AT LE PERREUX 

London, 31 October 1891 

My dear Lafargue, 

Louise and I send you our hearty congratulations on the result of 
last Sunday’s* vote. ‘It’s magnificent’ and it is ‘war’.?+° True there 
may have been some 4,400 abstentions and missing voters, but more 
than 3,100 of those who abstained would have been needed to rally 
round your opponent if Dépasse was to surpass you by passing you (a 
pun, alas, passing through like an attack of diarrhoea, let’s hope it 
will pass!). And no such thing has ever been known. And you yourself 
have won an intoxicating victory. So a week tomorrow we shall drink 
to your definitive victory **'—— though we shan’t forget you tomor- 
row either. 

I see from the newspapers sent me by you and Laura that the press, 
both governmental and of radical tendency, has at last been com- 
pelled to take notice of your election. The nonsense talked by Le Temps” 
cannot but be of use to you. Once the ice has been broken, anything 
these gentlemen may say will work in your favour. Even the worthy 
Pelletan of La Justice has had to come down on your side. 

Should you be elected, that would be a further embarrassment to 
the Chamber: whether to vote or whether not to vote for your release. 

What on earth is this new split that is about to happen amongst the 
Chamber’s radicals, between Millerand, Hovelacque and Moreau, 
on the one hand, and the bulk of the Clemencists on the other? You 
speak of the possibility of joining forces with the former.3*? But up to 
what point are they keeping in step with you? To the best of my 
knowledge the nominally ‘socialist’ radicals in the Chamber have 
hitherto been merely the detritus of Proudhonism and, as such, the 
avowed opponents of the socialisation of the means of production. 
And in my view it would be impossible for us to effect a merger, form 
a group, with people who don’t subscribe to that, at any rate in princi- 
ple. Alternatively I believe we might enter into a more or less tempo- 

* 25:October-° Presumably Engels has in mind the leader ‘Il y avait trois élections 
hier...’, Le Temps, No. 11118, 27 October 1891. 

rary alliance with them, but not a merger. However there has evi- 
dently been some new development I don’t know about and [ shall 
await further word from you before forming an opinion. How truly 
splendid it would be if the radicals in the Chamber began to come 
over to our side-——-symptomatic indeed! 

I’m delighted that you and Laura should have found my article 31% 
both good and topical—but what will the others— Argyriades 
& Co. of the Almanach*— say? In all my experience I have never 
had the good fortune to comply with the wishes of those gentlemen, 
those friends of all the world, having found that, whenever I have 
done an article at their request, it has always been quite different 
from the article they requested. Alongside the solemn lucubrations of 
Mr Bénoit Malon and other choragi of Parisian socialism, that would 
be well-nigh impossible. Besides it’s all one to me. I warned Laura in 
advance that the situation would compel me to write things that 
many people would find distasteful. Well, she asked for it and I ob- 
liged. I know very well that the Socialiste won’t hesitate, but as for the 
Almanac, that’s another matter. Anyway we shall publish the thing 
one way or another and it will probably cause a rumpus. 

At Erfurt everything went off very well.*°' The jackasses of the op- 
position left the representatives of the whole party in no doubt that 
they were indeed jackasses and poltroons undeserving of sympathy. 
They are either fools or covert anarchists or policemen. Last night 
there were meetings in Berlin at which delegates had to submit their 
reports, thereby probably demolishing the gentlemen of the opposi- 
tion.24% Vollmar, on the other hand, has had to recant, not only at 
Erfurt, but also, and more specifically, at Munich °** before his own 
constituents. They rejected a resolution proposed by him in which he 
sought, without unduly infringing the resolutions passed against 
him at Erfurt, to introduce various passages acknowledging the point 
of view he had espoused in his reactionary speeches. Vollmar himself 
was forced to propose a fresh resolution, viz. outright submission to 
the Erfurt resolutions, and this was passed unanimously. As Bebel 
points out in a letter to me, whoever leaves the party or is shown the 
door by the party is, in political terms, dead.3+* Mr Vollmar is well 
aware of this and has taken good care not to do something that would 
place him in such a position. But that won’t prevent him from being 
the most dangerous intriguer in our party. 

* Almanach du Parti Ouvrier 

fateh, wan Shahan plan i Vo Acer 

tie ys Peer ee Ake, ac Ovrbre 4. ele 
fee 

>» Re Gere tx Ab yi = 

First page of Engels’ letter to Paul Lafargue 
of 31 October 1891 

Anyway things are going ahead in Germany and before long the 
same thing will happen in France. We shall, perhaps, avoid a war 
and, since we are slow and methodical, that may give the French 
a chance to overtake us again by pulling off some mighty coup. It au- 
gurs well for the ‘fin de stécle’ and could put 1793 in the shade. 

What idiots your bourgeois and the Russians are! In a war, En- 
gland with her fleet and her command of the sea would hold the bal- 
ance — which is why those gentry are impelling her into the arms of 
the Germans by teasing her on the subject of Egypt 34°! 

Love to Laura——the Viennese women’s paper* hasn’t appeared 
yet-——for want of money, no doubt. 

Yours ever, 
F.E.