Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, End of July 1849

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written July 1849


Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, p. 208;
First published: in Die Gesellschaft, 1930.
Collection(s): Die Gesellschaft

To Joseph Weydemeyer in Frankfurt Am Main

The date of writing of this letter was established on the basis of Marx's mentioning in it the receipt of Engels' letter to Jenny Marx of 25 July 1849.

In English this letter was first published abridged in: K. Marx and F. Engels, Letters to Americans. 1848-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1953.

Paris, end of July 1849

Dear Weydemeyer,

I have heard from Dronke that it's no go with the Westphalian lady. Well, it can't be helped.

Now I should appreciate your advice as to how best to publish pamphlets.

I should like to start with the pamphlet on wages of which only the beginning appeared in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. [Wage Labour and Capital] I would write a short political foreword to it on the present status quo. Do you think that, e.g., Leske would be agreeable? But he would have to pay, as soon as he had the manuscript in his hands, and pay well, since I know that this pamphlet will attract and will find a mass of subscribers in advance. My present financial condition will not permit me to settle my outstanding account with Leske.[1]

Were Leske then to find that the thing is well received, we could continue in this way.

Yesterday I had a letter from Engels; he is in Switzerland and, as Willich's adjutant, has taken part in four encounters.

The sword of Damocles still hangs over my head; my expulsion has neither been rescinded nor, for the moment, is it being enforced.

Awkward though the present state of affairs may be for our personal circumstances, I am nevertheless among the satisfied. Things are going very well and the Waterloo[2] suffered by official democracy[3] may be regarded as a victory. 'Governments by grace of God' are taking it upon themselves to avenge us on the bourgeoisie, and to chastise them.

One of these days I may perhaps send you a short article for your paper [Neue Deutsche Zeitung] on the state of affairs in England.[4] Just now I find it too boring, having already discussed the matter in a number of private letters.

Write to me direct and to my own address: 45, rue de Lille, Monsieur Ramboz.

My best regards to your wife and yourself from my wife and me. The former very poorly, the natural consequence of her all too interesting condition. Good-bye, my friend, and reply soon.

Your
K. M.

  1. ↑ The reference is to a contract signed between Leske and Marx on 1 February 1845 for the publication of Marx's work Kritik der Politik und National-ökonomie.
    On 1 February 1845 Marx signed a contract with the publisher Leske for the publication of his Kritik der Politik und National-Ökonomie. But as early as March 1846 Leske suggested that Marx find another publisher and, in case he did find one, return him the advance received. Therefore Marx hoped to repay Leske either when he signed a contract with a new publisher or out of the sum received for financing the planned publication. But Marx was unable either to sign a new contract or to fulfil his intention to write a work on economics, and in February 1847 the contract with Leske was cancelled.
  2. ↑ In the battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) Napoleon's army was defeated by the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian forces commanded by Wellington and Blücher.
  3. ↑ An allusion to the setback of the Montagne on 13 June 1849.
    Montagnards — during the French revolution of 1848-49 representatives in the Constituent and subsequently Legislative Assembly of a bloc of democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists grouped around the newspaper La Réforme. They called themselves the Montagne by analogy with the Montagne in the Convention of 1792-94.
  4. ↑ There is no information about this article except a mention in Marx's next letter to Weydemeyer.