provoke a schism. On the other hand they know that, subject as we 
are to the Anti-Socialist Law,! we too have reasons for avoiding in- 
ternal splits which we cannot debate in an open forum. Hence we 
shall have to put up with epistolatory and verbal cabalism and jere- 
miads from these people until we are again in a position to thrash out 
inside the country itself and before the workers those points on which 
we differ as to tactics and principles unless, of course, their antics are 
such that our hand is forced. Meanwhile the Anti-Socialist Law will, 
one way or another, shuffle off this mortal coil and, as soon as that’s 
been got rid of, the position, or so it seems to me, must be fairly and 
squarely stated; what should be done next will automatically emerge 
from the attitude adopted by these gentry. 

Once they have organised a separate right wing we shall be able, 
as and when occasion arises and in so far as it is admissible, to come to 
an agreement with them as to common action, or even enter into 
a compact with them, etc. Although this is unlikely to be necessary: 
the schism itself will lay bare their impotence. They have neither 
adherents amongst the masses, nor talent, nor knowledge—all 

2 K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, 
Wilhelm Bracke and Others’.-° See this volume, pp. 259-61. 

they have is pretensions, and those in plenty. However, we shall 
have to wait and see. Whatever happens, it will serve to elucidate the 
situation and we shall be rid of an element that in no way belongs 
to us. 

There is no need to fear that, in such a case, we shall no longer 
have any presentable candidates for the Reichstag. That is a pure fig- 
ment. If a working man in the Reichstag now and then says I when 
he ought to say me, all we need ask is how long the Hohenzollerns, 
let alone field marshals, have been able to distinguish between I and 
me. Frederick William III and his adored Louise perpetrated 
more howlers in the matter of I and me than did even A. Kapell. 
And if Bismarck isn’t afraid of appointing to his economics council 
workers who speak ungrammatically, but vote grammatically, can 
we afford to jib? But I know that to many it’s an abomination. To 
us not in the least. And it would put an end to the utterly senseless 
practice of our deputies, which is supposed to be ‘democratic’ but 
isn’t, whereby every man must speak in turn. How could any party 
possess as many good parliamentary speakers as that, and what is 
supposed to happen when there are, say, 200 of our men in the 
Reichstag? 

But of one thing you may be sure: When it comes to a show-down 
with these gentry and the party’s left wing declares itself, we shall go 
along with you whatever the circumstances, and do so actively and 
with our visors up. If I did not contribute to the Sozialdemokrat in my 
own name before, this was due solely to the influence so long exert- 
ed upon the paper by these people and the prolonged absence of any 
guarantee that they would not regain it. 

As you know, there’s a split in the workers’ party in Paris. The 
Egalité people (our best, Guesde, Deville, Lafargue, etc.) were uncere- 
moniously thrown out by those on the Prolétaire (Malon, Brousse, 
etc.) at the recent congress of the Centre of France. The Sozialdemo- 
krat rightly censured this procedure in a passage which the Egalité 
translated. Thereupon the Prolétaire replied, saying that its own 
point of view concerning this matter had been put to the German 
party leadership with whom it had since been in complete accord.3%’ 
Do you know anything about this? The Prolétaire people are the most 
egregious liars; but on the other hand I recall all too many instances 
of stupendous blunders perpetrated in the Leipzig Volksstaat and 
Vorwarts in regard to French affairs and persons. Can you tell me any- 
thing about what actually happened? I shall try and let you have the 

cutting from the Prolétaire. Malon, Brousse & Co. are finding their 
labours as workers’ candidates unduly tedious and are therefore con- 
sorting with sundry radical bourgeois and J/iéerati, and inviting others 
of that ilk to join forces with them; they imagine that they will 
thereby get themselves elected more quickly. They are fighting 
the Egalité with the same old infamous weapons used by the Baku- 
ninists. 

Your 
F. E.