40
PARTISAN REVIEW
BAKUNIN.
I
promised the traitor Lassalle to assaSsinate you.
MARX. And where is Lassalle, the Bourbonist bandit?
BAKUNIN. He has fled the country, the reptile.
MARX
(shooting Bakunin).
Good: he may live to take a
treacherous part in some even more sensational conspiracy.
ENGELS
(snatching the Dialectic from Marx).
I,
too, have been
disloyal to Comrade Marx!
I
take full responsibility for everything!
I
did not know about the plot and failed to prevent it.
(He shoots
Mary Burns and himself.)
MARX. And now we may tear up the Gotha Program prepared
by the mad wolf Lassalle and poisoned with the counter-revolutionary
demand for equal pay for officials and workers. Forward to socialist
inequality and democracy!
Marx takes a
If
his beard and reveals the smiling face of Com–
rade Stalin.
CURTAIN
EDMUND WILSON
