ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN *'% 

London, 2-3 November 1882 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

Have still received no proofs *7* (just arrived 3/11). On the other 
hand, have had from Bebel the Accident and Health Insurance Bill of 
1882, but not the earlier one '** which represents genuine Bismarckian 
socialism, unclouded by parliamentary divisions. This I] would much 
like to have, along, perhaps, with other matter relating to the 
Accident Insurance Bank; without it I can do nothing. *!* 

Many thanks for Marquis Posener.* I do not need all the details in 
respect of the remaining railways. The early or mid-1879 prices (before 
anything was known about nationalisation) would suffice. The differ- 
ence between then and now would be proof enough of the way the 
state has bought up the bourgeoisie. 

In many respects Lassalle was a good jurist and, moreover, had 
studied his Roman law of inheritance sufficiently to impress jurists by 
the extent of his knowledge. (Impress was a favourite expression of 
his; while contemplating the Rosetta Stone *! in the British Mu- 
seum, he said to Marx: ‘Should I, do you think, set aside six months 
in order that I may impress the Egyptologists?’) In Germany all one 
has to do is elaborate some point in accordance with a particular 
theory, and the jurists of today have forgotten that the theory elabo- 
rated by Lassalle was lifted word for word from Hegel’s Philosophy of 
Law and History’ and, moreover, does not hold water if applied to the 
Roman law of inheritance; this did not evolve out of what Hegel 
called ‘the will’; rather, it evolved out of the history of the Roman 
gens, the tribal kinship group about which, indeed, few jurists know 
very much. I only said, by the way, that I should be obliged to 
demolish the legend of Lassalle as an original thinker,< and that is 
absolutely essential. 

I had not seen Lafargue’s letter in the Prolétaire’ and _ shall 
certainly ask for it to be sent me from Paris, though I am unlikely 
to get it. If you still have it, I should be glad if you could send it 
me; you shall have.it back. Incidentally, Malon had better be on 
his guard; Lafargue has a whole pile of compromising letters from 
him. 

Picard’s absurd article*!° has certainly been disclaimed in the 
Citoyen, as Marx saw with his own eyes. Gome to that, the man who 
sent it to you, marked in blue, does not know French; he fas under- 
lined as a chauvinistic remark of the Citoyen’s a passage which Picard 
attributes to the exploiteurs bourgeois ... ligue des patriotes ... dont 
Gambetta est la téte*! I have marked it in red. Picard enjoys pitting 
himself against Guesde and, by way of playing a nasty prank on the 
latter, smuggled the article into the paper; if a proper editorial 

* Stock Exchange nickname for the Markisch-Posener Railway Company - 
> G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissen- 
schaft im Grundrisse and Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der Geschichte.-° See this volume, 
p. 332.-4 Ibid., pp. 363-64.-° bourgeois exploiters ... patriotic league ... of which 
Gambetta is the chief 

department were a possibility over there, this nonsense wouldn’t 
have occurred. 

Now for the ‘nothing short of creditable performance put up by the 
editors of the Citoyen in the affaire Godard’. *! We happen to know 
all about this, Marx having often heard the tale when in Paris, both 
from those who had taken part and those who had had nothing what- 
ever to do with it. Following an incident at a meeting Godard went to 
the editorial office of the Citoyen where he was accorded an amiable 
reception by Guesde who still has something of a soft spot-— of a per- 
sonal nature—for his erstwhile anarchist brothers. In the middle of 
a quiet conversation Godard, with no excuse whatsoever, suddenly 
dealt Guesde a violent blow in the face. The others sprang to their 
feet, whereupon Godard, like the cowardly anarchist he is, took 
refuge in a corner — surely they would not ill-treat him, a prisonnier*? 
And, instead of beating him into pulp, the childlike Cztoyen chaps 
conferred together and decided qu’en effet il fallait le lacher parce 
qu'il — était prisonnier*!! Godard left in a hurry, sad to say, unchas- 
tised. But the following evening, when most of the editors were known 
to be absent, a dozen armed (with cudgels, etc.) anarchists forced 
their way into the office and, with threats, demanded satisfaction of 
some kind or other. Massard, however, stood firm, and they had to 
retire empty-handed. But now the fédération du centre ? was informed; 
for several evenings they placed working men on guard, and messieurs 
les anarchistes did not return. 

But now I would ask you to give me some idea of the sort of thing 
the ‘nothing short of creditable’, etc., is supposed to have consisted in. 

The whole gist of your letter points to the conclusion that you are 
not getting the Citoyen regularly and hence, apart from the Egalité 
and the Prolétaire, have to depend on the accounts provided by com- 
rades in Paris who, in turn, exclusively rely on the services of Malon 
and Co., in regard to whom their credulity would seem to have as- 
sumed no mean proportions. In my view, however, the party organ 
ought in no circumstances to allow its judgment of a workers’ move- 
ment in a foreign country to be unduly influenced by comrades in 
that country’s capital who are, after all, a shifting population. Ger- 
man associations abroad are unquestionably the worst sources of in- 
formation on the movement abroad; they seldom command a bird’s 
eye view and generally have their own particular connections to the 

prisoner - that in fact he ought to be let go Eecause he — was a prisoner! 

exclusion of any others, which means that they are unable to partici- 
pate in the daily life and development of the movement around them; 
finally, they persist in the belief that, even today, they are still of more 
than passing significance to the masses actually inside Germany. 
What would have become of our freedom to form an opinion of the 
English movement or non-movement, had we paid the slightest heed 
to the changing majority in the London Society? And are not the 
German associations in New York equally uncritical in their attitude 
towards the American labour movement? Every association desires 
above all else to be thought important, and will therefore—in the 
absence of a very energetic and intelligent leadership — fall an easy 
prey to any foreigner who knows the ropes. 

