London, 28 November 1882 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

To begin with, my best thanks for the information about the nation- 
alised railways. It is amply sufficient.*°? I have received from Bebel 
the Accident and Health Insurance Bills of /882, but must, of course, 
also have those of 1881, the original wording !** being precisely the 
one in which Bismarck’s soul, filled with ardour for the poor, has am- 
ple space to flap its wings; in the second wording, in which the said 
wings have already been substantially clipped as a result of bourgeois 
divisions, we no longer find Bismarck in his entirety. 

Marx used to get the Arbeiterstimme, but as he has probably failed to 
renew his subscription it no longer arrives. 

Aside from a few minor points, Vollmar’s article # is pure Malon 
at one remove. In it the history of the French workers’ movement 
since 1871 is completely falsified, and that sort of thing simply should 
not happen. For instance, in the 2nd article Guesde is blamed for not 
having joined up with the few small cliques (later the progenitors 
of the Prolétaire or, in other words, the out and out coopérateurs 
against whom he was just then conducting a campaign)! As though 
the chaps who were subsequently to bring out the Prolétaire would 
have even considered admitting a ‘non-worker’! But more falsified 
than anything else is what Deville has correctly depicted in the 
Egalité of 19 November (‘Il_y a cing ans’ ,* history of the Egalité), name- 
ly, the fight for the ‘collectivist? programme  at the congresses 
and the victory of that programme in 1879 at the Marseilles Congress.**% 
This is completely suppressed in Vollmar’s article. I cannot assume 
that Vollmar deliberately perpetrated this falsification, but nor is it 
any easier to explain his ignorance of the subject and the fact that he 
appears to know nothing at all about the French workers’ movement 
save what Malon thought fit to tell him. 

Hence, by omitting the Marseilles Congress, he suppresses the vital 
fact that the French workers’ party had accepted the collectivist 

* ‘Five Years Ago’. 

programme 3 years ago, so that Malon’s abandonment of it was a def- 
initely retrograde step. Since it is now essential that our people in Ger- 
many should be told the story of the French movement, not as it 
ought to have happened to fit in with Malon’s present requirements, 
but as it really did happen, this is something which must unquestion- 
ably be put right. In my view, the simplest way of doing so would be 
to relate it to the above-mentioned article by Deville, precisely be- 
cause this is so utterly unpolemical. Should you no longer have it, 
I can send it you forthwith on a postcard. 

Malon, by the way, had better watch out. Should we at any time 
wish to portray his fazts et gestes* more accurately if as minutely as he 
got Vollmar to depict those of Guesde, he would have a rough time of 
it. We still have all the documents in which, on 18 March ’71, he ds- 
avowed the rising, only to join it after the event, when things were doing 
better than he had expected. 

Now as regards the strength of the two factions, I have obtained 
a report on the subject from Lafargue.**? In Paris the Roanne people 
have 15 groups with whose help they have kept the Fgalité going for 
a whole month now, which does at any rate say something for the 
quality of these chaps. In the provinces they are, so Lafargue says, 
very strong. The Fédération du Nord *°%* is, in essence, on their side; 
they do not wish to prendre part aux querelles des Parisiens” but they 
uphold the old collectivist programme which also features prominent- 
ly in their Forgat; the Roanne people are holding their next congress 
at Roubaix, to which all the delegates of the North will be going, 
and are constantly in the closest touch with the Fédération du Nord. 
The other provincial workers’ paper, L’Exploité de Nantes, has simi- 
larly printed the old programme together with the considérants**°° in 
a prominent position. It reprints articles from the Egalité, and 
Deville is a contributor. This means that the only two workers’ organs 
in the provinces are both on their side. ‘En province’,* aside from the 
North, ‘fartout ot tly a un groupement ouvrier, a Reims, Epinay, Lyon, dans 
tout le bassin houillier de VAllier, & Bordeaux, Angouléme, Rochefort, 
nous battons les Possibilistes qui n’ont de force qu’en Bretagne at a Mar- 

settle — et encore.’* 
* goings-on-" take part in the squabbles of the Parisians-* preambles-“ ‘In the 
provinces’ -° ‘wherever there is a concentration of workers, at Rheims, Epinay, Lyons, 
throughout the Allier mining district, at Bordeaux, Angouléme, and Rochefort, we are 
vanquishing the Possibilists who are strong only in Brittany and in Marseilles — 
if strong is the right word.’ 

That Malon should obtain a wide hearing for the empty verbiage 
of his considérants without a programme is not surprising. But if one 
founds a party without a programme in which everyone can have 
a say, it cannot properly be called a party. The impotence of the old 
sectarians, for whom Malon and Vollmar show such tender regard, 
has been in evidence for years and it would be best to let them wither 
quietly away. As for the Chambres Syndicales* —- well, if one is going to 
account a member of the workers’ party every strike association 
which, like the English rrapes unions, fights solely for high wages and 
short working hours but doesn’t otherwise give a damn for the move- 
ment,— then the only party one will actually form is one for the pre- 
servation of wage labour rather than its abolition. And, or so Marx 
tells me,” these Parisian Chambres Syndicales are for the most part even 
more colourless than the English rrapes unions. To abolish a party 
programme just to please these people is no way to spur them on. And 
has the like ever been seen before—a party without a programme, 
a party whose wishy-washy considérants (written wholly in the spirit of 
the communist Miquel, who likewise believed communism to be fea- 
sible in 500 years’ time *°*) lead up to the conclusion that each group 
should concoct its own private programme? 

