London, 16 December 1882 

Dear Old Man, 

I have been waiting for some time for some money to come in so 
that I could send you another fiver. It eventually came in yesterday, 
followed that very evening by your postcard.* I therefore im- 
mediately took out a money order for the said fiver = 126 frs, and 
hope the money will reach you without delay. 

I was very glad to hear that you have extricated yourself from the 
cantonal and communal mire; it’s a sheer waste of time and produc- 
tive of nothing but tittle-tattle and pointless vexation. Incidentally, 
that jackass Solari is still sending me 2 copies of the Précurseur. It must 
be a fine despatch department! 

Every year the anarchists commit suicide and every year rise anew 
from their ashes, and so it will go on until such time as anarchism is 
subjected to serious persecution. It is the only socialist sect that really 
can be destroyed by means of persecution. For its perpetual rebirth 
depends on a steady supply of would-be bigwigs who wish to play 
a role on the cheap. Anarchism is as if tailor-made for that. But run 
a risk? Not on your life! Hence the present harassment of anarchists in 

* See this volume, p. 404. 

France will damage that gang only if it isn’t sheer make-believe or 
hanky-panky on the part of the police. But either way its victims will 
be those poor devils, the miners of Montceau. *°? Incidentally, I have 
grown so used to the anarchist buffoons that it seems to me quite nat- 
ural to have that clownish caricature tagging along like this beside 
the movement proper. They are dangerous only in such countries as 
Austria and Spain, and then only for the time being. Again the Jura, 
where watch-making is carried on in houses scattered all over the 
place, would seem a foreordained hotbed of this ballyhoo, and here 
your blows could prove quite beneficial. 

Marx has been given permission by the doctors to spend the winter 
on the south coast of England and has been in the Isle of Wight for 
6 weeks or so. *!! Hitherto, all has been well as regards the two main 
counts: no sign of any recurrence of pleurisy or bronchitis. The rotten 
weather we have been having here (for a week the fog has scarcely lift- 
ed at all) means that convalescents are inevitably subject to colds of 
all sorts and, for one in Marx’s condition, these are lingering and 
troublesome. But if it remains at that, no matter. However, he might 
well be sent out to Switzerland again next summer, in which case you 
will certainly see one another. 

Madame Lafargue’s address is 66 Boulevard de Port-Royal, Paris. 
Not long ago her husband was arrested, but has already been set free. 
The point at issue was certain speeches he had made in the provinces 
and, upon their being summoned by the examining magistrate of 
Montlugon, he and Guesde, instead of obeying, poured vile scorn 
upon him in the Egalité. Whereupon he naturally issued a warrant 
for their arrest but, although Lafargue went daily to the newspaper 
office and was at so little pains to conceal his whereabouts that he ac- 
tually announced he was going to speak, and did speak, at meetings, 
it took the clever Parisian police three weeks to seek him out. Like 
Guesde before him, he was immediately released after the first 
hearing at Montlucgon. They might still get a couple of months 
apiece. **° 

As you know, the workers’ party in France has split. 39* Malon and 
Brousse can hardly wait for the day when they become deputies, 
which means that a herd of voters has to be quickly rounded up. In 
other words a party created without a programme (literally — for a long 
series of ‘considérants’* is followed by the conclusion that every local- 

* preambles 

224, Engels to Bernstein. 16 December 1882 407 

ity must draw up its own programme), in which every Tom, Dick 
and Harry is welcome and, to carry this through, people are being 
admitted into the party before the congress who accept the old pro- 
gramme with the reservation that, come the congress, they will 
subvert it. Guesde, Lafargue, etc., were outvoted and those who stood 
by the programme went to Roanne. Our people are no tacticians and 
have committed hopeless blunders, but nevertheless they will win 
through and the ‘Possibilists’ won’t have it all their own way for long. 
Our chaps have a very considerable lever in the shape of the daily 
Egalité and, moreover, are all of them devoted to the cause, something 
which cannot be said of those intriguers, Malon and Brousse. 

Well, good-bye, old man, and keep your pecker up. You’re unlikely 
to decline as fast as all that and, as you know, we’re all heading the 
same way! 

Your 
FL E.