25

This article introduces, presents and comments on a brief writing by Louis Bertrand published in 1932, and which has so far gone unnoticed. In 1932, the Belgian socialist Louis Bertrand published indeed two articles in memory of Eduard Bernstein, who had died ten days earlier. In the second article, here transcribed, we discover the establishment of a weapons network by the “reformists” Eduard Bernstein and Louis Bertrand, to the Russian revolutionaries of 1905. These weapons came from the National Factory Herstal [Fabrique nationale d’armes de Herstal, (FN) or (FN Herstal)] near Liège in Belgium. In the same article, Bertrand evokes the first French translation of Marx’s Capital, Volume II and III. This translation was made by the Belgian socialist and engineer Hippolyte Vanderrydt, with the German socialist Julian Borchardt. It was carried out at the instigation of some members of the Belgian Workers’ Party (POB/BWP). The various elements mentioned are the occasion to present the relatively unknown place occupied by Belgium in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and in the political thought of Eduard Bernstein. They also allow us to re-examine the question of Marxism within the POB/BWP. For that purpose, various elements of the reception of Marx in Belgium are recalled, in particular the context of the Capital’s translation, as well as the attempt to “orthodoxize” the Belgian Party by the young Henri de Man.