ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE?” 

AT LE PERREUX 

London, 16 November, 1889 

My dear Lafargue, 

Let us say no more about your proclivity for Boulangism, now happily 
a thing of the past, and why re-read, at this late date, your letters of yester- 
year? In any case the gallant general has ruined himself, not only by his fail- 
ure to remain on the field of battle, but—and this was infinitely worse—by 
his royalist and Bonapartist alliances; this he now sees and would like to 
recover his Republican virginity but, as in the case of the fair Eugénie: 

Should he this night find a maidenhead, 
(Bonaparte, on his wedding-night) 
Ivll mean the fair lady had two. 

No one is in any doubt that the discontent underlying Boulangism!*” 
is justified, but it is precisely the form assumed by that discontent which 
goes to show that the majority of Parisian working men are as little 
aware of their situation as in 1848 and 1851. Then, too, their discontent 
was justified; the form it assumed, Bonapartism, cost us eighteen years 
of Empire—and what an Empire! And at that time a fair number of the 
Parisian working men were still fighting against it; but in 1889 they 
thought fit to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of 1789 by grovelling 
at the feet of a mere scallywag. That being so, you can hardly expect 
other people to defer to the Parisians with the same respect they so read- 
ily accorded their forebears. 

I am much relieved to hear that the Boulangists—genuine or other- 
wise—have been kept at arm’s length by the Party, and the Possibilists! 
likewise. Had they been admitted such as they are I should have been at 
a loss what to say to the English, Danes, Germans, etc. For the past 
twenty years we have been advocating the formation of a Party that was 
distinct from and opposed to all bourgeois parties—and the inclusion of 
men elected under Boulanger’s banner, a banner whose protection, in 
those same elections, was extended to the Monarchists and repudiated 
by them—would have spelt our French Party’s ruin vis-a-vis other 

national parties. And how exultant would the Hyndmans and Smiths 
have been then! 

You say that the attacks on Boulé achieved nothing save to gain him 
access to the /ntransigeant and to get him nominated as a municipal candi- 
date—in other words, publicly profess himself a Boulangist, fall into line 
with that crew and receive the due reward of his treachery.># Thank you! 

Your plan is very good if it is practicable—if, that is to say, the 
provinces are prepared to assume the leadership of this committee.? 

You keep talking about your provincial papers, but you hardly ever 
send me any.>* A few used to be forwarded to me by Bonnier, but now 
I seldom see one. Everything you send me, or get others to send me, will 
bear fruit in that it will help me keep Bebel posted, and Bebel is ten times 
more important than Liebknecht; if, moreover, I know what is going on, 
I can get to work on Ede and the Sozialdemokrat. 

It would be a good idea if all your newspapers were to arrange 
exchanges with the Sozialdemokrat and the Labour Elector, 13 Paternoster 
Row, E. C. In all other countries this is done as a matter of course; but the 
French gentlemen wait to be begged—and sometimes begged in vain—to 
put us in a position to work in their interest. Should this kind of behaviour 
exceed certain limits, we for our part might begin to tire. Is it really too 
much to expect some small modicum of order and organisation? 

But enough of that. I stand up for you so often and with such ardour 
vis-a-vis other people that, by way of return, it is only fair that I should 
give you a thorough dressing-down. At the moment I have no means of 
checking M. de Paepe’s intimations>** and the Vienna Arbeiterzeitung 
has received confirmation of his death’ from St. Petersburg; in view of 
the Russian government’s mendacity and the myths about Russian revo- 
lutionaries, there’s no knowing what is true and what is false. 

Now for Laura. 

Yours ever, 
FE.