AT LE PERREUX 
[London,] 26 February 1895 

41 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

My dear Lafargue, 

I am sending the Manuscript to you by registered post with a few 
comments—as always the translation is excellent. °'’ There has been a delay 
of a few days, and this is why; in Berlin they want to reprint the three articles 
by Marx on the events in France in 1848-49 (published in 1850 in the Revue 
de la Nouvelle Gazette Rhénane“ and this cannot be done without an 
introduction; *’’ this introduction has become quite long, since besides a 
general review of the events since that date, it would be necessary to explain 
why we were right to expect the imminent and definitive victory of the 
proletariat, why that has not come about, and to what point events have 
modified the way we saw things then. This is important because of the new 
laws which are threatening us in Germany. ** A Reichstag Commission is 
attempting to transform all the articles of the penal code into rubber articles 
which are applicable or not, depending on the political party to which the 
defendant belongs. Arguments in favour of an act declared criminal, etc. will 
be punished if they are made in circumstances which could justify the 
opinion that the accused wished to provoke or incite imitation! etc., etc. that 
is, you who are socialist will be punished for having said something which 
any conservative, liberal or 

* Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-6konomische Revue. 

clerical may say with impunity. The clericals in the commission are worse 
than the government itself. Just imagine, they are requesting two years in 
prison for anyone who denies in public or in the press the existence of god or 
the immortality of the soul. 

This is a fury of reaction wholly without purpose, and absolutely inex- 
plicable except on the supposition that all these gentlemen are threatened by a 
coup d’état. This coup d’état is openly preached by top-ranking officials. 
Constantin Réssler, ministerial counsellor, has called for it in a brochure.* 
Boguslawski, a retired general, has just done the same thing.” The liberals and 
clericals know that, faced with such determination on the part of the 
government, there is nothing left for them but to submit. In the presence of 2 
million socialist electors, these gentlemen do not have the courage to resist a 
coup d’état openly—the government uses this threat to disarm them, and they 
will vote just to ‘save’ the constitution and domestic peace! Wait and see, 
they will vote for all the taxes, all the battleships, all the new regiments 
requested by William’—if the electors do not become involved. For our 
bourgeois deputies are so cowardly that even the courage of cowardice may 
prove lacking. 

In any case, we are striding towards a crisis, if there can be a crisis in this 
Germany of the Bourgeoisie, where everything is blunted. What is certain is 
that there will be a new age of persecution for our friends. As for us, our 
policy should be not to let ourselves be provoked at this point; we would be 
fighting without the least chance of success, and we would be bled like Paris 
in 1871, whereas in two or three years our forces may have doubled, as under 
the exceptional law. '° Today our Party would be fighting alone against all 
the others, rallied around the government under the banner of social order; in 
two or three years we will have on our side the peasants and the petty- 
bourgeois crushed by taxation. The battle corps does not engage in frontline 
battles but reserves itself for the critical moment. 

Anyway, we shall see how it ends. 

How ironical that you, one of the most French writers of our age, should 
be doomed to be published almost always in German! And what German! 
The translators of Berlin and Stuttgart display a truly Germanic heaviness. 
There is only Adler who does you justice, and he will not al- 

*C. R6Bler, Die Sozialdemokratie. —° A. Boguslawski, Vollkampf-—nicht Scheinkampf. Ein 
Wort zur politischen Lage iminnern. -° William II 

ways have the time to translate you himself. The only consolation I can offer 
is to tell you that I myself always breathe a little of the French spirit when I 
retranslate mentally your translator; sometimes I succeed. 

We have been without water for 15 days, the pipe beneath our road is 
frozen; otherwise everything at home is going well. For one week we had 
almost no gas, as paraffins containing C4, Cs and C., and more of carbon are 
precipitated in the pipes by the cold. It was one of those periods when 
London relapses into barbarity. And the Standard tells you that, this is the 
proof that England has reached the summit of civilisation! 

Thank Laura for her fine translation; I still have not received the letter you 
promised I would receive from her, but I hope that she has received the copy 
of the 3 volume* for Deville that I sent to her on Ist January. 

Greetings from the Freybergers. 

Yours, 
F.E. 

The preface to the 3"! volume has been published in Italian in La Rassegna 
translated by Martignetti, and reviewed by Labriola, who has rendered the 
passages on Loria with a voluptuousness which bursts through each line. On 
the other hand, Loria has written a critique of the 3" volume in the Nuova 
Antologia which is of unequalled superficiality. '° 1st volume: Napoleon I, 
2™: the king of Rome, tubercular, 3": Louis Bonaparte II I. In Germany, 
Werner Sombart, a Berlin professor and a rather eclectic Marxist, has written 
a good article on the 3" volume.° How are things progressing for Ist May? 
People are talking only of the Allemanists. *! And how is the unity, or 
disunity, of the groups progressing, particularly as regards your own? 
Vaillant has written to me again, he wants my opinion on his draft laws. I 
have still not found the time to read Jaurés on materio-idealism. *'* 

467 

Engels’ Comments on the French translation of his On the History of Early 
Christianity: 

“ of Capital- A. Loria, ‘L’opera postuma di Carlo Marx’. In: Nuova Antologia, Anno XXX, 
fascicolo II I - 1 febbraio 1895. - © W. Sombart, Zur Kritik des 6konomischen Systems von Karl 
Marx’. In: Archiv für Soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik. Bd. 7, H. 4, [1894] - ‘ See this volume, 
pp. 420, 453 

P.17* The Philonic school of Alexandria and 
Greco-Roman vulgar philosophy—Platonic and especially Stoic—played an 
important role in the development of Christianity as the state religion under 
Constantine. This role is far from being established in detail etc. etc. 

p. 34” What holy indignation was provoked 
after 1830 in the pious nursery that was Germany at the time by, as Heine 
called it, Saint Simon’s reinstatement of the flesh! The most shocked were 
the aristocratic estates who dominated at the time (I’m not speaking of the 
aristocratic class, given that in 1830 classes did not yet exist in our country) 
who, etc. 

same page, last word conception—doesn’t this word lend itself too well to 
a play on words here?