Well, now, what benefit does Malon derive from the Chambres 
Syndicales? They pay no contributions, they send no delegates to the 
Federal Council, they were nominal members of the Union fédéra- 
tive before the split and have nominally remained so—they are, 
as Lafargue puts it, ‘complétement platoniques’. They are there for 
show. As for Malon’s other groups, Lafargue writes: 

‘Dans le XVII arrondissement nos amis ont organisé, apres le congrés, un groupe qui immédiate- 
ment s’est trouvé composé de 29 membres. Pour nous faire piece, les posstbilistes ont subdivisé 
leur groupe qui, a ce que U’on me dit, ne se composait que d’une vingtaine de membres, en cing 
Sous-groupes réunis par un comité fédéral du quartier. Le tour est joli, mais ne trompe que les 
indifférents et ceux qui sont éloignés.’< 

That’s just what the Bakuninists used to do. On the other hand, so 
Lafargue says, the Possibilists are really strong only in Montmartre, 
where they are also well-organised. 

* Syndicalist Ghambers-° See this volume, p. 385.-° ‘In the XVII arrondissement 
our friends organised, after the Congress, a group of which the immediate composition 
was 29 members. To play a trick on us the Possibilists subdivided their group, which by 
all accounts consisted of some twenty members only, into five sub-groups convened by 
a federal committee in the quarter. It’s a pretty trick, but one that can deceive only 
those who are indifferent or far away.’ 

To be momentarily in the minority — guoad* organisation —— and 
have the right programme is at least better than having no pro- 
gramme and a large, though almost entirely nominal and bogus, fol- 
lowing. We have been in the minority all our lives and have thrived 
on it. And the comparative weakness (supposing it exists, which I am 
very much inclined to doubt — the Possibilists did not dare attend the 
Roanne people’s conférence contradictoire’ on the two congresses *>”), 
the comparative weakness where organisations in Paris are con- 
cerned would be outweighed two or three times over by journalistic 
influence. 

So how your Paris correspondents are able to regard the St-Etienne 
folk as the ‘genuine workers’ party’ is beyond me. In the first place 
they are not a party at all, let alone a workers’ party, any more than 
are the workers over here. But they are in embryo what those over 
here have become in full maturity, namely the tail of the radical 
bourgeois party. The only thing that keeps them together is bourgeois 
radicalism, for they have no labour programme. And as for those 
labour leaders who descend to manufacturing a docile labour vote for 
the radicals, they are, in my view, downright traitors. 

Your remarks also led me, just for fun, to ask about Godard.*! 
The said Godard, ‘gui se dit anarchiste comme son maitre Maret, écrit 
dans un journal opportuniste de Toulouse« To refuse 
a chap of this kind what is known as a rectification is quite in keeping 
with the customs of the Paris, as of any other, press. 

On the other hand our friends have again perpetrated a really co- 
lossal bloomer in as much as they have, by their revolutionary brag- 
ging, exposed themselves to prosecution before the paper? had found 
its feet. Guesde has been arrested, as you know, and Lafargue will 
probably soon follow in his wake. When both are in jug, the most ac- 
tive — not only writing, but fighting — men will have been got out of 
the way. Deville is lazy, Massard quite good for his post of secrétaire de 
la rédaction,* but they are hardly the people to keep a paper going in 
difficult circumstances. I won’t mention the other 3—-Brissac and 
Bouis, old Communards, are so much ballast, and Picard is a com- 
mon-or-garden journalist. 

Whatever you do, by the way, don’t allow anyone to persuade you 
that Guesde and Lafargue intended, ‘by hook or by crook, to make 

* as to- public debate-‘ ‘who professes to be an anarchist like his master Maret, 
writes for an opportunist Toulouse journal’ - L’Egalité-* secretary to the editors 

all organisations subject to their own directives’. It is a constantly re- 
curring catchword in Bakuninist tactics, and in other contexts in 
France it may always be resorted to in lieu of other arguments. 

Treatment of other countries in the Egalité! If only you knew what 
disorder reigns and what the standard of German is like in that office! 
Should Lafargue remain at large, you would do best always to ad- 
dress yourself to him; he does at least forward the things. Otherwise 
I have no advice to offer. 

If you want to use the resumé of the pamphlet, ?’*° I am quite 
agreeable. The concluding note will follow shortly. The affaire 
Schmidt is very nice. Pollaky has been running a private detec- 
tive’s office in London for some time. In the directory, under the head- 
ing Inquiry Orricer (of whom 18 are listed), there is an entry: 
‘Pollaky, Ignatius Paul, 13 Paddington Green, W. (not at all far from 
where I live), Correspondent to the Foreign Police Gazette.’ 

I trust my congratulations on your attaining your 7th thousand * 
will again prove outdated. I, for my part, am 62 years old today. 

Kindest regards. 

Yours, 
PoE: