London, 8 October 1885 

Dear Ede, 

I enclose herewith the introduction* to the Revelations Concerning 
the Trial in Cologne. If you want to print it initially as a feuilleton in 
the Sozzaldemokrat, I should have no objection. Only you must come 
to some arrangement with Schliiter, who is probably awaiting it anx- 
ously. Tell him he will be getting the notes and the proofs of Marx’s 
text tomorrow, as also instructions about what to print of the enclo- 
sures° from Stieber. ° 

Karl Kautsky will be sending you a few Kélnische Zeitungs contain- 
ing the first rational report on events in Bulgaria. **5 The correspon- 
dent is in Belgrade and is well-informed, and since as yet Bismarck’s 
interests have not provoked a hushing-up order, the report can, in 
fact, be regarded as an honest one. So the Russians have fallen into 
their own trap. They forgot that, as a lieutenant in the Prussian 
Guards, Alexander Battenberg is rightly relying on his ‘comrade’ 
William. ° 

You worry too much about someone ‘succeeding’ you on the 
Sozialdemokrat. But the best of it is that they couldn’t really put anyone 
in your place; any attempt on the part of those gentry to put one of 
their milksops would fail because 1) no one of that ilk would voluntar- 
ily go into exile, 2) the party would soon put a stop to it, nor would 
they continue to support such a paper. If you go, the Sezialdemokrat goes 
with you, and this coincidence is all to the good. August‘ is likewise of 
the opinion that the Zurich establishments should in all circum- 
stances remain in our hands, as indeed they probably will, since they 
would only be a burden to others. It is up to you, I believe, to ensure 
that we retain the press and bookshop, in which case the matter of the 

4 F, Engels, ‘On the History of the Communist League’. - > K. Marx, Revelations 
Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne. - ° K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Address of the 
Centra) Authority to the League, March 1850’ and ‘Address of the Central Authority 
to the League, June 1850’. - 7 Wermuth/Stieber, Die Communisten-Verschworungen des 
neunzehnien Jahrhunderts. - © William I - ‘ Bebel - the editorial board, bookshop 
and the press of the newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat 

Sozialdemokrat will resolve itself —if the worst comes to the worst — 
through the issue of a new paper after the demise of the present one. 
But you rate these gentlemen’s offensive power too high. 

The acquittal in Chemnitz is splendid. So it was too much of 
a good thing even for a Saxon judiciary. 

The French elections mark a great advance. As I had previously 
said,* the scrutin de liste*’* has eliminated the Opportunists. **” But 
that it would eliminate them so thoroughly, that the upper, middle 
and part of the lower middle classes would take refuge with the Mon- 
archists, and do so en masse, was something that could not have been 
foreseen — not, at any rate, outside France. The Opportunists played 
at being a ‘Directory’ and such was their corruption that it far out- 
stripped even that of the Second Empire. But they didn’t guarantee 
your bourgeois the peace and quiet that would be guaranteed him by 
a monarchy. The relapse into monarchism, here dubbed Orleanism, 
was all the more natural in that the entire Centre gauche” (Ribot, Jour- 
nal des Débats, etc.) are simply Orleanists disguised as Republicans; 
so that people prefer genuine Orleanists, and are even content, if 
there is no other alternative, with Bonapartists and Legitimists. The 
second ballots may already witness a setback, the bourgeois having 
taken fright at his own electoral victory, and hence a swing to radical- 
ism. If not there will soon be a set-to. 

This much, at any rate, has been won — the ousting of the parties of 
the Centre, Monarchists versus Radicals, the few Centre Party depu- 
ties compelled to choose between joining one or the other. The situa- 
tion is thus a revolutionary one. No one in France seriously believes in 
the monarchy as such, if only because of the vast number of Pretend- 
ers. But there is some possibility of the Orleanists attempting a coup, 
in which case there would be a show-down. At all events, this is how 
the question is presented: either la république en danger,° or the set- 
ting up of a ‘radical’ republic. There would seem to be every proba- 
bility that the latter will prevail. But then the Radicals +?° will not 
only have to abide by their promises* and replace Napoleon’s central- 
ised administration with the kind of self-government exercised by the 
departments and communes between 1792 and 1798; they will also 
have to rely on the support of the Socialists. We could wish for no 
more favourable situation. France remains faithful to her own logico- 
dialectical course of development. Contradictions are never sup- 

* Cf, this volume, p. 317. - ° left centre - © Here: endanger the Republic. 

pressed for very long, but are constantly being fought out. And we 
can wish for nothing better. 

That the Socialists have so few votes (a source of considerable 
chagrin to Lafargue) is perfectly natural.**° The French working 
man does not chuck away his ballot paper. And since in France there 
are still /2veng parties and not, as in Germany, only dead or dying 
ones, it is far from politic to vote for a Socialist who has no prospects, 
if by so doing one puts a Radical in the minority and an Opportunist 
in the majority. The fact is that there are considerable drawbacks to 
_ the practice of nominating candidates as a measure of strength in 
France, as there may be in some parts of Germany as soon as life re- 
turns to the political scene there. When once the course of things in 
France enables the Socialists to become a political opposition, i.e. 
when Clemenceau finally comes to the helm, we shall instantly gain 
millions of votes. But one shouldn’t try and insist upon the French 
developing along German lines, although that is what many of our best 
men in Germany are doing. 

A final verdict will not, of course, be possible until the second ballot 
is over. 

Your 
F.E.