Nor have you any other source, i.e. other than Malon at second 
hand, for your reiterated assertion that in France ‘Marxism’ suffers 
from a marked lack of esteern. Now what is known as ‘Marxism in 
France is, indeed, an altogether peculiar product—so much so that 
Marx once said to Lafargue: ‘Ce qu’il_y a de certain c’est que mot, je ne 
suis pas Marxiste.* But if, last summer, the Citoyen was able to sell 
25,000 copies and attain a standing such that Lissagaray hazarded 
his reputation in order to gain control of it,” would not this seem some- 
what incompatible with the lack of esteem you insist upon? Even 
more incompatible, however, is the fact that the said lack of esteem 
does not prevent these chaps from enjoying an esteem so great as to 
enable them, after being chucked out of the Citoyen, to start up an im- 
portant new daily paper the selfsame day‘ and, supported almost ex- 
clusively by workers and petty bourgeois (ouvriers et petits industriels* as 
Lafargue puts it), to keep it going for almost a fortnight despite ha- 
rassment by the proprietor‘ of the old Cztoyen, and find a capitalist 
with whom they will be negotiating the paper’s' fate — out ou non’— 
tomorrow. The facts speak so clearly for themselves that Malon will 
doubtless have to swallow his ‘lack of esteem’. However, so great is 
the ‘esteem’ in which Mr Malon himself is held that, upon his apply- 
ing to Rochefort for an increase in the fee he is paid for his Jntransi- 
geant articles, he received the reply: “Je vous paterat plus st vous écrt- 
vez moins.» One of these days Malon ought to have a go at found- 
ing a daily paper in Paris without so much as a farthing in his 

* “If anything js certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.’-> See this volume, 
pp. 343-44 and 346-47.-° Ibid., pp. 344-45.-4 workmen and small industrialists - 
* Blommestein-' L’Egalité (daily edition) - yes or no-* ‘I shall pay you more if you 
write less. 

pocket, and then he could show us just what the esteem he enjoys is 
capable of doing. 

But enough. I have asked Lafargue to send the Egalité to the 
Soztaldemokrat by way of exchange,* and today he writes to say he 
will do so, in return for which kindly send the Seztaldemokrat to the 
Egalité. Should the Egalité not arrive regularly, you need only 
drop a line on a postcard to P. Lafargue, 66 boulevard de Port- 
Royal, Paris. 

As regards Vollmar’s articles,*** the first in particular, levelled as 
it was directly against those people who, cost what tt may, are clamour- 
ing for the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law, was very good and hit 
the nail on the head. The second I read rather cursorily before a jour- 
ney, with 3 or 4 people chattering around me. Otherwise I would not 
have taken the lenient view I in fact did of the excessively fervent lan- 
guage which, in conclusion, he advocates for use by the party. Bebel 
is right about this point #°’ which, however, I think he takes rather 
too seriously. The real weakness of the 2nd article (which I did note, 
but attached little importance to) lies in its childish idea of the com- 
ing revolution which is to begin by the whole world splitting itself 
‘A Guelph! A Waibling!’,*!7 into 2 armies — on one side ourselves, on 
the other the whole of the ‘single reactionary mass’. I.e. the rev- 
olution is to start with the fifth act, not with the first, in which the 
masses of the opposition parties stand shoulder to shoulder against 
the government and its blunders and thus win through, whereupon 
one after the other of the individual parties amongst the victors loses 
its efficacity and puts itself out of the running, until finally the 
mass of the people are thereby forced onto our side, at which juncture 
the decisive battle so much vaunted by Vollmar can take place. 
However, in this context the point was a subsidiary one; what mat- 
tered was the demonstration that, if the gentlemen of the ‘right 
wing’ were to have their way, we should indeed be able to rid our- 
selves of the Anti-Socialist Law on conditions which, while more 
detrimental to the party than the Anti-Socialist Law itself, would 
permit these gentlemen to publish sheets like the Hamburg Gerichts- 
Kettung, etc., and pass them off as party organs. In this I agree 
entirely with Vollmar and have, indeed, written and told Bebel as 
much." 

Yesterday I took out in your name, 137 alte Landstrasse, Riesbach, 

 See this volume, pp. 331-52.-° Tbid., p. 349. 

a money order for 12/- = 15.10 frs in payment of Marx’s and my sub- 
scription. Kindly remind me when this again falls due. 
Congratulations on entering your seventh thousand.* 

Yours, 
F. E. 

In view of your amendment in the preface, * there is no longer any 
call for an allusion to the Wyden Conference, and J shall therefore 
delete it. Kindly send me 2 fair proofs. Proof will go off today or to- 
morrow.