[IN BORSDORF NEAR LEIPZIG **] 

London, 12 May 1886 

Dear Liebknecht, 

The French papers (of which I have sent at least 3 parcels) were 
simply intended to give you an opportunity of reading at first hand 
some of the news about the brilliant turn things have taken in France. 
Since you take the Cri du Peuple, I need only send you the Jntran- 
sigeant, etc. Lafargue sends me one now and again, when something 
happens, and I thought that in this way they could be turned to 
further account. 

As regards Clemenceau, the moment may very well come when 
you would do better to drop La Justice. He is being pushed over onto 
the conservative, markedly bourgeois, side by, on the one hand, the 
immediate prospect of a ministerial post, and, on the other, by the to 
him unexpectedly rapid growth of the Workers’ Party. 7°! Even from 
his own point of view he is behaving stupidly. But that’s how all these 
bourgeois are, even the most progressive. Longuet will soon have to 
choose, if he doesn’t want to ruin himself utterly. Gaulier’s candida- 
ture, supported solely by the press unaided by the comités radicaux- 
soctalistes, cost the Radicals #79 50,000 voters who have come over to 

us and are now the loudest in their denunciation of their one-time 
chiefs. In the absence of colossal blunders— the movement is al- 
ready strong enough now to absorb minor errors without damage to 
itself—we shall obtain between '/, and '/, of the seats at the next 
elections in Paris. And, now that they have something real to do, our 
people are behaving in quite exemplary fashion. 

But to write for Justice without being paid is stupid. The paper is 
perfectly well able to pay; after all, its chief editors — deputies — are 
paid by the State. 

Bebel has written to say that his voice is apt to give out after several 
days of exertion, and needless to say I told him that for an American 
stump tour the very first prerequisite was a voice that is proof against 
anything. * Whether he’s not making too much of the business, I na- 
turally cannot say, but it would in any case be quite a risk; once 
you’re over there, you yourself will discover soon enough what the Yan- 
kees demand in return for their good money. If he doesn’t go, you 
must at any rate make sure that no one of the tame, petty-bourgeois 
breed is sent with you. 3! 

No doubt the Chicago affair °*? will put paid to the anarchist farce 
in America. The chaps can shout their heads off if they want, but 
pointless rowdyism is something the Americans refuse to put up with, 
now they have become an industrial nation. 

There’s nothing favourable to report of the so-called ‘movement’ 
over here. Hyndman loses more ground every day, having completely 
forfeited the confidence of his own people, and the Leacus is in- 
creasingly coming under anarchist leadership. Since The Common- 
weal became a weekly — without adequate supplies either of money 
or talent — Aveling has had to resign his (honorary) editorship in fa- 
vour of Bax who, like Morris, is strongly influenced by the anar- 
chists.°77 The two gentlemen will have to learn in corpore vile; 
they'll soon be sick of it and it’s a real stroke of luck that these teeth- 
ing troubles will have been left behind before the masses join the 
movement, which at present they obstinately refuse to do. It’s just as it 
was in France; a really big working class cannot be got moving by ex- 
hortation, but when things have reached the right stage, the least im- 
pulse is enough to precipitate an avalanche. And that’s what will 
happen over here as well, and soon. Most probably it will be the fi- 
nancial collapse of the big rrapes unions under the pressure of chronic 

@ See this volume, p. 429. -> from bitter experience 

overproduction that will mark the moment when the eyes of the En- 
glish are opened to the inadequacy of ‘self-help’ and of Radicalism. 
So [see you} here this autumn! 

Your 
F.E. 

Tomorrow week Mrs Pfander will be sailing for America to stay 
with her brother-in-law in New Ulm, Minnesota. 

wes, Vol. I (V 
Pans Archies Vel TANT Moscow, 12 Published in English in full for the 

first time