AT LE PERREUX 

London, 3 October 1889 

My dear Lafargue, 

So after all ours is the only Party able to register an increase in 
strength at the elections. Altogether, though our information is by no 
means complete, we can reckon on 60,000 votes for our candidates, i.e. 

4 Pionter, Illustrirter Volks-Kalender 

those put forward by the groups represented at our congress*”? and, in 
addition, 19,000 which may be accounted ours (the candidates being 
neither Possibilists nor ‘Radical Socialists’), but to which we would not 
venture to lay claim in the absence of further advice. 

But how comes it that we over here have been left without any statis- 
tical information regarding the elections except for that contained in the 
bourgeois press, from which we cannot possibly deduce the position of 
all those unknown candidates? How are we to know how many votes 
are ours when the papers fail to classify the candidates save in the vaguest 
possible manner? Yet I should say that it would be very much worth 
your while to keep German and English Socialists informed about your 
doings, seeing that you no longer possess a paper through which this 
might be done. And, as you know, we over here are all of us ready to 
work in the interests of your Party as, indeed, we have always done to 
the very best of our ability; but if you French gentlemen will not deign 
to keep us au fait with las cosas de Francia,* we shall be powerless, and 
more than one of our number will tire of a task so little appreciated by 
those for whom it is performed. 

So as soon as possible after the poll send us a complete list of Socialist 
candidates belonging to the groups represented at our congress, as also 
of other Socialists (if any) who are neither Possibilists nor Radical 
Socialists, with the number of votes cast for each in both the first and the 
second ballots. We cannot here run the risk of having our facts contested 
by men like Hyndman, etc., as is bound to happen if we are again 
thrown back on our own sources of information. 

At the congress you set up a National Council>% which passed certain 
resolutions. Not one of you deemed it necessary to breathe a word to us 
about it; and if I hadn’t come upon the thing by chance in the Madrid 
Socialista, it would not have appeared either in the German Sozialdemokrat 
or in the Labour Elector—and, what is more, two months after the event. 

You yourselves must realise that, by carrying on in this way, you are 
playing into the hands of the Possibilists and of their friends in this 
country. 

I have written and asked Bebel5 to send some money for Guesde’s 
election campaign, of the importance of which I am very well aware. I 
hope it will be voted, but it must be remembered that the Germans have 
already contributed 500 fr. towards the congress, 1,000 for Saint- 

4 French affairs 

Etienne,°”’” 900 for the congress report (the first instalment of which 
hardly redounds to the credit of those who compiled it and who seem to 
have gone to undue pains to garble the names),? 2,500 for the Swiss paper” 
for which, furthermore, they are holding more than 3,500 fr. in reserve. 
In all, 8,400 fr. voted for international purposes, and this on the eve of 
their own general election! And, after all these sacrifices, M. Jaclard goes 
and gratuitously insults them in the Voix by calling them machines who 
vote to order.>°8 As if it was the Germans’ fault that the workmen of Paris 
are Possibilists or Radicadets*”” or Boulangists or nothing at all! It would 
seem that, in Jaclard’s eyes, the Germans’ ability to accept a majority vote 
and to act in concert of itself constitutes an insult to the Parisian gents, 
and that, if Paris marks time, the rest are forbidden to march on. 

But if memory serves me aright, M. Jaclard is a Blanquist for whom 
Paris is therefore a holy city, Rome and Jerusalem at the same time. 

To come back to the elections. If it is true that Guesde and Thivrier 
stand a chance, and if they are successful, we shall be vastly better placed 
in the Chamber than the Possibilists—Baudin appears to be a certainty, 
then there’s Cluseret, Boyer and Baslu,*°” one or the other of whom will 
succeed and, with four or five such, Guesde could form a group which 
would not only impress the Chamber and the public, but would also 
place the Possibilists in a rum sort of position. It was the co-existence in 
the Reichstag of our deputies and those of the Lassalleans which, more 
than any other circumstance, brought about a merger between the two 
groups, i.e. the capitulation of the Lassalleans.°!° In this case, too, our 
group would be the stronger and would end up by forcing the Dumays 
and the Joffrins to enter its orbit, so that the Possibilist leaders would 
have to choose between capitulation and abdication. 

For the time being, however, all this is the music of the future.4? But 
of one thing you may be sure, and that is that Boulangism is in extremis.© 
And to my mind that is something of the utmost significance. This has 
been the third attack of Bonapartist fever; the first, involving a genuine 
and great Bonaparte, the second a bogus ditto,‘ the third a man who isn’t 
even a bogus Bonaparte, but simply a bogus hero, bogus general, bogus 
everything, whose chief attribute has been his black charger. And, even 
with this charlatan-cum-adventurer, it was a dangerous business—as you 

@ Congres international ouvrier socialiste de Paris (Du 14 Juillet au 21 Juillet 
1889), Paris, 1889 — > Arbeitstag: Der Achtstiindige Arbeitstag — * on its last legs 
— 4 Louis-Napoleon, subsequently Emperor Napoleon III 

382 Letters ~ 1889 

know better than I. But the acute stage of the attack, the crisis, is over, and 
we may hope that the French people will now cease to suffer from such 
Caesarean fevers—proof that its constitution has grown much more 
robust than it was in 1848. But the Chamber was elected to combat 
Boulangism and is suffering the consequences in the shape of an inher- 
ently negative character, which leads me to doubt whether it will be capa- 
ble of reaching its natural term. Unless the majority becomes convinced 
of the necessity for constitutional revision, it will soon have to be 
replaced by a new Chamber with a revisionist but anti-Boulangist major- 
ity. You, being better acquainted with the elements that make up the new 
majority, will be able to tell me if I am wrong. But I believe that, had it 
not been for the Boulangist episode, there would by now already have 
been a revisionist republican majority, or at any rate a healthy minority. 

All this if there is no war. The Portland Place HUMBUG’s? defeat will 
at least postpone that but, on the other hand, the amassing of armaments 
by all the powers will have the reverse effect. And if war does come, then 
goodbye to the Socialist movement for some time. Everywhere we shall 
be crushed, disorganised, deprived of elbow-room. France, bound to 
Russia’s chariot wheel, will be unable to move and will have to renounce 
all revolutionary pretensions for fear of seeing her ally go over to the 
other camp. With the forces of the two sides pretty well equal, England 
will be in a position to tip the scales in favour of whichever side she may 
take. This will hold good for two or three years to come but, if war does 
break out later, I am willing to wager that the Germans will be beaten 
hollow for, within three or four years, young William? will have replaced 
all the good generals with his favourites—imbeciles or fake geniuses, like 
those who commanded the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz,>!! and 
each with a prescription for military miracles in his pocket. And just now 
Berlin is swarming with that breed, which has every chance of success 
since young William belongs to it himself. 

Give Laura a kiss from Nim and me. I shall be writing to her soon. 

Yours ever, 
FE.