KARL MARX

SELECT CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 218
moved nearer to a sort of Marxism which they proclaimed in their newspaper
UEgalite. In October 1879 the Federation du Parti des Travailleurs
Socialistes was formed; and the amnesty of 1880 strengthened the socialists
by permitting the return of exiles, among them Marx's two sons-in-law.
In May 1880 Guesde came to London to discuss an electoral programme
with Marx, Engels and Lafargue. Marx was by and large happy with the
programme - to which he wrote the preamble - as it embodied 'demands
that have really sprung spontaneously from the workers' movement
itself, 108 but he protested at the demand for a statutory mininum wage
(which Guesde insisted on including). 'If the French proletariat is still so
childish that it needs such bait, then it is not worth while drawing up
any programme whatever.' 109 He also drew up an extended questionnaire
to be distributed among French workers, thus reviving an idea broached
at the 1866 Geneva Congress of the International. The questionnaire was
published in Malon's Revue Socialiste in April 1880 and 25,000 copies were
off-printed. 110 The introduction insisted that 'it is the workers alone who
can describe with thorough knowledge the evils that they suffer, it is they
alone - and not some providential saviours - who can energetically apply
remedies to the social miseries that they undergo'. 111
Marx conceived the enterprise as primarily educative in the sense of
inculcating a class consciousness, though there is no evidence of its having
achieved any result. He doubted whether the new party could long remain
united and this time he was quite justified: at the Congress of St-Etienne
in September 1882 the party split into reformist and revolutionary wings
the latter led by Guesde, who found himself under attack on the grounds
that he received orders from the 'Prussian' Marx in London. 112 In reality,
the relationship between Marx and Guesde was a very tenuous one, and
Marx's opinion of some of his would-be disciples in France was so low
that he declared to Lafargue: 'what is certain is that I am no Marxist'. 115
Both his sons-in-law in fact disappointed him by their lack of political
sense. He contemptuously dismissed 'Longuet as the last Proudhonist and
l.afargue as the last Bakuninist! Devil take them!' 114
Britain was still the country where Marx's ideas made the least impact.
I'.ven the United States gave him more encouragement. He closely followed
America's 'chronic crisis' of 1873-78 and was particularly interested
in the economic progress of the newest states such as California. He
considered that there was a good possibility of 'establishing a serious
workers' party' 115 and thought that the government policies of land appropriation
would ally the Negroes and farmers with the working class. Even
the transfer of the seat of the International to New York might turn
out to have been opportune. 116 The British working class, however, had
(according to Marx) now sunk so low that they were no more than 'the