London, 20 October 1882 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

I have long been intending to write to youiabout French affairs, 
but have only just got round to it. Just as well, since it means that 
I can kill two birds with one stone. 

1. St-Etienne.— Despite the well-meant advice of the Belgians, the 
inevitable has happened; the incompatible elements have taken 
themselves off. $°* And that is a good thing. In the beginning, when 
the parti ouvrier* was formed, it was necessary to admit all elements 
who accepted the programme; if they did so with mental reservations 
this would be bound to emerge later on. We over here have never 
been under any illusion about Malon and Brousse. Both were edu- 
cated in the Bakuninist school of intrigue; Malon was actually one of 
those responsible for the foundation of Bakunin’s secret ‘Alliance’ 
(one of the 17 founders). But enfin, they had to be given a chance to 
show whether, along with Bakunin’s theory, they had also sloughed 
off his practice. Developments have shown that, if they accepted the 
programme (and adulterated it, Malon having introduced sundry 
changes for the worse), it was with the mental reservation that they 
would subvert it. What was begun at Rheims ??* and Paris #47 has 
been completed at St-Etienne. The programmie’s proletarian class 

* workers’ party -° after all 

character has been eliminated. The communist considérants* of 1880 °° 
have now been replaced with the Rules of the International of 1866° 
which had to be couched in such elastic terms precisely because the 
French Proudhonists had lagged so far behind, yet could not be left 
out. The positive demands of the programme have been neutralised 
in that every locality may, whenever it wishes, formulate an indi- 
vidual programme for each individual occasion. Not only is the so- 
called party of St-Etienne not a workers’ party — it isn’t a party at all 
because it hasn’t in fact got a programme: at most it is a Malon- 
Brousse party. The worst these two can reproach the old programme 
with is that it repelled more people than it attracted. That has now 
been put right: neither Proudhonists nor Radicals can now have 
any grounds for remaining aloof and, if Malon and Co. were to have 
their way, the ‘revolutionary pap’ of which Vollmar complains *9’ 
would be the official expression of the French proletariat. 

In all Latin countries (and elsewhere too, perhaps), the practice as 
regards congressional mandates has always been exceedingly lax. 
Many of these could not stand close scrutiny. So long as it wasn’t 
taken too far, and so long as only matters of little consequence were 
involved, small harm was done. But the Bakuninists were the first to 
introduce this (initially in the Jura) as a regular thing, going in for 
expert mandate-rigging and attempting by this means to make their 
way to the top. Similarly now at St-Etienne. The preliminaries to the 
congress have been generally dominated by all the old Bakuninist 
tactics which stop at nothing —lies, slander, covert cliquism. That’s 
the only thing Brousse is master of. These chaps forget that subter- 
fuges and the like, which may succeed in the case of small sections and 
in a small territory such as the Jura, will necessarily bring about the 
downfall of those who try them on in the case of a genuine workers’ 
party in a large country. The apparent victory scored at St-Etienne 
will not be a lasting one and Malon-Brousse will soon be done for 
once and for all. 

It would seem that any workers’ party in a large country can de- 
velop only through internal struggle, as indeed has been generally 
established in the dialectical laws of development. The German party 
has come to be what it is through the struggle between the Eisenach- 
ers and Lassalleans, in which, after all, the actual scuffles played 

* preambles (see present edition, Vol. 24, p. 340) - Association Internationale des Tra- 
vatlleurs. Statuts et réglements, London, 1866. 

a leading role. Unification only became possible when the gang of 
scoundrels deliberately cultivated as a tool by Lassalle had lost its effi- 
cacity and even then we were in far too great a hurry to effect that 
unification. 9°! In France, those people who have admittedly relin- 
quished Bakuninist theory but continue to make use of Bakuninist 
weapons and at the same time seek to sacrifice the class character of 
the movement to their own particular ends, will likewise have to lose 
their efficacity before unification again becomes feasible. Such being 
the case, it would be sheer folly to advocate unification. Moral homi- 
lies are of no avail against teething troubles which, circumstances 
being what they are today, are something that has got to be gone 
through. 

Come to that, the Roanne people stand in great need of constant 
and searching criticism. Revolutionary hot air and futile impetuosity 
are things they are all too often prepared to tolerate. 

2. Citoyen-Bataille. As long ago as last summer, at a time when 
things were going badly for the Bataille, when its funds had been 
frittered away on advertising, etc., the capitalists had pulled out and 
Lissagaray had broken with Malon-Brousse, Lissagaray proposed to 
Guesde that the two papers be amalgamated, that they should both 
be editors-in-chief and each have the right to sling out three of the 
other paper’s editors. Thus did Lissagaray think to rid himself of the 
hated Lafargue. This was unanimously rejected by the editors of the 
Citoyen. The Bataille continued to founder. Thereupon Lissagaray 
approached the proprietor (a Dutch rinancier*) of the Citoyen, and ne- 
gotiated the amalgamation behind its editors’ backs in the hope that this 
coup de main would place them at his mercy. The reverse happened. 
The editors of the Citoyen continued to publish the paper without 
a day’s interruption, and sued the proprietor for breach of contract. 
Lissagaray’s coup was thereby foiled and he himself utterly put to 
shame, as he has himself admitted by having recourse to the extreme 
measure of challenging the ‘/dche> Lafargue’, as he describes him in 
the Bataille, to a duel which, it is to be hoped, the latter will not ac- 
cept under any circumstances.— That Lissagaray has ruined himself 
for good and all by this Bonapartist coup can be pretty well assumed. 
To go and risk the very existence of a paper at a moment when it is 
more necessary than ever to the party in their struggle against the St- 
Etienne faction and to do so in order to save one’s own paper from 

b 

2 Blommestein -° cowardly 

foundering, to change (had this coup succeeded) the character of 
that paper, no matter what the cost, and to change it, what’s more, 
in alliance with the bourgeois proprietor and in the teeth of the 
editors, the representatives of the party,—that really is a bit too 
thick! 

Should the enclosed be unduly strong, you must tone it down. #98 
What’s the position as regards printing the pamphlet? 7° Marx is 
here (but secretly!) and will, I hope, be able to spend the winter on 
the English coast. 

Yours, 
F. E. 

Since this letter is being sent off at 5 p. m. on 20 October, it should 
be in your hands by tomorrow evening or Sunday* morning.