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Monsieur Lafargue held a deservedly high position among all classes in the Soudan. He had discovered that no legitimate commerce was possible with the savages of the White Nile; he had therefore advised his employer to that effect, and he had resigned all hope of effecting the original object of his expedition.
In 1892 Engels related the story of its birth: "At the request of my friend, Paul Lafargue, now representative of Lille in the French Chamber of Deputies, I arranged three chapters of this book as a pamphlet, which he translated and published in 1880, under the title: "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific." From this French text a Polish and a Spanish edition was prepared.
With a loud roar the lion flew to the attack, and with a terrific blow it struck the hunter upon the shoulder. The effect was awful; the man was dashed violently upon the ground, and the lion fell across his body; after a few gasps it rolled over and died. The Tokroori never moved. The steamer was now run alongside the bank, and Monsieur Lafargue, with a number of men, quickly went ashore.
Any lecturer who will acquaint himself with the names of Lamarck, Darwin, Lyell, Lavoisier, Huxley, Haeckel, Virchow, Tyndall, Fiske, Wallace, Romanes, Helmholtz, Leibnitz, Humboldt, Weismann, etc., in science, and Marx, Engels, Lafargue, Labriola, Ferri, Vandervelde, Kautsky, Morgan, Ward, Dietzgen, etc., in sociology, and learn what those names stand for, such a lecturer, other things being equal, has a great and useful field before him.
If that had been the attack of a tiger, the skull would not have been injured, although the scalp would have been badly lacerated, and death would have been occasioned by the grip of the jaws upon the neck, not by the blow. Another instance of the great force of a lion's blow was witnessed by my late friend, Monsieur Lafargue, whom I knew when he was a resident of Berber in the Soudan.
This is quite a different position from that taken by Lafargue in his fight with Jaures. Lafargue there argued that economic development is the sole determinant of progress, and pronounces in favor of economic determinism, thus reducing the whole of history and, consequently, the dominating human motives to but one elementary motive.
The late Paul Lafargue stated the same principle at a recent congress of the French Socialist Party, contending that, as long as capitalists still control the national administration, representatives are sent by the Socialists to the Chamber of Deputies, not in the hope of diminishing the power of the capitalist State to oppress, but to combat this power, "to procure for the Party a new and more magnificent field of battle."
That is to say, Lafargue believed that reforms extremely beneficial to the working class might be enacted without any union of Socialists with non-Socialists, without the Socialists gaining political power and without their even constituting a menace to the rule of the anti-Socialist classes.
You will recall on this subject the celebrated debate between Spencer and Laveleye: "The State and the Individual or Social Darwinism and Christianity," in the "Contemporary Review," 1885. Lafargue has also replied to Spencer, but has not pointed out the fact that Spencer's criticisms apply, not to democratic socialism, our socialism, but to State socialism. See also CICCOTTI on this subject.
The steamer arrived safely at Khartoum, and was engaged in the trade of the Blue Nile to Fazocle, and through the White Nile to the unknown, as in those days Khartoum was the southern boundary of Egypt. Monsieur Lafargue was a charming man, highly educated, with a mind of a peculiar character, that enabled him to lead a happy life in the remote wilderness of the Soudan.
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