Letter to the Editor of The Times, March 21, 1871

Author(s) Frederick Engels
Karl Marx
Written 21 March 1871


Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 22
Drafted by F. Engels on March 21, 1871
First published in The Times, No. 27017 March 22, 1871 as an item on Marx's letter
Reproduced from Engels' draft

J. T. Delane.— Ed

This letter was drafted by Engels on Marx's request in connection with a letter that was published in the French police newspaper Paris-Journal on March 19, 1871, which the editors declared to be Marx's letter to Serraillier. According to them it testified to the contradictions between the French and German members of the International. The forged letter was reprinted in the bourgeois newspapers of various countries, which joined in the campaign of slander against the International. At the meeting of the General Council of

March 21, 1871, Marx exposed the communication in the Paris-Journal as a provocative forgery and said that he had already sent a refutation to the editor of The Times, which had reprinted the communication from the Paris-Journal.

The item on Marx's refutation was published in The Times on March 22, 1871, but the newspaper, joining the campaign of slander against the International, published an item by a correspondent of the Bonapartist newspaper La Liberté distorting Marx's letter of March 21. At the meeting of the General Council on March 28, 1871, Marx again exposed the slanderers. He inserted the text of this piece into his letter to Paul Lafargue of March 23, 1871 (see present edition, Vol. 44) in order to make it known to the Paris members of the International.

Sir,

In your impression of the 16th March your Paris correspondent states:

"Karl Marx...has written a letter to one of his principal affiliés in Paris, stating that he is not satisfied with the attitude which the members of that society (the "International") have taken up in that city etc." [1]

This statement your correspondent has evidently taken from the Paris-Journal of the 14th March where also the publication, in full, of the pretended letter[2] is promised. The Paris-Journal of the 19th

March does indeed contain a letter dated London, 28th February 1871 [3] and purporting to be signed by me, the contents of which agree with the statement of your correspondent. I now beg to declare that this letter is, from beginning to end, an impudent forgery.

  1. ↑ "The State of Paris", The Times, No. 27012, March 16, 1871.— Ed.
  2. ↑ "Le Grand Chef de l'Internationale", Paris-Journal, No. 71, March 14, 1871.— Ed.
  3. ↑ "Lettre du Grand Chef de l'Internationale", Paris-Journal, No. 76, March 19, 1871.— Ed.