ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE”” 

AT PERREUX 
London, 16 May 1889 

My dear Lafargue, 

Herewith my notes on your draft appeal,*? which I have discussed 
with Bernstein. If, by the bye, you say that the Troyes*”? congress repre- 
sented the whole of the French working class you are putting yourselves 

4 provincial — > not all French gaiety has vanished 

in flagrant contradiction to the facts and laying yourselves open to 
protests and refusals from abroad—and quite needlessly at that. Your 
dicta will not cause the Possibilists and their Paris majority to vanish 
into thin air. 

I have sent out the English circular to the weekly papers, tomorrow 
it will go to the daily press, to the London radical clubs,” to Socialist 
organisations and to such influential people as may be interested. 

This will account for perhaps 1,000 copies, Tussy will dispose of 500 
others and Keir Hardie of another 500 in Scotland. The addresses and 
wrappers are ready, and everything will go off tomorrow so that by 
Saturday evening, when the clubs, Trade Unions, etc., meet, all will have 
been distributed. 

Bonnier’s letter is in the Star.#? 

Clara Zetkin* has written an excellent article in the Berlin Tribune— 
had we had so exact an account of things three months ago, it would 
have helped us a great deal. Bernstein will make good use of it when he 
goes to see Massingham tomorrow, as also of the affair of the 13th*?’ 
whose significance was not apparent from the Egalité article, but all the 
details of which she has given to Bernstein. 

You are quite right not to locate the National Council in Paris—since 
your strength lies in the provinces, it is there rather than in Paris that the 
official leadership belongs. That the provinces should be better than 
Paris is, moreover, a very good sign. 

Tomorrow will see the first performance of another of Aveling’s 
plays.*** Although he has not taken the public by storm, he is attracting 
the notice of some critics, even those who have hitherto adhered to the 
conspiracy of silence. 

The miners’ strike in my part of Germany (Barmen lies some five or six 
miles from the edge of the coal-field) is an event of the very greatest signif- 
icance.*?* Whatever the outcome, it will open up territory hitherto closed 
to us and, as of now, will earn us 40,000-50,000 more votes in the elec- 
tions. The government is scared stiff, for any attempt at resolute action or, 
as they say in Prussia (although the term is an Austrian one), ‘schneidiges 
Handeln’> might precipitate a week of bloodshed, as happened in Paris in 
1872. Henceforward the miners will be ours throughout the length and 
breadth of Germany—and they are a force to be reckoned with. 

4 [C. Zetkin,] ‘Der internationale Arbeiterkongres und die Streitigkeiten unter 
den franzésischen Arbeitern’, Berliner Volks-Tribüne, No. 19, 11 May 1889 - 
b brisk action 

As for Boulanger, I hope you are right and that that mountebank has 
lost the game.>! But ... 

POST-TIME! 
Yours ever, 
FE. 

I shall write to Danielson 

International Socialist Working Men’s Congress. 
14th to 21st July, 1889. 

Workers and Socialists of Europe and America, — 

The Bordeaux?! Working Men’s Congress, held by the delegates of 
upwards of 200 trades unions from all the industrial centres of France,> 
and the Troyes’? Congress, constituted by the delegates of 300 work- 
men’s and° Socialist groups representing the French’ working class 
and revolutionary Socialism at large, have resolved to convene an 
International Congress in Paris, during the Exhibition, that shall be 
open to the workers of the whole world. 

This resolution has been joyfully welcomed by the Socialists of 
Europe and America, happy to be able to meet and to clearly formu- 
late the demands of the working-class on the subject of international 
labour legislation, which question will be treated at the Berne 
Conference, to be held by the representatives of the Governments of 
Europe in September. 

The capitalists invite the rich and mighty to the Universal 
Exhibition, to contemplate and admire the achievements of the work- 
ers doomed to misery in the midst of the most colossal wealth ever 
possessed by any human society. We, Socialists, whose aim is the 
emancipation of labour, the abolition of wage-slavery, and the creation 
of an order of things in which all workers—without distinction of sex 
or nationality—shall have a right to the riches produced by their 
common toil; it is the producers whom we invite to meet us on the 
14th July in Paris. 

We call on them to seal the bond* of fellowship that, by consolidat- 
ing the efforts of the proletariat of all countries, will hasten the advent 
of the new world. 

‘Working men of all countries, unite!’ 

4 See this volume, p.346 — > The word ‘France’ was inserted by Engels with a 
question mark — © Engels underlined this word and put a question mark — 
Underlined by Engels - * Underlined by Engels 

—to seal the bond may give rise to difficulties. The Germans are 
forbidden to have any kind of organisation whatever and such as they 
have in defiance of the law is regarded as a secret society. Hence one 
must avoid any expression which suggests the idea of formal organisa- 
tion. Bid them to a féte of solidarity, to a public demonstration of frater- 
nity—anything you please, so long as you do not invite them to form an 
official organisation or words to that effect, as the English jurists say. 

It also seems to me that one or two good sentences are needed to 
make an effective ending. 

And you might tell the international Socialists who are going to sign 
this that the details of place of meeting, etc., will be communicated later 
by the Paris commission. A little prose after so much rhetoric would not 
come amiss. It would be more businesslike.