ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE 29+ 

AT LE PERREUX 
London, 2 September 1891 

My dear Lafargue, 

So you are back once more ‘neath Madame Pélagie’s* hallowed 
and sacrosanct vaults—in Ja citta dolente fra le perduta gente” but it 
won't last long, I trust, and before your ‘year’ is up we may have 
Constans there in your place. At all events it’s a great pity that you 
weren’t able to go to Brussels before you got nabbed; the effect would 
have been magnificent. But no matter; I am very happy about the 
congress '?5 none the less. In the first place the total cottapse of the 
Brousso-Hyndmanian opposition; it was as though it had never exist- 
ed, as though the Possibilist congress of 1889°? had simply been 
a phantasmagoria. Heaven forbid that these gentlemen should be- 
come our ‘friends’—if they did, they would become a pest; as ene- 
mies they would be a source of amusement, as in the past. 

Next, the exclusion of the anarchists. The new International has 
resumed at the point where the old one broke off. Here, 19 years later, 
we have out-and-out confirmation of the resolutions at The 
Hague.?93 

Lastly, the door has been thrown wide open for the English Tranrs 
Unions— a move which shows how well the situation has been under- 
stood. And the utterances committing the rrapes unions to the class 
Struggle and the abolition of wage labour mean that this did not even 
require our making any concessions. 

Hence we have every reason to be pleased. The Nieuwenhuis inci- 
dent has shown that the working men of Europe have at last pro- 
gressed beyond an era dominated by high-falutin verbiage and that 
they are aware of the responsibilities incumbent on them: it is a class 
constituted as a militant party, a party which reckons with facts.?°> 
And the facts are taking an increasingly revolutionary turn. 

In Russia there its already famine; in Germany there will be famine 
in a few months’ time; the other countries will suffer less, this is why: 

 Ste Pélagie—a prison in Paris. -” 

The Divine Comedy, ‘Inferno’, IT). 

the city of woe, ’midst the lost ones below (Dante, 

it is estimated that the 1891 harvest will be in deficit to the tune of 
4 million quarters (11'/, million hectolitres) of wheat and 30-35 mil- 
lion quarters (between 87 and 101'/, million hectolitres) of rye; in the 
latter case this enormous deficit mainly affects the two rye consuming 
countries, Russia and Germany. 

That will give us a guarantee of peace until the spring of 1892. 
Russia won’t make a move before then. Thus, assuming the absence 
of some inconceivable blunder on the part of Berlin or Paris, there 
won't be a war. 

On the other hand, will Tsarism come through this crisis? I doubt 
it. There are so many rebellious elements in the big cities, especially 
in Petersburg, that they are bound to seize the opportunity, now to 
hand, of deposing that drunkard Alexander III, or of placing him 
under the control of a national assembly — perhaps it will be he him- 
self who takes the initiative in convening it. Russia (i.e. the govern- 
ment and the young bourgeoisie) had done an enormous amount of 
work towards the creation of big industry on a national scale (see 
Plekhanov in the Neue Zeit*) and that industry will be stopped in its 
tracks because its only market— the domestic one — will be denied it 
on account of the famine. The Tsar will see what comes of having 
made Russia a SELF-SUFFICIENT Country independent of abroad; he will 
have an industrial crisis on top of an agricultural crisis. 

In Germany the government will reach a decision, too late as al- 
ways, to abolish or suspend the duty on corn. That will break the pro- 
tectionist majority in the Reichstag. The big landowners, the sqguirear- 
chy, will no longer want to support the duties on industrial products; 
they will want to buy IN THE cheapest MARKET. Thus we shall probably 
see a repetition of what happened at the time of the vote on the Anti- 
Socialist Law '!: a protectionist majority, itself divided by divergent 
interests arising out of the new situation, which finds it impossible to 
reach agreement on the details of a protectionist system, all the possi- 
ble proposals being only minority ones; there will be either a rever- 
sion to the free trade system, which is just as impossible or—— 
dissolution, displacement of the former parties and of the former ma- 
jority, a new free trade majority opposed to the present government. 
That will mean the real and definitive end of the Bismarckian period 
and of stagnation in home affairs (I am not speaking here of our own 
party but of parties which might ‘possibly’ govern); there will be strife 

* G. Plechanow, ‘Die sozialpolitischen Zustande Rußlands im Jahre 1890’, Die Neue 
Zeit, 9. Jg. 1890/91, 2. Bd., Nr. 47-51. 

between the landed nobility and the bourgeoisie, and between the 
protectionist bourgeoisie (one section of the industrialists) and the 
bourgeoisie favouring free trade (the other section of the industrialists 
and the merchants); the stability of the ministries and of the country’s 
domestic policy will be shattered, in other words there will be move- 
ment, struggle, vitality, and it is our party that will reap the whole 
benefit. If things take this turn, our party will be able to come to pow- 
er round about 1898 (Bebel puts it as early as 1895). 

There. [ haven’t discussed other countries because they are not so 
directly affected by the agricultural crisis. But suppose this agricul- 
tural crisis were to unleash, here in England, the acute industrial 
crisis we have been awaiting for the past 25 years, what then? 

In a quarter of an hour we shall be leaving for Highgate to plant an 
ivy cutting on Marx’s grave. Motteler brought it back three years ago 
from Ulrich von Hutten’s grave (Island of Ufenau, Lake of Zurich) 
and it has grown marvellously on my balcony. 

I have had Bebel and Adler from Vienna with me here for the past 
few days; they are very pleased about the congress. 

Enjoy yourself and make good use of the opportunity you have 
been offered of ‘concentrating’ on work, as the Berlin journalist said 
when thrown into jug in 1841. 

With best wishes, 

Yours, 
F.E.