London, 4 April 1889 

Dear Liebknecht, 

Besides your letters to myself, I have before me those to Bonnier and 
Ede.” 

From them I see that, as usual, we diverge very considerably as soon 
as it comes to taking action. 

Your ‘politeness’ post festum? would now simply make you look 
ridiculous in the eyes of the English. 

Your advice to the French, namely that they might ultimately arriver 
a un arrangement quelconque avec les Broussistes, i.e. deliberately go 
and present their backsides to be kicked, has, quite understandably, infu- 
riated them. The above advice, and your annoyance at the fact that we— 
for the pamphlet was embarked upon at my instigation and almost 
wholly edited by me*8*—should have presented the Possibilists for what 
they are—recipients of reptile funds*? of the Opportunists,!% i.e. haute 
finance‘—thereby opening the eyes of large numbers of Englishmen to 
things which had been deliberately withheld from them,—your annoy- 
ance, I say, is explicable only if you were intent on keeping a foot in the 
back door so that—even after being spurned by the Possibilists—you 
might cook up some little deal for the account and at the risk of the 
German party. If that’s how things are, then I am not at all sorry to have 
taken some of the wind out of your sails. 

This, along with your opinion*”’ that Ede should have replied to the 
Justice with an editorial, i.e. in the Sozialdemokrat, i.e. in German and 
thus in a form neither accessible nor comprehensible to the English, 
shows that you are totally out of touch with conditions both in France 
and over here, and that your calculations are based on out-of-date infor- 
mation and imaginary situations. Nor is anything else to be expected 
since you receive none of the relevant journals there and have no regular 
correspondence with anyone of note (I mean, of course, in the socialist 

@ after the event — > core to an arrangement of some sort with the Broussists — 
© high finance 

parties) in England and France. Ede is infinitely better informed than 
you are about all these matters, and you would do better to turn to him 
for information rather than haul him over the coals about matters in 
which he is and must needs be far and away your superior. 

That the pamphlet was not only the greatest service we could do you 
people, but also completely indispensable, is something I trust I shall be 
able to bring home, if not to you, then at least to Singer, when the two 
of you come over here. 

One thing I do know—you can arrange the next congress yourselves; 
I shall wash my hands of it. 

The Hague resolution was sent to me by Lafargue expressly for 
publication, as was absolutely essential after the brazen rebuff meted 
out to you by the Possibilists.°* So Pll damned well forget about 
etiquette and just wait and see whether anyone else besides you 
complains. 

As regards the date of the congress, any alteration to what has 
already been resolved will put fresh difficulties in the way of an under- 
standing, since everybody will propose a different date and it will be 
the 10th of October before they have agreed upon, let us say, the 10th 
of August. For us to make proposals to you on this matter will serve 
no useful purpose and I can only hope that, after all this bother—for 
the past 4 weeks I haven’t been able to do a stroke of work on Volume 
III* because of this damned business—something real will actually 
come of it. 

Cordial regards to your wife and to the others when you see them. 

Your 
EE. 

I fully understand—and have plainly intimated as much to Lafargue? 
that you should want to avoid a set-to with the Possibilists which, be it 
noted, would take place with the consent of the powers that be, and with 
police protection for the Possibilists; in other words, out of gratitude for 
the favourable attitude you have adopted towards France since 1870, 
you would be beaten up as Prussians by the French. 

* of Capital — See previous letter — © Prussians